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 April 2003
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity SUBJECT: Intelligence Fiasco We write to express deep concern over the growing mistrust and cynicism with which many, including veteran intelligence profes...
The so-called "Casey Letter" protesting repression in Cuba has received numerous signatures and aroused considerable controversy. I would like to explain here, with line by line comments, why I would not sign this letter. (Full text of the letter at the ...
Rick Santorum had only been in the senate for a few weeks when Bob Kerrey, then Senator from Nebraska, pegged him. “Santorum, that’s Latin for asshole.” It was probably the funniest line the grim Kerrey ever uttered and it was on the mark, too.
Su...
Al Fallujah is known in Iraq as the "city of mosques." There is a reverence for the holiness of the city and Muslim leaders made clear to American troops that they did not want them in their city. The US troops responded by saying they had to be there fo...
Text of remarks delivered at the Federal Communications Commission Hearing on Media Ownership Rules at the City Hall, San Francisco, Saturday April 27th, 2003. My name is IAIN BOAL. I am a historian of science and technics, with a...
Enron gone, but the great CEO looting spree is still going strong–and airline bosses are leading the way. Less than two years after top Enron executives shocked the world by cashing out stocks as their employees’ retirement funds evaporated, Ame...
Inasmuch as the historian’s craft depends on written records, then the answer to the question posed in the title of V. Gordon Childe’s classic book about the Tigris and Euphrates, What Happened in History? is well answered in the title of another clas...
Thirteen Iraqis shot down dead protesting the US military occupation of a school. "A good occupation," that’s what the Israelis said their west bank rule would be. When the territory returned to the Arab world its citizens would be goo...
Early in the 20th century, the U.S. socialist journalist John Reed explained the drive for plunder, profit and geopolitical domination that lay behind U.S. military interventions. "Uncle Sam never gives something for nothing," Reed said in a speech....
As the battle for Baghdad comes to a close in Iraq, a battle for the soul of the American republic has begun in Washington, D.C. This is a battle of ideas being waged by people with an imperial concept of American power, or "flag conservatives," wit...
History has all but forgotten Nazi Germany’s most feared judge, Roland Freisler, the President of the Volksgericht (People’s Court). Known as the "hanging judge," Freisler was known for yelling at and berating prisoners paraded before hi...
Tuesday afternoon, April 29, just checking out the news online. MSNBC. Very mainstream, trustworthy reportage. "US fires on Iraqi crowd, killing at least 13." In the town of Fallujah, MSNBC reports, U.S. soldiers opened fire on a crowd of de...
I have lived in the United States all my life, and for personal and political reasons I expect to live out my life here. It is my home. But after the U.S. attack on Iraq, I feel more alienated from my "homeland" than ever before. Judging from...
I don’t know if you will read this letter, not because it will not reach you, but because you are incapable of reading it. Your heart is so hardened by hatred and fear, that you have neither capacity nor courage to open your mind and your spirit to comp...
The disintegration of the Soviet bloc permitted American unilateralism on a scale the modern world has never seen. But with its war against Iraq the United States for the first time openly massed its military power and then invaded another nation, justifying the ...
Donald Rumsfeld says the US does not want its troops in countries where they are not welcome. "You want to be someplace that people want us, you really do," he admitted in an interview. "We don’t want to be places that we’re not wanted. ...
So, the US is occupying Iraq. What does that mean? Does it mean that US marines are shooting into crowds of Iraqis protesting the US presence and killing some members of the crowd? Does it mean the reappearance of death by cholera and typhoid in the ...
It is hard to be entirely dispassionate and objective in evaluating the results of the attack on Iraq, on the basis of what many perceive to be fabricated charges, and the consequent imposition of (call it whatever you will) a military occupation regime. But let m...
The first thing to remember is bend at the knees & keep yr back relatively straight. It could be a long day filled with leapfrogging pitfalls– easy to throw out spinal discs or lose a wig in the wind. Most important is learning the ...
We’re rolling. Can’t stop. Flattened Iraq. Sights on Syria. Weapons of mass destruction. Almost certain. We won’t stop. Probably hiding terrorists. Shouldn’t stop. It’s George’s show. It’s Rummy’s show. We don’...
Dear Mayor Brown: The police actions that occurred in the port of Oakland on April 7th, brutally suppressing a peaceful anti-war demonstration by shooting protesters and longshore workers without warning, is an affront to all those who cherish civil liberties....
California medical marijuana patients blocked a country road in Santa Cruz county last September, trapping DEA agents who had just chainsawed 167 marijuana plants grown by the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM). Agents driving U-Hauls stuffed wit...
On Jan. 17, 1991, Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, 32, was piloting a F/A-18 fighter jet at the start of the first Gulf War. Hit by an air-to-air missile fired by an Iraqi warplane, Speicher, known as a "top gun among fliers," was later given up for de...
How blatantly can an administration lie to promote a war and get away with it? We’ll find out in the coming weeks, as U.S. forces in Iraq search for evidence of banned weapons and U.S. officials shape postwar Iraq. Ironically, the conduct of the war p...
Baseball boosters in the Washington, D.C., area are conducting an agonizing search for the perfect location to build a new baseball stadium. The metropolitan area doesn’t have a major league baseball team yet, but some local officials are betting that leader...