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 2005
In some ways, it seems just like yesterday. In others, well… Twenty years ago today, I was arrested for "stealing" the gold painted ground breaking shovels at the Union Carbide PCB facility in Henderson, KY. In many ways, that cold morning d...
Just when you think it can’t get crazier, it gets crazier. Aaron Nicodemus, a journalist with the southern Massachusetts newspaper ...
Two pieces of legislation currently wending their way through Britain’s Parliament illustrate how the war on terror is being used to dismantle the very freedoms it’s supposed to secure. Both criminalise the expression of ideas and neither is likely to ...
Helen Miers knew what Vladimir Putin didn’t. When Helen visited George W. Bush on his spread in Crawford, Texas, she came prepared for a round of brush cutting. Poor Vladimir. He took horseback riding lessons in preparation for his visit ...
Tony Benn, was born in London on April 3rd 1925, the son, grandson and father of Members of Parliament. He entered Parliament in 1950 at the age of 25 and retired from the House of Commons in May 2001. He is the longest serving Labor MP in the history of the party...
One of the more puzzling mysteries of 9-11 is what ever happened to the flight recorders of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center towers. Now it appears that they may not be missing at all. Counterpunch has learned that the FBI has them. Fli...
Back when LBJ and then Richard Nixon were presidents, their nationally televised speeches were must-see events for me and millions of other folks opposed to their policies. Even when I was living in Germany during the early 1970s, I would stay up late and listen t...
Gian Accardo: Your book is entitled Empire of Shame. What is this empire? Why "shame"? What is this shame? Jean Ziegler: In the favelas (shantytowns) in the north of Brazil, some mothers may, in the evening, put water in a pot and then put stones...
The subject line of the e-mail read "Thanks." The author expressed his condolences for the loss of my nephew in Iraq. He, then, told me his story. I asked permission to use it. Jess agreed: I have a 30 year old son who returned from h...
Irja. The time has come for all of us to become familiar with this word. There is no checkpoint soldier who doesn’t know it, there is no Palestinian who hasn’t heard it. "Irja!" roars the soldier at the person whom he is preventing from cross...
The big puzzle is why anyone is shocked that President Bush eavesdropped on Americans. The National Security Agency for decades has routinely monitored the phone calls and telegrams of thousands of Americans. The rationale has always been the same, and Bush said i...
More than a dozen years ago, I joined with Jeff Cohen (founder of the media watch group FAIR) to establish the P.U.-litzer Prizes. Ever since then, the annual awards have given recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year. It is regrettable t...
This essay was written for the catalog accompanying a show of new work by Michael Zwack at the B...
As the number of U.S. war dead edges toward three thousand, and Iraqi casualties soar into the tens of thousands, it might be useful to remember the an earlier Iraq — the first U.S. invasion and occupation of a foreign land. The United States sunk into a qua...
It is said that the earth’s magnetic field is about 10 percent weaker than it was when Carl Friedrich Gauss first measured it in 1845. At some point, the field will reverse poles and regenerate itself. Compasses will then point south. This process,...
The Hong Kong meeting of the WTO has amply illustrated how difficult it is to arrive at a consensus about the rules of free trade. The fact that none of the major players has been willing to budge-to offer what in negotiating parlance is known as "deliverabl...
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation. The statesman collects his...
Former CIA analyst Don’t believe what you’ve heard in our domesticated media; the much-ballyhooed White House compromise with Sen. John McCain on torture is largely smoke and mirrors. The focus has now shifted to a fresh outrage, as Preside...
Not all of the Russian cartoons from our childhood were that bad. One particular story springs to my mind now with nostalgia, a version of the Tolstoy tale that all Cubans over the age of 30 will remember, Mashenka and the Bear. If memory serves me right,...
In homage to the Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech testifies to gifts of inspiration; hints of realms apart within; callings to craft that expose writers to tempestuous solitudes where lines betwe...
The dilemma the US has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must impose on its budget and its imperial plans have never guided its actual behavior and action. It has always believed, as well it should, that Europe and its control would determine the f...
The judge who sentenced Bryan Epis to 10 years in federal prison now realizes that Epis was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct, according to Brenda Grantland, the lawyer handling Epis’s appeal. Epis, 38, was convicted in 2002 of conspiracy to cultivate ...
HOUSTON Houston, black hole, geographical epicenter of American culture. It is the farthest point southwest for the prototypical "Southern" culture. In the 1950s thousands upon thousands of rural farmers from East Texas moved south in search of jo...
For decades, the corporate world has been dishing out propaganda to make us bow down to America’s wealthiest corporate CEO’s and attempt to stop the rest of us from protecting our own economic and social interests. They’ve been attempting to dis...
Now that we know that President Bush, through the misuse of secret executive orders, authorized the super-secret National Security Agency to monitor domestic phone and Internet communications without any involvement of the courts, it’s time to recall Admira...