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
"The story of what we’ve done in the postwar period is remarkable. It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day." Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA), on his return from touring Baghdad with other...
If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, anti-Americanism is currently the first. The Bush regime uses it to deceive the United States people while enriching its corporate buddies. Spreading fear, anxiety, and hatred under the pretext of fighting terrori...
I was in the police station in the town of Fallujah when I realised the extent of the schizophrenia. Captain Christopher Cirino of the 82nd Airborne was trying to explain to me the nature of the attacks so regularly carried out against American forces in the Sunni Muslim ...
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has been heard to say that he thinks he is too smart for the Court, let fly his contempt for his colleagues last week. Speaking of the court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which earlier this year struck down Texas&...
Perhaps we have not paid enough attention to Exodus and have lost, therefore, the import of General "Jerry" Boykin’s words to the evangelical Christians as reported in the LA Times on the 16th, "We in the army of God, in the house of God, king...
We’ve all met them, people who stubbornly hurl themselves in the wrong direction, stopping only when they violently collide with reality. It is a painful way to learn, but those afflicted with the disability seem unable to learn in any other way. This...
How many times have you heard people say the events of 9/11 "changed everything?" Well, yes and no. Yes to the obvious, the U.S. as the target of Mideast terrorists who slew thousands of innocent people. No, however, to America’s criminal ju...
Behold the perverse and heart-wrenchingly anti-family policies of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney: Women reservists, young mothers of infants and small children, leave their families to go halfway ’round the world to act as cogs, expendable parts, in the machiner...
The New York Times and the Pulitzer organization are currently in high dudgeon over a 1932 Pulitzer prize awarded to Times Russia correspondent Walter Duranty. The problem: a report commissioned by the Times and authored by Columbia University’s 20th Century...
"Down With Big Brother," wrote the fictitious character Winston Smith in his secret diary, a thought-crime seen as an "all-inclusive offense," whose punishment was extermination. Big Brother, the dictator of the totalitarian society in George O...
[Editors' note: The following essay is excerpted from economist ROBERT POLLIN's vital new book, ...
The tug of war between the hawks and doves over North Korea policy continues within the Bush administration. In the latest move, the administration has unveiled its new, flexible negotiating position with Pyongyang: a willingness to provide security guarantees. Ex...
In 1974 Celestina Pérez de Almada died of a heart attack after spending day after day listening to the screams of her husband being tortured. This brutal soundtrack came to her courtesy of the torturers themselves–a "2 for the price of 1" fo...
As a teacher of literature I am struck by the dearth of literary, historical or philosophical works that celebrate or even sanction pre-emptive strikes. Most great plots in history are scripted in moral favor of the people who have resisted invading or occupying f...
Was Rush Limbaugh high when he said, "There’s nothing good about drug use…It destroys individuals… families… societies, some might say this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs...
Bolivia’s conflicts regarding the proposal to export the nation’s gas to the US through a Chilean port proved to be the spark that fueled a much larger fire of national discontent. Arising from the din of the Gas War were demands for clarity in coca er...
Cheerfulness 1.0 Since Consumer Culture has sucked the marrow of every conceivable pleasure, from eating to fucking to watching the sun rise (without Claritin, thank you), there’s nothing left to do but – smile. Smile though you’re heart i...
[This is the text of a speech at the Gandhi Peace Festival. It is dedicated to the memory of George Weber, A Canadian member of the Christian Peacemaker Team. Mr. Weber died in Iraq protecting innocent children from the curse of invasion and bombs.] It is v...
What is the difference between evil acts and evil actors? An act is an action, an actor an agent. Does evil come from acts or from agency? Both, you might say. Evil acts are evil and evil humans do evil acts. Can evil humans do good acts? Can evil acts do good? Ho...
The question ‘Is there a right to terrorism?’ is obviously not about whether there is a legal right, a right in national or international law. It must be the question of whether there is a moral right. I take it in that way. My answer depends at...
Magnequench is an Indianapolis-based company. It specializes in the obscure field of sintered magnetics. Essentially, it makes tiny, high-tech magnets from rare-earth minerals ground down into a fine powder. The magnets are highly prized by electronics and aviatio...
Here it is 2003, and the ghost of the notorious Nazi Adolph Hitler haunts America. He’s in the White House in Washington, DC and the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California. He roams the halls of the George C. Marshall Space Flight C...
American foreign policy and its global concerns have been central to the emergence of the world’s present multilateral order. However, American foreign policy has now become of concern to the global order. America according to the new Bush doctrine is abdica...
It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. George Orwell, 1984 The only thing between a people living in a country governed by George W. Bush and contentment is a lobotomy. Words have lost all m...
"In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either ‘most’ or ‘some’ of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero." (Christian Science Monitor, March 13, 2003) ...