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 March 2007
The oil men of the Bush administration are trying to set up one of the biggest swindles in history–the great Iraq oil robbery. The cabinet of the new Iraqi government–under pressure from the U.S. occupiers who put them in power–approved a ...
While the headlines will read that the Senate voted to withdraw U.S. troops in Iraq, the peace movement recognizes that the Senate bill will extend the war not end it. The exit date in the bill is merely a goal for the removal of combat troops, and there are large...
MEMORANDUM FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Brinkmanship Unwise in Uncharted Waters The frenzy in America’s corporate media over Iran’s detainment of 15 British Marines who may, or may not, ha...
While dilettantes believe the attack is the most difficult military art, most soldiers know better. Carrying out a successful retreat is usually far harder. One of history’s most successful retreats, and certainly its most famous, is the "Retreat...
On March 6, 2007, the U.S. Department of State released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006. This annual report to Congress details the human rights practices of foreign governments, from restrictions on free press in Iran, to extrajudicial kill...
The United States has given Israel $51.3 billion in military grants since 1949, most of it after 1974- more than any other country in the post-1945 era. Israel has also received $11.2 billion in loans for military equipment, plus $31 billion in economic grants, no...
George Bush has a land mine planted in the supplemental appropriation legislation working its way through Congress. The Iraq Accountability Act passed by the House and the companion bill passed in the Senate contain deadlines for withdrawing our troops from...
The trial of 15 defendants, arrested at The Port of Olympia during eleven days of protest in May of 2006 ended in mistrial on Thursday March 29th, 2007. The group, formerly known as the "Olympia 22", was arrested on misdemeanor charges of criminal trespa...
My name is DAVID BUSCH, and I am homeless, and I have lived off and on Skid Row since 1999. I was taken to jail by LAPD for using a public phone in a downtown hotel; and had to have a jury trial to clear my record. I was arrested for pitching an emp...
More than three billion people in the world are being condemend to a premature death from hunger and thirst. It is not an exaggeration; this is rather a conservative figure. I have meditated for quite a long time on that after the meeting held by President Bush wi...
Diplomatic briefcases are unlikely to be dropped at news of Condoleezza Rice’s call, on the eve of the Riyadh summit, for Arab states to "reach out to Israel" and show they accept it. Israel’s insistence that negotiators begin by accepting it...
Tina Richards has an idea. Tina is the mother of a Marine scheduled for his third tour of duty in Iraq who took on Rep. David Obey (Dem., Wisconsin) and the Democratic leadership over funding for the war. Though her home is Missouri, she’s in the process of ...
Okay, now I’m worried. There have been several rounds of reports that the war-obsessed Bush administration was getting ready to attack Iran-first last September, then in December, and more recently in January and February. The one thing that ke...
Amongst all the myriads of industrial horrors that treeplanters are exposed to in BC, nothing is more disgusting than the use of the Swedish-invented pigs blood product called "Plantskyyd." The industrial philosophy behind using pigs blood is this: it...
Bush behavior–practicing torture, violating human rights and wrapping itself in secrecy while preaching the opposite–has given deceit a bad name. W didn’t begin the double speak and double standards patter, however. In 1971, US troops and...
"You should be ashamed!" Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, and Prime Minister Tony Blair, among a congregation of 2000 attending the memorial service at London’s historic Westminster Abbey earlier this week to commemorate the 200th anni...
"I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect. I am convinced that the human history has not yet begun–that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with...
Arbil, Iraq. Shia police rampaged through a Sunni district in the north-western city of Tal Afar killing at least 33 people in the streets and in their homes in revenge for devastating car bombs in a nearby Shia neighborhood earlier in the day. "...
Bigotry has once again reared its ugly face in a piece by columnist Thomas Friedman, published in the New York Times on March 2,2007. Part of his piece was based on a poem he retrieved from the Middle East Media and Research Institute [MEMRI] web site. It read in ...
Picture this. At an air-show in Los Angeles one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, British Aerospace, invites Mr. Bill Gates of Microsoft to have a go at flying one of the latest models of their Hawk fighter aircraft. Would the American media respond ...
After 60 days without food, an ailing Sami Al-Arian called off his hunger strike last week at the urging of his wife and children. But just hours later, a federal appeals court upheld a civil contempt ruling that could keep Al-Arian behind bars indefinitely. ...
In 1975, there was this cute little two-bedroom house for sale on Grant Street in Berkeley. I loved that house! I wanted to buy that house! But I dithered around and missed my chance because I couldn’t come up with a down payment for its outrageously expensi...
Like Halliburton shipping off to Dubai or the travel happy transnational enterprises, Citibank also has accelerated its abandonment of the United States. It will cut thousands of jobs, sending them outside North America to India and other international locations w...
There are more books about Muhammad Ali than Abe Lincoln: 300 titles in the children’s section alone. You can also purchase The Muhammad Ali Reader, the Tao of Muhammad Ali, or the $10,000 G.O.A.T. – a massive coffee table book about all things Ali tha...
If I had any doubts about the influence of Nestle Inc., the global water giant, in my state, they were dispelled the day last June I received a communication from the Maine Secretary of State (SOS). The SOS is elected by the majority party in the Legislature, curr...