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 from October 2001
The old joke goes that in the waning days of the Second World War, when Hitler was told of yet another defeat on the battlefield, he slammed his fist into his desk and declared: “That does it! No more Mr. Nice Guy!” We’ve been treated in t...
Haziza, a 12 year old girl from Kabul, Afghanistan, helped find her mother and baby brother dead in the rubble of their home on the first night of the U.S. bombing in early October. In the N.Y. Times on October 30, from Peshawar, Pakistan, Barry Bearak rep...
If we really want to stimulate our economy, we should put money in the hands of the people most likely to spend it. Economists from Paul Krugman to James K. Galbraith to Joseph Stiglitz agree, but this is exactly what the bill passed by the House of Representatives on las...
I would like to draw an analogy between the drug war and the war against terrorism. In the last 30 years, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a failed war on drugs. This war has been used as an excuse to attack our liberties and privacy. It has been a...
For years environmentalists have warned that shipping high-level nuclear waste across the country on rails or highways was a program fraught with peril. They pointed to the near certainty that eventually a train would derail or a truck would crash, spilling radioa...
As the U.S. launches its fourth week of gaudy, largely fruitless air strikes in Afghanistan, the echoes of the Gulf War a decade ago become plainer and plainer. Once again the Pentagon is releasing carefully vetted footage of aerial bombardments and the networks a...
Dear Secretary Powell, Even as the people of Bethlehem and Beit Jala mourn their freshly buried mothers, fathers and children killed by the Israeli occupation forces in vengeance for the targeted killing two weeks ago of Israeli cabinet minister and ethnic ...
Few things are as predicatable as the excited bleats of Pentagon flacks touting the killing efficacy of new weapons systems every time the US begins a military operation. During the Gulf War, the press was dazzled with reports of smart bombs and Scud-blasting Patr...
When the bombing began, I was cooling my spiked heels, sitting tight on the frontlines of the New War on Terrorism in a 747 bound for glory, devastation or Frankfurt airport, steeling myself to actually use one of those lethally sharp high heels as a weapon, shoul...
We have all watched in horror as hijackings, building implosions, and anthrax incidents have intruded into our comfortable world. These events have involved countless individual tragedies, including the victims themselves, their families, friends, and associates. ...
At 7am, on 29 October I was arrested at the Munich airport. After a day of interviews and book-signings and another two spent at a Goethe Institute seminar (on ‘Islam and the Crisis’), I was exhausted and desperate for a cup of coffee. I checked in. So...
The left is getting itself tied up in knots about the Just War and the propriety of bombing Afghanistan. I suspect some are intimidated by laptop bombardiers and kindred bullyboys handing out white feathers and snarl...
The images of the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center are nightmare images of unspeakable horror that will forever be a part of our reality. Imagine, however, another nightmare — that of a mushroom cloud rising over an American city. This is...
Genocide scholar Adam Jones claims he has been “silenced” on H-Genocide, an academic mailing list for the genocide-studies community, after attempting to post materials and commentary on the U.S.-led military campaign against Afghanistan. Jones,...
The post-September 11th guessing game rages on. Did the U.S. government know beforehand that the World Trade Center would be attacked? Who is responsible for delivering unsolicited anthrax mail? I recently bumped into my old Iranian friend A...
The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks’ bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorized by the most ...
War is one of the great privileges of civilization, quite characteristic of our own. It’s a moment to join together in a group celebration in which deep passions are allowed to arise, the clearest of which is hate itself. War is a time for displays of master...
This has been a tragic time in our country. Before I discuss this bill, let me first pause to remember, through one small story, how September 11th has irrevocably changed so many lives. In a letter to The Washington Post recently, a man wrote that as he went jogg...
Nezavisimaya Gazeta [On October 24, Marina Kalashnikova interviewed Zbigniew Brzenzinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter and the original patron of the Mujahideen, for the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The interview was little noticed in the US,...
“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and...
With the bombs and missiles falling on Afghanistan in the high-altitude US destruction that is Operation Enduring Freedom, the Palestine question may seem tangential to the altogether more urgent events in Central Asia. It would be a mistake to think so — and not ju...
The first principle of humanitarian relief is that it be impartial, that aid be given on the basis of need without any consideration of political agendas. The United States government, the same government that aroused international execration by using Red Cross mar...
A letter to the editor in the Daily Minnesotan (“Left lacks leadership”) took issue with my persistent criticism of the loosely defined, endless U.S. war on international terrorism. The letter’s author also suggested the radical left (a category ...
Sami Ullah was asleep when it happened, and so his friends and neighbours had to tell him about the bomb that struck his house and what it did to him and his family. How the American planes, which had been over earlier in the evening, had returned after everyone went to b...
The terrorist assault on various targets in the United States of America on 11th September 2001 is an extremely cowardly act that deserves to be condemned in no uncertain terms. The tragic loss of life resulting from the dastardly act is a reminder of the fact tha...