By Phil Wolfson - Znet

At the heart of the matter is MD psychiatry’s prolonged attempt at legitimation and recognition in parallel with disease based medicine. The evolving [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's] have served well to psychologize its practitioners and the public into believing there are known mental diseases that resemble diabetes or heart disease and a visit to the shrink, the prescription of a pill or two will alleviate that malady, which must be a brain disorder.

By James O’Nions - June 03, 2013

In 2004, the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was kidnapped by US marines and flown to the Central African Republic. It was a coup of the kind tried unsuccessfully in Venezuela two years earlier and successfully in Honduras in 2009. The institutional structures put in place by the coup regime, including the UN troops occupying the country, still remain despite several elections.

This new book’s thoughtful analysis and chilling reflections on what author Shawn Griffith experienced while incarcerated is a remarkable illustration of why the US public must listen to the voices of current and former prisoners who have stories that only they can tell. Griffith writes that “by integrating my own personal experiences with statistics and examples from different corrections systems around the nation, I am attempting to discredit the general perception that the system is designed to enforce and protect justice for everyone."

By DAVE MARSH - May 08, 2013

Bono may be the personification of all that’s evil about contemporary celebrity culture and all that’s worse than bankrupt about liberal capitalism (and liberal capitalists) but there’s also a real person in there, and he’s spent most of a lifetime making himself what history must surely judge...as a fool.

By Gerry Caplan - May 4, 2013

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam is not just another history book. Its implications for today are both profound and unnerving. It will haunt you every time the United States launches yet another military adventure somewhere in the world in the name of American idealism.

By Liam Barrington-Bush - rabble.ca

Since its birth, the management field has largely served to reinforce the social and political status quo, manipulating the vast majority of those who fall victim to it...In traditional leftist working class politics, 'management is the problem'...But there's another side to our relationship with the subject. It is exemplified in the fact that much of the organized left has long-embraced the same breed of top-down managerialism that most of us associate with industrial capitalism.

By Ron Jacobs - March 17th, 2013

...[O]ver 80,000 prisoners are currently locked away in control unit prisons in the United States...Living in cells smaller than many suburban bathrooms, the walls are painted white, lights are on most of the day, no windows or even bars, hardly any exercise, no reading materials and no visitors...These units are constantly watched by prison video feeds and prisoners are often beaten at will by the guards.

By Jordy Cummings - March 15, 2013

Hitchens...was not like other political or religious apostates, notably the first generation of neoconservatives who rejected their early political impulses...But the truth is that Hitchens was never really on our side to begin with...Hitchens was a petit-bourgeois social climber who wanted to be close to power whatever the source, whether that be the movers and shakers of the socialist left, the American left intelligentsia, the world of "letters," even the department of Homeland Security.

By Gar Lipow - March 05, 2013

The 2012 Canadian science fiction series Continuum...is a warning sign. It represents, possibly without intent, an escalation in the way media drums up support for increased police power, and repression of civil liberties and dissent...At first glance, this series is a mix of a standard science fiction trope with a police procedural.

By Gary Corseri - February 9th, 2013

Reading this scrupulously documented book, I lost count of the times I uttered, “unbelievable!” concerning some nefarious act committed by the US Empire in the name of freedom, democracy and fighting communism or terrorism. Reading Blum’s book with an open mind, weighing the evidence, will bleach out any pride in the flag we have planted in so many corpses around the world.

By Matt Moir - January 1, 2013

Though Canada doesn't yet lock up the same percentage of its citizenry as its southern neighbor -- the most heavily incarcerated society in the world -- measures passed by Prime Minister Harper's Conservative government have resulted in a steady increase in the number of Canadians behind bars. Canadians of Aboriginal ancestries have borne the brunt of the surge of prisoners.

By MICHAEL DONNELLY - December 31, 2012

Tarantino’s script is superb; the acting excellent; the score beautiful; the cinematography stunning and the absolute horror of Slavery has never been addressed this well in film...It’s the most important film so far on American Slavery...In the end, the movie is a love story: a retelling of the original Broomhilda myth with Django playing...a real-life Siegfried who rescues his love; a story of a man’s undying love for his wife.

Extremist settlers reflect much about Israel's dark side. Messianic interlopers have no place in civil society.

By Mary Ann Swissler - AlterNet

Women are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than men and are more likely to attempt suicide...“And those disorders are much more likely to persist in women”...[Film-maker Lucy] Winer['s]...experience was part of the massive “warehousing” of people living with mental illness which ended with deinstitutionalization in the 1970s — one massive failure replaced with a string of broken promises to provide community and family support. Instead, patients were unceremoniously discharged out into a society that was unprepared for their medical and social needs.

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s new film chronicling the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden, which opened in select theaters December 19, has largely received rave reviews and garnered a host of awards and nominations as the year’s best movie. It is a shameful work, and this reception says far more about the state of the media and the popular culture industry in the US than it does about the film itself.