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 2004
This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the much anticipated Pledge of Allegiance case. The man challenging the pledge is Michael Newdow, an atheist whose daughter attends public school. And despite the fact that Newdow neither has a law degree nor see...
It’s hard for me to believe, even though I consider myself pretty hardened to the murderous acts of governments, especially the governments of Israel and the United States, but the murder by missile of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in the streets of Palestine represen...
Prophet Muhammad said, "He is not one of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship" When asked, what is "tribal partisanship," he an-swered, "[It means] your helping your own people in an unjust cause." [1] ...
There is an interesting parallel between the dramatic events in Spain earlier this month and the dramatic weeks that followed the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001, but it’s not the one most pundits and politicians have been making....
When Jay-Z released the accapella version of his Black CD, remixers jumped on the album, and the mash-up was on. DJ Dangermouse flipped it with Beatles samples, which roundly brought charges of blasphemy from the Recording Industry Of America (RIAA), EMI and other...
The assassination of Hamas founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassine, should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Ariel Sharon’s actions and has paid minimum attention to how he operates. His logic is straightforward and impeccable: Israel...
"Where tha Fuck did u lurn how to drive koon-boy…U talk jus’ like any dumb nigger I ever met!" Straight outta Samuel L. Jackson’s "A Time To Kill," or perhaps a relaying of Klan oral tradition — no, this most eloquent fi...
Daniel Samper Pizano has turned his column in the Bogota daily El Tiempo into a megaphone in recent weeks, rallying the public against U.S.-backed herbicide spraying in Colombia’s 49 national parks. His writing led to a two-day deluge of more than 1,100 angr...
As the growing stench of disaster begins to gather around the Bush Administration ,a remarkably similar situation is unfolding in Canberra, the Australian capital. Nowhere in the Bush Coalition has there been an ally half so good as the Australian P.M. John Howard...
The 60 Minutes interview of the Bush Administration’s top "terrorist advisor", Richard Clarke, and his damning testimony about President Bush, should be analyzed in a way that is consistent with what we already know about the media. We’...
George Bush’s re-election campaign suffered a stinging blow yesterday when the president’s former chief counter-terrorism adviser accused him of doing "a terrible job" in protecting America against attack, largely because of a fixation on Ira...
Three years ago, while California’s energy crisis was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney secretly met with half-dozen corporate executives of the country’s largest energy companies to hammer out a national energy policy for President ...
Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was murdered at daybreak on Monday. Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at the car carrying the wheelchair-bound head of the Islamic group as he left a mosque near his house in Gaza City. It also appears Ariel Sha...
As the fourth strongest army in the world, Israel could have arrested the quadriplegic and partially blind spiritual elder of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). But history shows that such extrajudicial executions (200 so far) create instability and a cycle ...
The San Francisco Bay Area had experienced a heat wave with record-setting temperatures all week and Saturday did not disappoint. It was a gloriously sunny day with bright blue skies and temperatures in the 80s. My expectations had been for a demonstration of 10-1...
The assassination of Shiekh Admed Yassin is worse than a crime, it is an act of stupidity! This is the beginning of a new chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It moves the conflict from the level of a solvable national conflict to the level of relig...
Pull down the walls, fix the schools, hold the elections, and stop the wars. How many times do we have to ask? Today in Houston, we ask again. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, from the 18th District of Texas, standing at the steps of Houston City Hall, remin...
I’m a traffic surveyor by trade. Among other things, I count pedestrians on sidewalks, vehicle flows, etc. So when I go to a parade, political or otherwise, I try to make a professional count or at least a professional estimate of how many people were there....
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." Voltaire "Chaplain Yee has won. The Army’s dismissal of the classified information charges against him represen...
The first of June 2002 does not mean anything to Spaniards. On that day a 1.000 kilogram bomb launched from a US warplane against a crowd attending a wedding resulted in 40 people dead and over 100 wounded, most of them children and women. The seventh of Ap...
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." Thomas Jefferson "The th...
Michael Moore makes movies, writes books, produces TV shows, and has built-in pacifist radar (hey, he endorsed "anti-war" candidate Wes Clark, didn’t he?). But that’s not the extent of his varied skills. Moore is also a: ...
No, in the midst of losses more sorrowful than speech can convey, Spain is not capitulating to terrorism. But the horrible carnage of the train bombing in Spain will soon have its intended effect on other nations. The "Death Smoke Squads" of Al Qaeda are...
I don’t know if the Diebold computer voting machines in my town will let me to write-in a presidential candidate come November. But if it is possible I’m voting for Emma Goldman. It will be a symbolic vote, of course. Emma died in 1940. ...
"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall." "Mending Wall," Robert Frost Funny how Frost’s fallen boulders, the size of bread loaves and small balls, when placed back on the ...