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 2008
That Tuesday there was no fresh international news. The modest message I wrote to the Cuban people on Monday, February 18, was widely and easily disseminated. As from 11 o’clock in the morning I started to receive concrete news. The previous night I had slep...
The U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on October 18, 2007 on the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) H.R. 1975, sponsored by Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) and 125 other Repr...
One-and-a-half cheers for the American College of Physicians, which has issued a statement "Supporting Research into the Therapeutic Role of Marijuana." The ACP is the nation’s largest medical specialty group -124,000 internists- and is widely resp...
Until last week John McCain’s political handlers had been complacently sketching out their basic strategy: to portray Obama as a mere novice in statecraft, devoid of those powers of mature wisdom and sober judgment with which the seasoned McCain is so richly...
It’s always a sure sign that something has gone horribly wrong when Tory politicians can only be persuaded with extreme reluctance to support anti-terror measures pursued by the Labour government. But this is exactly what happened on Thursday, when Conservat...
The Border Angels finished their historic 4500 mile "Marcha Migrante III" from San Diego to Canada and back on Sunday, February 17. The group, a human rights organizations founded in 1986 by Enrique Morones to stop the unnecessary deaths of people...
and STANLEY SHEINBAUM Throughout the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was at the heart of US nuclear policy. But deterrence has some important limitations that make it highly unreliable, particularly in a time of terrorism. The most critical shortcoming of nuclea...
In 1964, after a military coup, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire was jailed for seventy days and later exiled from his country. He did not return for 15 years. His crime? Using a wildly creative method to teach peasants how to read and write. In 1970 Freire publish...
Editors’ Note: In April 2004, JÜRGEN VSYCH was an apolitical filmmaker whose career crashed when she supported Ralph Nader in 2000. When Nader’s campaign put out a desperate call for volunteers to come to Texas to gather signatures t...
News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law. But, predictably, it is not being invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture, the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries...
The 19th of March, 2008 marks the beginning of the sixth year of the US war and occupation in Iraq. Hundreds of actions against the war and occupation are planned throughout the United States, including civil disobedience in DC and protests around the country. The...
In 2004, the 9-11 Commission issued what it deemed as the most complete, final, and authoritative report examining the events and history of that fateful day. However, according to the new, controversial best selling book, "...
The important confrontation between employees and administration of the "Ford" plant in Vsevolozhsk, north of St Petersburg ended in compromise. Salaries were raised by 16-20 per cent depending on the category of employee, rather than by one third, as th...
It has become clear in recent weeks that one of the weak points of the Obama insurgency is the candidate’s perceived failure to fully support abortion rights. Hillary’s strategists and salesmen rifled through Obama’s legislative record as an Illi...
I’m a very visual person. I hear something and an image begins to form in my mind. When I saw the story about John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman, the vision was of McCain and Iseman, their body parts entangled. I quickly dislodged this from my consciousne...
In a town awash in irony, this particular example of it couldn’t have been more striking. Yesterday, in Washington, D.C., former Marine Corps Sergeant and Iraq War vet, Adam Kokesh, kick-rolled a 55-gallon oil drum lettered "Hands Off Iraqi Oil&q...
With the surprising news of Fidel Castro’s resignation as Cuba’s president after a reign of forty-nine years, U.S. President George Bush made an even more astounding statement. In response to Mr. Castro’s announcement, Mr. Bush said he was commit...
Pervez Musharraf, who usurped power in Pakistan on November 3, 2007 by virtue of his Proclamation of Emergency, refuses to relinquish the office of the President, an office he unlawfully occupies against the will of the people and contrary to the Constitution of P...
Janet was a female elephant born in 1965. She had been taken from the jungles of Southeastern Asia. Stripped from her mother and extended family, she was ultimately shipped to the United States. After arrival, she was put to work in the circus, and it was in the c...
Upon being confronted with The New York Times’ "bombshell" report of his too-cozy relationship with a "lady lobbyist" during his last presidential campaign, GOP contender John McCain took a page from the Bush playbook and blamed the media...
All the attention in the breaking story about John McCain’s 2000 relationship with the 32-year old telecom lobbyist has been focused on the question of whether or not they were "doing it." But really, who cares whether they were shacking up ...
The credit storm which began in July when two Bear Stearns hedge funds were forced to liquidate, has continued to intensify. Last week the noose tightened around auction-rate securities, a little-known part of the market that requires short-term funding to set rat...
Barack Obama, hoping to shore up major victories in the delegate rich states of Texas and Ohio early next month, is going after Hillary Clinton’s ever-dwindling base of working class voters. The Illinois Senator is hoping to stimulate their passion for his c...
President Bush headed home on Thursday from his five-day, five-country tour of Africa. Not since Thanksgiving 2003, when he showed up at the Baghdad Airport with a fake turkey for US troops have we seen such saccharine Presidential photo ops. And most of the media...
I am close to being a senior citizen. Though I will always think of myself as a student at Hofstra who was the 19 year old President of the Sophomore class, I am turning 58 this year. Damn, 60 is around the corner! You know what that means? When I open a ne...