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
As he gave an official debut to the bombing of Afghanistan (entirely illegal under international law and the UN charter) with high explosive and food packages (a day’s worth of food for 37,000 was dropped on a land of 20 million people, some 7 million of who...
Over the past decade or so, every war fought by the West (in the Gulf, the Balkans and now South Asia) has been accompanied by a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign. Politics is conducted and presented in the style of intelligence agencies: disinformation, exagg...
The faces of Britain’s rulers on Monday night said it all. They had lost the argument. Sitting in Parliament they looked haggard and wretched. Tony Blair thumped on yet again about Osama bin Laden being a fiend and a monster. Everyone chanted that bombing should be ...
For the last three weeks Pakistan’s military rulers have been trying to convince the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden and avoid the catastrophe being prepared. They failed. Since Osama is the son-in-law of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, t...
The anti-aircraft guns and radar systems of the Taliban were largely destroyed during the first night of the US and British air assault, according to spies working for the Afghan opposition forces. Osama bin Laden’s headquarters were completely destroyed in t...
Hostile actions against the Taliban’s “sacred” terror are unfolding. I dedicate these words of reflection to true patriotism, to true peace. I pray to sacredness that all hostile actions on our tiny globe bring about conditions that preven...
Northern Afghanistan is now on the verge of all-out conflict, prompting people across the country to prepare to flee their homes and increasing the likelihood of an overwhelming humanitarian crisis. The reason for the mass flight is less the American and British ai...
Am I angry when 50- and 60-year-old congressional legislators say in television interviews say that the anti-war protests of 20-something university students are invalid because those students lack the perspective of living through the Vietnam war? Yes I am...
A well-kept secret about the U.S.-U.K. attack on Afghanistan is that it is clearly illegal. It violates international law and the express words of the United Nations Charter. Despite repeated reference to the right of self-defence under Article 51, the Char...
Below are references to Afghanistan in Colin Powell’s (with Joseph Persico), autobiography, ...
Sunday’s first round of attacks against Afghanistan was followed by the obligatory wave of backslapping and press spin. Officials from the U.S. and U.K. proclaimed major blows to the Taliban’s offensive and defensive capabilities and insisted the air r...
“[A] war has been declared upon Western societies. It is mistaken to view the events of 11 September solely as a war on America. It was an act of war in America, on the West,” writes Anne McElvoy in the Independent. The statement/theme, or variations ...
Don’t let the heady poll numbers in support of Bush and his war mandate fool you. There are plenty of Americans who nurture a healthy suspicion regarding the motives of U.S. foreign policy and the wisdom of waging endless war on untold fronts, a suspicion br...
From a hilltop 40 miles north of Kabul, across a clear night sky illuminated by a half a silver moon, I saw flashes on the skyline last night as the Allied air strikes began. Under a canopy of stars, plumes of fire were visible across the flat, heavily populated Sh...
Deep inside Afghan territory, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance is secretly building an airbase at breakneck speed, which the US-led coalition will then use to funnel massive amounts of military supplies to the one force that is already taking the war to Osama bin Laden&...
1. How can one analyse the evolution of Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion and the victory of the Taliban? The PDPA (—the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan—-Afghan Communist Party) which had a strong base in the army and air force carri...
The Guardian in London has apologized to playwright Harold Pinter and myself for smears by Christopher Hitchens, the Washington-based commentator. Hitchens wrote in the Guardian on September 26 that Pinter and I supported “that renowned Muslim-hater Slobodan ...
The US State Department-Pentagon has a bad record on war aims. During the lead-up to the Gulf War, the Bush administration, Part 1, argued that the US was needed to liberate Kuwait. The invasion of a state of 2.2 million people, in which only 28% earned the right ...
In what may be the opening shots of the war in Afghanistan, a silver-coloured Taliban jet screeched through the sky and released two cluster bombs. Just missing some mud-brick houses, they exploded in a field, spraying hundreds of steel balls in all directions. The...
Osama bin Laden, in an interview with the Pakistani paper Ummat, claims that the United States has deliberately concealed the true enormity of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “According to my information,” says bin Laden...
October 4 , 2001 This is the full text of the document, entitled Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, released by the office of Briti...
The following is a transcript of Noam Chomsky’s October 2 appearance in the MSNBC chatroom hosted by Will Femia. Will Femia: Ok....
Let’s say you woke up on Sept. 11 and saw the World Trade Towers collapse on television. Later that morning, numbed and confused, you tried to get back to normal life so you went out and bought Love and Theft, the new Bob Dylan album. You didn’t feel ...
The government’s choice of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to close the National Prayer Service, the first Friday after the WTC attack, shocked me. I was more shocked when it closed the peace-mongers’ mass we attended that Sunday. ...
As the Bush Administration promises to provide Americans with a sense of security as well as an overt and covert series of military spectaculars in answer to this week’s appalling terrorist attacks, we should expect our post-Manhattan world to become a polic...