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 2006
in Karachi, Pakistan. While we were opening the World Social Forum in Karachi last weekend with virtuoso performances of sufi music and speeches, the country’s rulers were marking the centenary of the Muslim League [the party that created Pakistan and ha...
Economist Paul Krugman is "proud of America’s immigrant history, and grateful that the door was open when my grandparents fled Russia." Now, however, he argues that the U.S. should close its door on the poor huddled masses, warning, "We...
in Arbil, Iraq. In a crescendo of violence in Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 40 army recruits in Mosul as Shia leaders reacted furiously to a US-Iraqi raid on a mosque which they claim killed 37 people. A further 21 bodies were found in and around Baghdad, some...
President Bush passes himself off as a conservative Republican and a born-again Christian. These are disguises behind which Bush hides. Would a Christian invade another country on false pretenses, kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and show no remorse o...
Describing fentanyl as a "very strong narcotic," on July 15, 2005, the FDA issued a Public Health Advisory regarding the safe use of transdermal fentanyl patches in response to reports of 120 deaths in patients using the patch for pain management, statin...
Does torture work? Can foul means prevent a fouler catastrophe and thus redeem themselves by producing a greater good? Of course not, but those in power need discussions like this to continue, to give them a fig-leaf of official respectability. Consider this testi...
Guatemala’s Efrain Rios Montt earned the nickname "the General" after taking power in a 1982 coup d’etat. His sixteen-month rule is considered one of Guatemala’s bloodiest periods since the Spanish conquest. Under the General’s co...
/FONT>. Don’t believe the hype I was in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday when the historic march to protest the racist anti-immigration bill HR 4437 took place. For those who don’t know, this bill would make illegal immigrants felons as well as anybody,...
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, could well be called the Democrats’ Daddy Warbucks. He’s scored bundles from war contracts. He has recently purchased a $16.5 million crib in San Francisco and along with his wife has handed hundreds...
If there is any hope of saving Afghanistan booting out the Americans is an essential first step "I did not join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy," said British soldier Ben Griffin, a member of the SAS-Britain’s elite comma...
Arbil, Iraq. US forces killed 22 people and wounded eight at a mosque in east Baghdad in an incident likely to lead to increased tensions with the Shia community. Police said the US troops had retaliated after coming under fire. Videotape showed a h...
After years of advocacy for progressive causes, I am used to angry mail — often from fellow Christians — when I take a political or theological position that challenges conservative or fundamentalist views. So, I wasn’t surprised when many...
A bullet in the head from a distance of a few meters, fired suddenly and without warning shots aimed at the wheels, which the Israel Defense Forces claims there were. This is the way undercover soldiers from the Border Police killed Akaber Zaid, an eight-and-a-hal...
There have been a number of massive protests across the United States for immigrant rights in recent weeks. The particular impetus for these protests is a bill authored by the anti-immigrant Congressmen Rep. Sensenbrenner and his allies that was passed by the Hous...
A decades-old, impoverished refugee population, tens of thousands of settlers, a 1000-mile wall, a stalled peace process and now an intifada in an occupied territory. This is not a description of Palestine, but a territory known as Western Sahara, a few hundred mi...
Once again, Congress is poised to approve "emergency" funding to prosecute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House already approved $67.5 billion on March 16, 2006-rushing the bill through the Appropriations Committee and the House floor in order to ...
The movement for immigrants’ rights took an enormous leap forward two weeks ago, when a quarter-million demonstrators, overwhelmingly Mexican-Americans, jammed Chicago’s city streets-in the middle of a workday. This massive turnout reached far b...
In the current wave of heightened interest in Islam and the Middle East, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking. The exhibition opened February 26, 2006. The work of fifteen artists born in the Middle East...
Plan B is the nickname for emergency contraception, also known as the "morning-after pill." Two years ago, the FDA Nonprescription Advisory Committee voted 24-3 that Plan B should be made available for over the counter (OTC) use, without a prescription, ...
In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence,...
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Charley Patton: Screaming and Hollering the Blues: the Complete Re...
Washington’s war in Afghanistan is going badly, and the Taliban, or, rather, the insurgents who are Taliban leftovers and all the new insurgents who have been created by the brutality of US occupation soldiers, have greatly increased their attacks on foreign...
I was around fourteen years old when The Band’s "Up On Cripple Creek" made it into the Top Forty. Must have been the summer of 1969 or thereabouts. The first thing I did upon hearing the tune was look on a map to try and figure out where the hell C...
George Bush’s recent admission that our occupation of Iraq will extend beyond his presidency passed with hardly a ripple in American public opinion. Uh oh. The greatest fear leading to the outrage that fans the flames of terrorist tactics in the Midd...
What happened in the village of Isahaqi, north of Baghdad, on Ides of March? The murk of war–the natural blur of unbuckled event, and its artificial augmentation by professional massagers–shrouds the details of the actual operation. But here is what we...