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 August 2008
Britain’s High Court will hold a hearing to assess whether the UK government should be ordered to hand over secret documents to lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee. The detainee in question, Binyam Mohamed, faces possible charges of conspiracy and ma...
It’s a classic antiauthoritarian trope that enemies don’t really exist, therefore governments need to create them. The primary reason they must be created is so that governments can justify their existence. Whether or not governme...
As has been shown in Georgia recently, the Russians are in no mood to take any nonsense from anyone, and are intent on once again being a power to be reckoned with. The declaration by the psychotic Dick Cheney that the recent Russian operation in t...
As part of their pre-Convention program on Monday, C-SPAN showed some footage from conventions past. Among the vignettes was the speech by the late Ann Richards at the 1988 Democratic Convention, a stark reminder of how far the Democratic Party has falle...
As I flew from JFK to Port-au-Prince Airport on August 11, a fellow journalist handed me the front section of that day’s New York Times with a laugh. My friend pointed to a passage in an article about Russia’s war with Georgia that had ...
I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign has mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a political system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of the peoples of the United States and the world. Your electi...
is an original member of the 1960s countercultural anti-war group known as the Yippies. Judy is co- author of ...
The Olympic spectacle dictates a sports metaphor. In 2002, high level neocons dominated much of Bush’s National Security Council and Defense and State Departments, challenging US enemies across the world in a slugfest, which they did. Now, years la...
As part of its alleged “desire not to hold detainees any longer than necessary,” the Pentagon announced on Tuesday that two Guantánamo prisoners had been transferred to Algeria. This follows the ...
“I am a Zionist…You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist…”
Senator Joe Biden
“…I want you to know that today I’ll be speaking from my heart and as a true friend of Israel. And I know that wh...
A few days after the other 9/11, Victor Jara., a Chilean folksinger, songwriter, actor, director, poet, political activist and teacher, was tortured and then shot to death while being held prisoner by the military. This year on May 15th Chilean Judge Juan...
Pakistan has been unsuccessful in designing a stable presidency. Two competing models vie for approval. Pakistan’s formulaic constitution, borrowed from the legal-political traditions of England and India, establishes a ceremonial presidency subord...
Our country has been hijacked and the Democrats have proven themselves to have been in on the plan. When it came to the Constitution, the Democratic leadership showed us that aiding and abetting illegal spying on us was more important to them than protec...
From Coldplay to Leonardo diCaprio to Al Gore, influential environmentalists are increasingly modeling green behavior by neutralizing their carbon emissions through carbon offsets. Briefly, offsets are based on the notion that consumers can balance out c...
The “politics of avoidance” is receiving a great deal of media attention during this period of national political conventions. Unfortunately, the newspapers and television programs do not use the phrase: “the politics of avoidance.&rdqu...
THE SIXTIES. That’s where the trouble began. Just ask Rush Limbaugh or David Brooks or Bill Bennett, or just about any right-wing pundit. THE SIXTIES is the problem. Of course, they don’t mean the decade but rather THE SIXTIES, a casserole of...
"The question most Americans want answered about Iraq is this: When will our troops come home? We already know the likely answer. In 2006, they will begin to leave in large numbers…In 2007, a significant number of the remaining 100...
We’ve come a long way towards imperial government in the US—towards a view of the relationship between the federal government, and especially the administration, and the citizenry that has more of a ruler-subjects than a democratic feel to it...
As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results of disastrous federal, state and local policy on the people of New Orleans. Several organizations have released reports in ...
One thing organized labor has learned from its dealings with management is that, basically, anything that can be used against a union will be used. Take specific accommodations, for example. No matter how limited or exceptional a particular a...
For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter.
Disappointment has often been self-inflicted. Supporters have dipped their pens deeply int...
Two years and two months after three prisoners at Guantánamo died, apparently as the result of a coordinated suicide pact, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which has been investigating the deaths ever since the three long-term hung...
Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark–indeed brainwashed–about...
I remember the hot summer of ’63. I was 22 years old, leading demonstrations in Greensboro, N.C. to open up access to public facilities – restaurants, movie theaters, all those establishments that had been closed to blacks for so long. Becaus...
It was 108 years ago in 1890 when journalist Jacob A. Riis published How the Other H...