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 2008
The same day that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stood in Philadelphia delivering a stirring speech on racism in America, authorities shut down a section of I-95 in that city to conduct emergency repairs on a crumbling support beam. In ...
A week ago, on the day President Bush disavowed government intervention in financial markets, the Federal Reserve announced the fruit of its weekend labor: essentially guaranteeing hundreds of billions in toxic financial derivatives owned by banks. Money laun...
The U.S. economy is in recession with no end in sight. Falling housing prices are blamed, but the root causes are bad economic policies and lousy banking practices. U.S. imports exceed exports by more than $700 billion, thanks mostly to expensive oil and lo...
I’ve run into trouble before but nothing like the trouble I’ve run into with the I.R.S., the government agency whose duty it is to collect our taxes. They’re coming after me pretty hard. I owe lots of money, half of which is accrued penalt...
Hi Mom, I checked out Obama’s speech. I thought it was well-written and well-presented, bringing up to White America some considerations they need to keep in mind, and handling the attacks on him and his pastor very well. Now, I’m not say...
There are advantages to be gained from taking possession of a country rather than simply befriending its leader. Consider Iraq and Pakistan. Iraq, as was recently observed in this space, is a possession of George Bush. Though sovereign in theory, Iraq was p...
More than a year ago, I attended the official book release for the Venezuelan edition of Eva Golinger’s Bush Versus Chávez, published by Monte Avila, and the book had previously been printed in Cuba by Editorial José Martí. I recount thi...
The investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein has taken up the Litvinenko case. The media used the Litvinenko case...
Nothing is more uplifting than watching MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," where wealthy Anglicized Irish Americans like Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Tim "Little Russ" Russert and Pat Buchanan hold forth on the topic of race. During the week begi...
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy. As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it’s not a terrorist attac...
From the moment that the Toronto Star unleashed a gruesome, and previously unpublished photo of the chest wounds sustained by 15-year old Omar Khadr, after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, it was clear that the resumption of Khadr’s pre-trial hearing...
U.S. officials often look down their noses at the corruption in the Mexican government, especially with respect to the war on drugs, where drug laws have long enriched the coffers of Mexican officials through bribery, extortion, and blackmail. U.S. officials behav...
The world marks the fifth year of the war in Iraq with no end in sight. Just as others in my generation could not remember a time when there was no Vietnam war, my life seems to have begun with the current massacre. What came before has been erased. I was j...
Let Me Stand Alone: the Journals of Rachel Corrie by Rachel Corrie ...
Since TV celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall launched exposes of poultry production in the UK late last year, three quarters of polled consumers said they’d buy free range chicken and eggs and that stores should not carry any other k...
“4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”, the latest installment in new Romanian cinema, is definitely worth the hype and the excitement surrounding it. This is the movie that I’ve been waiting to see for months, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it far exceede...
Day One: the Colombian military and police forces launched an attack on an encampment of the Colombian guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Ecuadorian territory, killing over 20 people. Day Two: Ecuador’s President Raf...
A cable newscaster on Friday afternoon asked in a tone of voice that expressed her wide-eyed naivety: "What is liberation theology?" Having covered the news for many years, and having covered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright thunderstorm for two weeks, it was st...
On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Bush’s illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the Fabricator-in-Chief made a speech at the Pentagon, whose muzzled army chiefs had opposed his costly, ruinous adventure from the start for strategic, tactical and logist...
In 1967 author, historian, human rights activist and professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz was working on a Ph.D. in Latin American history at UCLA when a TV report drew her attention. Armed men of the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres had captured a small town’s c...
A special law for the Galapagos specifically prohibits dogs and cats, and for good reason. They are exotic species who don’t belong on these islands, where indigenous animals have no natural defense against them. Now, considering that it is against th...
President Uribe’s troop and missile assault, violating Ecuadorian sovereignty came very close to precipitating a regional war with Ecuador and Venezuela. During an interview I had with President Chavez, at the time of this bellicose act, he confirmed to me t...
Ten years ago, one of the projects I worked on as a Peace Corps volunteer in Olancho, Honduras involved protecting a watershed in the high mountains north of Manto (my site) that would serve as the water source for 11 communities spread out in the valley below. An...
On March 7th-International Women’s Day-dozens of Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-mo...
According to George Bush, the Iraq war is boosting the US economy. Recently, he said to NBC’s Ann Curry, "I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs because we’re buying equipment, and people are working." Ah, the in...