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 'poverty'
In the middle of December 2012, New Delhi was once again choking on a thick stratum of smog. Everyone around me was coughing, while I was supposed to be filming, for one of my documentaries. But in such conditions, filming became almost impossible, unless one was yearning...
I want to briefly follow up on a recently published article of mine about atheism and economic justice. Doing so makes good sense, I think, because the piece is long, research-based, and addresses an unduly neglected topic. I’ll get to the article presently, but first l...
Irrespective of ones circumstances or stage of life, illness is never welcome, in America if your poor it can prove to be a total catastrophe, ending often in personal bankruptcy. “According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a ...
London.
In Charles Dickens ‘Hard Times’, there is a scene where one of the main...
I don’t have a television, so I didn’t get to see President Obama deliver his reelection speech last night. Like millions of Americans, the day after the election was much the same as every other day. I spent my first day after Obama’s victory moving for...
The idea of sharing is increasingly popular today as an answer to many of our social, environmental and economic problems. By learning how to share more in our everyday lives – in everything from cars, clothes, couches, meals, household tools, even our time and skil...
Durban, South Africa.
What did Hurricane Sandy teach us a week ago, here in South Africa, just as $30 billion of state funds is being committed to the dig out of vast new Durban port capacity over the next three decades, plus billions more nearby for petro...
While the extent of Hurricane Sandy’s damage in the U.S. and the Caribbean is still being assessed, what’s already clear is that across the map the recovery process will be long and require massive financial and human investments by both governments and non-govern...
Our topic today is a livable economy, and right now that conversation is urgent. I don’t have to tell you that, you’re all here because you know something is wrong. We live in a society that promises us that if we work hard we will succeed. If we allow the fre...
If a bomb goes off and kills a lot of people, does that mean the bomb is broken? The question is ludicrous. If the bomb were broken, it wouldn’t go off.
That is self-evident, but why is it self-evident? It’s because, intuitively, we all understand...
I am living in the middle of the produce district in Los Angeles. Every morning trucks beeping and backing up wake me, especially the trucks dragging away the full dumpster and sliding in the empty one. Nearby are the toy, flower, and fabric districts. Also, spread among ...
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to car...
Our two fathers would have much to say to today’s presidential and Senate candidates who are pandering for middle class votes? As if tens of millions of economically struggling families, like the ones in which we were raised, did not even exist. In the face of such ...
Trickle down economics refers to the view that the profits of the rich ultimately trickle down to the poor. Specifically, for example, tax cuts that benefit the rich motivate them to invest and the growth that results from that investment benefits everyone....
Port-au-Prince.
Do four pound babies in one of the worst slums in the world really count?
It seems they do at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Cite Soleil.
This precious little girl was born on Friday morning (three days ago) but was having ...
On July 1st, 2012, the day of Mexico’s recent presidential election, I visited the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, hoping to encounter a painting by Remedios Varo. A surrealist painter fleeing the Spanish Civil War, Varo was among the many notable exiles to make t...
We can’t seem to stop having record numbers of people living in poverty in the United States. The richest continue to get richer and the rest of us continue to see our incomes get lower and lower.
New Census Bureau figures ...
Fairbanks.
Shift work can be a dangerous, nauseating experience. Working 12 hours straight in a control panel at a power plant for 84 hours I often have entertained myself by adjusting the junked out radio with an antenna that wraps around the wall like a ...
Jab zulm-o-sitam ke koh-e giran
Rooyi ki tarah ur jayenge.
When the weighted mountains of tyranny
Will fly off like cotton whisps.
– Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
This memorandum is addressed to you. Y...
Durban, South Africa.
“One of the things you learn as an anthropologist, you don’t come in and change the culture,” Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim told wealthy alumni when contemplating the institution’s notorious hazing practices, prior ...
On 20 November 2011, thirty-six years after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, the right-wing Popular Party (PP) won a resounding victory in the parliamentary election. Less than ten months later, voting intention polls show that public support for the Rajoy gove...
You’re a lot poorer than you thought you were.
According to a report by Sentier Research “real median annual household income… has fallen by 4.8 percent since the ‘economic recovery’ began in June 2009.”
That’s worse...
Cheri Honkala was born into poverty in Minneapolis in 1963. For the past twenty-five years she has served as national director of the ...
The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, environmentally, and morally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic co...
Since the recession of 2008, it has become increasingly apparent that for the past four decades the majority of the American population has gotten a raw economic deal. Computer applications and internet technology have made accessible raw data from the Census, the Bureau ...