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 2001
We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies–who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996–move into the city and execute up to 300 Taliban fighters. ...
“U.S. Meeting Envisions Rebuilding Afghanistan” read the headline in the Washington Post of November 21. After a one-day meeting in Washington of leaders from two dozen nations and international organizations, US and Japanese officials said they had developed ...
“Terrorism” may be the most important, powerful word in the world right now. In the name of doing away with terrorism, the United States is bombing Afghanistan and talking about possible attacks elsewhere. Political leaders from many countries are at o...
Sana Sersawi speaks carefully, loudly but slowly, as she recalls the chaotic, dangerous, desperately tragic events that overwhelmed her just over 19 years ago, on 18 September 1982. As one of the survivors prepared to testify against the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharo...
A native of Egypt, Ali Abdelsoud Mohamed rose to the rank of major in Egypt’s special forces before being forced out of Egypt’s military in 1984 because he was considered a religious extremist. Much later he was identified as a secret member of the Isl...
Many conservatives, liberals, and libertarians are protesting the numerous invasions of your liberty that Congress and the Bush administration have imposed during the past two months. But without realizing it, many of the protestors brought these invasions ...
The Independent in Mohammed Agha, Afghanistan In a field in an arid valley south of Kabul a hundred local leaders, all powerful in their own districts, assembled yesterday to debate the future of their province at the same time as Afghan politicians were meeting i...
The Independent We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies–who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996–move into the city and execute up to...
Early in the morning of November 22, five Palestinian children were blown to pieces by an Israeli mine or bomb as they headed to school in Khan Younis. The children were 6 to 14 years-of-age, all from the Al Astel family. It is unclear if the explosion was set off...
The Gorleben International Peace Team (GIPT) was established in 1997 to report on the human rights and civil liberties situation in the Wendland region of Germany during high-level atomic waste transports. The November 2001 GIPT observed that by placing the interests of t...
Boeing may have lost out to Lockheed in it’s bid to build the Joint Strike Fighter, one of the most lucrative contracts in Pentagon history, but no one should mourn for the defense giant. The Pentagon needs a plump Boeing as much as Boeing needs Pentagon lar...
Early evening. A doctor’s private surgery in Baghdad. A day-bed in the corner sealed off by a white curtain. An exhausted woman in a white-coat is slumped at her desk, her head resting on the large table. She is fast asleep. The buzzer on her desk rings. She...
“You’ll never get through,” the Taliban man shouted at me. “The Northern Alliance are shooting into Takhta–Pul and the Americans are bombing the centre of the town.” “Impossible,” I said. Takhta–Pul is only 24 m...
I toss in an unfamiliar bed. Strange bed. Strange room. Strange town. Strange country. A stranger in a strange land, I sleep fitfully in a country not my own. The hotel door bangs open. Heavy boots shake the room as armed soldiers surround me. Angry voices. Blinding light...
President Bush is putting a big stake in the newly formed Office of Homeland Security under the leadership of former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. The rationale behind the formation of the office is a belief that the coordination of the disparate agencies with resp...
Only three days have passed following US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Middle East policy remarks at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center for Political Leadership in Kentucky. Following Secretary Powell’s tribute to a key member i...
It won’t be long, most likely, before Osama’s body is on display and an end written to his chapter in the unfinished saga of Empire v. Terror. How appropriate that this last week millions of children here in the US, (the most implacable critics of all)...
The highly-anticipated book, The Clash, Photographs By Bob Gruen, is slated for release lat...
Few political movements have come so far so fast. A month ago, the Northern Alliance was clinging on by its fingertips in a few strongholds amid the crags of the Hindu Kush mountains. Today, it is master of Kabul, seems about to take Kunduz and is preparing to attend talk...
The Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) today wrote to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert asking that Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, be removed from his position because of bigoted anti-Muslim comme...
Several weeks ago in Massachusetts, acting Governor Jane Swift approved a bill that exonerates the accused witches hung in 1692 and 1693 during the Salem Witch Trials. The women were the last of the 20 victims to be cleared by the legislature since their executio...
My office is cluttered with over 20,000 pages of FBI files chronicling the damage inflicted on academic freedom in America by McCarthyism. These hundreds of different files tell divergent stories with various twists, turns and morals, but most of them are bound to...
The weekend before Thanksgiving, as the Taliban fled into the Hindu Kush and America’s children flocked to Harry Potter, the nation’s opinion formers discovered that the Bush administration had hijacked the Constitution with the Patriot Act and the military tr...
People are more conflicted than ever this Thanksgiving. The deaths of 4,000 people in New York make many of us wonder whether God is sleeping on the job. It is said there are no atheists in foxholes, but, on the flipside, I wonder what happens to the fait...
America’s Message of Greed and Violence for Thanksgiving and Ramadan as We Leave the Children Behind
With some U.S. military aircraft broadcasting and others bombing, the United States delivered its message of greed and violence to the people of Afghanistan during the first week of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. An airborne special forces radio station aboard...