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 July 2002
"At this very moment there are 100,000 fools of our species who wear hats, slaying 100,000 fellow creatures who wear turbans, or being massacred by them." Voltaire, Micromagus, 1752. Angelina Jolie and ...
Last week, Carlos Castaño, longtime leader of the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), announced that the group was disbanding. For years the AUC has united the many local rightwing paramilitary groups in Colombia within a single federation. ...
Their religion teaches them to do it…. Their religion teaches them to do it they say of the Palestinian suicide bombers. They teach them in school to hate Jews we are told. But there are things that we are not told about. The Inte...
Bogota. The number of people being forcibly disappeared in Colombia each year is rapidly increasing and according to a local human rights organisation state sponsored forces, both official and unofficial, are responsible for over 99% of the cases. New stati...
As we approach the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it might be useful to see how far an ordinary citizen’s knowledge has progressed one year on. So here, in the way of a summing-up, based on journalistic documentation, is a list of things we...
"Methinks he doth protest too much," wrote Shakespeare in MacBeth. Recently, the same warning applies to the logging industry’s desperate demagoguery and the wildfires of 2002. They place blame on "environmental obstructionists" fo...
I admit it. I’m guilty. Guilty of what, you may ask? Well it might seem strange, but guilty of not writing. Of not doing more to adequately chronicle all that has been taking place in Palestine during the past few weeks. Not just in Ramallah, but thro...
JERUSALEM. A few hours after the F-16 jet dropped a 1-ton bomb on a crowded residential area in Gaza, killing 17 people — 11 of them children — and wounding over 140 more, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon exclaimed that the attack had been one of IsraelR...
The media have increasingly excited the attentions of the left over the past 20 years or so. The consensus seems to be that the media play a significant role in sustaining capitalism, whether by encouraging people to buy needless consumer goods, or by perpetuating...
The media have increasingly excited the attentions of the left over the past 20 years or so. The consensus seems to be that the media play a significant role in sustaining capitalism, whether by encouraging people to buy needless consumer goods, or by perpetuating...
On Thursday, July 25, 2001, the people of the United States were still reeling from the tales of corporate corruption on Wall Street, and their intimate genetic relationship to the rise of George W. Bush. Congress passed so-called "landmark" legislation ...
I just returned from another 6 weeks with RAWA, five weeks in Pakistan and one amazing week in Afghanistan. RAWA’s work is very busy and the need is still enormous–this includes some cities in Pakistan where refugees are actually flowing in not out. Th...
In early April 2002, moved by the massacres in Jenin and the wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure in West Bank cities by invading Israeli forces, two British academics, Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, circulated a call-posted at www.pjpo.org-for an academic ...
Last week, Carlos Castaño, longtime leader of the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), announced that the group was disbanding. For years the AUC has united the many local rightwing paramilitary groups in Colombia within a single federation. ...
Get ready for September Eleven, the brand. Between now and the first anniversary of that horrible day, Sept. 11 is going to be commemorated sometimes in the most moving ways, sometimes in the most humbling, even sublime ways: Greatness can be touched in spi...
The Czech Republic just passed a law giving anyone "promoting drugs" up to five years in prison. So much for the Velvet Revolution. Pathetically ineffectual President Vaclav Havel, a leader of the Velvet Revolution, is currently hospitalized. But when tw...
Get ready for September Eleven, the brand. Between now and the first anniversary of that horrible day, Sept. 11 is going to be commemorated sometimes in the most moving ways, sometimes in the most humbling, even sublime ways: Greatness can be touched in spi...
"Do you know what your daddy did?" said the doctor. "No, sir, I reckon not," said Wilburn. "He saved that man’s life. Your daddy knows a chicken’s body temperature is higher than a man’s. It drawed the poiso...
SLAVOJ ZIZEK, the Giant of Ljubljana, is like the great brain of Goethe’s fairytale "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily". In this revolutionary and allegorical tale (reputedly inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute) there are two lands sep...
Three weeks ago I attended a surprisingly wretched performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, at Benaroya Hall, in Seattle, Washington. Conducting–to call it by that otherwise noble word–was Seattle’s own version of Kurt Masur, Zubin Me...
In the past 18 years we have found ourselves in many different countries on tour with the Piedmont Choirs. For those who don’t know, this is one the lading children’s choral organizations in the US and is widely known internationally as well. This year...
In the past 18 years we have found ourselves in many different countries on tour with the Piedmont Choirs. For those who don’t know, this is one the leading children’s choral organizations in the US and is widely known internationally as well. This yea...
I have stared at them over meals, And in between, for three months now: A full gallery of American presidents Assembled–on a paper place mat. I can tell them apart now in any crowd. I could greet them on a first-name basis: Geor...
Last week Citigroup, the nation’s largest financial services holding company, trotted out one of its top executives, Robert Rubin, to spread some soothing words about how to clean up the corporate scandals and repair the sagging stock market. Rubin...
Opposition to the Patriot Act, legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President last year, is growing. Americans are beginning to understand that many precious liberties have been put in jeopardy by the government’s rush to enact new laws in the wa...