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
New Orleans . Bernice Mosely is 82 and lives alone in New Orleans in a shotgun double. On August 29, 2005, as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the levees constructed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers failed in five places and New Orleans filled w...
Spying on grannies in Sacramento who were planning to “mark Mother’s Day urging the Governor and Legislature to support bringing California National Guardsmen home from Iraq by Labor Day”; doing undercover surveillance at a union rally ...
Members of the San Joaquin Valley public would like to invite you to the first annual UC Pombozastan Pot Luck. We’ve got the barrel; you bring the pork. Public/private partnerships get preferential picnic tables behind gated, straw-bal...
Michael Ignatieff, now a Canadian MP and contender for a top leadership position in the Liberal Party, was slow in responding to the Israeli war on Lebanon. He told the Canadian media on August 1st that “I’ve been following it minutely from th...
The mother of a teenager shot dead by British soldiers in Belfast has launched a campaign for an inquiry into alleged killing of civilians by private consultants in Iraq.
The woman is Jean McBride, the mother of 18-year-old Peter McBride, shot dea...
Beirut. OnLast week, I made my first trip to South Lebanon since the war began. Having traveled a fifth of the world, and been present during “wars” in Iraq, Palestine, and New York – I can honestly say that I have never ...
“The ceasefire in Lebanon was holding by a thread last night after Israel sanctioned a commando raid in the east of the country. Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, said Israel had violated the truce, and he was ‘deeply ...
British authorities grabbed media headlines on August 10, claiming to have foiled Muslim terrorists caught in the act of harboring suspicious liquids in their homes–sending U.S. and British airports into an anti-terrorist frenzy. But the U.S. Depar...
Beirut. Upon arrival in Beirut in early August, 2006, Michael Birmingham met Abu Mustafa. Michael is an Irish citizen who has worked with Voices campaigns for several years. Abu Mustafa is a kindly Lebanese cab driver. Ha...
On September 21, 2001, ten days after 9/11 a sting operation against Osama Bin Laden was launched. It was to be a two-part affair. Part 1 was the taping of Bin Laden describing the 9/11 attack. Part 2 was to be his captur...
Readers want to know why I have not reported on the payroll jobs statistics for the past two months. Does this mean, they ask, that the situation has turned around and that the US economy is again creating jobs in export and import-competitive sectors? ...
Floyd and his girlfriend Trixie were out in San Francisco to see the Gay NASCAR Rally on July 4th. Before the festival began she dumped his sorry ass and he showed up on my doorstep with a half gallon of cheap vodka and some anti-depressants he had gotte...
Nazareth. Late last month, a fortnight into Israel’s war against Lebanon, the Hebrew media published a story that passed observers by. Scientists in Haifa, according to the report, have developed a “missile-trapping” stee...
It’s on! Michael Bloomberg, New York’s Mayor, is going to Ireland. He will fly into West International Airport on August 22 in a private plane. About 200 people plus TV crews are coming with him. An 8:00 a.m. breakfast at Sli...
Ramallah, West Bank. The Israeli army arrived in our street at 2 am yesterday morning. For the past two weeks they have been in Ramallah every night and we knew it was only a matter of time before we would directly experience their invasion tactics. ...
I first came across the name of John Kenneth Galbraith during my student years at Princeton where I picked up his book American Capitalism. Wondering why it was not on any reading list for my economics course, I put the question to the professor. He replied: "...
For many years the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has advocated the global elimination of nuclear weapons. This advocacy is consistent with the moral position adopted by nearly all major religions as well as with the dictates of international law. It is also consist...
On July 7, 2006, Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued an international arrest order for two former Guatemalan military dictators, Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, along with five others accused of genocide and other crimes agains...
Tel Aviv. WITH A few words, a Lebanese army officer destroyed, the day before yesterday, the illusion that Israel had achieved anything in this war. At a televised Lebanese army parade that was also broadcast on Israeli TV , the officer read a prepared...
What is really portended by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which set the terms for the present ceasefire in Lebanon? The very fact that it was signed at all might be encouraging, but no one is sure what its actual impact will be and most are sceptical. For I...
There’s a perplexing question associated with the prohibition of cannabis by Congress in 1937. Why would U.S. doctors and pharmacists -and we, the people- allow a medically useful herb to be outlawed? Part of the answer, obviously, is that the American peopl...
For the second time in two months, a federal court has ruled that the president is in violation of the Constitution. This time it’s a federal court in Detroit that has ruled that President Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and sei...
The image and the idea of the Minuteman is attractive: the patriot, the typical working guy, prepared to take up arms at a moment’s notice to defend his country. Minutemen and Minutewomen too: the ordinary people fighting the good fight to protect the Americ...
"What spot on earth," He said, "what region of the earth, Achates, Is not full of the story of our sorrow? Look, here is Priam. Even so far away Great valor has due honor; they weep here for how the world goes, and o...
The one year anniversary of Hurricane
Katrina, August 29th, 2006, should be a day to remember our commitments
to our fellow Americans and our collective losses. It should
be a day to reflect on what we as American citizens should expect...