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 February 2002
The hoofprints of Lucifer are everywhere. And since this is America, eternally at war with the darker forces, the foremost Enemy Within is sex, no quarter given. Here are some bulletins from the battlefront, drawn from a smart essay on “Sex & EmpireR...
Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel are University of Chicago law professors who believe that, when it comes to making profits, nothing — not even the law — should stand in the way. (For almost two decades, Easterbrook has also been a federal appeals ...
After some fits and starts, on February 15 the U.S. opened up a “second front” in the “war on terrorism” in the southern Philippines. At least, that’s how the mainstream media is depicting “Operation Balikatan 2002,” the joint ex...
The Bush Administration seemed to have everything so well coordinated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. How, many wondered, could they have put the whole shebang together so quickly? We may never know all the details, but recently some minutes of a pre-9/11 Bush i...
Those of us with fond memories of the “Aggie Cold Fusion” debacle and bizarre reports of long-term alchemical research (well-funded, too) by top Aggie scientists could hardly have been more delighted by the triumphant production of “Copycat,̶...
George Bush sits quietly at his desk in the Oval Office. Suddenly, with a puff of acrid, yellow smoke, a dark figure appears at his shoulder, arrogantly leaning an elbow against the back corner of the big leather chair. He wears a soot-stained stovepipe hat, a rum...
I am so frustrated by numerous identically fruitless attempts to stop prison guard violence, especially in Florida, but of course I, like many others, will continue to seek justice. A federal case should be made out of the latest travesty. The recent acquit...
I was on the Navajo reservation last weekend. You may know that the Navajo people have long had a major fondness for and relationship with Waylon Jennings, moreso perhaps than any other musician. The relationship goes back many years, when Waylon began making regu...
A few nights ago, I sank onto the couch next to the dog, and popped “The Missiles of October,” a 1974 made-for-TV docu-drama about the Cuban missile crisis, into the DVD player. This is a behind the scenes teleplay, based upon Robert F Kennedy’s...
The drive from Basra to Safwan, Iraq, is eerily apocalyptic. In the Demilitarised Zone, the Iraqi desert is an odd mix of greenhouse farms competing for space with decrepit and bombed-out concrete factories and mills. To the east run a series of rebuilt plastics factor...
I’m not sure where GW Bush was in 1979, but he must remember something about the popular uprising of the Iranian people that overthrew the US’s biggest puppet in the region-the Shah. Although the revolution had been brewing for years, in 1978 and early...
9/11: “And when you would say something that is sad/Speak how I fell”– Henry VIII, death of Buckingham Why Bush give major speech before ASA? Poodle of anesthesiologists? Today company passed out orange nylon “survival kits...
The NY Times rarely runs 2 obits. But they did for Dave. The 1st obit saw him as a major inspiration for Bob Dylan. The 2nd was more complex, obviously a critical fan’s memorial to someone far too significant, as a performer & person, to be reduced to a...
A few days ago, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called upon the “conscience” of the American people to help the Palestinians. The Emir of Qatar went one step further in self-abasement. The Arabs, he said – and he apologised for using the word ̵...
President Bush’s budget proposal includes $98 million in military aid and training to help the Colombian government protect an oil pipeline from guerrilla attacks. The aid is being pitched by the Bush administration and its Colombian counterpart, the governm...
The second month of the second year of the new century began with the two ways open to us set, as it were, side by side. In New York the ...
The world’s business and governmental elite held their annual meeting last month in New York City. More than 50,000 people gathered to focus on social justice at a “shadow event” in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Not a chain-link fence was in sight and po...
Ante Pavelic was the original ‘Butcher of the Balkans.” He was the leader of the Nazi puppet government of the “Independent Sate of Croatia” who died peacefully in Madrid in 1959. The mass murderer of 80,000 Jews, 30,000 Gypsies, and over 5...
The European Union commissioner in charge of international relations attacked U.S. foreign policy under the Bush Administration as having a dangerously “absolutist and simplistic” attitude toward our allies and other members of the global community. Ch...
The Honorable Jeb Bush Office of the Governor The Capitol Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0001 Dear Governor Bush: Florida’s pension fund –for which you chair the oversight board –lost $334 million on Enron stocks and bonds in the wak...
With the tone and substance of national policy in the United States in a seemingly bottomless downward spiral, threatening both the peace of the world and the freedom of Americans, it may be fair to ask, why talk about a woman running for president? The simple ans...
President Bush used strong rhetoric in his State of the Union address last month to describe our fight against terrorism. But to back that rhetoric with constitutional might, the president must also honor the terms of the War Powers Resolution, which requires the ...
Why does the movement against corporate globalization protest at meetings like those of the World Economic Forum, recently completed in New York? What does the movement for global justice want? There are a million ways to answer these questions. One set of ...
Call it another skirmish in the war on terror, which is translating these days as more or less anything deemed unpalatable to social harmony. Los Angeles school officials are pulling an edition of the Koran from the district’s libraries because of complaints...
Saying goodbye to the old family farm is always sad; but losing it through coercion or threat of violence is simply criminal. This situation, as well as various others, is what has happened to many black and poor farmers over the past 30 years. According to an Ass...