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 June 2006
Bolder, Colorado. On February 2, 2005, Colorado Governor Bill Owens called for me to be fired because of statements I made about U.S. foreign policy that were clearly protected by the First Amendment. It would have been illegal to do so then, and it is...
Imagine the following scenario. A Palestinian gunman boards a bus inside Israel and rides it to the city of Netanya. Close to the end of the line, he walks over to the driver, levels his automatic rifle against the man’s head and pumps him with bullets. He t...
The Take Back America conference, an annual event held in Washington DC this year from June 12-14, is supposed to be a venue for prominent progressives to gather and debate the major issues of our day. Their aim is to "provide the nation with new vision, new ...
Nobody’s going to morn the death of Al Zarqawi, me included, but there are some important questions about how and why he died that need asking. From the available reports on the incident, it seems clear that the U.S. knew exactly where he was, and had...
A huge farce is being staged in the Israeli High Court of Justice. Every university in the country has joined an appeal of a ruling by the National Labor Court (which ordered Bar-Ilan University in April 2005 to reveal its procedure for appointing professors), and...
On the heels of the Great June 6th non-debate between Mexico’s three leading presidential candidates, a U.S, reporter stopped in at his favorite café in the old quarter of this sprawling megalopolis for an evening café con leche. The patrons of...
U.S. specialists are currently awaiting the White House’s next drug certification report, which is normally released in September, to see whether the Bush Administration will continue to use the document as a political tool rather than a piece of objective r...
At the United Nations yesterday morning, one thing was immediately clear: as the member nations of the Decolonization Committee noted, there is tremendous and lasting interest in the case of Puerto Rico and its political status. The Committee noted that, this year...
As an American Jew who has spoken out against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for many years, I have been regularly smeared as a "self-hating Jew" and worse. It little matters that the "radical" ideas I advocated 25 year...
As I go through a list of New York Times articles on the Haditha massacre, in which Marines murdered 24 Iraqi civilians, the following phrases keep popping up: "unprovoked attack," "unprovoked murder," "unprovoked killings." Th...
There are moments that require us to stop everything and take stock of the time in which we are living. This is one such moment. Listen: "They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for li...
A bu Musab Al Zarqawi is dead. The Jordanian-born Zarqawi was in a meeting with associates at a "safe house" just north of Baghdad last Wednesday (June 7) when he was killed in a joint operation with Iraq carried out by U.S. air forces. Zarqawi has been ...
This has been a good week to be in Canada–or an awful week, depending on your point of view–to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on "terroris...
John Bolton, a notorious neocon warmonger who could not be confirmed as America’s ambassador to the UN by even the compliant and corrupt US Senate, got the job as a recess appointment. He is using the platform to push America into war with Iran. Bolto...
In London at the moment you can’t get away from it. The red cross flag of St. George is fluttering from cars and balconies, plastered on windows and billboards, inscribed on chocolate bars, pizza boxes and soft drink bottles. And in case anyone was not aware...
Tough talk from United Auto Workers (UAW) leaders will abound at the union’s convention in Las Vegas June 11-15, which takes place amid the union’s strike threat at bankrupt parts maker Delphi Automotive Systems. But back at Delphi’s Nee...
Dear Scott Simon and all Weekend Edition Sat folks: Weekend Edition Saturday in general and Scott Simons hosting and essays in particular have been among my favorite news experiences for many, many years. But in recent years, and as I have learned more from...
You know you’re in trouble when the high point of your day is Arianna Huffington. I’ve spent the last three days in Las Vegas, lurking incognito at the Daily Kos convention. (Yesterday’s report ; ...
In the days before he was tracked down and killed by US lazer-guided bombs Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was living with almost no guards and only five companions, two of whom were women and one an eight year old girl. US military were yesterday displaying the few t...
Oxford, England. A June 3rd poll conducted by Near East Consulting based in Ramallah, Palestine shows that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the Prisoner’s Agreement, an inter-factional agreement signed by one member each of Fatah, Ham...
As you may already know, in the Assembly of May 29th we presented a proposal for an Action Plan. Because of the weather and that some friends from various states had to get going, we explained it only briefly there. We think it, therefore, a good idea to expl...
The first time I saw The Who was almost by accident. My friends and I were four teenage scouts who knew that our scouting life was almost over. I was having a hard time with the blind patriotism the organization insisted on and my friends were turning their intere...
The "therapeutic ratio" of a drug compares the amount required to produce harmful effects with the amount required to provide benefit. The therapeutic ratio of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is about 2:1 -and even lower if your liver ha...
The arrest in Toronto of seventeen men, mostly quite young, for conspiracy to bomb places in Southern Ontario has raised a storm of comment. Unfortunately, much of it has been either premature or wrong. A Congressman from Northern New York, uninformed but s...
There are too many U.S. grocery chain stores, said George Whalin, head of Retail Management Consultants, in The Sacramento Bee of June 7. Call it overcapacity in the grocery industry. A few new owners of the Albertsons grocery chain are responding according...