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 September 2002
Episode 1: Friendly Games. Script and Summative Comments ['70s cop drama, 30 min, color.] Opens with standard montage of sedans, blue and brown, tailfinned and otherwise, gliding over federally-funded blacktop. Then the obligatory shots ...
Between August 27 and September 10, 2002, the Los Angeles Times ran a well-written series of articles on the anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Entitled "Munich Olympics: Thirty Years Later," the series contained twenty articles totaling over 18,00...
The consequences of 11 September remain visible on several fronts. Psychologically, the American empire has constructed a new enemy: Islamic terrorism. Its practitioners were evil, the threat was global and, for that reason, bombs had to be dropped unilaterally an...
Jim Kirwan is a political independent artist/illustrator and activist writer who has been intermittently published since the 1970s. He has worked for two governors, the att...
There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run. There’s still time to change the road you’re on. Jimmy Page / Robert Plant “Stairway to Heaven” This may not be the case anymore....
1. Why did the White House announce that George Bush himself authorized the arrest of the Lackawanna Six, since arrests warrants are normally the purview of an assistant attorney general and the White House never before announced the direct involvement of George B...
This time honored tradition goes back to the lengthy discussions leading to the War for Independence, before the war of 1812, before the Mexican War in 1845, before the 1898 Spanish-American War, and between 1914 and 1917 when the United States entered the First W...
President Bush, the United Nations, and the rest of the “Washington consensus” are offering up privatization as a solution to water and sanitation problems around the world, as well as inside the United States. Worldwide, an estimated 1.1 billion peopl...
Part One Fourteen years ago, the soon-to-be infamous barge, the Khian Sea, left the territorial waters of the United States and began circling the oceans in search of a country willing to accept its cargo: 14,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash. First ...
‘Only in Canada’ is not the jingle for a beer ad. Perhaps only in Canada can one say without smudging one’s conscience that: “Still, the planet actually is becoming a fairer place, if slowly.” (Toronto Globe and Mail, editorial commen...
"Why does a dog lick its own balls?" the joke goes. "Because he can." And so the justification for the Iraq war has drifted from urgency to necessity to facility, and now simple gratification. The new selling point for the invasion is th...
Burlington, VT. In what local Democrats perceive to be a serious attempt to effect a regime change in Vermont, where their party has owned the Governor’s office since 1991, Dick Cheney flew into town this morning. The reason for his most honored visit...
Can anybody in Washington do what needs to be done about corporate crime in the eight weeks before the November elections? Don’t look to the Republicans. Their “whatever corporations want” subservient stance during the Nineties reached le...
“This isn’t Gaza.” So quotes the Concordian, one of the weekly papers of my alma-mater, Montreal’s great Concordia University. The quote comes from an irate suppoprter of Benjamin Netanyahu, angry that a glorious display of civil disobedien...
It has been many months since I last wrote anything that I believe would be a contribution toward the struggle of Palestinians for freedom, independence and most importantly justice. I found that my inability to write was part of both an inner and external strugg...
It took the public expression of doubts by Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush, to initiate finally a national debate on the merits of preemptive war against Iraq. Before Scowcroft spoke out it was nearly i...
The events of September 11, 2001, have been widely described as a tragedy, and so they were, for the victims and their families. But, as we all know, one person’s tragedy can be another person’s windfall. The greatest beneficiary of these attacks, and ...
In an interview with CNN’s Paula Zahn, former president George Bush spoke recently of his "hatred" of Saddam Hussein. "I hate Saddam Hussein," said Bush."I don’t hate a lot of people. I don’t hate easily, but I think he&#...
Every time I open my closet door I see them. The black Talbots sandals I wore when I revisited the wretched Palestinian refugee camps known as Sabra and Shatila. Although I’ve cleaned them, for some reason the sandals seem to be coated with a film of dust an...
I woke up that morning Where far across the earth In Beirut, in Sabra and Chatila camps Zionist butchers were hard at work That day was to have been special It marked the anniversary of my birth Instead came the news of the massacres Sending shock waves ar...
[This is a transcript of Rep. McKinney's remarks on September 14 at the reception for the Congressional Black Caucus.] This is an important week for all of us, although it is a particularly important week for me. This week we had t...
Let’s talk about the environment. For those of you who don’t know, the environment is that large brown thing outside your window– unless you live in Manhattan, in which case it’s on the other end of the Triborough bridge; take the Major Dee...
He said it and we must obey! “We (America) want the United Nations to be effective and respected and successful. We want (the) its resolutions to be enforced.” This is the third of Dubya’s new foreign policy doctrines, each a furtherance of his ...
The “Blowhard Zone” On September 13, 2001 I got a call from FOX News asking me to go on the O’Reilly Factor program that night, two days after the tragic events of September 11, to debate O’Reilly on War v. Peace. It is pretty clear ...
The month of September has seen a dramatic escalation of the War on Drugs in California, with DEA raids on two leading medical marijuana dispensaries. On September 5th, DEA agents arrested Valerie and Michael Corral of WAMM (Wo/Men’s alliance for Medical Mar...