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 October 2003
Baghdad. The centre of the book trade in Baghdad is al-Mutanabi Street, which runs between the Tigris and Rashid Street, now shabby and decayed but once the city’s commercial heart. The bookshops are small, and open all the time; on Friday there’...
Rap mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs claims he gave up sex to train for the November 2 New York City Marathon, which he entered "for the kids." The workers at the sweatshop in Choloma, Honduras who make Combs’s Sean Jean clothing line give up ...
After years of playing the hapless Charlie Brown as Lucy Democrats pulled away the protection football time after time, it’s perhaps only fitting that the best the hapless environmental movement can muster following its major defeat on Bush’s Healthy F...
The Republican Party, which has adopted the "4 R’s" of neo-conservative undemocratic political action — refusal (to vote), recount, redistricting, and recall — is attempting to stage yet three more gubernatorial coups in November’...
It was an Egyptian who first aroused my interest in freemasonry. Adel was a well-educated Copt, whose once wealthy family had fallen on hard times. Unable to find employment in his hometown of Alexandria, Adel set off for Lebanon hoping for better luck. The young ...
Remember Admiral John Poindexter’s proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program, the one which was going to mine all available electronic data on you and me, make it into a nifty profile, and put it out there for the government to use to track "te...
Remember when George Bush the candidate said he would restore integrity to the White House? The reference, of course, was to the Clinton White House, which had gained a certain notoriety because of Bill Clinton’s famous finger-wagging episode, when he...
Enter the world of Paul Krugman, a world either dark (the eras of Bush One and Bush Two), or bathed in light (when Bill was king). "What do you think of the French revolution?" someone is supposed to have asked Chou En Lai. "Too soon to tell", ...
"Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary, I don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries." Bob Marley Howard Dean wants the peace movement to believe that he is its best hope for b...
Slave driver the table has turned Catch a fire you’re gonna get burned. Bob Marley, Slave Driver On the Day of National Dignity-which commemorates the greatest achievement of socialist martyr Marcelo ...
[A version of this talk was delivered at Elon University, Elon, NC, on October 27, 2003.] Whatever arguments one might want to have about the pace of global warming and toxic waste accumulation, about the rate at which humans are degrading the earth’s...
Veterans and family members of soldiers now in Iraq mobilized in large numbers for the October 25 demonstration in Washington, D.C. to show their opposition to Bush’s war and occupation. Their contingent swelled to 1,000 people as they took up their position...
As today’s column will provoke accusations of anti-Semitism, let me begin with a few words in my defence. A classic philo-Semite, I’ve long been described as a Jew lover by the anti-Semites in organisations such as Frederick Tobin’s Adelaide Inst...
As of mid-day, EST, October 25, 2003, 343 U.S. troops had officially died in Iraq since the war of aggression, based on lies, began March 20. 138 were killed during the conventional war (the term I use for want of a better one to distinguish it from the guerrilla ...
Understanding the brain. That’s what you have to do in a guerrilla war. Find out how it works, what it’s trying to do. An attack on US headquarters in Baghdad and six suicide bombings, all at the start of Ramadan. Thirty-four dead and 200 wounded. Wher...
Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia have been acting as surrogate therapists to scores of families of the September 11 terrorist attacks. As soon as Zacarias Moussaoui was indicted in Alexandria, prosecutors ramped up a staff of assistant U.S. attorneys...
Argentina’s unemployed workers movement is faced with another repressive attack from President Nestor Kirchner and national government. In the past weeks, national daily newspapers have published that the government is taking a firm position against social p...
It seems that, incredibly, the U.S. armed forces feel that they do not have enough young blacks in their ranks. And so we see that the army has launched a street marketing campaign, including driving a big yellow tricked-out Hummer around at events where yo...
When they asked the outlaw Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he put it to them straight: "That’s where the money is." It is of course physically–not to mention politically–impossible for the weasel-wording cadres of the Bush Reg...
Eye witness: ‘They’re getting better,’ Chuck said approvingly. ‘That one hit the runway’ Running the gauntlet of small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades after check-in at Baghdad airport Baghdad, Iraq (The Independ...
"I wish Wolfowitz had been killed. I wish all the Americans here would be killed," said Ali Hussein a grocer in downtown Baghdad. "The Americans are not human beings. They are monsters. They lied to the Iraqi people." ...
Halliburton Corp., the oil field services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, told the New York City Comptroller’s office Monday that it won’t scale back its business dealings in Iran, despite concerns from the City’s Comptroller W...
"Whom do you believe?" asked General Ya’akov Amidror on TV with subdued anger, "the army spokesman or Hamas?" General (reserves) Amidror is the highest religious officer in our army. In the past he has raised several public storms ...
Everyone knew this fire was coming. TV reporters commented on the possibility all over the state a week before it happened. Yet preparations were minimal. For example, San Diego has long had extensive planning for terrorist attacks and has gone through city-wide d...
[Editors Note: The following is an excerpt of a speech White delivered on September 11, 2003 at Bethel College, a Mennonite institution of higher learning in rural Kansas. --AC/JSC] Two years ago today, everyone in this room felt a sense of dread and fear p...