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 February 2003
We ordinary earthlings, were informed by George Bush Senior in his 1991 State of union Address, are living under a new world order. Over the past decade, from the highway of death between Kuwait and Iraq, in Kosovo, in Jallalabad and the hills of Afghanistan, in t...
Much has happened since the end of the Cold War to show that there is merit in old-school conservatism. It’s hard to imagine 1952 Republican Presidential Candidate Robert Taft going for NAFTA, or thinking it was a good idea to accelerate defense spending des...
At the beginning of his presidency, George was faltering. He blundered his way through unscripted camera appearances. He had little direction, save for his daily jog. He wasn’t engendering confidence from the American people. His handlers were worried. How a...
Istanbul is a city of mosques. Some grand and others smaller, they are in every neighborhood. Their presence cannot be ignored. The domes and minarets shine at night under colorful lights. They give the city a sense of the past gracefully making its place in the ...
It’s remarkable how rarely Israel is mentioned in regard to the American plans to attack Iraq — with the exception of occasional notices of how strongly the Israeli government supports those plans. A proper assessment of its part in this war depends up...
Finally, after a long delay in Rome and a few passport hiccups in Turkey, I arrived in Baghdad yesterday on a flight from Jordan. It’s been a long and winding road, but we human shields who started out from London on 25 January are all in Baghdad now and doing what ...
I’m not sure what was weirder — them suggesting Duct Tape and plastic; them expecting people to buy into it; people actually buying into it; or the press not going apeshit over how stupid this was, so…..here’s my take. The more I th...
Penny Rosenwasser is a Jewish American peace activist who refuses to accept a single label of being either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. “For me, it’s about supporting the survival of both peoples,” she says. “There’s no contradiction ...
After what seemed to be a triumph at the UN on February 5, Secretary of State Powell has taken some major hits to his credibility. His defensiveness can be seen in his undiplomatic trashing of the French for being “afraid” to take responsibility for making war...
“Let me tell you about those Gaza olives. First of all, they are the bitterest ones in the entire world. Gaza people say that the olives get their bitterness from life in the Gaza Strip, from the pressure of the Occupation. And not only are these oli...
SAN FRANCISCO. Lawyers for convicted medical marijuana grower Ed Rosenthal say he is entitled to a new trial because two jurors in the case received outside legal advice that compromised their ability to make an impartial judgment. Jurors Marney Craig and P...
Crowds and fire; darkness and panic: they are the currency of these weird times as Pentagon divulges its plan to "shock and awe" the people of Baghdad with a 48-hour barrage of missiles. Two weekends ago we had the unity of vast crowds asserting life; an...
Many of us have never been polled by a national news organization. Almost all of us have, however, over the years, read results of hundreds, if not thousands, of opinion polls. It seems no one in America can escape being bombarded by opinion polls, which are prese...
Public dissent in America may soon be a crime, if Mona Charen has her way. Her demonizing of patriotic Americans, who believe a U.S. war with Iraq is not in our national interest, continues relentlessly. Where will her dehumanizing of the peace and justice seekers...
Pity poor Sami Al-Arian, the Palestinian University of South Florida (Engineering) Professor/activist indicted on February 20th by Jesus freak John Ashcroft’s U.S. Justice Department under the so-called RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Ac...
Dear Tony, Stand tall, yield to no-one. Your stand by George is to be admired. You need however, to tell the UK electorate the truth. 1. This war is to protect US interests. The US has a massive Trade Deficit, revealed only on Friday for...
I don’t know which was more inspiring—attending the February 15 demo in New York, which with its sister event in Los Angeles, and the February 16 rally in San Francisco, has altered the political environment in this country—or reading the reports...
If the United States decides to wage a war with Iraq without the full support of the United Nations it will be “much more complicated and bloody” than the siege in Afghanistan after 9-11 and the first Gulf War combined, Secretary of State Colin Powell ...
“War is disaster,” young Zeinab told me. “Do you know what it is to live your entire life in disaster?” Zeinab studies English at Baghdad University, and she represents an entire generation of Iraqis raised in the nativity of warR...
The Bush administration offers two sets of justifications for the war with Iraq. In international and formal circles, where “regime change” is not passe, it is the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and its refusal to comply with ...
George W. Bush says he wants to attack Iraq to install democracy. But as he explained on December 18, 2002: “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” Under Bush the Constitutiona...
My family moved from Massachusetts to Utah County when I was 5. I couldn’t articulate at the time the impression the 11,000-foot peaks of Mount Timpanogos and Mount Nebo and the rest of the Wasatch Front made on me. As a boy used to roaming the beaches of Ca...
In the Stalinist universe, the central drama was always a ritualistic staging of a theatrical spectacle, in the truth of which no one believed. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D–Connecticut), is American Democracy’s equivalent of that spectacle. The s...
The Bush administration has argued that if Saddam Hussein refuses to disarm, it will go in and disarm him with or without a second UN Security Council resolution. The war is portrayed as a just and necessary war that would improve America’s national security...
The turnout in London on Feb 15 was overwhelming. Central London main streets were so crowded with marchers that one could only shuffle. Ken Livingstone from the stage: `As Mayor of London I am proud to welcome you on the largest demonstration in 2000 years of Bri...