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 2004
On December 10, two Strykers, the Army’s newest armored personnel carrier, were patrolling near Balad, Iraq, when the embankment beneath them collapsed and the vehicles plunged into a rain-swollen river. Three soldiers died and another was severely injured. ...
Indirectly, of course. Tillman, an ex-NFL star who threw away his career and a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to fight Bush’s war as an Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan this week. According to the Bush Ministry of Disinf...
Behold Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, would-be graduation commencement speaker at Emory University in the United States. She has made a big mistake. She dared to criticise Israel. She suggested–horro...
Americans consider themselves rugged individualists who by nature resist the coercion or imposition of any arbitrary external power. This self-definition of Americanism is represented in numerous ways in American popular culture. The symbol of that independent att...
"I welcome the disengagement plan prepared by the Government of Israel, under which Israel would withdraw certain military installations and all settlements from Gaza and withdraw certain military installations and settlements in the West Bank.Th...
LA PAZ, Bolivia. Explosions through the night, tear gas and protecting two young student teachers from riot police were not exactly what we expected for our holiday in Bolivia. Still, my partner and I will remember the first ten hours of Wednesday long afte...
Baghdad Iraqi generals who fought for Saddam Hussein are being reinstated to strengthen the new US-trained Iraqi army half of whose soldiers mutinied or went home during fighting earlier this month. More than half a dozen generals from the old Iraqi ...
Washington politicians are fond of saying nothing could have been done to prevent the 911 terrorist attacks. This would be comparable to an aircraft maintenance superintendent ignoring a letter from the safety office saying that there had been random observations ...
Well, co-editor Alex, you are asking me to do a piece on the Sydney City Council elections, after I forwarded some articles summarizing the surprise election results for Lord mayor 3 weeks ago. I am a bit washed out after an Easter vomit bug. Then the toilet broke...
I do not think that we humans feel only one emotion at any given time. I am thinking of the March for Women’s Lives this Sunday and I feel elated. Finally, the fight for women’s reproductive rights is coming back out where it belongs: in the streets. B...
It has often been pointed out that I might enjoy wider circulation as a writer if I didn’t use rude words in my pieces, nor would it hurt if I stuck to the 800 word limit like normal columnists (Ann Coulter). Some readers have suggested a 50 word limit, or m...
It occurred to me after Kerry’s performance on Meet the Press this weekend that Americans have a choice this coming November between George Walker Bush or George Kerry Bush, the Tweedleddumb and Tweedledeedumb proffered to us by the Republicrats Party. How c...
In 2004, an estimated 600,000 people will be released from state and federal prisons. And in the near future, this number will increase exponentially — as persons who began serving long prison terms in the late 1980′s (for mostly drug offenses) return ...
"Bob Dylan And The Beatles" (Vol. 1 of the best of the Blacklis...
Presidential Press Secretary Scott McLellan, speaking for the world’s loudest democracy, was droning on in his mendacious monotone. When, in response to Senator Kennedy’s speech at the Brookings Institution, he avowed that Iraq was nothing like Vietnam...
The stance of the political parties throughout the crisis that led to the ouster of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a constant reminder for the lack of democratic norms and traditions that has characterized Haiti over the last two centuries. Simply put, there...
The dominant myth about democracy in the United States is that all sides may air points of view, and that through debate truth and justice will win out over power. But under the present regime, it seems the might of capital makes right. Take the example of ...
Taking the stage at a community center in the small Northern California town of Bolinas, a group of four musicians quickly showed themselves to be returning as a vibrant creative force centered very much in the present. Not that the music of Country Joe and...
This is the text of CYNTHIA MCKINNEY’s talk at the Georgia Tech Globalization Forum held on April 22, 2004 I would like to thank Georgia Tech and the Georgia Peace Center for holding this forum tonight. I spent one qu...
A corporate military monster is being
created in Iraq.
The U.S. government is relying
on private military contractors like never before.
Approximately 15,000 milita...
After causing a slight uproar among the Beltway elites one year ago for placing a "Peace is Patriotic" sign in her home window, Wanda Baucus, wife of Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, allegedly sidelined her nonviolent disposition, and assaulted a w...
Back in the mid 18th Century, the east coast of North America was a pretty rough-and-tumble place. The British, our colonial motherland, had outlawed slavery, but here in the colonies, the inhuman practice thrived everywhere. Similarly, while Britain had developed...
It is amazing to me that they [CentCom] aren’t more careful with t...
In "bracing for terror" before the election the administration sternly forewarns that November’s alert status will be Red with prescience, suggesting that operatives ("the bad guys") might already be in place–...
Hearty congratulations to Lisa Renstorm, Jan O’Connell, Nick Aumen, Sanjay Ranchod and Dave Karpf. They won the election for the Sierra Club Board of Directors. I like to call them the Chosen 5. They won in an unprecedented, landslide victory. Why, it was so...