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 2004
NFL legend Reggie White passed away in his sleep Sunday at the tragic age of 43. The 6′ 5" 300-pound ‘Minister of Defense’ was a football immortal without peer. He played in 13 consecutive pro bowls and retired as the all time NFL leader in ...
Word that the U.S. government is offering a paltry $10 million in aid to those countries whose coasts were devastated by tidal waves from the largest earthquake in 40 years should be a national embarrassment. That a nation which can talk casually about $400-$500 b...
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to a conversation I overheard at Starbucks in Nashville last winter. I was distracted from my work on that cold and rainy night by two young men who sat down in upholstered chairs next to my table. One was talking and...
Imagine yourself coming of age in a country where speaking out against the government is severely repressed. Activism of any sort is met with torture, imprisonment and even death, all courtesy of the US-trained secret police employed by a ruler who owes his very e...
A year before Howard Dean announced his bid for the presidency; he spoke at a Pittsburg event sponsored by a "smart-card" firm, Wave Systems, which was a sure sign Dean was fast running away from his grassroots support, and right into the arms of the cor...
Hot on the heels of the deadly attack on U.S forces in Mosul on December, 21, a front page headline in the NYT on December, 22, proclaimed authoritatively: "Fighting On Is the Only Option, Americans Say." Amazingly the self-assured report was based solel...
The new-model, compassionate, caring, tender-hearted, public-related Donald Rumsfeld flew to Iraq Christmas Eve, and went to Mosul. We are assured by the Pentagon that the Mosul visit by their CEO was – but of course – planned well before the carnage i...
The young people at the news desk weren’t
quite sure who he was. The name sounded familiar but they weren’t
sure from where. A few had heard about one of his books. A few
ha...
My good friend Lisa Goldrosen is a veteran of many left causes. Lisa has spent her entire adult life working in various coop endeavors. She has a wonderful collection of buttons and posters from back when America rose from the slumber of the Eisenhower years. She ...
On December 17th I met with Professor Noam Chomsky at his MIT office to get his thoughts on the ideological justifications and historical realities behind America’s "war on terror." Professor Chomsky spent a half-hour taking apart the framework of ...
"As I look back over the General E...
"We headed to the area where we live and saw some bodies lying about the streets. I entered my neighbor’s house and found him lying on the ground, nothing left of him but some bones." Abd al-Rahman Salim, Fallujah resident ...
On December 10, US Interest Section Chief in Havana James Cason offered yet another Bush Administration policy missile to overthrow the Cuban government and replace it with a "democratic" regime, i.e.; one that would revere private property and kiss Wash...
"It’s not everyday that we are needed. Not indeed that we are personally needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, ...
Throughout the 1980s, Honduras was the linchpin in the U.S.’ Central American policy, serving as Washington’s "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for covert Contra missions against Sandinista Nicaragua and providing a base for U.S. military trainer...
I hate to keep wading around in the drudgery of election-year fallout, but I’ve heard too much elitist cynicism and scapegoating of a supposedly dumb-and-dumber American population to keep quiet. In much of the post-election commentary, the left along with m...
"We headed to the area where we live and saw some bodies lying about the streets. I entered my neighbor’s house and found him lying on the ground, nothing left of him but some bones." Abd al-Rahman Salim, Fallujah resident ...
"Destroying cities and torturing prisoners are things you do when you are losing the real war, the war your enemies are fighting. They are signals of moral bankruptcy. They destroy the confidence and respect of your friends, and reinforce the cr...
Some 167 years ago United States Army, Marine and Navy units were engaged in an occupation and pacification of dangerous foes in Florida. The first foreign invasion launched by the new US government began in 1816 and met fierce and prolonged resistance from the mu...
I met Dick Barnet about 34 years ago and got lost in his smile and the twinkle in his eyes. I had already stolen ideas from Intervention and Revolution and Roots of War, and read his articles in The New Yorker. I worked with him for twenty-five years at the ...
I spent the last six months of 2003 in Colombia, living with a community in the foothills of the Andes, in the Urabá region, a region of mountains, jungle, and huge rivers stuck up next to Panama at the gateway to South America. I was a volunteer with the F...
It was December of 1991 and I was serving as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in Washington DC. The Israelis were stalling –not even negotiating in bad faith. And the Americans were doing nothing to get the ne...
Kiev, Ukraine. With only a coupl...
Winter takes the color away, but people put up lights. In my own cul de sac of the global village, the light show this year is fantastic: colors like I’ve never seen, electric deer that raise their lit-up heads, candy canes, icicles, y mas santas. At night t...
"They say we can̵...