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
When bureaucracies fail, one of their favorite ways to deflect demands for reform is to offer reorganization instead. That appears to be what has happened in the report of the 9/11 commission and Washington’s response to that report. Worse, the reorganizatio...
The Independent Iraq, we are told by Mr Blair, is safer. It is not. US military reports clearly show much of the violence in Iraq is not revealed to journalists, and thus goes largely unreported. This account of the insurgency across Iraq over three days last ...
I can’t claim to have read everything, and I couldn’t bear to punch it in and hit search, but when I finally saw Fahrenheit 9/11, one enormous omission jumped out that no one I know of has commented on, and which might be worth a few paragraphs of a Co...
Can we look forward to a "New Community of the Americas," as candidate John Kerry has promised, in a Kerry-Edwards administration? Unlikely. Will U.S.-Latin American relations improve under a Democrat administration? Very likely, giv...
I haven’t seen more than ten minutes of the Democratic National Convention coverage yet, preferring to spend my evenings watching the Red Sox knock the baseball around, but I have read enough news to know that a picture of John Lennon hangs in the Fleet Cent...
The Independent The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are on the floor. Dozens of them. Outside,...
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Boston. As military veterans wrangle over whom to support for president, one veterans’ organization has fired a shot across the bow of whoever will occupy the White House next year. Over 400 Veterans for Peace (VFP) members gathered last weeke...
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When John Kerry addressed the national conference of the Anti-Defamation League in May, he joked of how he’d acquired his singular perspective on the Middle East. He had once looped-the-loop in an Israeli trainer, he said, and the view-from Sinai to Jordan a...
Dear Senator Kerry, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" This is a question you asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, testifying against the Vietnam War. If you are elected President of t...
I was watching The Learning Channel the other day, when I had a moment of clarity of sorts. They were showing the bizarre eating habits of different cultures, in particular an Icelandic tradition to honor the Vikings. Many people over there like to partake of a ce...
Award-winning
investigative journalist Jeffrey St. Clair presents a shocking
look at the war on the home front: the battle against the Earth.
From the ancient forests of Oregon to the toxic wasteland of
Cancer Alley, St. Cla...
Former CIA analyst The 567-page final report released Thursday by the 9/11 Commission provides a wealth of data–indeed, so much detail that it is all too easy to miss the forest for the trees. Comments by the ubiquitous commissioners last weekend yield t...
I’ve tried shouting "Kerry-Edwards" on the step out to my garden. The cat yawned and the flowers drooped. Democrats know this in their hearts. Twit them about Kerry’s dreariness, reminiscent of thin cold chowder or Weeping Ed Muskie and one g...
IF WE WERE VENEZUELAN, ON AUGUST 15TH, 2004, WE WOULD VOTE FOR HUGO CHAVEZ We, the signers of this manifesto, wish to express our solidarity with the struggle that, alongside President Hugo Chavez, the majority of the Venezuelan people are waging in defense...
Former CIA analysts Chapter 12 of the 9/11 Commission’s report, titled "What to Do? A Global Strategy," is the philosophical heart of the entire report. It is certainly the most important chapter for those who believe that nothing the U.S. can ...
Get to work, Americans! Globalization is coming home to roost, and you’re going to be getting very, very busy, with no rest in your dotage. That’s the message from United Airlines and Old Europe this past week. First Old Europe, where wor...
Twenty five years ago, the FSLN seized power in Nicaragua. Although it is difficult to see this abjectly miserable country in these terms today, back then it fueled the hopes of radicals worldwide that a new upsurge in world revolution was imminent. Along with Gre...
There’s a chilling scene in Jahane Noujaim’s new documentary Control Room where an American F-16 is seen slowly turning in the sky over Baghdad. The plane arcs lazily in the blue sky and then quickly noses downward, following a straight line towards th...
While the Department of Energy (DOE) shuts down nuclear labs, and a Senator introduces a bill to end the University of California’s management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a plan is emerging for Texas and New Mexico universities to take over the be...
Always partial to monopolies, the Democrats think they should hold the exclusive concession on any electoral challenge to Bush and the Republicans. The Nader campaign prompts them to hysterical tirades. Republicans are more relaxed. Ross Perot and his Reform Party...
At convention time, in years gone by, pundits would decry with patronizing chuckles the supposed proclivity of the Democratic Party to "tear itself apart". Auto-rupture is actually a good thing. As Hegel once said, "a political party only truly exis...
The Independent The pictures are grainy, the voices sometimes unclear. But when Kim Sun-il shrieks "Don’t kill me" over and over again, his fear is palpable. As the heads of Iraq’s kidnap victims are sawn off, Koranic recitations–us...
Boston, July 25, 4 pm Half-an-h...