The Alternative to Long-Term Austerity
“A spectre is haunting the treasuries and central banks of the West – the spectre of secular stagnation. What if there is no sustainable recovery of the economic slump of 2008-2013? What if the...
View ArticleThe U.S. Dares to Criticize Israel
It seems that, perhaps, Israel’s latest slaughter of defenseless Palestinians may have been a bit too much even for the United States to condone. In what may be the U.S.’s harshest, although still...
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Capitalist Denial and Climate Chaos
Capitalism is a term that comes fully loaded in the Western psyche. It is a Rorschach test that brings history, ideology and personal experience to the fore. Capitalism is perceived as oppositional, as...
View ArticleOnce More, Into the Quagmire
More than 191,000 dead in Syria during the civil war. Four to five million displaced. Nearly 3,800 slaughtered in Iraq in September alone. The numbers mount. But America is back on the case. President...
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The Civil War and 150 Years of Forgotten US Military Atrocities
George Orwell wrote in 1945 that “the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” The same moral...
View ArticleChallenging Drone Warfare in Court
On October 7, 2014, Kathy Kelly and Georgia Walker appeared before Judge Matt Whitworth in Jefferson City, MO, federal court on a charge of criminal trespass to a military facility. The charge was...
View ArticleDeer Hunting in Virginia While the World Burns
“Managing Virginia’s wildlife to maintain optimum populations of all species to serve the needs of the Commonwealth”; – Mission Statement, website of Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries...
View ArticleGetting Bolshie Over the Human Rights Act
“The Tories’ major announcement was to scrap the Human Rights Act, because, and I quote, ‘people get very frustrated with human rights.’” Tim Farron, Liberal Democrats President, The Guardian, Oct 7,...
View ArticleThe Follies of John Kerry
“Look, let me be clear,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry, signaling he was about to obfuscate. “The United States doesn’t ever trade its concern for human rights for any other objective,” he...
View ArticleLatin America’s Recessions: Made in the USA
Three major economies of Latin America—Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela—entered recession in 2014. And in all three cases their recessions may be subtitled, ‘Made in the USA’. After growing at 5% to 9%...
View ArticleClimate Destruction in the Court of Public Opinion
As the leaders of more than a hundred of the world’s governments addressed the U.N. Climate Summit last week, people’s organizations from around the world convened a Climate Justice Tribunal across...
View ArticleTerrorism and Assassinations in Venezuela
Last Friday, the centre of Caracas was filled with thousands of mourning citizens as they accompanied two flag draped coffins loaded with flowers they had cast upon it in homage. If a Member of...
View ArticleKrugman’s Vocabulary Needs an Upgrade
Paul Krugman’s “Voodoo Economics, The Next Generation” does not make any more sense today than it did back in 1980 when presidential candidate G. W. Bush used this term to criticize Ronald Reagan’s...
View ArticleTwitter Sues US Government
The Defendants’ position forces Twitter either to engage in speech that has been preapproved by government officials or else to refrain from speaking altogether. -Twitter, Inc. complaint against the...
View ArticleWhen the Military Brass Turn Pundits
I’ve been concerned about top officers in our military stepping up to the microphone and announcing their opinions on what the foreign policy of the United States should be. For example a few weeks ago...
View ArticleMexico’s Drug War is Killing Children
Many countries prohibit deploying their military for domestic law enforcement: it’s a recipe for violent authoritarian abuse. But the Obama administration’s prohibitionist drug war is funding and...
View ArticleThe Token Palestinian and Authentic Narrative
I recall, with particular awkwardness, my first talk at a socialist student gathering at the University of Washington in Seattle nearly two decades ago. When I tried to offer an authentic view of the...
View ArticleThe Return of Nicolas Sarkozy
London. Midway through his presidency, François Hollande is on the ropes: He is the most unpopular president of the Fifth Republic, and his brand of pro-business and austerity policies is almost...
View ArticleDuvalier vs. Aristide
The October 4 death of former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in Port-au-Prince has justly garnered world-wide attention. But too much about current Haitian politics has been left out of this...
View ArticleThe ‘World Versus Bank’ Seen From South Africa
Durban. In Washington, DC and ten countries across the globe, protests on October 10 target the World Bank during its Annual Meeting. Many are asking, isn’t 70 a dignified age for institutional...
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Annual Fundraising Appeal
Calling All CounterPunchers! We interrupt your regular reading habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch needs your financial support! Either we meet our fundraising goal...
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An Electronic Silent Spring
In 1960, in a hospital a few miles uptown, my mother gave birth to me under bright, electric lights with an epidural that erased her pain and made her unconscious for my arrival. While my mother slept...
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Democracy Works in Haiti
“Democracy works in Haiti.” Brian Concannon (who made the statement, p. 157), Mario Joseph, Fran Quigley, the author of How Human Rights Can Build Haiti: Activists, Lawyers and the Grassroots Campaign,...
View ArticleI Am a Patriot
On Thursday, November 13, I dropped down in my seat at the hearing room of the House Armed Services Committee on the Administration’s Strategy and Military Campaign against ISIL, a little depressed at...
View ArticleDo Wars Really Defend “America’s Freedom”?
U.S. politicians and pundits are fond of saying that America’s wars have defended America’s freedom. But the historical record doesn’t bear out this contention. In fact, over the past century, U.S....
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The Decay of American Media
Patrick L. Smith on the decline and fall of American journalism; Peter Lee on China and its Uyghur problem; Dave Macaray on brain trauma, profits and the NFL; Lee Ballinger on the bloody history of...
View ArticleColonialism of the Mind
“Les intellectuels ont toujours été des courtisans. Ils ont toujours vécu dans le palais.” “Intellectuals have always been courtesans. They have always lived in the palace.” – Pier Paolo Pasolini...
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Paris, the New Normal?
Diana Johnstone files an in-depth report from Paris on the political reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shootings; The Treachery of the Black Political Class: Margaret Kimberley charts the rise and fall of...
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Anatomy of Torture
Historian Christopher Dietrich on the 100-year-long history of American torture; Jeffrey St. Clair on the implications of giving impunity to the CIA’s torturers; Chris Floyd on how the US has exported...
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