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 February 2007
If you believed Rev. Ted Haggard on Christ and homosexuality you might also believe Bush and Cheney on Iraq’s WMD and now on Iran’s "guilt" for the Iraq War. Millions of fundamentalists recently rejoiced because Haggard recovered from his hom...
One test of a great idea is if afterwards it seems obvious or necessary. Scott Myers-Lipton has certainly come up with a great idea with his book ...
In addition to holding George Bush and U.S. Congress accountable for the illegal occupation of Iraq, American troops must also be prepared to accept responsibility, because we’re all presumed to know the law. If we accept that fundamental legal presumption, ...
The international news media is flooded with images of a woman in a pink headscarf recounting a shattering experience of rape by members of the Iraqi National Police. Most of the coverage has focused on her taboo-breaking decision to speak publicly about the assau...
Richard Hayne is the CEO of Urban Outfitters. For fear of landing on the wrong side of the War on Terror, Hayne pulled from the trend-setter company’s shelves, the Palestinian head scarf known as a keffiyeh. Traditionally worn in the Middle East for protecti...
The all-time poster child for a drug illegally promoted for off-label uses, is Neurontin, marketed by Warner-Lambert, and its Parke-Davis division, until Pfizer acquired the company in 2000. The term "off-label" means prescribing a drug for indica...
Tony Blair has admitted what George Bush still desperately denies: defeat. Iraq is turning into one of the world’s bloodiest battlefields in which nobody is safe. Blind to this reality, The British prime minister said earlier this week that Britain could saf...
"An epitome of beauty, serenity and colonial charm" – From an advertisement for The Carlton, a luxury hotel created by The Rahejas in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu Two competing notions of development ar...
The scene: a military checkpoint deep in Palestinian territory in the West Bank. A tall, thin elderly man, walking stick in hand, makes a detour past the line of Palestinians, many of them young men, waiting obediently behind concrete barriers for permission from ...
Senator Mike Gravel is running a populist anti-war campaign for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Gravel, who is no novice to Washington, DC politics, is direct and clear in his views on the war. And, he has a long history of fighting unjust war...
Shank: With similar nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, why has the United States pursued direct diplomacy with North Korea but refuses to do so with Iran? Chomsky: To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a li...
Hugo Chavez Frias was reelected by an overwhelming nearly two to one margin over his only serious rival on December 3, 2006 giving him a mandate to proceed with his agenda to build a socialist society in the 21st century on a Bolivarian model designed to meet the ...
On Sunday, February 11th, a group of antiwar students turned out to challenge Barack Obama’s position on Iraq as he held a rally at the UIC Pavilion to kick-start his campaign. Approximately two dozen antiwar activists from UIC, Northeastern Illinois ...
The grifters, drifters, hustlers, down and outers, and ne’er do well denizens who inhabit the seedy hotels that line the run-down side streets of the old quarter or "Centro Historico" of this megalopolis, are wearing frowns these days. Not only is ...
The states of Western Europe continue to resist harmonisation. On the same day that the chicaneries of every antiquated careerist vying for the New Labour deputy leadership were made public, each justifying his/her grotesque decision to support the war and occupat...
This past Tuesday, in Fairbanks, Alaska, nine people entered the office of Senator Ted Stevens to deliver their "emphatic request" that the Senator vote against supplemental funding for the war and then began reading the names of Iraqis and U.S. people w...
Bicycle racing and NASCAR have more in common than the fact that both depend on their success for the wheel. Both are infected by the doping bug. Everyone knows that the sport that some might consider a touch effete has had a long history of doping. Learning that ...
"This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are ca...
No exit strategy; violent resistance by the occupied nation’s citizens; opposition to the war in the United States; international anger at the U.S. because of the war; the American economy being decimated by the war; escalating casualties; presidential refus...
"I belong to no organized party", Will Rogers once boasted famously, "I am a Democrat". Were he alive, he would be dumbstruck by the conformity that has overtaken his party. It is hard to imagine a time which cried out more for a vigorou...
I write to you as an Iranian as well as an American person, and write to you with great urgency. I know that some, maybe most of you, know what I am about to tell you, but somehow cannot admit it publicly. Maybe in such situations a mirror from outside can help. ...
We all know that the American Way of War is to use our technology to pour firepower on the enemy from a safe distance. Implicit in this is the central myth of precision bombardment that dates back to at least to the Norden Bombsight in World War II. The theory of ...
Among the greatest unsung public health advances of recent times is progress made against the global cigarette industry. In the United States, cigarette smoking is finally on the decline. The courts have ruled the tobacco industry to be "racketeers.&qu...
The majority of the American people want a single-payer health care system Medicare for all. The majority of doctors want it. A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it. But what they want doesn’t appear to matter. Why? Be...
Bush’s budget proposal for FY 2008 is emblematic of the social crisis unfolding inside the U.S. Empire, its ramifications still largely ignored in mainstream politics. Coupled with whopping military expenditures and permanent tax cuts for the extraordinarily...