radiofree.asia

Category: CounterPunch+

  • For Russia, With Love

    A still from Compassionate Spy, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

    Two-time Oscar nominee and three-time Emmy Award winner Steve James’ compelling, confessional A Compassionate Spy is the latest in a current cinematic trend of nuke-related documentary and feature films that includes Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now, Irene Lusztig’s Richland and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Perhaps this vogue is emerging from the collective psyche now because of historic dates regarding the Manhattan Project and the fact that June 19 was the 70th anniversary of the electrocution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953. Or because the war in Ukraine plus tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the USA are heightening.

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post For Russia, With Love appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Setting the Future Free From Inside an Israeli Prison

    In his young adult novel, The Oil’s Secret Tale, Walid Daqqah describes a wall – a vast wall that darkens the sky, divides the Earth, separates animals and plants and people from each other – a wall that stops children from visiting their parents in prison. Daqqah’s story is about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, born […]

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post Setting the Future Free From Inside an Israeli Prison appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Extremism Blends Into the Mainstream

    The ultra rightwing parental rights group, Moms for Liberty, held their second annual convention the last week of June in Philadelphia.  The Moms for Liberty received nationwide attention before and during their gathering as an example of the new normal: welcoming the Moms for Liberty’s right-wing racism, homophobia and book banning into the Republican mainstream. […]

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post Extremism Blends Into the Mainstream appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • White Supremacy and the Bombing of Hiroshima

    As I was born in Hiroshima, I visited the Peace Park there many times. It was a short walk from my grandfather’s house. I didn’t visit Nagasaki until I was an adult, when in 1999, my friend Gordon Greene and I were in Kyushu as visiting medical education faculty. After our visit to Nagasaki’s Peace […]

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post White Supremacy and the Bombing of Hiroshima appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Trying to Make a Living and Doing the Best They Could       

    When I was a freshman at Fordham University in 1973, one of the records played most often in the dorms was the newly released Allman Brothers record Brothers and Sisters.  Other top choices in the stack were Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, The Grateful Dead’s Wake of the Flood, Earth, Wind and Fire’s Keep Your Head to More

    The post Trying to Make a Living and Doing the Best They Could        appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Forever Dangers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

    If you didn’t know better, you’d think Lloyd Marbet was a dairy farmer or maybe a retired shop teacher. His beard is thick, soft, and gray, his hair pulled back in a small ponytail. In his mid-seventies, he still towers over nearly everyone. His handshake is firm, but there’s nothing menacing about him. He lumbers More

    The post The Forever Dangers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Joshua Frank.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Forever Dangers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

    If you didn’t know better, you’d think Lloyd Marbet was a dairy farmer or maybe a retired shop teacher. His beard is thick, soft, and gray, his hair pulled back in a small ponytail. In his mid-seventies, he still towers over nearly everyone. His handshake is firm, but there’s nothing menacing about him. He lumbers More

    The post The Forever Dangers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Joshua Frank.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • World Hunger and the War in Ukraine

    On Monday, June 17, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, announced, “The Black Sea agreements are no longer in effect.” This was a blunt statement to suspend the Black Sea Grain Initiative that emerged out of intense negotiations in the hours after Russian forces entered Ukraine in February 2022. The Initiative went into effect on July 22, 2022, after Russian and Ukrainian officials signed it in Istanbul in the presence of the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. More

    The post World Hunger and the War in Ukraine appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Elon Musk and the New Era of Extractive Geopolitics

    Image of mine.

    Image by omid roshan.

    In November 2020, leftwing president Evo Morales returned to Bolivia after being expelled by right-wing opponents with the aid of the United States. The Organization of American States (OAS), which has served as an appendage of U.S. imperial aspirations in South America for decades, conducted an audit of the vote tallies and deemed Bolivia’s election of Morales in 2019 illegitimate, forcing him to flee the country. The OAS’s assessment of the election aligned with the U.S. government’s unofficial position that Morales threatened its regional geopolitical interests. There were problems, however. The statistical analysis used in OAS’s 2019 report was “flawed,” according to The New York Times. Even so, U.S. criticisms emboldened Morales’s opposition and led to “a chain of events that changed the South American nation’s history.”

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post Elon Musk and the New Era of Extractive Geopolitics appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • On Black Intifada in France

    July 16, 2023 by Sukant Chandan
    Image of French flag.

    Image by Anthony Choren.

    The police racist killing of children is a regular occurance for decades in France, often triggering burgeoning spontaneous working class insurgencies. The moments after French police killed 17yr old ‘Nahel M’ in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre wasn’t any different. 45,000 riot police, including the infamously brutal BRI special forces, contributed to the quelling of another uprising in France conducted mostly by young working classes of African heritage in the ‘banlieues’ or contained council estates often many miles out of the urban centres. Over two nights of the uprising at least 2,000 insurgents have been arrested by French authorities, the average age of arrestees is 17yrs old, pointing to another generation that will see considerable sections of their neighbours experiencing the French criminal justice system and prisons that will only boost their sense of alienation and confrontation with the French colonial state. Black working class communities across colonial centres in the ‘West’ are seeing multiple generations of the same family in prisons at the same time.The average age of the arestees also indicates how young our children are brutalised by the police and schools. The youth who led the uprising are of African heritage, both northern (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and also other regions like from West Africa and other former colonies of the French state. The uprising saw the insurrectionists use fire bombs, grenades and firearms against the state, indicating a further intensification by means of tactics as compared to previous similar uprisings. There is much to explore as to the significance of the uprising by means of class-struggle against capitalist-colonialism and for socialism in the colonial centre in a context of global victories of white supremacist racism and the far-right.

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here
    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    Sukant Chandan is a London-based decolonial anti-imperialist activist and analyst. He advocated justice for Libyans in visiting Libya three times during the Nato onslaught in 2011 and reports frequently on English-language news channels based in Russia, Iran, China and Lebanon on which he discusses issues pertaining to the challenges of the struggle to end neo-colonialism. He can be contacted at sukant.chandan@gmail.com.

    Read over 400 magazine and newsletter back issues here

    Make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation and enjoy access to CP+.  Donate Now

    Support our evolving Subscribe Area and enjoy access to all Subscribers content.  Subscribe


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sukant Chandan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Turning the Page on Coal

    For years, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe has fought to protect our reservation and people from the harmful environmental and social impacts of coal mining and energy production. We have pleaded with the Biden administration to take action on the federal coal-leasing program and address individual leases near our reservation, such as the Rosebud strip mine. More

    The post Turning the Page on Coal appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by William Walks Along.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Weird Days at Black Rock

    When you drive into the Owens Valley from the south, on your left to the west is the most magnificent mountain range in the Sierra Nevada. Majestic Mt. Whitney, tallest peak in the continental United States, stands in the middle of a jagged row of peaks, not much shorter. In late spring, great paths of […]

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post Weird Days at Black Rock appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

  • The Trouble with Palm Oil

    As if the Southeast Asian haze, otherwise known as a “recurrent transboundary air pollution issue”, wasn’t enough, there are many other reminders of how harmful the palm oil industry is to this planet. It’s well known that massiveland-clearing operations of the palm oil agribusiness burn down rainforests and cause the sky-blackening haze but the damage […]

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post The Trouble with Palm Oil appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Getting It All Wrong About Sequoias and Wildfires

    As my colleagues and I hiked through the Nelder giant sequoia grove south of Yosemite National Park recently, we could barely believe our eyes. In 2017, the Railroad fire swept through nearly all of the Nelder Grove, burning lightly in most areas but very intensely in the portion where we walked, about six years after More

    The post Getting It All Wrong About Sequoias and Wildfires appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Chad Hanson.

  • Of College Debts and Real Democrats

    I care less about the pain Joe Biden’s known than the pain he’s gratuitously inflicted. So of all the nothings that would not “fundamentally change” under a Biden administration, the notion that a guy who spent his political lifetime in the service of credit card issuers would actually do something consequential about unindebting students to More

    The post Of College Debts and Real Democrats appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jerry Long.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Echoes of the SS St. Louis Today

    On May 13th, 1939, the SS St. Louis, a luxury cruise ship, departed Hamburg, Germany bound for Cuba, where its 937 passengers, most of them Jews fleeing Hitler’s Germany, expected to gain entry into the United States. After weeks at sea, likely filled with a mixture of uncertainty and hope, all but 29 of the More

    The post Echoes of the SS St. Louis Today appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Derek Royden.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Cruel Arrangements: The UK-Rwanda Refugee Deal Falters

    Since 2022, Rwanda has been very much on the mind of British policy makers, a dark option of retreat from the irritating intrusions of international refugee law. The English Channel has become something of a polemical resource, with those seeking to cross it demonised as undermining Britannia’s sacred sovereignty. Giddy with the dusty advice of More

    The post Cruel Arrangements: The UK-Rwanda Refugee Deal Falters appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN Forcefully Hits at US Blockade of Cuba and Prison in Guantanamo

    Nothing on the horizon now threatens the end of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. Critical voices inside the United States and beyond fall flat; nothing is in the works, it seems. Recently, however, the United Nations put forth a denunciation that carries unusual force, mainly because of the UN’s legal authority and its practical More

    The post UN Forcefully Hits at US Blockade of Cuba and Prison in Guantanamo appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

  • Religious Freedom isn’t About Employment “Accommodations”

    In 2019, Gerald Groff quit his job, then sued his employer for causing him “much anxiety and distress” by expecting him to show up for work and, after various attempts to accommodate his absenteeism (more than 24 missed shifts in two years), disciplining him when he didn’t. If he’d sued because working on Sundays interfered More

    The post Religious Freedom isn’t About Employment “Accommodations” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Prighozin Rebellion & the 3rd Offensive

    Much has been made in the US propaganda heavy public media about the recently aborted ‘rebellion’ by Russia’s mercenary ‘Wagner’ division led by former fast food restauranteur Russian oligarch, Prighozin. The US media and neocons in US government are trying to paint a picture the whole affair means there’s a deep crisis in the Russian More

    The post The Prighozin Rebellion & the 3rd Offensive appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jack Rasmus.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • We Don’t Know How It Ends

    Image by Khara Woods.

    Fintan O’Toole’s latest book, We Don’t Know Ourselves, starts in 1958 when Ireland “was just about beginning to change,” and moves, one year at a time, into the transformation of Ireland from a developing country to a Celtic Tiger that wowed the European Union with its dramatic growth in GDP.

    The one-year-per-chapter pace thankfully breaks down. Chapter 7 covers 1962-1999. Then back to one-year-per-chapter until 1975-1983, then 1971-1983, then two-years-per-chapter. The trouble with this form of organisation is it doesn’t hold up. The Troubles never end. The conflict between Protestant Northern Ireland and Catholic Ireland just keeps surfacing, a story that gets told over and over again, bodies of innocents blown to bits and men starving themselves to gain symbolic concessions.

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post We Don’t Know How It Ends appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • A Choice of Evils

    Co-directors Jan Haaken and Samantha Praus’ documentary Necessity chronicles the frontline struggles by Indigenous and other climate activists, including Stop Line 3 Resistance, Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, Fire Drill Fridays, etc., against pipelines and fracking. In almost two hours, this sprawling two-part nonfiction film also zooms in on an evolving, new, novel legal defense that courtroom gladiators are developing to defend eco-warriors in the judicial arena in order to defeat the fossil fuel industry in the courts, and from which this production derives its title.

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post A Choice of Evils appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • We Should Have Listened to Jim Hansen, Instead We’re Heading Toward Global Chaos

    Hansen’s warning Today, June 23, is a significant date in history, when climate scientist James Hansen went up on Capitol Hill to warn us human-caused climate disruption had arrived. That was 1988. Fossil fuel executives, who knew it was true because their own scientists had told them so, instead swung into a full-scale disinformation campaign More

    The post We Should Have Listened to Jim Hansen, Instead We’re Heading Toward Global Chaos appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Mazza.

  • Has the Putin-Prigozhin Confrontation Opened a Door for Negotiation?

    The war between Russia and Ukraine has become more complex in the wake of the past weekend, which found Yevgeny Prigozhin marching his troops toward Moscow, and President Vladimir Putin finding a safe haven for Prigozhin in Belarus. The conventional wisdom among politicians and pundits is that this is an opportunity for Ukraine and its Western allies to increase the pressure on Russia.  Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, for example, favors “better and more weapons and better and more sanctions as fast as possible,” believing that Putin is more likely to “negotiate an end to this war if he is losing on the battlefield.”  The problem, however, is that the war remains unwinnable; neither side has the ability to achieve a decisive victory. More

    The post Has the Putin-Prigozhin Confrontation Opened a Door for Negotiation? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • 24 Hours of Chaos Ends with Belarus-Sponsored Deal to Settle Abortive Wagner Group Insurrection

    The reasons for Prigozhin’s apparent mutiny are not yet clear. But Prigozhin’s statements have explicitly been aimed against Russia’s military leadership and the ministry of defence. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Wagner Group boss claimed that the Wagner Commanders’ Council made the decision to stop “the evil brought by the military leadership” who neglected and destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers. This appears to be a direct reference to his claims during the Bakhmut campaign that his units were being deliberately starved of ammunition. More

    The post 24 Hours of Chaos Ends with Belarus-Sponsored Deal to Settle Abortive Wagner Group Insurrection appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tracey German.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Love of Comrades

    Image by Anastasiia Chepinska.

    After an apparent, all-too-brief détente in the battle over LGBTQ rights, gay and trans rights have again become a flashpoint in the American culture wars. Ron DeSantis, a notorious homophobe, transphobe, and antifeminist, is one of the main 2024 presidential candidates. Although marriage equality and its attendant economic and social benefits for the LGBTQ community seem to be relatively well ensconced and are now reinforced by the Respect for Marriage Act, Orwellian “religious liberty” laws threaten to corrode its effect by undermining equality in public spaces and institutions. Trans rights, drag queens, and LGBTQ books in libraries are all under assault, metaphorically and literally.

    To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.

    If you are logged in but can’t read CP+ articles, check the status of your access here

    In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

    More

    The post The Love of Comrades appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Where is the Outrage?

    “How about we’re buying oil from Venezuela? When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would’ve taken it over; we would have gotten all that oil; it would’ve been right next door. But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it.” –Donald More

    The post Where is the Outrage? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Maria Paez Victor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Two Minute Hate

    I saw a poor fellow making the terrible mistake of suggesting on a Facebook post the other day, (I spend an inordinate amount of time there), that love was the answer. He put it this way; “I try to think of ways too find some love for all those people that I’m supposed to hate. More

    The post The Two Minute Hate appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Scott Owen.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Daniel Ellsberg’s Last Message

    When Daniel Ellsberg died on Friday, the world lost a transcendent whistleblower with a powerful ethos of compassion and resolve.

    Ellsberg’s renown for openly challenging the mentalities of militarism began on June 23, 1971, when he appeared on CBS Evening News ten days after news broke about the Pentagon Papers that he’d provided to journalists. Ellsberg pointedly said that in the 7,000 pages of top-secret documents, “I don’t think there is a line in them that contains an estimate of the likely impact of our policy on the overall casualties among Vietnamese or the refugees to be caused, the effects of defoliation in an ecological sense. There’s neither an estimate nor a calculation of past effects, ever.” More

    The post Daniel Ellsberg’s Last Message appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Partial Freedom: What Juneteenth Looks Like for Prisoners

    Juneteenth has long been a special day in Black communities, but I didn’t learn about it until I went to prison. In the early 2000s, prisoners at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla decided to hold a Juneteenth celebration. Because the Department of Corrections didn’t treat the day as special, Black prisoners used the category of “African American Cultural Event” (which had usually been used to celebrate Black History Month) as a platform to celebrate Juneteenth. The spirit of liberation moved through the incarcerated population, motivating other prison facilities across the state to follow suit.  More

    The post Partial Freedom: What Juneteenth Looks Like for Prisoners appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Antoine Davis – Darrell Jackson.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.