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 2007
Comrades of the National Assembly: You have no easy task on your hands. On January 1st, 1959, surrounded by the accumulated and deepening grievances that our society inherited from its neo-colonial past under U.S. domination, many of us dreamed of creating ...
If Musharraf had an iota of sincerity, he would step down. He would apologize to the nation for having embroiled it in bloodshed. He would acknowledge his mistakes and his powerlessness. And then, maybe, we might forgive him. But that is not likely to happen. ...
Brave and courageous. These words have not yet been applied to Nawaz Sharif who returned to a turbulent Pakistan, but Benazir Bhutto was honoured with such terms. She died on what people will now see as those terms. As the first Muslim woman to become head of stat...
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat, ‘We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’ ‘How do you know I̵...
Where is agriculture headed? Can we feed a growing population and meet the demand for biofuels in the Industrialized North? Supporters of biofuel agriculture, (grain and chemical companies, Wall St. investors, politicians and most University researchers) avoid men...
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi yesterday is yet another statement of politics as tragedy. The killers left nothing to chance, using gunshots and the now commonplace suicide bombing. She is dead, along with a score of others, figures killed in th...
Former CIA analyst "There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater … Perhaps the only comparably od...
Hamid Dabashi’s 2006 book on Iran, Iran: a People Interrupted, turns conventional wes...
Toshiba, famous for electronics products around the world, plans to build "small" (room-sized) fully-automated nuclear reactors. These new reactors are just 1/5000th the size of today’s old, massive, deteriorating (and did I mention unsafe?)...
I. THE ASSASINATION An assassin’s bullets and suicide bomb ended the life of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; tragically, she followed in the footsteps of her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s Prime Minister [197...
The U.S. delivered an early Christmas present to the people of Iraq this year in the form of logistical support for Turkey’s war against the Kurds. The Turkish government has succeeded Saddam Hussein as the primary oppressor of the Kurdish people, and it und...
When the hideous photographs of torture and abuse emerged from Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2004, they created a public relations disaster for the Bush administration. The White House had painstakingly worked to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks by creating a "war ...
Three years ago today, the tsunami hit Aceh. It was a cataclysm so vast that Acehnese don’t talk about it all that much. It’s easier to deal with human-scale things. That morning, December 26, 2004, in an inland town far from the impa...
Now receded into distant memory for many, the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah, accompanied by the al Sadr uprising in the south, was a decisive turning point in the Iraq occupation. These battles demonstrated to much of the world that the occupation was deep...
In a remarkable symbol of the injustices of post-Katrina reconstruction, hundreds of people were locked out of a public New Orleans City Council meeting addressing demolition of 4500 public housing apartments. Some were tasered, many pepper sprayed and a dozen arr...
Consider Kwanzaa and Chanukkah mentioned. One of my favorite activities during the holiday season is going out among the common folk to see how much Fun they’re having. And golly, they’re having so much fun. I never saw so much fun. Probably termites d...
In a remarkable symbol of the injustices of post-Katrina reconstruction, hundreds of people were locked out of a public New Orleans City Council meeting addressing demolition of 4500 public housing apartments. Some were tasered, many pepper sprayed and a dozen arr...
I was near the deadline for a column when I glanced at a TV screen. "The Suze Orman Show," airing on CNBC at prime time, exerted a powerful force in my hotel room. And the fate of this column was sealed. Orman made a big splash many years ago on p...
With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, her family will go down in history as one where everyone, except the mother, Nusrat, died a violent death. Her father, Zulfikar Ali, former prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged in 1979 during the rule of his succe...
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution took a slight hit as a result of the December 2, 2007, constitutional referendum. The measures proposed by President Hugo Chávez would have ended term limits for the office of president, provided pensions for service ...
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution took a slight hit as a result of the December 2, 2007, constitutional referendum. The measures proposed by President Hugo Chávez would have ended term limits for the office of president, provided pensions for service ...
Consider Kwanzaa and Chanukkah mentioned. One of my favorite activities during the holiday season is going out among the common folk to see how much Fun they’re having. And golly, they’re having so much fun. I never saw so much fun. Probably termites d...
I was near the deadline for a column when I glanced at a TV screen. "The Suze Orman Show," airing on CNBC at prime time, exerted a powerful force in my hotel room. And the fate of this column was sealed. Orman made a big splash many years ago on p...
I couldn’t help but be struck by the vicious smear of Ron Paul by a Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times. ...
1. I have to start off with my recent perceptions of her. She was a corrupt politician who was more interested in her political legacy than in the welfare of her nation and people. President Bush said today that Bhutto was someone who fought against terrorism. She...