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 September 2006
With the November elections hanging in the balance, politicians from both parties are desperately jostling for votes on this year’s key "wedge" issue. Both parties have embraced the vague phrase, "securing our borders," which conveniently...
Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it. Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellec...
One week after Jonathan Tasini was defeated by Hillary Clinton in New York’s Democratic Primary, the career labor organizer and loyal Democrat released a statement about the role his bereaved followers should play in the upcoming election. "I urge my su...
Mexico City. When we last left leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), recently robbed of the Mexican presidency by the usual fraud, he was eyeball to eyeball in the great Zocalo plaza of Mexico City where his supporters had been camped out since the Ju...
This is the time of year when media campaigns for the latest digital products are apt to go into overdrive. Schools are back in session, and the holiday sales blitz is getting underway. For the latest computerized gizmos, that means an escalating media drive ̵...
What made Israel burn Lebanon again? The decision to go to war hurled Israel’s economy into a wall, smashed the deterrent’ power of the country’s army, plunged its northern population into misery, and magnified the hatred felt towards it in the r...
Tokyo. No matter what the world’s second economy, modern super-tech Japan, attempts these days, even when ushering in the first prime minister born after World War II, there comes an ominous rattling of old wartime bones — in this case literally...
In the homestretch leading up to the latest trial in New Orleans, the score in the Vioxx litigation was 5 to 4 in favor of Merck. However, in mid-August, 2006, a New Jersey victory for Merck was thrown out reversing the score to 5 to 4 in favor of plaintiffs. ...
Addressing an academic group assembled at his former university at Regensburg in his native Germany, Pope Benedict XVI launched into a mystifying homily against Islam. At the height of the diatribe, Pope Benedict quoted a medieval monarch who insulted Islam by sta...
Nabatiyeh, Lebanon. The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more. The casualty figu...
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, President George Walker Bush delivered an illegal speech and may have committed an international crime, that is, the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide of a religious group. Determined to rally disbelieving A...
The war in Iraq has raised serious fiscal, social, and constitutional problems. Politicians are generally unwilling to mention, let alone deal with them, but their urgency will require attention soon enough. A tax–one specifically tied to warmaking–may...
On 9/11/73, General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup that overthrew Chile’s elected government. The military bombed the Presidential Palace, assassinated 3,197 and tortured of tens of thousands more in order to "save" Chile from "subversio...
This week, the International Monetary Fund will be holding its annual meeting in Singapore. No doubt, the economic restructuring and forced leveraging of Iraq will be a key component of talks surrounding the meeting. In these past few months, free trade zones have...
"To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy." Mahatma Gandhi "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." Colin P...
Air travel just isn’t what it used to be. On a recent trip to Washington, DC, I checked my bag, something that wouldn’t have been necessary in the days before The Great Toothpaste and Hair Gel Scare, the latest episode in the ongoing Bush Administratio...
Price of gas up 400%. Foodstuffs up almost as much. Life for Iraqis is not only difficult, it’s becoming unaffordable. According to Washington and its client government in Baghdad, this inflation is due to other Iraqis. Ask them who to blame and they blame t...
Does the Canadian-promoted "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine include murder rape, and threats of violence? That’s the question we should be asking Canadian officials after a study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal released at the ...
In the end, it’s fitting that Bill Clinton would eulogize Texas ex-Governor Ann Richards for the "big things" she accomplished. Executing 49 people, including two juveniles and two mentally disabled prisoners certainly is "big." Clinton o...
The latest string of E. Coli outbreaks should raise serious questions about the vulnerability of our country’s food supply. While most public health officials blame the cases on a violent strain of noxious bacteria, the corporate food industry continues to e...
The Echo 9 launching facility for the intercontinental nuclear missile Minuteman III is about 100 miles northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota. Endless fields of sunflowers and mown hay dazzle those who travel there. The fenced off site at first appears innoc...
As the second trial of Saddam Hussein and six Baath co-defendants for assorted war crimes moves toward its near-certain guilty verdict, the Iraq Tribunal increasingly reveals itself as a naked U.S. exercise in one-sided punitive justice. The first court, to reconv...
When I found myself in Harrisburg two weeks ago surrounded by seven police officers wearing body armor, I have to admit I was a bit taken aback. Seven was probably more than enough to handle a sixty-year-old arthritic. Yes, it is true; I called a member of the Dem...
Guess whose words these are: "Starting this war was a scandal…It was possible to solve the problem of the missiles in South Lebanon by diplomatic meansThe offensive of the last two days of the war, in which 33 soldiers were killed a...
People imagine that their opinions are their own, not those of corporate moguls who compete to colonise the public sphere. We are not as free in thought as we think. German philosopher and political scientist Jèrgen Habermas is often credited for his...