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 October 2005
The following quotes are from Bush’s speech about the War on Terror, as given October 6, 2005, and largely repeated October 28. It was a speech especially dense with Bushspeak, a dialect which never means what it seems to say. Perspective and the occasional ...
One day I walked down to Bronte Beach, from my flat in Bondi Junction, in Sydney. Or was it Woollahra? The real estate said it was Bondi Junction. Maybe that helped in renting it. Close to the shops and train station. But the post office kept correcting ou...
When President Bush was confronted by reporters as he left the White House for Camp David following the announcement of the five indictments of, and the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney chief of state I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, he offered up a la...
The State of California is attempting to silence the voice of death-row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams as quickly as it can. On October 24, less than two weeks after the US Supreme Court refused to hear Stan’s final appeal, a Superior Court in Los Ang...
Kevin Benderman sits in jail. An injustice. He did not want to go. He did not take his stand, break a law and dare the courts to put him in jail with a stiff sentence. Kevin Benderman put his principles on the line and dared to trust that his rights would be respe...
The special prosecutor investigating the outing of a covert CIA agent expanded his probe last year to include intelligence information used by the Bush administration claiming that Iraq tried to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger. According to a court ...
and STELLA LA CHANCE The catastrophic success of Hurricane Katrina in carrying out the Bush administration’s second term agenda in only a few short days should have been cheering news for the beleaguered war prez. Even though he is being forced to lick h...
It is true the overwhelming majority of Americans are aghast at the use of torture by agents of the US government, and favor an immediate, permanent and absolute abolition on its use. It is true that prominent US law-makers, policy-makers and military leade...
Debate and reportage from Israel-Palestine continue anxiously to focus on the symptoms, rather than the deeper direction, of the conflict. Media controversy whirls about how the Palestinians can navigate the immense challenges of the Gaza withdrawal, the electoral...
Employers’ wage costs grew 2.3% over the past year, the slowest growth rate on record, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Factoring in the recent energy-driven increase in inflation, the real wage is down 2.3%, also the la...
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Maybe for a moment George Bush thought Bill Frist was calling late Wednesday evening to tell him he was quitting as Senate majority leader on account of his own deepening legal problems, stemming from insider stock deals. But no, F...
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the Palestinian uprising and may well be the last moment for making peace in Israel and Palestine. Peace is not only important for the people who live there. It will pay dividends to the world and especially to the United ...
Remember Make Poverty History, anyone? It seems a long time ago that some 200,000 people flocked to Edinburgh to rally G8 leaders as part of an unprecedented campaign for global justice. That same day, July 2, Bob Geldof organised free music concerts in nine count...
With the coming indictments of at least some administration factotums for lying to a federal Grand Jury if not for the underlying crimes, it’s telling to note how deeply members of Congress feel about perjury by government officials and how much damage they ...
"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!" –Walter Scott The conspiracy that bubbles around Judith Miller protecting a source — whose name she couldn’t remember ...
To his fans, a Randian free-market hero, an Atlas barely quivering under the Himalayan chain of operating systems, software packages and security patches with which he feeds the hungering cyber-masses. Or as one Indian model squealed orgasmically, "Mr. Gates,...
So I’m sitting on the couch last Saturday evening watching the World Series game with my friend’s eleven year old daughter. My night for childcare, you see. It’s a lot different for me this year since the Boston Red Sox are out of the mix after t...
So there’s maybe a third of all Americans who are still wavering behind George W. Bush and his murderous attack, invasion, occupation and massacre on-going in Iraq. (It never ever was a war) And half of all Americans voted Democrat in the last election, -for...
"You are like the prisoner sawing away at the bars on the little cell window so intently that he does not notice the door has long been wide open." –George Bernard Shaw (paraphrased) "Will ther...
During the heyday of British, French, Belgian or Portuguese colonialism, if you asked the citizens of London, Paris, Brussels or Lisbon whether their countries were the seats of great transcontinental empires, they would have answered ‘yes’, unhesitati...
Shocking images from Afghanistan have again exposed the racist barbarism of the U.S. "war on terror." Last week, U.S. soldiers were caught on videotape burning the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters–something forbidden under Islamic lawR...
in Baghdad A majority of Iraqis have voted for the new federal constitution, which will divide the country into three regions and weaken central government. The results, released by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, show that the Sunni Arabs...
It is hard not to be elated over what seem to be imminent indictments resulting from this whole Valerie Plame/CIA leak. Is it going to be Scooter Libby, Karl Rove or Dick Cheney? Perhaps all three? It is impossible to say at this point, but as Jason Leopold a...
Today, in cities and towns throughout the U.S. and beyond, activists will gather to grieve and protest the carnage wrought by the unlawful and immoral war in Iraq. Thousands will gather to commemorate the 2,000 lives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and call upon U...
Rosa Parks passed October 24, 2005. She was an unassuming, remarkable woman who came to symbolize the black struggle in this country, and by refusing to get up out of a bus seat this humble but grand black woman taught black Americans how to stand up. She gave bir...