The Tennessee Valley Authority could likely rightfully claim a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, but it’s not an achievement for which the federally-owned electric utility corporation would welcome notoriety. After taking a whopping 42 years to build and finally bring on line its Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in Tennessee, TVA just broke

The upcoming PBS documentary Cured begins by compelling us to experience, at a visceral level, just how much Americans hated and feared homosexuality. Not that long ago, there was no public outcry directed at governments that had declared homosexuality a crime, churches that had declared homosexuality a sin, and psychiatry—the focus of Cured—that had declared

We reenact our history again and again without even realizing it, so absolutely has the darkest chapters of our nation's past been erased from the collective memory. Our leaders react in mock horror when confronted with the outlandish scenes of torture and gratuitous violence that they themselves have set in motion. The liberal conscience, frail as it is,

One of Freire’s most important contributions was his politicization of culture. He viewed culture a terrain of struggle that both reflected and deployed power. He rejected the vulgar Marxist notion that culture was simply a reflection of economic forces. Not only did he connect culture with social relations that ranged from producing and legitimating class

I have, as expected, received numerous emails defending Glenn Greenwald against a recent Counterpunch essay in which I, among other things (all of which were ignored by the emailers), criticized his mocking presentation of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s instantly infamous “Tax the Rich” gown caper as an attempted act of “revolutionary socialism.” Don’t

Part of Washington’s climate adaptation plan for the growing number of displaced people around the globe is more walls, surveillance technology, and armed agents on the border. Not long into our conversation, the young woman at the migrant resource center in Sasabe, Sonora, told me why she had left her home in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala: floods More The

On September 15, 2021, the heads of government of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced the formation of AUKUS, “a new enhanced trilateral security partnership” between these three countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined U.S. President Joe Biden to “preserve security

A century-plus ago, the U.S. economy was dominated by what were then known as “cartels,” “trusts” or “monopolies.”  According to one source, between 1897 and 1904 over 4,000 companies were consolidated down into 257 corporate firms. Among them were Standard Oil (40 refineries), AT&T (22 units), U.S. Steel (nine steel companies) and J. P. Morgan’s More

In a rare pushback against the radioactive pollution industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — well known as a rubber stamp for the nuclear lobby — has flatly rejected an attempt to further weaken the agency’s radiation exposure regulations. After six years of deliberation, the NRC’s three commissioners, two Democrats and one Republican, voted

Scenes of thousands of Afghans flooding the Kabul International Airport to flee the country as Taliban fighters were quickly consolidating their control over the capital, raised many questions, leading amongst them: who are these people and why are they running away? In the US and other Western media, answers were readily available: they were mostly More

President Biden addressed the UN General on September 21 with a warning that the climate crisis is fast approaching a “point of no return,” and a promise that the United States would rally the world to action. “We will lead not just with the example of our power but, God willing, with the power of More The post U.S. Militarism’s Toxic Impact on Climate Policy appeared

Things just go from bad to worse. In mid-September, we learned from Bob Woodward’s new book that Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley had to assure his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng last January that Trump was not a raving lunatic ready to nuke China, which Chinese leadership assumed from his erratic, aggressive behavior. This More The post

For over 50 years I have been writing about foreign policy, mostly America’s, but those of other nations as well. I think I have a pretty good grasp of countries like Turkey, China, India, Russia and the European Union. I regret that I am less than sure-footed in Africa and Latin America. During this time More The post Looking Back: 50 Years of Foreign Policy appeared

Shielding the Western elite from justified rage The recent outbreak of the Delta variant in China “shows that its strategy no longer fits. It is time for China to change tack.” So declared a lead essay atop the New York Times Opinion/Editorial section on Sept. 7 by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council More The post NY Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon

William Oliver Stone, the Legendary Filmmaker and multiple Oscar-winning writer and director of JFK and Born on the Fourth of July, has a powerful new memoir: Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game. Stone is also poised to release a brand new documentary about the assassination

The quasi-official history of the Afghan War has now be written by cable news house historians. Key elements: 1. The terrorist organization al-Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan at the time of 9/11 and so HAD to be destroyed to prevent further attacks on our Homeland. It was a “war of necessity,” as President Obama said More The post The Official

‘Mainstream media’ is the bugbear of choice for the anti-lockdown movement; it associates the facts of epidemiological science with media propaganda, and so avoids having to address the rationale for lockdowns in its own legitimising narratives. In sociology, the process of constructing an exclusionary binary between the known and unknown is called ‘Othering.’

With that orange haired brute of a president supposedly ushered out of the White House with moralising delight, the Biden administration was all keen to turn over a new leaf.  There would be more diplomacy, and still more diplomacy.  There would be a more humanitarian approach to refugees and asylum seekers – forget, he claimed, More The post Trumpism with a

As Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, I want to say a few words about some of the important budgetary issues that Congress is now facing. I want to focus on the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill but before that I want to comment on the looming debt ceiling crisis.  Republican leader Mitch McConnell this morning More The post Why We Need the $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation

It’s a well-worn trope that history is written by the victors. It can also be said that it is written by those in power. In Europe, the combination of these two statements means history is written by the corporations, banks and those who serve them in the universities and governments. What this means for us More The post Twentieth Century Europe: Revolution

As September reached its halfway point, trophy hunters were let loose across Montana—including on the edges of Yellowstone National Park—to hunt for some of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem’s most iconic and ecologically charismatic species: wolves. Restraints that had formerly limited the kill to one wolf in this hunting zone, to reduce the likelihood

As a religious studies professor, I know a parable when I see one. Consider the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the final events in this country’s war in Afghanistan as just such a parable taken directly from the history of our moment. The heart-wrenching last days of that war amounted to a cautionary More The post A Parable of (All-American) Violence:

There is a narrative commonly held by observers in the west that the Afghans are a people defined by perpetual warfare. Like many stereotypes, this one comes with a cornel of truth. After all, the people of Afghanistan just got done throttling the bare hind quarters of the greatest empire Satan ever devised for the More The post Afghanarchism: What American Radicals

Suddenly there’s major concern across the country — from the mainstream media to every last rock-ribbed Republican — for the rights of Afghan women and girls to be able to work, to go to school. Oh my God, we’ve given Afghanistan back to the Taliban! Even George W. Bush found his way back into the More The post Women’s Rights: Afghanistan and Beyond appeared first

Life’s been a ball this week. There was the Met Gala ball with AOC’s “Tax the Rich” ballgown, and #Ballgate with Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s vaccinated friend’s swollen balls. We also had Brett’s Balls virtually in our face (again!), when Crybaby Kavanaugh and four of his fellow Right-Wing Supremes voted to let the Texas Taliban practically More The post #Ballgate,

Despite the withdrawal of U.S. military bases and troops from Afghanistan, the United States continues to maintain approximately 750 military bases abroad in 80 foreign countries and colonies (territories). These bases are costly in a number of ways: financially, politically, socially, and environmentally. U.S. bases in foreign lands often raise geopolitical

It is now one year since controversial farm bills were passed into law in India in September 2020. The  three bills and the subsequent legislation have triggered a massive 15-month farmers’ protest that has attracted worldwide attention and support. Farmers, farmers’ unions and their representatives demand that the laws be repealed and state that they More

Many people in the United States might assume that the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program — the program created after “welfare reform” — would be an important tool to assist needy families during the COVID-19 recession. The latest analysis from the Census Bureau shows that TANF has failed once again to provide much More The post Even During

Only weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden courageously ended the war in Afghanistan—in the face of bitter opposition from the media and Congress—came the announcement of the formation of AUKUS, a new trilateral security alliance between the U.S., the UK and Australia. The creation of AUKUS is only further confirmation—as if more was needed—that the

As lawmakers scramble to finalize a historic jobs and infrastructure package, huge fights are underway to figure out how to fund it. The simplest, most effective, and most popular way is to tax the extremely wealthy, like the billionaires who’ve seen their collective wealth grow by $1.8 trillion during the pandemic. Unfortunately, lawmakers have missed

Donor-advised funds have come under increasing fire as tax avoidance vehicles for the wealthy. Donors get a charitable gift tax deduction when they transfer money into the funds, but whereas private foundations have to distribute at least 5 percent of assets to charities every year, donor-advised funds face no such payout requirements. Under pressure from

Sweet Girl, a 2021 film released on Netflix in late August, dramatizes power relations between Big Pharma and families. One party gains. The other loses against a backdrop of stunts galore that some critics praised while damning the film’s clichéd storyline. Clichéd is not my adjective of choice. Depoliticized better captures my view of the More The post Families

The word “freedom” is being bantered about these days in different contexts. On the one hand, those opposed to mandatory vaccinations claim they have the freedom to be vaccinated or not. It’s their choice what to do with their bodies. The government cannot force them to be vaccinated; they are free to choose. On the other hand, many of the same people say that pregnant

Now that George W. Bush is back in the news with his attacks on the Trumpist insurrectionists, it might be worth reviving one of the great lines of his presidency. After the September 11thattack, when Bush decided to go after not just the terrorists who planned the hijackings, but all sorts of people around the world he didn’t like, he lumped them together as “evil

Our beloved dog Echo died last week. She was almost 15 years-old, or about 87 in human years. In addition to grief and fond remembrance, her death prompts thoughts about the many historical changes that happened in her lifetime.  So many in fact, that it seems like she really was born Lincoln’s “four score and seven years ago.”  Has historical change become so

Taking up the position of education secretary is Baghdad-born Nadhim Zahawi, one of the Commons’ richest MPs, who made his fortune in petroleum, and was previously minister in charge of Covid vaccines. The Tories make him a regular choice for radio and TV appearances, where his forte is sounding thoughtful while saying virtually nothing. But the true nature

The independence of Mexico and of Cuba, got a big hearing in Mexico City on September 16.  On that day in 1810, in Dolores, Mexico, Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo called upon parishioners to join him in rebelling against Spain’s viceregal government. Mexico finally gained independence in 1821. Every year, at 11 PM on September 15, More The post Cuban and Mexican

The decision by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) to honor Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan spits in the faces of the 100,000 Yemenis the United Arab Emirates has helped kill over the past six years. Bin Zayed (popularly known as “MBZ”) has been the Emirates’ de facto ruler since his More The post Washington Institute for Near East

In German elections – like the coming ones, as always on a Sunday – all you have to do is present the registration paper mailed to every citizen, then make crosses on a paper  ballot. No trouble with the boss, no missing work, long lines or quarrels about fraud or discrimination.  It sounds easy. But those ballots More The post Germany’s Who With

Journalism needs a new rule. Are you reporting about a human rights violation in another country? If the United States commits the same offense, you should be required to refer to that fact in your article or broadcast. Criticizing how a nation treats its prisoners or responds to internal dissent implies that the behavior being More The post Taliban Cops vs American

As a longtime Hawaii resident, I have always wondered how the former President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, was so ineffective when it came to foreign policy matters. His efforts to right the wrong of the unauthorized armed invasion and imprisonment of the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Liliʻuokalani, in 1893 More The post

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies went to federal court on Tuesday to halt the Ripley project, a massive clearcutting and logging project in Cabinet-Yaak grizzly habitat in the Kootenai National Forest southeast of Libby, Montana. The Ripley logging project calls for almost 17 square miles of commercial logging (10,854 acres) including 5 square miles of

Everyone knows that we are in trouble. The university graduation statistics suggest that there will be a downturn in enrollment. Just as in previous cycles, silver bullets are being proposed. It is natural that we have different opinions. However, this is nothing new. When educators—or let’s say administrators—propose solutions, they are generally based

In ancient Greek mythology, Cassandra was a priestess who was able to predict the future but unable to convince others to act upon her prophecies. The fate of Cassandra seems particularly relevant today, for there has been ample warning about three developments that threaten continued human existence—preparations for nuclear war, climate change, and disease

I don’t remember exactly where I first saw the Adbusters poster with a ballerina poised atop the famous Charging Bull statue in lower Manhattan, calling for the “occupation” of Wall Street on September 17, 2011 but it was certainly an eye-catching. I do remember thinking it was funny in a weird kind of way. “Occupy More The post Reminiscences of a Wall Street Occupier

As a society, we love heroes. We adore baseball players who pull out a win in the bottom of the ninth inning while down by several runs. We love the frontier myth of the savior who comes to the rescue of others amid daunting odds. Pop culture and particularly movies thrive on heroes saving all More The post Don’t Count On Heroes! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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When Taliban fighters swept across Afghanistan in a little over a week and entered the capital city of Kabul on August 15, 2021, they surprised the US media, the Biden White House, and the military. Desperate to get out of the country, those who had worked with the US-backed Afghan government fled to the airport in Kabul, running across the tarmac and swamping

The political climate created by the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, as Bush administration officials quickly dubbed it, set the stage for humongous increases in the Pentagon budget. In the first year after the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, defense spending rose by more than 10% and that was just the beginning. It would, in fact, increase annually

On Wednesday, thousands of Salvadorans celebrated the 200th anniversary of the country’s independence by marching in protest against President Nayib Bukele’s administration. President Bukele’s decision to make Bitcoin an officially recognized currency in El Salvador succeeded in getting a lot of attention. And that was precisely the point. The boldness

“Neoliberalism” has been a hot topic for a few decades, but by now the word is sloppily used often enough that many claim that the word has become meaningless. However, it doesn’t work that way. The word neoliberalism has a definite meaning, even if it can be a tricky one, and it does not lose More The post What is Neoliberalism? A Primer appeared

On July 29th,  H.R.4373 committed to providing Israel $3.3 billion in unconditional military aid after it passed in the House in a close bipartisan vote of 217-212. The Palestinian refugee and diasporic community residing within the so-called United States is outraged by this bill that embodies all the funding mechanisms for US interference in Palestine.  

In its August 2021 Update to its Tracking the Dirty Dollars Project, Sierra Club California reveals that the California Republican Party has accepted over $300,000 from the fossil fuel industry and its allies this year. This more than triples the party’s contributions since Sierra Club’s last report update in May. “Once again, Republican legislators

Free speech and free press mean the same thing: the right to voice any beliefs or ideas, even unpopular ones — orally or on paper — without fear of being punished for it. Sometimes it’s called freedom of expression. Through history, various advances slowly won this right, which lies at the very heart of democracy. More The post Free Speech and Press

When President Joe Biden won the White House, he promised, with a facility of unceasing boredom, that diplomacy was back.  “Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign policy,” he stated on February 4.  “As I said in my inaugural address, we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not More The post The Anglo Unilateralists Strike appeared

The statue of an indigenous woman will soon replace a prominent statue of Christopher Columbus on the Paseo de la Reforma, a wide avenue that runs through the heart of Mexico City. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his allies in the capital city’s leadership are sending a powerful symbolic message: the time More The post Mexico Got Rid

By now people have plenty of examples of the GOP’s idea of governance, which consists of opposing everything that doesn’t fit their myopic ideology. Here in Montana we’re headed back toward Lockdown City thanks to the utter failure of our Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches of government. But evidence is quickly mounting that GOP extremism

The Forest Service is proposing the South Plateau logging project with almost 9 square miles of clear-cuts, south and west of West Yellowstone. People should know what the area could look like while there’s still time to stop it. The Forest Service claimed that utter destruction, pictured above, in the Helena National Forest would be More The post Clearcutting

As York, England prepares to welcome Afghan refugees, housing becomes an increasingly critical issue. It is not that York lacks rental housing, but rather that it lacks affordable housing, a particular problem for people who in many cases left their country with nothing. The aim of the article is to offer an alternative solution and More The post A New Model

Back in the 1960s, a young American activist called Michael Albert was asked, “Okay, we hear you, you don’t like capitalism. So, what DO you want?”. Like many young activists, Albert and his friends first scoffed at the question. We don’t have to produce a blueprint of an alternative future system in order to justify More The post Imagine Life After Capitalism

Los Angeles, CA. A federal district court in Los Angeles has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (the “Service”) violated the law when they failed to list the imperiled Joshua tree under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The Service disregarded overwhelming scientific evidence showing that climate change poses a major threat to the Joshua tree’s

Marxist economist and author Michael Roberts returns to CounterPunch to discuss the state of US imperialism following the end of the Afghanistan War and how it relates to the profitability of capital in the 21st Century. More The post Michael Roberts on American Imperialism and Marx’s Law of Profitability appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

The post How Caffeine Addiction Changed History appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Trumpism was never quite what it seemed to the rest of the world when it came to America’s actions as opposed to his words. The tone was always belligerent, but Trump went out of his way not to start any wars. As for the slogan “America First”, this was not so much about an isolationist US More The post When It Comes to Letting Down Allies, Trumpism and Bidenism Have

Demographers looking back — years from now — on America’s annual mortality rates are going to find an asterisk on the years 2020 and 2021. The text behind that asterisk is going to give the reason why so many more Americans died in those particular years than the years right before. The explanation, of course, More The post Why Do Europeans Live Longer Than Americans?

Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its wars, Yoda was just plain wrong. That part of the future is all too More The post The US Military, Post-Afghanistan appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Joe Biden is taking heat from Democrats, not for his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan—that’s popular—but for his haphazard pullout that, self-serving Rumsfeldian stuff happens, wars end messily platitudes aside, could have been executed more efficiently. They blame George W. Bush for starting America’s longest war, arguing that what he began inexorably

Hotspotting was never implemented as an intervention to address upstream social determinants of health, but rather as a cost containment strategy — and it failed at that too. On January 4, CNBC reported on a Freakonomics radio episode from November 2020 in which Whole Foods CEO John Mackey graced the world with his very astute More The post The False Premise

The world economy faces serious risks going forward: for example, an estimated $2.3 trillion in income is projected to be lost in 2022–25 due to vaccine inequity — most of it in developing countries. In the United States, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to zero, and has created more than 3.6 trillion dollars since More The post Billions of People Globally

The old saying that “art follows function” is being reversed by print newspaper editors alarmed over the shorter attention spans of readers who are moving to online news outlets. As a result, newspaper editors have ushered in a golden age for graphic artists giving them huge chunks of newspaper space formerly devoted to reporters and news. Granted a More

Bill Niskanen was the long-time head of the Cato Institute. He was the rarest of all creatures in Washington, an honest libertarian. While I disagreed with him on most issues, I came to realize that if I shut up and listened to what he had to say, I might learn something. In particular, I remember More The post Cost Disease Socialism: the Niskanen Center’s Unnecessary

Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the More The post What Are the Prospects

The team of Arizona Republican state senators, legislative staff, and advisers finalizing the Cyber Ninjas’ report on the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County are preparing to say that Joe Biden legitimately won the election, according to the largest funder of the Senate’s mostly privatized election review, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick

“If it works, why do we need to do it 183 times?” – Dianne Feinstein, Senate Intelligence Committee on Torture Last year, I filed a FOIA to obtain the poetry of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) and Abu Zubaydah (AZ). I was in earnest. The illustrious and toolishly necessary New York Times, along with London’s equivalent More The post Anguished Lyricism: the Poetry

The United States over the past five decades has had dangerous experience with “war scares.”  This demands an assessment of options for reducing the possibility of a war scare that could result in an actual war, particularly in the nuclear age.  U.S. and allied military exercises are particularly dangerous because military doctrine, particularly in communist

This is not the first time Rahm Emanuel has turned to Republicans for rescue. The GOP rescued him in 1993, when he was a key White House aide, as the Clinton administration rammed the NAFTA trade pact though Congress. Most Democrats in Congress – responding to the base of the party, including union and environmental activists – voted no on NAFTA. Years later,

Peruvian president Pedro Castillo took office July 28 following a narrow electoral victory on June 6 and official certification of voting results on July 19. Then and since, right-wing opposition forces have viciously attacked Castillo and his Perú Libre (Free Peru) party. Defamatory media blasts from virtually all Peruvian news sources have been constant.

Only a few weeks ago, a Reichsbürger in Germany shot a police officer with a crossbow during a house’s search in a remote town called Linden, in the north of Hessen. The Reichsbürger is accused of attempted manslaughter and he was sent to a prison until his court hearing. Violent attacks by the right-wing extremist Reichsbürger is nothing out of the ordinary in

Until we see a text, if any, of the executive agreement for the AUKUS thing-a-ma-gig, the only real meat of it seems to be the Australian purchase of nuclear US or UK subs rather than the “conventionally” (not really) powered French design.  The more I look over the submarine alternatives for the Australians, the less More The post Why the Nuclear

The conversations in Mexico between the opposition Unitary Plataform of Venezuela and the Maduro government, with the intermediation of Norway, represent the failure of the US interventionist strategy and the end of the Lima Group. On August 13, a new stage of negotiations officially began to reestablish the institutional framework and democratic coexistence

In the first half of 2021, the economy added more than 4.2 million jobs, a rise of almost 3.0 percent, as it rapidly added back jobs lost during the pandemic-related recession. In a recent report in July 2021, Jason Furman and William Powell documented that the recent job transition rate from unemployment to employment was More The post lack and Asian American

Earlier this year (2021), Ben and Jerry’s ice cream decided to quit selling its ice cream in the illegal settlements built by Israel in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. This decision was reached after years of letter-writing, leafleting, editorializing, and other forms of pressure organized in large part by the anti-occupation group called

If you haven’t been to the Cabinet-Yaak region in northwest Montana, you ought to go. You will find an incredibly beautiful landscape that alternates from rugged, glaciated peaks, to dense coniferous forests with lush meadows and riparian areas along the meandering Yaak River. If you are exceptionally lucky, you might see one of the rare Cabinet-Yaak grizzly

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley stepped outside the realm of his constitutional power to prevent Donald Trump from starting nuclear war with China or Iran.  It was definitely unconstitutional and probably illegal.  But he’s not the true villain in this story; the true villain is almost never mentioned in the press. Trump’s advisors aren’t More

On September 15, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved two companion motions that will put Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the nation, on a path to ban existing oil drilling and transition fossil fuel workers to careers in clean energy and other climate-friendly industries. There are approximately 1,600 active

Photo credits: Sung Wang (via Unsplash) and Leijurv, CC by-sa 4.0 int’l. Tesla’s going to produce $25K cars. Welcome news for many working folks who have, so far, only admired Tesla cars from a distance. And it should be good news for the global transition to sustainable energy—if we believe Elon Musk, the self-crowned Technoking. Anyway, that 25K price tag

Image by Jordy Meow. With the War on Terror in its twentieth year, thrust back into the public discourse with the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Linda Sarsour, prominent Palestinian American activist and thinker, one of the national co-founders of the Women’s March (the largest single day protest in U.S. history), expressed what has been

Oscar Homolka in Alfred Hitchock's Sabotage. As compulsively watchable as it is, Hitchcock's Sabotage makes a real hash out of Conrad's The Secret Agent–that prescient novel which so accurately predicted the ways in which radical underground groups could be penetrated and manipulated by intelligence agencies into doing the repressive work of the state.

Democracy exists if and when a community organizes its self-governance around the full participation, on an equal basis, of all the members of the community. Its other, autocracy, exists when a community organizes (or allows) its governance by an individual or subgroup of that community, a ruler. Universal suffrage is clearly a step toward at least formal

Seen from Beijing the storming of the Capitol looked like a failed coup, a botched but serious attempt to upend US politics. Now, a book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa claims US General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called General Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army not once but twice. First on October 30, 2020, just

Almost everything Tom Wolfe wrote about the glitterati left in the late 60s has been recapitulated in subsequent decades, with the faux radicalism diminishing into hip liberalism and the artistic pretense inflating into camp couture for the one-percent. It's beyond parody. In the 60s, the message wouldn't have been "Tax the Rich" but "Fuck the Rich", "Eat

Glenn Greenwald’s latest Substack essay shows how it is possible to be bright, seemingly progressive, stupid, and stealthily reactionary all at one and the same time – a common affliction of petit-bourgeois intellectuals who’ve never had a proper Marxist education. More The post Glenn Greenwald and Iowa’s latest WTF Moments appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has given new license to the killing of Indigenous people in Brazil. Before he came to power in 2019, it wasn’t clear what he wanted to build, but he knew exactly who and what he wanted to destroy: the Indigenous people and the Amazon rainforest, respectively. “Bolsonaro attacked a woman first, the land, our More The post

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is busy clearing federally designated wild horse territory of wild horses on public lands — and BLM officials are telling some big lies to get the job done. At roughly 27 million acres, wild horse herd management areas (HMAs) constitute just 4% of the 750 million acres making up More The post The Big Lie That’s Destroying

The UK (in partnership with Italy) will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, COP26 in Glasgow on October 31- November 12, 2021. COP26 will be one of the most significant meetings in modern human history, comparable to the meeting of the Big Three at the Tehran Conference November 28, 1943 when More The post What’s Up With COP26? appeared first

Only 29% of people in the US trust the news. Some 37% of Mexicans do, and 43% of Australians. That figure drops even further when it comes to social media. Some 18% of Australians trust news there, and 13% of people in the US do. People are being inundated with content, marketing, and headlines, and More The post A Journalist Dissects a Biased Chart of Media Biases

The House select committee on the January 6 capitol riot finally kicked into gear. In August, the committee requested telecom companies to preserve phone and social media records of certain congress critters. Suddenly the likes of Mo Brooks, Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert quivered with anticipation: were they targets of

On September 16 the media carried the news that the US, Britain and Australia are banding together to increase pressure on China by arranging for Australia to buy and operate nuclear-powered submarines.  Strategically, this is of little significance, and it will take years for the vessels to enter service, but the video conference involving President

25 years before Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine, a Russian Jewish Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, argued that a Jewish state in Palestine could only survive if it exists “behind an iron wall” of defense. Jabotinsky was speaking figuratively. However, future Zionist leaders, who embraced Jabotinsky’s teachings, eventually

Recent news stories focus on how a conservation easement on a large ranch in northwest Colorado is blocking a major new transmission line, and therefore stalling the enormous Chokecherry-Sierra Madre wind farm in southcentral Wyoming. While these articles make some valid points about the need for renewable energy, they gloss over the reality that this More