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 December 2004
It’s funny how things come back to you when you lose a friend. As I was smoking a cigarette on my patio the other night, thinking about Gary Webb and how everything I stood for in journalism was now quaking under my feet, I recalled that Gary told me ...
Ariel Sharon’s speech at the "Herzliya Conference", an annual gathering of Israel’s financial, political and academic aristocracy, proved again his wondrous ability to conjure up an imaginary world and divert attention away from the real...
The Fortress of Solitude I’ve visited lots of Japanese castles, from Kumamoto in Kyushu to Matsumae in Hokkaido. Some sit atop hills, enjoying a commanding view of the surrounding area. Some are encircled by moats, or twisting roadways designed to thw...
Baghdad. The Iraqi election on 3...
The Independent It was the insouciance, the absolute indifference of the British military press office in Basra that shocked me. Here I had documents–one of them signed by a British officer–stating that Baha Mousa had died in British custody...
The AFL-CIO will be 50 years old in 2005. Its leaders have sat down and met with every U.S. President during those 50 years, except one, George W. Bush. The compassionate conservative will not talk to the representatives of organized workers. AFL-CIO President Joh...
Wal-Mart’s dedication to "low, low wages" is a satirist’s dream. The Onion zeroes in on it in "Wal-Mart Announces Massive Rollback on Employee Wages": Above: A sign announces a Louisville, KY Wal-Mart...
Mickey Z. is the author of two new books: "A Gigantic Mistake: Articles and Essays for You...
With just 635 workers on the picket line, the lockout at farm equipment maker CNH Global might seem to be just one small battle in the endless corporate war on labor. In fact, it’s a struggle that tests whether the United Auto Workers (UAW) is capable...
HAVANA. "When he saw Gerardo, he was naked, locked up in what they called the ‘box,’ that is to say a ‘hole’ within the ‘hole’, with no clothes and with absolutely no contact with the outside world. When they took hi...
The Drug Enforcement Administration has turned down an application by a University of Massachusetts botanist seeking to grow cannabis for research purposes. Mahmoud ElSohly, PhD, remains the only DEA-licensed cannabis grower in the U.S. ElSohly, who superv...
Baghdad. Gunmen raked a car with...
I read a piece about Kobe Bryant a couple of days ago. The way it described his fall made me think of Bryant as a parable of America in the Bush years, that maybe even W himself could understand. No longer the big guy leading the winning team to victory over Commi...
Words are used frequently today to mean exactly the opposite of what they mean. So maybe we need to remind ourselves that sacrifice means … sacrifice. To make a sacrifice means being willing to sacrifice ourselves. It means giving up our time...
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is finally being brought to justice. This represents a victory not only for Chilean civil society, but for international law. It also reopens the possibility of prosecuting Pinochet for a 1976 murder in Washington, D.C....
Not long ago, yet another farmer left my eastern Colorado community. Over three generations his family had accumulated a patchwork of fields that stretched for several miles. After his children moved away he put the land up for sale. As the auctioneer tap...
My old friend John Hess (www.johnlhess@blogspot.com) makes the astute observation that President Bush must ...
"Businessmen they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, None of them along the lined know what any of it is worth." Bob Dylan, All Along The Watchtower I’m no celebrity, and definitely not accustomed to sp...
Daniel was the quintessential street freak. If the Hog Farm and other communal efforts in the 1960s and 1970s were communities of freaks (as we liked to call ourselves then) who lived in an alternative reality that they helped create, Daniel was the loner in the p...
Former CIA Analyst While President George W. Bush, his "neo-conservative" advisers, and centrist Democrats bask in the glow of America’s status as "the one remaining superpower in the world," signs are mounting that other major powers...
We’ve all been hearing a lot about "moral values" of late. According to the conventional wisdom these days, some Americans remain proud guardians of our moral heritage–good, simple, common sense folk, mostly from rural communities–while...
When Israelis hear the exhortation to "submit" to international law in their quest for peace, they are likely to respond that their enemies use international law as a club with which to beat them. They can reference this with many such attacks, such as t...
In October, just in time for Halloween, the World Wildlife Fund issued its frightening ...
The steady flow of international dignitaries to Israel and Palestine following the confirmation of the new transitional Palestinian leadership has been rather impressive. Outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell, outgoing UN envoy for the Middle East Terje Roed...
[What follows is an extended excerpt from Chapter Two of our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the P...