War between China and the U.S. would spell doom for humanity. That’s because once the Chinese sink those sitting ducks called U.S. aircraft carriers, hotheads in the pentagon will want to bomb Chinese cities. No one will stop them. And then things turn nuclear. To those geniuses who say, well, we’ve basically been fighting Russia […]
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“My favorite things, my favorite things… / Blue jeans, see a red-haired girl / Sweet peanut butter, slow-burning candle / Cup of a tea and a good book and the dance of the reindeer, and also… / Pachinko, yeah / Pachinko / Pachinko / Wah, Sankyo…” This beautiful, probably improvised minor key piano ballad by […]
The post Megamen for Donuts appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
For more than 200 years, peace conferences have not only resolved conflicts but regularly signaled the arrival at stage center of a new world power. In 1815, amid the whirling waltzes in Vienna’s palaces that accompanied negotiations ending the Napoleonic wars, Britain emerged for its century-long reign as the globe’s greatest power. Similarly, the 1885 Berlin Conference that carved up the continent of Africa for colonial rule heralded Germany’s rise as Britain’s first serious rival. The somber deliberations in Versailles’s grand Hall of Mirrors that officially ended World War I in 1919 marked America’s debut on the world stage. Similarly, the 1945 peace conference at San Francisco that established the U.N. (just as World War II was about to end) affirmed the ascent of U.S. global hegemony. More
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alfred W. McCoy.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Right-wing media outlets such as Fox News have long pushed racist narratives to further their goals. And, outlets like the New York Times—the so-called “liberal media”—do too little, too late, to push back; it falls to the ranks of independent media outlets to create and promote counternarratives based on racial justice. This is not a More
The post When Corporate Media Fail, Independent Media Rise Up appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.
There could not be more dissimilarities between any two people than those between former president Donald Trump and Airman First Class Jack Teixeira. Simple demographics would record the differences in wealth, education, experience, background, and family. Trump is a millionaire many times over thanks to an inheritance from his wealthy dad; he lives in golden residences in New York, New Jersey, and Florida. Teixeira comes from a very modest background; he lives with his parents in a small town near Cape Cod. More
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Sure, it’s an outrage that Trump would have lied that he had stolen top-secret government files on such things as vulnerability of the US nuclear program, but whether or not that slimy eel manages to slither out of this latest criminal case, it should make Americans of whatever political stripe start demanding an end to all the government secrecy. No one can with a straight face call the US a democracy when all the important information about what this country’s national government is doing is being hidden away under classified, secret, top-secret and other even more restrictive stamps that make it impossible for us to see them, sometimes as in my case, even for decades or generations. More
The post Why Were Trump’s stolen Documents a Secret from the American People in the First Place? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dave Lindorff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Last month, Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley Williams (aka Marina Hyde) wrote a silly puff piece for the Guardian, making what George Seldes, journalist, once called “the most stupid boast in the history of present-day journalism”, when she chirpily announced that, “My absolute favourite thing about writing for the Guardian is not being told what to write”. Maybe she never heard about, or failed to understand, or ignored Chomsky’s 1996 warning to British journalist Andrew Marr: “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” She seems not to get it: she and nearly all her mainstream colleagues, as imbibers and profiteers of the do-not-write or only-write media culture, don’t need to be told what to write or not to write. And there’s so much they keep mum about, there’s plenty of space for them to write as much bollocks as they want. More
The post When “Quaint Dalliance Among Friends” Goes Radical appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Julie Wark.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Image by Jon Tyson.
It can happen here. “Here” being any country in which capitalism rules. When does a bourgeois formal democracy tip over into fascism? That is a question that needs an answer in many places, certainly not excepting the United States, which has already experienced a self-coup attempt with unmistakable fascist overtones.
We’re referencing Donald Trump’s attempt at a self-coup, to use the Latin American phrase, in January 2021. Many people, even on the Left, laugh at that day’s events, pointing out that the would-be putsch had no chance of success. It did have no chance of success. That does not mean it should be cavalierly dismissed; on the contrary, it should be taken with utmost seriousness. Hitler’s beer hall putsch of 1923 had no chance of success, either, and his violent movement remained on the lunatic fringe for several more years. But we know how German history would turn out.
The post When Does a Formal Democracy Degenerate into Fascism? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Pete Dolack.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Image by Helki Frantzen.
At a decidedly leisurely pace, director Irene Lusztig painstakingly paints a portrait of an outpost of Americana in eastern Washington State, Richland where virtually all of the townsfolk, except for homemakers, worked since the 1940s at neighboring Hanford. By most economic indicators, those employed by Hanford’s industrial plant earned a decent if not opulent standard of living. The workers and their families enjoyed prosperity and a river in a lovely rural Northwestern setting, where these members of the proletariat could afford to buy consumer products, take their families on vacations and send their children to good universities.
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On October 9, 1983, I was at the old Weir Cook airport in Indianapolis awaiting the arrival of David Brower, the great environmentalist. Brower emerged from the plane, his face aglow with impish triumph. We hustled down the terminal to the airport bar where he imparted the momentous news that his nemesis James G for […]
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Anyone who’s paid attention knows that Wisconsin is a tightly gerrymandered state. The geopolitical scrabble of electoral districts enables the Republican Party to hold large majorities in both the Assembly and the Senate. Those majorities come from districts far more rural than urban. They’re also rather working class in cultural disposition. There is a racial More
The post Abandonment and the Gerrymandering of Resentment appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Gilk.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and confusions. One of the greatest of lies and confusions, which I hope to help dispel in this article, is the common delimitation of the very concepts “left” and “right”: it is claimed that to be on the right is to value freedom above all—this More
The post Love of Freedom Defines the Political Left, Not the Right appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Chris Wright.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Snowden did heroic service in awakening Americans to Washington ravishing their privacy. Snowden’s “reward” is to be banished in Russia without a snowball’s chance in hell of a fair trial if he returns to America. But as he courageously declared, “I would rather be without a state than without a voice.” He explained why he leaked classified information: “I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” More
The post Ten Years Later, Snowden’s Heroism Shines Ever Brighter appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by James Bovard.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Australian concepts of sovereignty have always been qualified. First came the British settlers and invaders in 1788. They are pregnant with the sovereignty of the British Crown, bringing convicts, the sadistic screws, and forced labour to a garrison of penal experiments and brutality. The native populations are treated as nothing more than spares, opportunistic chances, More
The post Diluted Sovereignty: a Very Australian Example 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.
I first saw Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds at a movie theater in Lima, Peru. My dad and I had been mountaineering in the country for two weeks, and, if memory serves, we were waiting for our flight home when we decided to catch the adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel. My most recent viewing More
The post War of the Worlds as Species Reversal appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jon Hochschartner.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Arun Kundnani. Photo: Freya Billington.
Arun Kundnani is an author, professor, and activist who began his new book
If you read about broken-windows policing, it’s pretty clear that neoliberals’ main concern is precisely to make people, who don’t have a wage, pay for their enjoyment of our streets. People who earn wages are disciplined by their need to compete; someone else can always replace you on the job, right? But if you’re unwaged and get a welfare check, irrespective of what you do in life, you’re breaking the neoliberal rules. The fear is that you can go down a street and have the fun of breaking a window cost-free, no price mechanism to restrain your behavior. So the police need to make that low-Level crime cost.
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Republican leadership time and time again has proven itself to be people who care about nothing more than power. They don’t have principles. They don’t have morals. All they want to do is hold onto power by any means necessary. And living in a red state, I see many people who claim to love America, claim to be Christians, but have no problem aligning themselves with a man who is clearly antithetical to everything they say they believe.
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Schematic for the Project Gasbuggy nuclear test. Image: Department of Energy.
In all there were three big nuclear explosions in the Colorado Basin: Project Gas Buggy, Project Rio Blanco and Project Rulison. Rulison was the last major episode in the Atoms for Peace program. The peace in question wasn’t a cooling of the tensions between the US and the Soviet Union, but between two even more entrenched rivals: the nuclear industry and the oil companies, then locked in fierce combat over which sector would control America’s energy future. The AEC wanted to prove that a few well-placed nuclear bombs could strategically rearrange the geology of the Earth’s the crust in such a way as to release deeply buried and once untappable reservoirs of oil and gas.
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Can little Ukraine teach big America how to deal with our oligarch problem? Viktor Medvedchuk was the Rupert Murdoch of Ukraine. He ran a rightwing television network and owned TV stations across the country, while simultaneously being one of the richest men in that nation. He promoted hate and division, tax cuts for the rich More
The post Can Little Ukraine Teach Big America How to Deal with Our Oligarch Problem? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thom Hartmann.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
On May 3, 2023, a 13-year-old boy entered his school in central Belgrade with a gun and opened fire. He is currently in a psychiatric clinic, and his father is in custody, accused of training the teenager to handle weapons and failing to adequately secure the pistol. Only a day later, a young man of 20 More
The post The Serbian Movement Against Violence appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mira Oklobdzija.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
I know this sounds gay, but I’m in love with being Queer, and I’m kind of gross about it. I celebrate my flamboyant tribal freakiness in everything from the fluorescent pink color of my hair to the words I hurl into the shocked faces of basic bitches like glimmering confetti. I didn’t choose to be More
The post The Need for a Queer Power Movement appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nicky Reid.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
State Farm Insurance Company announced it would no longer take on new insurance clients in California due to the rising cost of fire-related losses. The company cited “rapidly growing” catastrophe risks like wildfires, “historic increases” in construction costs, and a challenging reinsurance market for its decision. The company says that it will continue to insure More
The post Wildfire and California Home Insurance Challenges appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Wuerthner.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
It’s odd agreeing with Terence Corcoran, Robert Friedland, Barrick Gold’s CEO and other leading capitalists. But they are the main force checking the out-of-control intelligence agency/military industrial complex/US Empire faction of Canada’s ruling class promoting conflict with China. Canadian foreign policy is broadly driven by two main factors: support for empire (historically British and today US) and More
The post Profit Seeking Capitalists Hold Back US Empire China Hawks appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Yves Engler.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
It’s odd agreeing with Terence Corcoran, Robert Friedland, Barrick Gold’s CEO and other leading capitalists. But they are the main force checking the out-of-control intelligence agency/military industrial complex/US Empire faction of Canada’s ruling class promoting conflict with China. Canadian foreign policy is broadly driven by two main factors: support for empire (historically British and today US) and More
The post Profit Seeking Capitalists Hold Back US Empire China Hawks appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Yves Engler.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
You could say the blues have followed me wherever I’ve gone. My mom came from a family of 18, picking cotton and peanuts in Georgia. My dad, who played the blues, couldn’t read. He learned numbers selling produce. I was born in Massachusetts, where my mom worked in the factories and raised me alone after More
The post Prayer Helped Me Survive Poverty, But I Needed Government Support, Too appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Trish Brown.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
You could say the blues have followed me wherever I’ve gone. My mom came from a family of 18, picking cotton and peanuts in Georgia. My dad, who played the blues, couldn’t read. He learned numbers selling produce. I was born in Massachusetts, where my mom worked in the factories and raised me alone after More
The post Prayer Helped Me Survive Poverty, But I Needed Government Support, Too appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Trish Brown.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When was the last time a foreign army invaded the United States? When was the last time our “national security’ was really at stake? Was it Mexico in 1846? Spain in 1898? Even Germany in 1940 could not cross 30 miles of English Channel. By what means could it cross the Atlantic Ocean to fall upon Boston? I was taught as a schoolchild that the United States had gone to war against Hitler and Japan for the sake of freedom and democracy and in the case of Germany to save the Jews. But these were falsehoods as were the fabrications that brought us the Korean War, Vietnam and the so-called war on terror that really provided pretext for war in Iraq and Afghanistan. More
The post A Veteran for Peace appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Atwood.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
[The following is excerpted and adapted from David Barsamian’s recent interview with Norman Solomon at AlternativeRadio.org.] David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He made an opening statement to the Tribunal on November 21, 1945, because there was some concern at the time that it would be an More
The post Aggression Made Easy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Barsamian – Norman Solomon.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A recent book detailing the seven most poisonous fabrications that make antisemitism possible starts by asking: “Why have the Jews been so despised and so brutalized throughout history?” Another book with potential answers is Why the Germans? Why the Jews?, which follows up on reasons such as envy, race hatred, and the prehistory of the More
The post The 7 Poisonous Fabrications of Antisemitism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Klikauer – Danny Antonelli.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.