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 March 2002
Top 10 CDs (Now playing at my house): 1. Patty Griffin, 1000 Kisses (ATO ad...
Triangulation, the trick Dick Morris taught Bill Clinton, is one of the most elegant jujitsu maneuvers in politics. The leaders of the Arab world may need Morris’s advice as they plan their response to Cheney’s Godfather charm offensive. The Bus...
In a very personal way I appreciate the Academy Award acclaim given to movies about people with mental disabilities who prevailed in life like "A Beautiful Mind" and "I Am Sam". I had severe bi-polar disorder when I was a student in the 1950s. ...
Confounded and dumbfounded by recent Bush Administration moves, once again I consult that invaluable reference series, this one titled "The Middle East for Dummies." I find their concise, no-BS answers help me through the confusing morass. Q. Why ...
Tip-skimming has surfaced in Boston, and there can’t be a tipper in America who, on hearing the news, doesn’t exclaim, "The greedy bastards!" In a lawsuit filed March 7 in Suffolk Superior Court, five former servers from the venerable eater...
In the mail today comes a flyer for a new bookstore in my area, complete with coupons for 10 per cent off books and music, free coffee and a free CD opener. This last gadget provokes me. It heaps me. It makes me want to have a "user experience."...
Exactly one year before the hijackers hit the Pentagon, Chalmers Johnson, a distinguished American academic, staunch supporter of the US during the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one-time senior analyst for the CIA, tried to alert his fellow-citizens to the dange...
Borne mainly on rivers of blood and Palestinian terror, a grim spectacle unfolded at Rabin Square this week, ostensibly closing a tragic circle–"Shir Lashalom" ("Song of Peace") replaced by cries of "Israel demands war!" at the ...
The rule of law is dead. Even as a fiction, a dream of human betterment — of "civilization," to use that word we hear so often on the lips of warlords and terrorists these days — the idea of law has been discarded, trashed: Just so muc...
As much as dissent has been under attack here in the United States since Sept. 11, a reasonable amount rational thinking by the American people should prevail when the question of whether to attack Iraq is put on the table. No other periodical went after di...
Writing in the March 10, 2002 edition of the Los Angeles Times, defense analyst William Arkin revealed the leaked contents of the Bush Jr. administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it had just transmitted to Congress on January 8. The Bush Jr...
Newspaper articles filled with neuroscientific lingo to explain the panic wave that has spread through America following 9/11. Television pseudo-documentaries seeking out the ‘terror’ gene. Radio shows interviewing think tank experts on the inbred driv...
Two recent sporting spectaculars began with two rather different musical intros; both relate to the cherished concept known as freedom. It was hard to miss the contrast: "I will fight for the right to live in freedom," sang Sir Paul McCartney at t...
It’s been over a month since I wrote about the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter and father-to-be Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. As it happens, it’s been a month of considerable personal trauma for me and for the Institute, but far, far less than w...
Speaking on 31 January to students at the National Defense University in Washington, The Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld announced a major shift in United States military strategy. The new objective was to be "deterrence in four critical theatres, backed b...
In recent days, the IDF and armed groups of Palestinians have displayed a common interest in presenting a distorted picture of reality. Both sides are greatly exaggerating when they talk about "Palestinian military resistance" to the IDF incursions into ...
US Vice-President Dick Cheney arrived yesterday in a Middle East far more concerned with the firestorm between the Palestinians and the Israelis than with Washington’s plans for a war with Iraq. President George Bush may believe Iraq is part of an “axis...
That pipsqueak Bono announced to the world (everything he says these days seems to have the weight of a Papal Encyclical) in a recent interview in Time magazine that he’s given up on music as a political force. From here on out Bono says he’s going to ...
American Muslim groups are calling on the National Review to apologize for published statements by editor Rich Lowry who suggested that "nuking Mecca" would "send a signal" to Muslims. ...
Before the corporate and political elite consign the "corporate accountability" proposal issued by President Bush last week to the dustbin, it is worth highlighting one element: the idea that CEOs sign and personally attest to the accuracy of the financi...
News reports that the FBI is not close to making an arrest in its investigation of last year’s deadly anthrax mailings and may be "dragging its feet," have provoked charges of a possible cover-up and secret domestic experiments conducted during the...
Another seminal figure from one of the most troubling episodes in the United States’ recent history has been quietly restored to his old stomping grounds. Otto Reich, like Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte one of the officials most responsible for devising a...
This isn’t just about being ‘tough on crime’. It’s not about winning a ‘drug war’. It’s not even about prison reform or human rights or social justice. It’s about the lack of common sense displayed by an overw...
There’s a piquant contrast in the press coverage across the decades of Billy Graham’s various private dealings with Nixon, as displayed on the tapes gradually released from the National Archive or disclosed from Nixon’s papers. I’ll come sh...
The widely publicised Russia-US friendship is crumbling. However, the US withdrawal from the ABM treaty, refusal to sign an agreement on the limitation of strategic offensive weapons and even the surprise appearance of US troops in Georgia all look minor aberrati...