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 January 2005
In no particular order (in keeping with the disarray elsewhere): 1. Why should "progressives" be criticized more than The Right? A: ‘Cause The Right is a long-dead dead horse. More than enough is already known about their machinatio...
Dennis Peron, the founder of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club and the prime mover behind Prop 215, is weighing the offer of a job in Dartmouth, England. It comes from George San Martin, who in the late ’70s worked at the Big Top, a marijuana dispensary...
So special is Condoleezza Rice, so essential to Bush’s revamped, de-Powell-ized and now neocon-ized State Department, that she was sworn in twice after her whirlwind Senate confirmation, according to the Associated Press. "You have given us our mission ...
The Independent Baghdad. Shi...
No one said that dying had to be dull. "Screaming with fear, paralyzed children at a shelter for the physically disabled and mentally ill in Galle, Sri Lanka, lay helplessly in their beds as seawater surged around them." The CNN report read like the scre...
When Boston College student Joe Previtera decided to protest the war in Iraq, he headed to the one place that keeps the war machine well stocked with fuel-his local recruiting office. In a clever display of street theater, Previtera put on a black hood and cape, s...
George W. Bush recently announced that he was going to end asbestos damage lawsuits; limit medical malpractice suits; and ban class action lawsuits of all sorts. It’s part of his high priority, tort reform plan. Instead of Bush’s proposed tort r...
You really know the state killers have lost it when they call for the death penalty for someone who was just trying to kill himself in the first place. That’s what prosecutors are doing in the case of Juan Manuel Alvarez, the 25-year-old Californian w...
Baghdad. With only three days to...
We should never pass up the opportunity to point out that Rush Limbaugh is not only a racist pig but, unlike the swine, one of our stupider mammals as well. This past weekend, as All-Pro quarterback Donovan F. McNabb led the Philadelphia Eagles to their fir...
Over the past two weeks, "Tsunami-Aid" concerts were organized in many countries, including one in the city of Cardiff, England which the BBC described as an "event set to be Britain’s biggest charity concert since Live Aid 20 years ago."...
Predictably, the U.S. news media are full of discussion and debate about this weekend’s election in Iraq. Unfortunately, virtually all the commentary misses a simple point: There will be no "election" on Jan. 30 in Iraq, if that term is meant to su...
It seems clear now that the disclosure that two syndicated right-wing columnists were paid shills of the Bush administration posing as journalists is really just the tip of a grimy iceberg. With the admission by Armstrong Williams that he had pocketed a coo...
Does the US State Department’s renewed campaign to publicize its $25 million (soon to be doubled) bounty represent an honest attempt to capture Osama bin Laden? It worked with Saddam Hussein’s sons, the argument goes, on whom there was a bounty of $15 ...
Editors’ Note: This is the second...
Editors’ Note: This is a transcri...
The document below is based on a public
letter written in Spanish (by Ignacio Chapela, translated by
John García) as a response to a flash-track vote on a
law presented by the Senate majority to the Chamber of Deputies
...
Just four days before Iraq’s historic
elections, 36 US soldiers were killed yesterday in the deadliest
single day for American forces since they invaded Iraq almost
two years ago....
Everyone who is rooting for Us instead of Them is hoping that it wasn’t a metaphor. The FBI has had enough bad news since 9/11 including, of course, the event itself. The metaphor to which I refer is the possibility that its latest case may have gone up in f...
Quick! Anyone! Who can put the brakes on Vice President Dick Cheney before we have another war on our hands? Current and former intelligence analysts are reacting with wonderment and apprehension to his remarks last week on the nuclear program of Iran and his resu...
The machinery of state decision-making is rarely exposed to public scrutiny. The cover of representative government is a scrupulously maintained fiction concealing the nuts-and-bolts of real statecraft. Normally, politicians and their accomplices in the media can ...
The recent election of Mahmoud Abbas as the new President of the Palestinian Authority has renewed speculation that 2005 will bring genuine peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Insofar as it depends on Israel’s own intentions, however, such hope is entir...
From Saigon to Baghdad Today, January 28, the US today lost a third of the soldiers it lost around Saigon on the first day of the Tet offensive thirty-six years ago. Even as George Bush was giving jesting with a docile press corps this morning, the C...
Writing in Dar Al Hayat at the end of the year, Ms Condoleezza Rice, the newly designated Secretary of State, made the following points: " when freedom is on the march, America is more secure when freedom is in retreat, America is mo...
Amidst the shambles of the 2004 elections, there were two spots of hope for the Senate Democrats — the seats they had wrested in Illinois and Colorado. At first blush, it would appear that both blossoms have merely flattered to deceive. Both Ba...