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
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...
The death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is being mourned by millions of Pakistanis. She had a profound public base despite staying out of her country for nearly a decade and dogged by corruption and nepotism charges. Her death, however, ...
"They’re locking them up today They’re throwing away the key I wonder who it’ll be tomorrow, you or me?" The Red Telephone (LOVE, 1967) At Christmas time it has been my habit to write a co...
By the end of the week before Christmas, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales dealt with his country’s constitutional reform as a leader ought to. He rallied a divided country by calling out to South America’s soccer greats, Pele and Maradona, to help...
Now that the first phase of the Iraqi civil war seems to have ended, it is time to consider the political processes it may have left in its bloody wake. It is crucial for Iraqis and others to get a sense of the stability and durability of present arrangements. Are...
Imagine, they made a funny movie about how the US helped turn Afghanistan into a killing field. It’s the film "Charlie Wilson’s War, a ligthearted look of how a skirt-chasing Congressman and a no-nonsense CIA thug helped bring mountains of weapons...
"An Unreasonable Man," the superb documentary on Ralph Nader, appeared on PBS on December 18. It is a substantive and very engaging portrait of Nader–and it has garnered far less attention than it deserves. It holds one’s attention for every ...
"Bush, your orders will not be implemented and your tutelage is rejected." - Hezbollah Deputy General Sheik Naim Kassem, in response to President Bush’s call for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to ignore the constitution and push ...
A growing number of political pundits are questioning America’s military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some are beginning to draw parallels to lawmakers’ much longer domestic war effort: the so-called war on drugs. The comparison is apropos....
As a 33-year-old Wall Street insider known for recommending hot medical stocks, many were surprised when physician Scott Gottlieb was named FDA deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs in 2005. "Gottlieb has an orientation which belies ...
As a child the only interesting fact that I knew about my grandfather Henry Cockburn was that he had read his own obituary in The Times. This happened because he was a diplomat in the British legation during the siege of Peking in 1900 during which the Chinese Box...
A small Buddhist Peace Fellowship delegation went to Burma to bear witness to the suffering of the people following the brutal crackdown by the Burmese military at the end of September on monks and the people of Burma. We wanted to communicate the support and soli...
Forget the Qassams. Forget the mortar shells. They are nothing compared with what Hamas launched at us this week: The chief of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, has approached an Israeli newspaper and proposed a cease-fire. No more Qas...
Tom Hayden has been given the cover article for The Nation’s December 17 issue to instruct the peace movement for 2008. Not since the cover page endorsement of the prowar John Kerry in 2004 has there been such an embarrassing face to this journal. In essence...
In 1980 the United States government printed 500 hardcover books called, The Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission. It is on our Museum’s wish list. In it on page 4 under the heading "Historical Survey," it makes the grand revelation on how ...
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the White House Not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse, The stockings were hung up by the chimney with care, And the shredders were humming in the chilly night air Our spinners and fix...
Tony Blair has become a Catholic. Had it been seen as a personal decision, it would be fine. However, it already sounds like political canonization. According to a report, Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, said he had prayed to God when deciding whether or not...
I think of Edward Said often, especially, but not only, when I read of the sordid deals in which the PLO is engaged with Israel and its US backers. I miss Edward’s impetuosity and righteous indignation. He would have had no truck with the shrivelled little B...
The sirens woke me up. The dogs broke into a howl, abruptly as though it woke them as well. Gee, that sounded close, I thought. Then the howls turned into barks, and Donna was outside calling them in. A few moments later, shouts. Doug was out of bed, strugg...
Last Friday Ohio’s top election official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner issued a report concluding that the voting systems that decided the 2004 election in Ohio were rife with "critical security failures". The perpetrators were so cocksure t...
It comes as no surprise when a major U.S. newspaper backs real estate developers over the rights and interests of the poor they have a long track record of doing so, while the poor are lectured in patronizing language to emulate the people the papers celebrate. Th...
While many impoverished American families are shivering in the winter cold for lack of money to pay the oil baron their exorbitant price for home heating oil, ex-oil man, George W. Bush sleeps in a warm White House and relishes his defeat of the Congressional atte...
THC -delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol- is not the only active ingredient in cannabis. At least five other cannabinoids exhibit biological activity, and so do some terpenes and flavonoids. All these compounds are found in the resin stored in the plant’s glandular...
Suddenly it’s Huckabee. The surge of the former Arkansas governor in the race for the Republican nomination has the pell-mell excitement of one of Napoleon’s victorious rampages across Europe in his heyday. In this case the long faces belong not to the...