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 January 2002
“The nation can be grateful in the knowledge that Strom is in good health,” read the second e-mail I received dealing with the president’s fainting spell. (The first dealt with the location of the Japanese prime minister during the incident.) Bush, too,...
Arthur Andersen, one of the nation’s Big Five accounting firms, admitted this week that it destroyed a “significant” number of documents related to its audit of Enron, the Houston, Texas-based energy trading giant that collapsed spectacularly int...
In the depths of the Pankisi Gorge, a natural fortress in the mountains of northern Georgia shielded from the outside world by its sheer rock walls, kidnappers are holding an Orthodox monk and demanding $1 million for his release. The kidnapping has provoked a public o...
Since it began 15 months ago the Palestinian Intifada has had little to show for itself politically, despite the remarkable fortitude of a militarily occupied, unarmed, poorly led, and still dispossessed people that has defied the pitiless ravages of Israel’...
Television news programs are suddenly a-flutter over accounts of the Bush administration’s negotiations with (and threats to) the Taliban about oil, long before September 11. It’s an indication of how insular the US media are that these reports were discussed ...
Conspiracy is going mainstream. On the morning of January 8 Paula Zahn of CNN went into wide-eyed mode as she parleyed with Richard Butler, former head of the UN inspection team in Iraq, latterly part of the wipe-out-Saddam lobby and now on the CNN payroll. They w...
People for the American Way, which once described the goal of the PMRC censors as “to bring children and parents together on music selection,” gave Neil Young its Spirit of Liberty award at a December 11 Beverly Hills banquet. Young used the occasion t...
An Israeli human rights group is charging in a new report that its country’s army is behaving with “blatant disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians” and a “complete lack of military accountability” as tensions in the Israeli-Palestin...
In October 1998, the US Congress defined US policy on Iraq and passed the ‘Iraq Liberation Act’. It contains a passage which confirms that the ultimate objective of the United States authorities is the removal of Saddam Hussain and his government. This puts th...
Over the past quarter-century, Greenpeace has gone from one of the more radical environmental groups around to a gateway into the corporate world. More and more a stint at Greenpeace seems to be prerequisite on the resum? of top-flight public relations honchos. Gr...
The Bush Administration’s entanglement with ENRON is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that Enron executives entered the White House six times last year to secretly plan the Administration’s energy policy with Vice-President Cheney before the c...
The inflation rate will aggravate in March, premier Mikhail Kasyanov will be dismissed in May, the world war may start in 2008, Alexander Voloshin–the head of the presidential administration – will be dismissed in September. This was predicted by Alexa...
In Afghanistan, as of this writing, women have not yet been bombed out of their burqas. It is risky to be the first in one’s village to shed the uniform of anonymity. At The Dancing Bare establishment, in Portland, Oregon, no one wears a burqa. There are no ...
The 13 December terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament and all other terrorist acts, especially in Jammu & Kashmir, are absolutely unpardonable. The trail of death and injury left behind by such mindless acts and the fear and hatred that has deeply scarred...
When I was a teenager about 35 years ago and in my final year in college in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, the movie “Battle for Algiers” was a big hit. It captured my imagination as well as that of my classmates, one of whom approached me a ...
Wars always have their propaganda, but it is often not very subtle. In the first world war, the Germans bayoneted babies, and nearly a century later, in a rework of the same false story, the Iraqis tore babies from respirators. But if you want to study the techniq...
The U.S. Defense Department announcement that it will use Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba to set up prison facilities and military tribunals where terrorists captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere will be held and tried raises important questions. Why select G...
“We’re trying not to be the poodle of the White House,” Mr. Valenti said. “If it looks like you’re under government supervision, you lose all of the integrity of the message.” –”Hollywood Enlists ...
Legal Times The war against terrorism is a war to preserve freedom, we are told. The president explained that the terrorists “hate us for our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagr...
It is a long distance from student consumers at U.S. college and university campus stores to the wretched overseas factories indenturing sweatshop workers who produce products for the U.S. market. But the United Students Against Sweatshops has built a network of s...
Okay here’s the deal: our elected officials are called “public servants”. Now, go to any household that maintains servants and see who has the better health care, the “master” or the “server”. Yet, our Congresspeople and s...
Despite pleas of the new pro-Western regime, Afghanistan is still being bombed. Innocent people die every day. Osama bin Laden is still at large, but attention has already shifted to Pakistan. The destabilising effects of the war in Afghanistan were always likely ...
Ever meet a movie star? I almost did. Before our delegation left Colorado for Palestine several of us went and saw a new movie documentary called “Promises.” The plot was simple: A Jewish Israeli man wanted to see if he could create relationship...
‘The world is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through.’ Thus Mahmoud Darwish, writing in the aftermath of the PLO’s exit from Beirut in August 1982. ‘Where shall we go after the last fro...
Not the least of the services that the September 11 attackers rendered to the Bush administration (and the business interests that back it) was to provide a basis for propaganda against the anti-globalization movement. From the point of view of Bush and his backer...