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 2003
The Independent Cigarette sellers don’t have names. They said he was called Fouad but even the shopkeeper whose nephew drove the wounded, screaming man to the hospital didn’t know his family name. There was just a pile of crushed Marlboro bo...
Bomb Las Vegas, America’s gambling Mecca and glittery playground built on desert sands by mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lanksy, and Frank Costello? Only al-Qaeda, we are assured, would contemplate such a depraved act — and it stands to re...
It seems it is all too easy to get caught up in the holiday spirit. How else to explain the reaction of the normally astute Senator Charles Schumer to the news that Attorney General Ashcroft has finally done what the New York Times lauds as "the right thing.&...
Two hot little controversies are brewing among progressive and anti-war Americans. One is the question of how much energy we–if there is a "we"–put into the 2004 elections, and in what way. The other is the question of whether t...
Count our blessings, an act the eternally pessimistic American left usually shuns, on the grounds it might indicate we’ve made some headway in progress towards the good, the true and the beautiful. First let’s look back. 2003 was a pretty good ...
The outbreak of Mad Cow Disease on a farm in Washington State poses a challenge to the Bush Administration and the way it typically conducts business. On the one hand they have approached the dilemma in an entirely predictable manner, treating it as though it was ...
Safuriya, Lebanon Just outside of Tripoli in northern Lebanon is Nahr al-Barid Refugee Camp. This was the first refugee camp established for Palestinians in Lebanon, and is still home to these people of great patience and hope, living in exile for fifty-fiv...
This has been a terrible year for the environment. In Florida, the fundamental balance has vanished that we hoped would protect the Everglades from the water demands of agriculture and Florida’s exploding population. A 2003 review shows why those who ...
(The following is an excerpt from JEFFREY ST. CLAIR’s new book, Been Brown So Long It Lo...
The GloFish, a zebra fish genetically engineered to glow in the dark in aquariums, was approved for sale to the public by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on December 9. However, you won’t be able to purchase them in California when they become a...
Jewish and non-Jewish commentators alike have deplored a recent upsurge in anti-Semitism. In Europe, journalist Andrew Sullivan says, "Not since the 1930s has such blithe hatred of Jews gained this much respectability in world opinion." Yet, Jews ...
Willie wrote this song on Christmas, 2003, and will perform it for the first time at the Kucinich for President fundraising concert in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 3, 2004. There’s so many things going on in the world Babies dying Mothers crying How much oi...
Villagarzon, Colombia. Colombian military efforts against drug production and illegal armed actors have focused on the southern border province of Putumayo since 2000, when the U.S. began disbursing a multibillion dollar mostly military aid package known as...
The broad outlines of the Bush re-election campaign strategy have begun to appear, and they present an ugly picture. From now until next November, we can expect to have a series of dramatically named military actions in Iraq–and occasionally in Afghan...
Some years ago, when the jury for the annual Israel Prize announced its award to Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, I decided to invite him to give a lecture to the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, the group that established the first contacts with the P...
Thirty-seven years before writer Frank Norris created the fictional Octopus in his 1901 novel, the U.S. Congress gave birth to its real-life counterpart by granting the Southern-Pacific Railway company a checkerboard pattern of right-of-way land parcels lining eit...
One of the best things I read in 2003 was Matt Taibbi’s piece in the New York Press in which he spanked the Washington press corps for its vulgar behavior at the press conference farce held by Bush Jr. during the early days of the American invasion of Iraq....
The recent news of mad cow disease in the U.S. was first reported in the nation’s mass media as a business story. Such coverage led with the countries that had refused imports of American beef. Stories also detailed how these import restrictions ...
Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to &#...
Central Intelligence Agency, Langley Virginia Office of Villains Department of Wayward Clients and Unsavoury Friends Status Report: December 2003 To: George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence Below is the updated report you asked us...
MEDIA: Yippee, "we got `em!" The Dow will soar! Forget the anxious two years since George W. Bush assumed his throne! That’s history! REALITY: The dismissal of history does not help anyone understand the present or plan for th...
Christmas. Crumblecake and Fish. At least that’s what I thought they said, though on the table was roast beef, chocolate cake and various pastries, none of them crumbly. No crumblecake. No fish. RelativeShe and RelativeHe had watched a show about Crum...
No doubt Lenny Bruce would have laughed with at least a tinge of bitterness if — like millions of Americans — he picked up a newspaper the day before Christmas 2003 and read that he’d been "pardoned" by the governor of New York for an o...
David Meggyesy was an All-American linebacker at Syracuse University before playing for the National Football League’s St. Louis (now Arizona) Cardinals from 1963-1969. He was active in the movements for civil rights and opposition to the war in Viet Na...
Our English language is a first-class language, the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. It’s wonderfully diverse, produced by a mix of peoples originally speaking Celtic, Germanic, or Romance languages. So it’s richer in synonyms than som...