Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'oil'
Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, in the north of Iraq, is booming. Brick houses are giving way to shopping malls, hotels and apartment buildings, while in the suburbs, there are villages newly built or under construction to house the new Kurdish middle c...
The breakneck pace of tar sands development in Canada is well known; it is the sheer size of the multiple mines, in-situ plants, upgraders, pipelines, rail lines, refineries and more across all of North America that earned the nickname “the Gigaproject.” Now, what if ...
Yesterday, Montana Senator Max Baucus announced he was set to retire at the end of his current term. As one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington he will surely leave a void, at least for the DC lobbyists that pay to play. However, as a native Montanan, I can assur...
If you live in Oregon, you are familiar with the spectacle of greenwashing at the highest levels of political theater. As Portland gears up to host the UN’s World Environment Day, the international attention almost obscures the plans for multiple freeway expansions, a N...
Congress will review the Obama Administration’s ...
Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the State Department consulting firm that claims TransCanada’s pr...
Following a train’s spill of 30,000 gallons of crude ...
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Almost 11 years ago in June 2002, ...
Dalarna, Sweden.
The catastrophe of global warming is rapidly bringing accessibility to the Far North, an often discussed ‘rush’ to claim land and resources ongoing as I write this. Historically, there have been numerous other ‘rushes’ for land and ...
Hugo Chavez died in early March. Heads of state came to his funeral and sent condolences to his family— except for the US President. Even in death the White House maintained a resentful tone toward a man we had names as an enemy. But what did Chavez do to us? He offered...
Recent headlines in the US press about the coming economic boom heralded by the shale gas revolution would lead you to think we are literally swimming in oil. A spate of reports last year, in particular the International Energy Agency’s (IEA)World Energy Outloo...
We have entered a critical era for the future of humanity on this planet, and the stakes are indeed as high as whether there will be anything left for those who come next. In the period of expansive consumer growth following World War II, and then again with another quant...
The protests against the Keystone XL pipeline have already focused a great deal of attention on the Conservatives’ terrible environmental record and if Obama rejects the project it would deliver a major blow to their tar sands oriented economic policy. It could also pre...
With the nomination of Ernest Moniz to be the next U.S. secretary of Energy, President Barack Obama has selected a man who is not only a booster of nuclear power but a big proponent of fracking, too. What happened to Obama’s call for “clean” energy in his 2013 State...
Iraqis are not naïve. Grim experience of their country’s rulers over the past 50 years leads many to suspect them of being self-serving, greedy, brutal, and incompetent. Ten years ago, some had hoped Iraqis might escape living in a permanent state of emergency as the U...
With less than transparency, the AFL-CIO just issued a statement endorsing “expanding the nation’s pipeline system.” Although it did not explicitly endorse the Keystone XL pipeline, the labor federation nevertheless managed to extend its blessing to the project whil...
“Ninety-three years old. The last leg of my journey. The end is in sight. I am lucky to be able to seize the time I have left to reflect on my lifelong commitment to politics: the Resistance and the program designed sixty-six years ago by the National Council of the...
This weekend, marking the second anniversary of the start of protests that would usher in a bloody and prolonged NATO-led coup to overthrow the Libyan Jamahiriya and Muammar Gaddafi, offers many reasons to celebrate for those whose intention was the demolition of Libyan s...
President Barack Obama will be publicly sworn in today – on Martin Luther King Jr. Day – to serve his second t...
There is a current of excitement running through the foreign affairs community sparked by the prospect that the United States will cease being a net energy importer within 25 years. The International Energy Agency’s annual WORLD ENERGY OUTLOOK 2012 projects that by 2035...
The West’s attempts to destroy the Iranian economy through heightened sanctions—including most imports, oil exports and use of banks for trade operations—is having its affect. According to Johns Hopkins University Professor Steve Hanke, Iran is facing hyperinfla...
Among the social, political, and economic issues that Obama and Romney seem to have no difficulty agreeing upon is the notion that the United States needs to achieve “energy independence.” Arguing that its reliance on the importation of sources of fuel puts th...
To the extent that the second debate between US president Barack Obama and aspirant Mitt Romney is generating media punditry buzz, that buzz centers mostly around the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11: What did Obama know, when did he know it, ...
An interesting side product of globalization is how China bashing has become a staple of domestic politics in nations around the world, from America to Zambia, from Sydney to Tokyo. Best practices also propagate with remarkable speed and efficiency.
It may not be a...
There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ...