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 August 2006
Naguib Mahfouz died yesterday. He was one of the world’s great writers. Here’s what the late EDWARD SAID wrote about him on this site back in December, 2001. AC / JSC Before he won the Nobel Prize in 1988, Naguib Mahfo...
Mexico City. The criminal fraud perpetrated in the July 2 presidential election against leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) by the right-wing PAN party, President Vicente Fox, the Federal Electoral Institute and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal once ag...
Former CIA analyst. On Tuesday, August 22, Iran responded formally to the demand of the European Union, represented by France, Germany and Great Britain of July 1, that, in return for unspecified economic and other benefits, it permanently give up the enrichme...
Moises Duarte may not be the best known among the 5,000 people who’ve come to a Chicago church to show support Elvira Arellano’s vigil against a deportation order. A given day might see elected officials, diplomats from the Venezuelan consulate,...
Nazareth. In a state established on a founding myth — that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed — and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as tha...
"War, like a slash-and-burn fire, never dies. It simply hops from one field to the next, burning everything in its wake." ...
Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who k...
Ramallah. August 29, Pre-dawn. It is only now that the gun-fire saluting the killed young man has become sporadic and no longer constant, and that the verses of the Koran, chanted in farewell to him, has ceased. But the streets are full; and full too...
Now that Dick Armitage has admitted to being the initial source of right-wing columnist Robert Novak’s news story outing Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent and wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, it’s important to remember what this story is real...
This month’s figures prove that the so-called "housing bubble" is not only real, but that its cratering faster than anyone had realized. As the UK Guardian reported just yesterday, "the orderly housing slowdown predicted by the Federal Reserve...
Vickie White is worried. "They are doing away with public education as we know it," she says. White helped organize a trip to New Orleans this summer for the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) Central Jersey. After seeing how public education...
Oaxaca, Mexico. Oaxaca shares, with Chiapas and Guerrero, the distinction of being the one of the three poorest states of Mexico. These three bastions of extreme poverty, albeit among the richest states of Mexico in natural resources, lie along the Pacific ...
LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are Emergency Medical Services workers in San Francisco. Last year, after attending a paramedics’ convention in New Orleans, they were trapped–first by Hurricane Katrina and then by a martial law cordon that preve...
When the neocons launched the Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and announced plans for invading Syria and Iran, I labeled Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice "the five Morons." With the passage of time I see that I ov...
When I was a kid John Wayne war movies gave us the message that America was the good guy, the white hat that fought the villain. Alas, today the US and its last remaining non-coerced ally, Israel, are almost universally regarded as the bad guys over whom John...
On Sunday, August 27, 2006, the assembled teachers of the Detroit Federation of Teachers voted with no noticeable dissent to strike against demands for massive concessions from the school board. There are about 9,000 DFT members. The board wants them to make $89 m...
Many peace activists may have felt somewhat bewildered by Hezbollah’s smashing success in outfoxing and outfighting the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. Was it right to feel such a visceral satisfaction from these battles fought by a group that was also lob...
Storm refugees, nearly all of them black, are on the move throughout the city. And they are refugees, as in, people fleeing misfortune and seeking refuge. NPR and other news organizations caved to pressure from critics who did not like the word. We substituted &qu...
Buried amidst video montages of a still devastated Lower Ninth Ward and sound bytes from the pundits and politicians who have come to New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina’s one year anniversary, the biggest story will continue to be who is not in the city. Sadl...
This past March, 44-year-old Hayan Ju’beh’s tourist visa expired, and he had to travel to Amman in order to receive a new one–a routine procedure for him over the last 10 years. "Three to four days and I’ll be back," he promised h...
In recent days one has heard this complaint in many alternative media: why with all the deaths in Iraq and Lebanon and Haifa etc. the fixation in the mainstream media on the death of a single individual, a little girl who died ten years ago? While I sympath...
For forty seven and a half years, Washington and the mainstream media have misread Cuban reality. This fallacious view of events on the nearby island continued on July 31 when Fidel Castro (almost 80) entered the hospital and issued a public letter. In it, he cede...
As co-author of The Case for Impeachment, the most common question I get besides "Why ...
When Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut, a prime loser was the Lobby. Like the Israeli army in Lebanon, the Israel Lobby in Connecticut was exposed as a paper tiger. Joe Lieberman is AIPAC’s boy; when he speaks at the yearly AIPAC conve...
Johannesburg, South Africa In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let’s get one thing straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran’s president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over, we hear that Ira...