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 January 2003
Twenty-three years ago this month, after Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I sent a letter to the Selective Service System–cc’d to the US Attorney in Buffalo, NY–...
January 9-12, 2003. To the Basque military-political organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). Basque Country. From: the Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico. Ladies and gentlemen: We received the letter, dated ...
“What’s this Bush Administration really about?” A frustrated student asked me. Good question! I suggested that he look into the clever manipulators–led by Karl Rove — who have woven together a novel coalition of voracious loote...
George Bush wants to invade Iraq so his petro-pals can get that glorious sweet crude, his p.r. machine can have a new “product” to promote to get people’s minds off the death-rattle economy, and his “base” can have gleeful “war-...
Usually I leave Hollywood alone. Dramatic film has not been a medium of historical accuracy. Getting around to seeing the movie “Frida,” however, put me in a comment-making mood. No, it drove me to speak up as a fan of Kahlo’s. Julie Traym...
Chairman of His Own Black Suit Man in the Black Suit claimed to be an IMPORTANT MAN, chairman of the board of DataCo Inc. Research the credit of the people; research backgrounds of license applicants; research lives of potentially dangerous “citizens....
One opens the New York Times on a daily basis to read the most recent article about the preparations for war that are taking place in the United States. Another battalion, one more set of aircraft carriers and cruisers, an ever-increasing number of aircraft, new c...
That’s it folks! The leader of the free world has spoken. “The friends of freedom will disarm Saddam Hussein”. Where do I sign up to be a friend of freedom you might ask? Sounds good to me. The American president went on to say: “Thi...
Most of the vociferously pro-Israeli neo-conservative policymakers in the Bush administration make no effort to hide the fact that at least part of their intention in promoting war against Iraq (and later perhaps against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestinians) is to...
And of course, it was a shell game. A protection racket of the highest order. So convinced were you that you were powerless that you surrendered your spirits to these jackals. To Krauthammer, an American conservative born in Uruguay. To a President willing to le...
5:30 on a Wednesday in late November. Our Ramallah master-class at The National Conservatory of Music (Palestine) has just ended and ten-year-old Taher, a young flute-player, is practically jumping up and down, his face glowing with hope: “Oh! please let me ...
The Super Bowl Sunday papers are full of news about the big NFL matchup/capitalist spectacle. Baseball being my sport, I dont really care who wins the game and will probably watch very little of it. The other headlines concern a contest which is definitely not as ...
Israel’s bulldozing of 62 shops in the village of Nazkt Issa, north of Tulkarem next to the West Bank line with Israel on Tuesday and its refusal to allow International and Israeli peace activists to witness the devastation illustrates the total control of the mil...
My neighbor is killing his oak tree. It’s taking a long time. He’s not doing it himself. It’s too big a job for him to do by himself, even if he knew how to do it, which he doesn’t. He’s hired a tree company to do it for him. T...
President Bush said the Iraq conflict is like watching a “rerun of a bad movie.” But clearly, the only bad movie Americans are being forced to watch all over again are the Nixon-like qualities–the paranoia, the secrecy and lies–that Bush re...
As the US prepares to invade Iraq I think we should all ask each other this question: “Do you remember the last war? The one that took place a little over two and a half years ago?” You remember that one dont you? It wasnt a little war. No, not ...
With passing day, the likelihood of war in the Gulf region grows despite the efforts of many people, in and out of the realm of international and national politics, to prevent another episode of military violence as a purported means of resolving the problems in I...
(Lakewood Ministerial Alliance Martin Luther King Day Celebration Lakewood Presbyterian Church Sunday, January 19, 2003 Lakewood, Ohio.) “Oh hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.” ...
Dropping in the polls like a balloonist with a slow leak, the Fulminator-in-Chief desperately tried to cover the gaping hole with a MADE IN U.S.A. patch. Alas, the godless liberal media found him out and exposed the MADE IN CHINA labels his staff had tried vainly ...
Porto Alegre, Brazil. In Davos, Switzerland, they’re gearing up for the year’s biggest apres ski hour: the World Economic Forum. While Swiss officials unloaded the corporate cocktail party on the Americans last year–they insisted that the stopove...
Today was an even worse day than its predecessors. Everyone asks, “Is ‘worse’ possible?” Mrs Sou’ad Godola, aged 54 and Mr Aiman Hanlawi, aged 22, became two more murder victims of the Israeli terrorist army, in this terrible war of a...
On January 8, the Dr. Strangelove-like Donald Rumsfeld was engaged in one of his puffed up oratories at a televised Pentagon press conference. He began ranting and raving about the draft in response to a question concerning Representative Charles Rangel’s bi...
Okay, so the Bushites had their yesmen at the UN find a few empty “chemical warheads,” which are not warheads (those fit on missiles) but artillery shells, and now we’re supposed to think this is evidence of Saddam’s homicidal intent when i...
In dictatorships like Iraq and North Korea, one man, by definition, makes a huge difference. If Saddam Hussein (or, for that matter, Kim Jong Il) could be induced to go into exile, regime change could proceed forthwith, thereby saving us an enormous amount of liv...
I am Yonathan, one of the initiators and signatories raeli pilot’s letter. Until some weeks ago I was a pilot and active leader in a squadron of “Blackhawk” helicopters in the air force. On the eve of last Yom Kippur I was called f...