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 January 2007
January 16 — Beirut Two years after the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, America’s Cedar Revolution in Lebanon has gone "Citrus". The chic Lebanese divas with maids in tow wagging protest signs on their employe...
Oil prices may be falling, but hold off the cheering. Yes, cheaper oil leads to cheaper gasoline, and that’s good for America. At least, that’s the common wisdom, particularly among the neoconservatives. But there is plenty of downside to cheaper oil a...
New Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), is calling President Bush’s invasion of Iraq a "stark blunder" and says that his new scheme to send 21,500 more troops into the mess he created is just digging the hole deeper. I w...
Nt so many years ago, perhaps five, there was a country known as "Iraq." That Iraq no longer exists. It has been replaced by two Iraqs. No, I am not referring here to the Kurdish Autonomous Region, nor to the nascent Shia statelet likely about to be crea...
How is the surrender of huge weapons caches supposed to lighten someone’s sentence? This is the case with Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat, who by any dictionary’s definition, are terrorists. The evidence against them? Machine guns, C-4 explos...
Proponents of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology like that Duke and Vectren desire to use at Edwardsport, Indiana, loudly proclaim that IGCC is the answer to global warming since the technology makes its easier to capture carbon dioxide. Once...
Dear President Bush: I have read your address to the nation on "The New Way Forward in Iraq" and wish to share some observations. You say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." You then quickly change t...
All foreigners are targets in Iraq, Americans especially. Even those who come to the country to do good share the fate of those who come to kill. Moments after Andrea Parhamovich, a 28-year-old from Ohio, left the offices of a Sunni Arab political party in ...
Mahatma Gandhi would have loved it. Nelson Mandela would have saluted. Martin Luther King would have been the most excited–it would have reminded him of the old days. Yesterday, a decree of the Officer Commanding the Central Sector, General Yair Naveh...
George W. Bush’s position on Iran is "disturbing" and "dangerous," reads a position paper written in late 2005 by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). One year ago the Bush administration accepted a Russian proposal to allow...
We often hear that the Pentagon exists to defend our freedoms. But the Pentagon is moving against press freedom. Not long ago, journalist Sarah Olson received a subpoena to testify next month in the court-martial of U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada, who now faces...
I opened my eyes to the sound of my children, so innocently unaware of what had befallen their father: "is Daddy going to die?" asked one, in a voice engulfed with a worry that transcended her years; "no, but I think that he will have to use a wheel...
"There is no solution. We’ve destroyed Iraq and we’ve destroyed the region, and Americans need to know this." Nir Rosen; interview with Amy Goodman, "Democracy Now" Let’s assume for a m...
This time last year, Suleiman Jamous was busy ensuring that hundreds of thousands of civilians in rebel-held areas of Darfur received the basic foodstuffs they needed to survive. As the humanitarian coordinator of the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M), a rebe...
Friends in Peace, Please join our demonstration in support of Jimmy Carter when he speaks at Brandeis University on "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid," on January 23 at 4:30 pm at the Shapiro gym at Brandeis. We will gather in front of the gym at 2:...
All the promises to relax restrictions in the West Bank have obscured the true picture. A few roadblocks have been removed, but the following prohibitions have remained in place. (This information was gathered by Haaretz, the United Nations Office for the Coordina...
On January 11, 2006, EST, China launched a medium-range missile from its Xichang Space Center, or near it, which shot up to a point near its Feng Yun 1C weather satellite — in polar orbit since 1999 — at an elevation of 864 km (537 miles), and destroye...
Everyone knows that Bush’s Iraq "surge" will not work. Even the authors of the plan, neoconservatives Frederick Kagan and Jack Keane, have emphasized that the plan cannot work with any less than an addition of 50,000 US troops committed to another ...
I’m glad to be back at the National Press Club. Indeed, at the age of 84, I’m glad to be anywhere. In my younger years when the subject of aging came up, trying to sound worldly wise, I would say, "It doesn’t matter so much the number of yea...
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a couple of dozen times, and shame on me — but also shame on what passes for journalism on television.
This truism comes to mind after my appearance on “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN this week to discuss the Duke rap...
Here it comes again. The new Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, is pressing to form a bi-partisan panel to address Social Security. Joining him is Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), whom Conrad succeeded. Conrad’s plan surfaced in ...
Perhaps you have noticed? Lots of US auto workers lost their jobs in 2006, lots of workers in other industries as well, farmers, well we don’t expect much anymore and even high-tech workers are feeling the pinch. The minimum wage hasn’t gone up since ...
The War of 1948 as seen in Otto Preminger’s Exodus, Amos Gitaï’s Kedma and Elie Chouraki’s O Jerusalem!
Representations of leadership in Exodus were carefully contrived to create support, in the United States and elsewhere for the St...
They waited at the intersection of two alleyways, as they do late every Monday afternoon. The entire population of the village of Santa Rosa del Peñon, in northern Nicaragua — the old, along with women and children — hoped for news from Costa Rica. When...
“The emancipated Jew is insecure in his relations with his fellow-beings, timid with strangers, suspicious even toward the secret feeling of his friends. His best powers are exhausted in the suppression, or at least in the difficult concealment of his own real ...