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 November 2004
Kansas City. The media spin cycl...
Never has there been an administration like the one in power today–so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and, in defiance of the Constitution, from their representatives in Congress....
Baghdad. Disintegrating security...
The recent appointment of Victor Cha as Asia Director in the National Security Council portends a more aggressive approach towards North Korea during President Bush’s second term. Long an advisor to the Administration, as Asia Director, Cha will hold respons...
Is the Bush administration competent? There is enough information at hand on which to base an objective opinion. On the eve of President Bush’s second term, the US economy has fewer jobs than when Bush was inaugurated four years ago. During Bu...
Back in May of this year, like many of you, I read about the case of an artist in New York whose wife had suddenly died and he was subsequently suspected of being a bio-terrorist. I first caught the story on the AP wire, so as you can imagine it wasn’t immed...
In his book from early 2000, The Lexus and The Olive Tree, globalization bull-dog Thomas Friedman, amongst his other grand ideas like McDonald’s being the key to world peace, speculates that one day governments will run on a for-profit basis. Rather than pri...
Baghdad. Assassins tried to kill Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, yesterday morning by leaving a car packed with explosives on a road where he was about to travel. His guards discovered the bomb shortly before his convoy went past. Th...
"Russia plus Ukraine is the Russian empire, which can never be a democracy." David Frum, neocon ideologue, advocating preemptive expansion of the U.S. empire Many are declaring the Ukraine crisis the nadir of post-...
An interesting and disturbing aspect of the post-election uprising in Ukraine is that it is not entirely a spontaneous event. Although the election outcome was clearly manipulated by the government of outgoing president Leonid Kuchma, a corrupt and dictator...
Two weeks before the invasion of Falluja a car bomb was set off in front of the Al Arabiyya news facility in downtown Baghdad; 7 people were killed. The evening news dismissed the incident as a warning by insurgents to the Arab news channel to change the "pro...
The integration of economic activities across national borders that goes under the name of globalization is effected primarily by economic actors in the private sphere (mainly multinational corporations) and government actors. The former are concerned only with pr...
Israel has a population of about five million Jews and nearly 1.3 million Arabs. There are around four million Palestinians registered as refugees by the United Nations. The death of Yasser Arafat will not, despite the rhetoric suggesting otherwise, inevitably lea...
Endocrine disrupters are man-made chemicals that affect our hormonal systems by mimicking or blocking hormones that regulate essential functions of the thyroid, pancreas, ovaries and testes glands. They are pervasive in the environment, in the water we drin...
"Give me some credit!" the new Israeli Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, cried out at the Labor Party convention in February 1965, addressing David Ben-Gurion. From the moment he resigned, Ben-Gurion started to undermine his successor. Eshkol, who...
When I watched Oscar-winning film The Pianist I had three distinct, uneasy reactions. I was not particularly impressed by the film, from a purely artistic angle; I was horrified by the film’s depiction of the dehumanization of Polish Jews and the impunity of...
The Independent The failure of the Indian government and an American corporation to tackle the after-effects of one of the worst industrial accidents in history has left a legacy of continuing pollution and inadequate medical care for survivors, according to a...
The neocons have added yet another country to their hit list, another one targeted for regime change: the Republic of Korea. Yes, that’s South Korea, long-time U.S. ally, host to around 34,000 U.S. troops. William Kristol, editor of the neocon Weekly Standar...
The big conflict during the first Bush term was of course that between Colin Powell on the one hand and Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and all the neocons on the other. That conflict will soon be resolved with Powell’s departure. Despite setbacks, the neocons h...
My response to the eleven states, including my home of Montana, that passed constitutional bans on football was about what you’d expect: It’s about damned time. Mind you, I am not a bigot where football is concerned. Some of my best friends play...
The face of Christ at Christmas is a baby facesweet, vulnerable, silent. The face of Christ at Christmas is about beginning human time, a needy present. It’s not the bloody Christ of suffering and death thirty-three years ahead of that baby and almost t...
"I can see the day comin’ when even your home garden’s gonna be against the law." -Bob Dylan On Monday morning, Nov. 29, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case now known as Ashcrof...
In the past year, several groups have asked me to facilitate retreats for people who want to further explore nonviolence. At the retreats, I ask volunteers to role-play situations likely to generate discussion about challenges people face when involved in peace ac...
On Tuesday November 16th, George Bush put forward Condoleeza Rice as his proposed Secretary of State to take over the diplomacy of US warmongering from the outgoing fraud, Colin Powell. Two days later on November 18th leading Venezuelan judicial prosecutor Danilo ...
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." -Joseph Conrad, Heart of Dar...