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 March 2003
Last October, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the military’s regional commanders to rewrite all of their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons, better intelligence and speedier deployment in the event the United States decided to inv...
Photos by JOANNE MARINER Because the corporate media is not doing its job explaining why we in New York and elsewhere oppose this sick war in Iraq, I want to describe some of what happened at the action on March 27th and explain my choice to participat...
Last October, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the military’s regional commanders to rewrite all of their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons, better intelligence and speedier deployment in the event the United States decided to inv...
The title could be the name of a television quiz show, although I doubt the subject matter would attract a large audience, especially in that key market of the United States. Even on progressive and liberal Internet sites in the United States, one finds ri...
“Your BS detector must be on at full blast.” – Michael Moore, March 28, 2003 In the good old days, the US used to tell a lie — crass propaganda — and it would stick for a long time...
Shu’ale, a suburb of Baghdad The piece of metal is only a foot high, but the numbers on it hold the clue to the latest atrocity in Baghdad. At least 62 civilians had died by yesterday afternoon, and the coding on that hunk of metal contains th...
The US House of Representatives recently voted to endorse Bush and Rumsfeld’s war on Iraq. They did this under the guise of a bill nominally supporting the troops that, in reality, endorses Bush’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq. Only 11 congresspe...
This was meant to be a quick, easy war. Shortly before I resigned a Cabinet colleague told me not to worry about the political fall-out. The war would be finished long before polling day for the May local elections. I just hope those who expected a ...
Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution defines treason as giving aid and comfort, or “adhering” to our enemies. I believe “adhering” sums up Richard Perle’s job description pretty well. The controversy surrounding Perle which ...
As the U.S. Army’s Seventh Combat Support Group, a unit of the Third Infantry Division, moved northward in the Arabian desert west of the Euphrates River towards the town of Najaf on March 26, the commander, realizing his exhausted men faced shortages of fo...
“Come to dinner when the war against Iraq ends,” Jamil said, as I opened the car door. He had just parked the sedan, a short distance from the Bethlehem military checkpoint, the one closest to Jerusalem. “Is that what you call hospitality?...
Yet some more thoughts about the war. The Coalition. No name could be more appropriate to the cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom against Iraq. In "The Devil’s Dictionary" of the American humorist Amb...
Nasiriya, Iraq. The light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was coming up, the beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence felt almost eerie after a night of shooting so intense it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My footsteps felt heavy on the...
March 25, 2003 may serve as a crucial turning point in American history. On that day, George W. Bush displayed his increasingly erratic and irresponsible behavior before America’s top military leadership. The friction between Bush and Defense Secretary Dona...
It has come to my attention that some Americans are concerned Iraq might bodily invade the United States unless all of Iraq’s women and children are killed. This seems about as likely as the Anaheim Angels winning the World Championship, but str...
The situation of the US/UK invading force can be assessed as difficult. The US 3rd Infantry Division, the Marines, Division, the 101st Airborne continue to be plagued by stretched supply lines which yesterday saw one Marine unit entirely immobilized ...
Iris Murdoch, the Oxford moral philosopher and novelist, thought suffering was not necessarily redemptive; it did not always improve us either morally or spiritually.
Taking her cue from Plato, she argued that while suffering might well be a c...
A few years ago, I stepped into the horror of the Gulf War. It was April 1999, and the place was Baghdad’s al-Amiriya bomb shelter. Living most of my life in a refugee camp in Gaza, where the murder of innocent people at the...
It’s difficult to weep about a telephone exchange. True, the destruction of the local phone system in Baghdad is a miserable experience for tens of thousands of Iraqi families who want to keep in contact with their relatives during the long dark...
We’ve entered a new era of history. The troops and tanks rumbling toward Baghdad take with them the ashes and dust of international law, diplomacy, human rights, civil liberties, democratic self-governance, and much else. But, as Arlo Guthrie fa...
Before the first cruise missile crushed the first skull of the first child killed in the first installment of George W. Bush’s crusade for world dominion, the unelected plutocrats occupying the White House were already plying their corporate ...
Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl–victim of an Anglo American air strike–is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to...
Baghdad. This morning the sky had cleared: a mixed blessing. It was good to be able to see through the daylight again, although the view of smoke plumes across the city wasn’t the most soul-fulfilling sight. At the same t...
East Jerusalem.
“We’re just pissed off [at the Palestinians], the way whites were with blacks in the southern United States. They just don’t know their place.”
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Richard Perle has resigned as chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board, a group of influential advisors of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Perle has been embroiled in a controversy over accepting money from a US corporation, Global Crossing, which...