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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.


CounterPunch: Complete Coverage of 9/11 and the War on Afghanistan

 New Print Edition of CounterPunch Published February 20: the Lie That Won Bush the Election; Harvey Matusow: the Death of a Snitch; an Honest Outlaw, the Legacy of Waylon Jennings; Jack Henry Abbott and the New Anti-Crime Wave; Debating Liberal Laptop Bombers. Subscribe Now!

March 12, 2002

Wole Akande
US is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa

March 11, 2002

Dave Marsh
10 CDs Playing On My Desk

John Chuckman
Footprints in the Dust

Norman Madarasz
Max Steel in a Time Chaos

March 10, 2002

Thomas Croft
Year of Living Dangerously

March 9, 2002

Bill Cook
Sharon's Bulldozer

Alexander Cockburn
The Nightmare in Israel

March 8, 2002

Mokhiber / Weissman
When Business Men
Make Boo-Boos

CounterPunch Exclusive
Enron's Spooky
Image Consultant

Rep. Ron Paul
Stop the War on Colombia

Andre Achong
The Failed War on Drugs

John B. Kelly
Michael Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy

March 7, 2002

CounterPunch Wire
Congressman McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda

Mike Rogers
Will the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo

Walt Brasch
Patriot Act and Free Speech

John Jonik
Insurance Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?

Cockburn / St. Clair
Bumper Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium

March 6, 2002

CounterPunch Wire
A Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?

Tom Turnipseed
War Is Wrong

David Vest
Billy Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape

Patrick Cockburn
The Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero

CounterPunch Wire
Berezovsky Fingers Putin
in Bombings

Edward Said
Thoughts About America

March 5, 2002

CounterPunch Wire
Ann Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta

Bill Christison
A Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work

Delkhasteh and Wright
What Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics

Mariya Tsvekova
Putin's Georgian Gambit

March 4, 2002

Ralph Nader
Dick Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals

Uri Avnery
How Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan

Southern / Kubrick
Stangelove Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker

David Vest
Grammy's of Constant Sorrow

March 3, 2002

Bernard Weiner
War on Terrorism for Dummies

Paul Cox
Boycott Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"

Frederick Hudson
Toward a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest

Eric Schaeffer
Dear Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It

John Chuckman
Why the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America

March 2, 2002

Alexander Cockburn
Sweat, Sex, Feet and
the Working Class

March 1, 2002

Brendan Sexton III
What's Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out

David Krieger
Nuclear Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy

February 28, 2002

James T. Phillips
Baghdad, Spring 1992

Gideon Samet
Sharon Must Go

Rep. Ron Paul
Before We Bomb Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
Samuel Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars

St. Clair / Cockburn
Rumble from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar

February 27, 2002

Eric Hobsbawm
The Future of War and Peace

John Troyer
About that WTC Memorial

Mokhiber / Weissman
Wired for Democracy
or Business?

Alexander Cockburn
Daniel Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?

February 26, 2002

Jonathan Steele
Kabul's Loss

Vasily Streltsov
The Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas

CounterPunch Wire
How Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence Politicians

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman
ABM Treaty: Alive or Dead?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich
A Prayer for America

February 25, 2002

John Clarke
Interrogated at US Border

Blankfort, Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL Blinks, Settles Spying Case

Alex Lynch
Naked from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian

John Chuckman
Ashcroft Speaks in Tongues

February 24, 2002

David Vest
Skate Date

February 23, 2002

Tom Turnipseed
Axis of Evil and
Media Monopolies

Bahour/Dahan
Cracks in the Occupation

February 22, 2002

Alexander Cockburn
Axel of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution

February 21, 2002

Gary Leupp
The Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War

David Vest
Reagan Clone Project?

Mokhiber and Weissman
Chicago School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core

February 20, 2002

Bernard Weiner
The Shallow Throat Document

Kay Lee
The Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes

February 19, 2002

David Orr
Waylon Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo

John Chuckman
The Devil and Georgie Bush

Prudence Crowther
Giblet Gravitas

Ramzi Kysia
Caught in the Iraq DMZ

February 18, 2002

Ron Jacobs
The US and Iran

George Lewandowski
Empire in Declline

Lenni Brenner
Life and Death of a Folk Hero

February 17, 2002

Robert Fisk
Lost in a Pit of Desperation

February 16, 2002

Phillip Cryan
Colombia in War Time

February 15, 2002

C.G. Estabrook
From New York to Porto Alegre

Robert O'Brien
The View from Porto Alegre

Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting the Assassins

February 14, 2002

Levy and Easton
Ante Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans

Joan Claybrook
Dear Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron

John Chuckman
Time for a Woman Prez

Alexander Cockburn
Banning the Koran

February 13, 2002

Sen. Russ Feingold
War Powers and
the War on Terror

Tom Turnipseed
Bush's Folly

George Monbiot
American Imperialism

February 12, 2002

Uri Avnery
The Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran

Tommy Ates
Black Land Loss

February 11, 2002

Walt Brasch
The Synergizing of America

John Troyer
Enron's Deep Throat?

February 9, 2002

John Blair
Criticize Cheney, Go to Jail

 


A Photographic Journal of Life in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann

Resources:
100s of Links About 9/11


CounterPunch:
Complete Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath


Five Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond

By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula

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Published Oct. 15, 2001

8-Page Special Issue

War Diary

CIA's Assassination Plan a History of Torture in US Prisons

bin Laden and Bush Business Connections

Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype of US Food Bombs

Peter Linebaugh on Pakistan

Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher

Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em


Search CounterPunch

Read Whiteout and Find Out How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden

Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the Press

by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism

By Rahul Mahajan

The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff

The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid

Edited by Roane Carey

 

A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair

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Reviews of Gore:
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Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

March 12, 2002

California's Half-Baked Prison Rules

By Kay Lee

This isn't just about being 'tough on crime'. It's not about winning a 'drug war'. It's not even about prison reform or human rights or social justice.

It's about the lack of common sense displayed by an overwhelmingly broken system that puts everyone in the country in more danger.

Some of the proposed rule changes for California prisons have already been implimented in prisons around the country. Soon they'll be in all the prisons. The way these warehouses are being run today include a lot of dangerous foolishness: Dangerous to the prisoners, the guards, their families, and all of society - yes, even you. If you are ever unfortunate enough to run up against an angry, shell-shocked, psychotic hungry ex-prisoner, let me know how it turns out.

The proposed rule changes in California that concern me most are:

  • Timed 5-second hellos and goodbyes for visitors. I visualize a room overflowing with guards with stopwatches.
  • There is a proposed rule that would forbid the children of prisoners from sitting on dad or mom's lap. Explain that to a child who wants to be held by their parent.
  • No contact visits for death row prisoners. Florida has already instigated this dangerous rule, even though there were no security breaches to make the rule necessary. So why would I say this rule is dangerous? Because if a prisoner has nothing to lose, life IS more dangerous for the guards around him.
  • And one that bothers me a great deal with it's senselessness is the proposed rule that would forbid DRUG OFFENDERS from having family visits for one year after incarceration. Every study ever done says prisoners do better with family contact. Why oh why do drug offenders always get the worst of the deal?

It seems to me that prison rules are now made, not because an incident caused security problems, but to make the guards' jobs easier. You know why? Because they can't keep the help if the help actually have to get up and work for their money!

For instance, in Florida if you needed toilet paper, you called out your need and a guard brought you a roll of two ply toilet paper (if he was in the mood). Now, you get one roll of one ply toilet paper per week for each two man cell. So the guards can do less work.

These kinds of rules may seem to make the guards' jobs easier on the surface, but believe me, with all incentives gone, with no rewards in place for good behavior, the guards are going to find their jobs more dangerous, the system will produce more angry, damaged people and society will eventually pay the price.