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 neocon-dominated Bush administration opted for generalized Southwest Asian war after 9-11. "S.H. and U.B.L.; things related and unrelated," penned Rumsfeld the day after. The meaning of this shorthand is clear in retrospect: the administration would ...
Someone should tell Condi Rice that the gig is up. With the Bush administration dissolving in illegalities committed by key officials in their attempts to protect the lies that they used to justify the US invasion of Iraq, the secretary of state is trying to ramp ...
At last, the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, on trial. At first glance, the event seems a landmark symbol of victory for the Iraqi people. But beneath the sense of vindication and hope experienced by countless Iraqis that justice will, finally, be done, there lies...
This is a tale about a vote, a strike, and a sleight of hand. For the past six months the United States and the European Union (EU) have led a full court press to haul Iran before the UN Security Council for violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (...
At the Library of Congress in 1994 there was a tribute to William Stafford, the American poet who, in 1970, had been what is now called the poet laureate of the United States. There were the usual accolades: Bill Stafford was a poet whose plain language fitted his...
OK, for a start, there really is no "Judith Miller and me," at least in the sense that I’d invite her to my birthday party. But I have talked to her on the phone a few times (nothing to do with Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby or Karl Rove, however). F...
in Baghdad It was the second time the 19-storey Palestine has come under attack leading to deaths. As US forces were first moving into Baghdad, an American Abrams tank shelled the hotel, killing and injuring a number of journalists. A central Baghdad hotel ...
According to Texas papers, when the Cards/Astros’ baseball playoffs opened in Houston, ( Saturday, Oct. 15, game 3), the ex-president and ex-first lady Barbara Bush arrived 45 minutes before game time, drawing a loud ovation as ...
It’s down to the finish line this week for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s probe into just who in the Bush regime outed CIA agent Valerie Plame in a lame attempt to counteract her husband Ambassador Joe Wilson’s refutation of Bush’s fa...
Many politicians and pundits have told us that "Iraq is not Vietnam." Certainly, any competent geographer would agree. Substantively, the histories of Iraq and Vietnam are very different. And the dynamics of U.S. military intervention in the two c...
Now that the New York Times’ own ombudsman has weighed in with a scathing critique of Judith Miller’s lies and deceptions about her WMD and Al Qaeda reporting, including a recommendation that the paper not allow her back in its newsroom, it’s tim...
in Baghdad It should have been a moment of supreme triumph: Saddam Hussein finally brought to bay, standing in the dock in Baghdad to answer for his crimes. The trial ought to have marked the victory of the new Iraqi state, but instead served only to underline...
Can Bush survive in a post-Rove world? Not likely. The Bush persona is mainly the invention of its author Rove; a careful stitching together of religious and western imagery, of pious moralizing and cowboy "straight-talk". Originally, Bush ...
Former CIA analysts On October 20, BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON spoke in Montpelier, Vermont at the first of several public forums scheduled in connection with an exhibition of Palestinian art, entitled Made in Palestine. Their presenta...
What I’m listening to this week. Doug Sahm– The Return of Wayne Douglas ...
Abortion was criminalized throughout the U.S. between the late 1800s and 1973. But during that time, millions of women sought and obtained abortions anyway. Of these, tens upon tens of thousands died from illegal abortions or complications arising from them...
Alan Dershowitz has written an introduction to a re-issue of The Unlawful Concert, a book I...
If the Bush administration wants it, they’ll get it. The threat of hurricanes and indictments isn’t going to stop these crazy guys. Nor will the Democrats, France, or that fallible United Nations. Nope, nothing is going to step in their way. Even if wh...
Gunshots down on Franklin, 11:45, two boys from the Lower Ninth, the coroner arrives. There’s a blind man reading tarot cards over there in Jackson Square. He says the future is uncertain but he don’t really ...
My ninety year old cousin recalled The Teapot Dome scandal under Warren G. Harding. Albert Fall, Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, took a $100,000 bribe to allow some buddies to develop federally owned oil fields. Harry Daugherty, Harding’s confidan...
Lately a furious debate has been raging between nuclear physicists, paleontologists, chiropractors, televangelists and other men of science as to whether the theory of evolution should be taught in our schools. The dissenters believe some other explanation should ...
"Area by area, city by city, we’re conducting offensive operations to clear out enemy forces [in Iraq]." – George W. Bush, October 6 At the moment there are some 154,000 US troops in Iraq. T...
Is the West "sleeping through" the Pakistani earthquake disaster? (1) Why do the responses to recent natural disasters in the U.S.A. and, often, around the world seem so limited? Consider this, from William Blum’s "Anti-Empire Report&qu...
Dear President Bush: Your position regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is increasingly untenable, even with your own Party, for reasons well known to you. Moreover, before...
There’s some terrible news, folks. George W. Bush is going down. Some of you, remembering a couple of pungent appellations I have applied to this horrible little Untermensch and his vampire wet-nurses, might be surprised to hear I’m not delighted about...