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 March 2005
A sucker is born every minute. It may not always be obvious who the sucker is. Pakistan is negotiating with the United States to buy some airplanes. Apparently there is no one left in Pakistan who remembers the 1990s. The United States may be considering selling a...
According to a report by the Associated Press, U.S. officials are "concerned" that Iran is reportedly buying and stockpiling high-tech small arms weapons as well as heavier equipment such as tanks, cruise missiles, etc. Well duh! Way down i...
A familiar expression in the homes and on the streets of Butte is this: "Duncan was the best Mayor we ever had." Lewis Duncan was elected to office by the vote of the working people. Duncan was then re-elected to office by the vote of the wo...
The main fallacy of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the last 12 years has been the complete omission or the indefinite postponement of fundamental Palestinian demands " demands sustained and cemented by international law and most recently by ...
Before studying at Columbia University I hadn’t thought much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Coming from Europe I had no specific links to the area. Then, after finishing my undergraduate degree in Europe and enrolling at Columbia as a graduate stude...
In a recent fundraising appeal on behalf of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Global Exchange and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin urged support for the PDA’s effort to "take over and transform the Democratic Party." But this is onl...
W.R. Grace and Company, the Montana State Board of Health, and elected officials have all received criticism for the asbestos tragedy in Libby, Montana. Now we read about the making of yet another potential culprit, the environmentalists! In a March cover s...
In spite of the abuse and corruption attributed to Mormon fundamentalism, the substance of which is published almost daily in Utah’s newspapers, there is in Utah a well organized, impressive movement to decriminalize polygamy. This movement is encouraged by ...
Twenty-five years ago, on March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot down while celebrating Mass in San Salvador. In the years before his murder, Romero had emerged as an outspoken defender of the Salvadoran poor, making him one of the best-known embodiments...
Since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, 1,524 US soldiers have died (as of March 22, 2005), and 11,220 US soldiers have been wounded in action (as of February 26, 2005).1 Iraqi casualties are even larger. A study published in The Lancet last November estimate...
Corporate cyborg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, must be thinking these days that it was not like this in his movies. On the screen, Arnold was the pursuer, the hunter, and the attacker. On the hustings now, it is the nurses, along with the teachers, and the firefighters,...
There’s an old Ojibwe saying: Gego baapiineminaken gidaabinoojiiyug. Never laugh at your children. That motto invokes a sacred Anishinaabe value: manaaji’idiwin, or deep respect. We are to respect others, no matter how young or weak or strange, in part...
The mass mobilization and media circus surrounding the case of the unfortunate Terri Schiavo offer a rare view of current American culture and, in particular, of the "culture of life" that George W. Bush and the evangelical right wing are so fond of talk...
Parisian denim purveyor Marithe et François Girbaud staged Da Vinci’s Last Supper in drag last week to mass outrage in Europe. The corporatization of Jesus and the girl Christ was more than the faithful could take. Girbaud’s apostles in couture ...
I sometimes think peak oil has already hit Manhattan as subways become increasingly unpredictable (although surveillance cameras are state-of-the-art) and escalator shut-downs present stair master survival challenges, a kind of perverse underground amusement. Unfo...
It was just over two years ago that I learned a little-known "antiwar" Democrat from Vermont was planning to run for President. At a rally on the eve of Bush’s Iraq invasion, a fellow protestor handed me a leaflet touting the now infamous Howard De...
Here’s a bit of news that had Washingtonians choking on their coffee this morning: President Bush’s neoconservative hawk Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s architect of the US invasion of Iraq, is dating a Muslim! While battle lines have harde...
Mexican President Vicente Fox speaks some English, as becomes a leader of a nation bordering the world’s largest English-speaking nation. For his part, U.S. President George W. Bush speaks some Spanish. The former Texas governor even started an oil company n...
The case of Theresa Marie Schiavo has again made headlines this week. As readers are probably well aware, Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as the result of a 1990 heart attack. PVS, also known as "cortical death," is the irreversible los...
In the long history of the Red Lake Nation, Monday will go down among the worst of all days. It is when the lives of 10 people ended before they could step into tomorrow. Nine were gunned down; seven are recovering from shots fired by one of their own–...
With Bush’s Social Security wrecking scheme on the ropes in the face of widespread public distrust of his intentions and his "facts," the inevitable scare stories are now coming out of the politically manipulated Social Security Administration itse...
My poetry reading at Kansas University tonight (March 10) is co-sponsored by Coca-Cola, through the KU Endowment Association. After giving the matter serious thought, I have decided that I cannot accept funds from Coca-Cola due to the company’s labor record ...
Tallahassee, Florida The ongoing...
Sometimes there is no blame; there is only sorrow. Sometimes there are no solutions; there is only introspection and wonder. Against the backdrop of the United States Congress engaging in a special midnight debate on the merits of creating another round of...
"If our guys want to poke somebody in the chest to get the name of a bomb maker so they can save the lives of Americans, I’m for it I don’t need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane...