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 September 2005
I. Thanks to many fine African- and Arab-American as well as gay speakers at the rally in Washington on September 24, we focused on issues of occupation in Iraq and Israel/Palestine, dispossessed people, refugees, and the right to return to occupied territo...
Dublin. "The arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA’s arsenal." With those words, spoken by Canadian general John de Chastelain today at a press conference in Holywood, Co Down, one phase of Ireland’s Troubles see...
It’s one thing to lie in politics. It’s another to be caught in a lie. Bill Frist has been caught in a lie. His political future is over. The immediate question is, can he survive as Majority Leader? The Tennessee Republican claims he wasn’...
As the United Nations intensifies its scrutiny of torture practices in Iraq, many Americans feel outrage and confusion. How could this have happened? The truth lies in the realities that led to the Katrina disaster. The horrors are not new, but lon...
Former CIA analyst Where do American religious leaders stand on torture? Their deafening silence evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of German church leaders in the 1930s and early 1940s. Despite the hate whipped up by administration propagandists agai...
George W. Bush will go down in history as the president who fiddled while America lost its superpower status. Bush used deceit and hysteria to lead America into a war that is bleeding the US economically, militarily, and diplomatically. The war is being fou...
On September 23, 2005, hundreds of separatists gathered in a small town of Puerto Rico called Lares to conmemorate the 137-years old-failed revolutionary attempt against Spaniard colonial rule, known as Grito de Lares. At about 3:00 PM on that day, the crowd was l...
It’s reasonable to estimate that more than a quarter of a million people demonstrated against the Iraq war on Saturday in Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other U.S. cities. The next day, the Washington Post front-paged a decent story that describe...
I have been thinking for a while now that the Democrats really should sit down and consider changing their mascot from a donkey to a marmot. A rodent really is more emblematic or their provincial habits than a donkey could ever be. Think about it. Just this past w...
I guess my weekend began when I stopped off at Arlington Cemetery after landing at National Airport in Washington DC. I didn’t go into the grounds but looked over the graves of the thousands of war dead. As always, it had a chilling and emotional effect. I h...
Tony Blair has dismissed opposition to his Iraq policy as the province of "urban intellectuals". A strange comment from the Prime Minister of one of the most urbanised societies on earth. But then he also managed to ignore the latest opinion poll showing...
When Madrid was struck with the heinous terrorist attack on March 11, it was Taysir Alony who conveyed the tragedy of blood and loss to millions of Arab speakers all over the world. In his serene demeanor and warm voice, Taysir told us about grief stricken Spaniar...
There have been rumors of Bush taking to the bottle again. Since alcoholics are never cured, this is possible. The stress of having his ineptitude so publicly displayed as it was in New Orleans and of having his every major policy collapsing before his eyes would ...
Remarks at the Anti-war Rally, Washington, DC, September 24, 2005 If we didn’t know it before, we certainly know it now. A cruel wind blows across America. Starting in Texas and Montana, and sweeping across America’s heartland, it’s...
Last year was the tenth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and nearly all evaluations of the agreement conceded that the period showed negligible or negative results for Mexico. As the developing country partner of the agreement, Mexic...
I would like to thank the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation for including this important discussion on its busy agenda. Even more, I would like to thank the members of the CBC and most especially the hosts of this panel for persistently keeping Haiti’s p...
The Independent "Water is your friend" was the advice regularly given to a truly good friend of mine here in the Middle East. The speaker was a member of the One-Thousand- Litres- a-Day-Keeps-Dehydration-at-Bay Brigade, although I have to say that th...
The movement for peace and justice in the USA has been transformed during the past two months. But what is the nature of the change, and how will it help to move us forward? The short answer, I think, is that we have been enriched by sorrow; we gather upon a sorro...
There is so much propaganda, faith-based economic theorizing and simple ignorance and naiveté surrounding the question of soaring gasoline and oil prices in this country! For heaven’s sake, of course there is collusion, monopolistic behavior a...
At 11 p.m. on Thursday, August 25, the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida, reported that the storm, which it had tracked from Tuesday and named "Katrina", had made landfall. The high winds struck parts of Florida, but this was going to be the pr...
"In every war but one that
the United States has fought, the conduct of those of its servicemen
who were captured and held in enemy prison camps presented no
unforeseen proble...
Caracas, Venezuela. Hugo Chavez has moved onto the world stage as an advocate of profound change within his own country and abroad. At the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations this week he proclaimed: "The United Nations has exhausted its ...
Logic dictates that Luis Posada Carriles has become an Al Qaeda agent. This would explain his recent behavior. Posada’s resumé contains a long list of terrorist "accomplishments." So, why did he return surreptitiously to the United States, w...
Every so often, the usually even-tempered Ahmad bursts forth with an exclamation of deep anger, almost startling in its intensity. He is talking about the confiscation of vast tracts of land belonging to West Bank Palestinian villages for construction of Israel...
Historians like to speak of special times when leaders "seized the moment" to enact or implement their priorities. Giant hurricanes make these "special times," and no one is moving faster to exploit them than the corporate powers. Urged ...