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 July 2004
The late great Claud Cockburn once said words to the effect that he never believed anything until he read an official denial of it, and in few periods in history can there have been more justification for his observation than at present. Governments and their acce...
Where Israel is concerned, U.S. foreign policy never ceases to amaze. When Palestinian in-fighting took place in Gaza last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell had the following to say about the United States’ position: "Just have to watch it unfold.&q...
At one level, the UNITE HERE convention was much different than similar union gatherings. Union staffers talked bluntly about terrible contracts negotiated by the corrupt old guard in HERE locals. At the HERE special convention to approve the merger, President Joh...
In July 2004, only about a month after millions of the American People began flocking to movie theaters to see Michael Moore’s incendiary exposé of the Bush administration, "Fahrenheit 9/11," officials appointed by this administration floate...
Compassionate conservatism has many faces and most of them have frowns. They frown at everything from the environment to the poor. During the 2000 campaign Mr. Bush proclaimed the environment one of his very best friends. He promised to fund the Land and Wa...
On that great day when all the single-issue groups assemble to pursue their mutual interests, cannabis users will find they have a lot in common with their fellow citizens who use synthetic opioids to cope with chronic pain. Patients in both groups have had to rel...
I heard several lines from John Edwards’ convention speech on the radio before I clicked it off. Anymore and I would have vomited. As it was, I experienced a horrible flashback to being a twelve-year old at the Midwest Baptists’ Camp Sycamore, s...
Can someone win the presidency entirely on the basis of a negative asset? I wouldn’t have thought so, but here’s John Kerry, just about 90 days shy of election day, promoting himself as a man of presidential caliber entirely on the basis that he’...
A recent article by a Washington Post staff writer (Dana Priest, July 12th) provides vivid evidence to support what most astute observers and analysts of the causes for the Iraq War always knew down deep in their hearts to be true. That the invasion was essentiall...
Ancient public forests out West are under attack as usual this year. Thankfully, courageous activists in Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest are attempting to fend off the worst of the pillage. On July 16 the US Forest Service placed 1900 acres of publi...
Hitchhiking used to be my carrier of choice. It was cheap and no more dangerous than any other form of transport. Then something changed. Americans grew more isolated from each other and hitchhikers became synonymous with criminals, even though they were more like...
The free speech cage at the site of the Boston Democratic Convention should be left standing permanently as a monument in this city that is awash in symbols of the founding of the nation. It should be left where it is to remind future generations–and maybe p...
MIT Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the world’s most perceptive social critics. I had the opportunity recently to ask him some questions concerning a range of subject matter. Professor Chomsky’s latest book is ...
According to many observers, this year’s Indonesian elections can be summed up by the informal slogan of Bill Clinton’s 1996 U.S. presidential campaign: It’s the economy, stupid! It’s easy to understand why economic issues might weig...
"In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I am not degraded and murdered." Aimé Césaire. Genocide is defined in a 1948 UN Convention as acts committed with intent to...
I recently got a chance to discuss the political and personal with the radical Palestinian-American activist and rap artist Will Youmans, who dons the moniker ‘Iron Sheik’ in his clever and powerful music aimed against Israeli oppression of the Palesti...
Usually it goes right in the recycling. But, this letter from AARP got my attention. It announced a workshop titled, "Reduce Your Prescription Drug Costs in Three Easy Steps." AARP reports the astonishing fact that in 2002, over 75% of Americans a...
On this 51st anniversary of the attack on the Moncada fortress on July 26, 1953 I shall address a sinister character that keeps threatening, insulting and slandering us. This is not a whim or an agreeable option; it is a necessity and a duty. On June 21, at...
With the Democrats having nominated an admitted war criminal for president, and with our president and commander-in-chief having perpetrated, encouraged and overseen war crimes of historic scale, perhaps it’s no surprise that down on the ground, the little c...
In the first minute of his July 29 Democratic National Convention (DNC) acceptance speech, John Kerry told us that the Democratic party has "one simple purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world." The Republicans have set the st...
The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of thin...
I’ve been watching the Democratic Convention on C-SPAN, a channel that has no commentators, no analysts, no commercials, no crawls. If applause goes on for ten minutes, C-SPAN shows ten minutes of applause. If there is a hole in the program because someone s...
In a July 16 speech in Tampa, George W. Bush leveled his human rights gun–mouth–at Cuba for promoting sex tourism. "The regime in Havana, already one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, is adding to its crimes. The dictator welcom...
Politics as usual will not suffice for John Kerry in his speech to the Democratic Convention. Kerry can hope to shorten the long odds he faces against President Bush only with a bold, imaginative approach to winning the election. This challenging conclusion...
In his senior year at Yale in 1966 John Kerry enlisted in the US Navy, with his actual induction scheduled for the summer, after his graduation. Already notorious among his contemporaries for his political ambition, he’d maneuvered himself into the top slot ...