Forty years ago this month in Peshawar in North-West Pakistan, my taxi pulled up outside the gates of the headquarters of exiled Afghan mujahideen leaders Younis Khallis and Abdul Haq. I didn’t know either men but what I did know was that they both belonged to Hizb-i-Islami, one of seven Afghan resistance groups based in […]
The post The Hat of Abdul Haq appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
To use a word whose Catholic meaning I learned in second grade at St. Mary’s Elementary while studying for my First Communion, let me make a small confession. It seems relevant to the response I have to Mary Jo McConahy’s new book Playing God: American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right. That confession is this: […]
The post The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Mammon and the Hippie Pope appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
The CIA’s role in assassination is one of those topics handled gingerly by the press or Congress from time to time and then hastily put aside, with the habitual claim that the CIA may have dreamed of it, thought about it and maybe even dabbled in it, but had never actually gone successfully all the […]
The post How Assassination Became Policy at the CIA appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
The most remarkable thing about the news related to the historic indictment of Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump by a New York state grand jury in Manhattan last Thursday afternoon so far is the unhinged nature of reaction from the Republi-fascist (Rf) Party. From House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Rf-CA) to House Majority Leader […]
The post Lawlessness in the Name of Law and Order appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Late in the afternoon of March 20, 2023, Monica Johnson, veteran employee at Manhattan’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Bureau, was busy playing Candy Crush on her iPhone, when she looked up to see a woman dressed in a dark robe and hijab standing by her desk. The woman told her that she wanted to report […]
The post How Many Monsters are You? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Famously, in response to the Supreme Court’s Worcester v. Georgia decision protecting Native American rights, Andrew Jackson reportedly responded: “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” The quote is apocryphal, but it goes to the heart of one of the most vexing problems in politics. We think of politics as if it’s a question of statutes, laws, and parliamentary procedure, of getting a policy to the finish line à la Schoolhouse Rock’s timeless ditty “I’m Just a Bill”, as if we could breathe easy once bills are signed into law.
The post American Whiplash appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
If we’re going to fight something, we need to know what it is. If a crime is to be prosecuted, we must know what the crime is. At first sight, and in its dictionary definition, ecocide seems to be fairly straightforward: “the destruction of large areas of the natural environment as a consequence of human […]
The post Ecocide and Ecoside appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
The My Lai Massacre, where American GIs murdered 502 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, occurred 55 years ago this week. Around 11:30 on March 16, 1968, Captain Ernest Medina ordered a ceasefire of US troops under his command in the south Vietnamese village of My Lai 4. After nearly four hours of gunfire, there was silence. There […]
The post The Last Child of My Lai appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
When we conceptualize the power that maintains capitalism, violence and ideology readily come to mind. Despite the vast inequality, grotesque exploitation, contempt for life and the environment, chronic instability and the rebellions that repeatedly arise and sometimes take power, capitalism seems firmer in the saddle than ever, spreading its suffocating tentacles to virtually every place on Earth.
The post How Does an Economic System so Hostile to Life Endure for Centuries? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
One of the most distressing disappearances from multiplexes in the last half decade is the studio comedy. I’m far from the first person to point out their absence, but I don’t think streaming and “prestige television” are entirely to blame. Romantic comedies have also vanished, and last year’s Ticket to Paradise is the exception that […]
The post Comedy Vacui appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
In 1971 a second-year grad student at Yale named Alfred McCoy met the poet Allen Ginsberg at a demonstration for Bobby Seale in New Haven, Connecticut. Ginsberg found out that McCoy had studied up on the drug trade and also knew several Southeast Asian languages, as well as the political history of the region. He […]
The post When the CIA Came for Al McCoy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
“The algorithm, he said, was YouTube’s speech and distinct from what users had posted.” – New York Times, Feb. 21, 2023 If the algorithm is speech just as money is speech, then it has the protection of the First Amendment and cannot be obstructed. (Citizens United, 2010) However, Constitutionally both the free speech of money […]
The post The Speech of Robots appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
In the late 1960s, Paul Coates, after a stint in Vietnam, had left the US Army and was back in the States. He settled in Baltimore, found a job, got married, started a family. But life in the army had awakened Paul to Black consciousness, and he found himself hanging out at the local chapter […]
The post “Look, I Got My Life Out of this Cat” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
A largely innocuous, if somewhat tedious, traffic reduction scheme in Oxford, England has in recent months become a bizarre cause celebre of the international far right. Since last May, three areas of East Oxford have had the bulk of their residential streets closed to through traffic to create what are called Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). […]
The post Thatcherism in End Times Drag appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Factories along the lower Columbia River, January, 2023. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair
One of the earliest climate-related documents in the CIA library is a 1958 Joint Services Publications report on Soviet analyses of so-called global “heat balances.” The report mostly consists of hundreds of footnotes referencing the work of Soviet climatologists who seemed way ahead on the issue. Until the 1990s, most of the CIA research entries for “climate change” and “global warming” are simply translations of Soviet science journals.
The post The CIA’s Changing Take on the Climate Emergency appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Still, from Emancipation.
Emancipating Film History
The Civil War is among Hollywood’s favorite, most frequently filmed wars, and since the silent era numerous popular motion pictures have dramatized “the war between the states.” This oeuvre includes notable productions such as: D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation; Oscar-winner Victor Fleming’s 1939 Gone with the Wind, based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller; John Huston’s 1951 adaptation of Stephen Crane’s novel The Red Badge of Courage; 1989’s Glory; as well as Ken Burns’ epochal 9-episode nonfiction TV series The Civil War, which won two Emmy Awards. Now add to this list what is arguably Tinseltown’s best Civil War movie ever: Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation, starring Will Smith and Ben Foster.
The post Emancipation, Hollywood’s Best Civil War Movie Ever appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
“I’m watching these trees fall over in the park because of being baked in the heat,” observed David, my climbing instructor. He has lived in Joshua Tree for some 30 years, just a stone’s throw away from the entrance to its namesake Joshua Tree National Park, where the Colorado and Mojave Deserts meet. As a […]
The post Will California Save the Iconic Joshua Tree? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Image by Markus Krisetya.
Every so often, the World Bank puts out a paper that calls for better social protection or at least a somewhat better deal for working people. The public relations people there evidently believe we have very short memories.
No, dear reader, the World Bank has not changed its function, nor have elephants begun to fly. Without any hint of irony, the World Bank’s latest attempt at selective amnesia is what it calls its “Social Protection and Jobs” strategy, in which it purports to advocate that the world’s national governments “greatly expand effective coverage of social protection programs” and “significantly increase the scale and quality of economic inclusion and labor market programs.” Hilariously, the World Bank titles its 136-page report fleshing out this strategy “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection: Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity for All.”
The post Call it Whitewashing or Greenwashing, World Bank Subterfuge Doesn’t Fool Us appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
In 1965, two twenty-somethings, Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons, activists seasoned by Mississippi Freedom Summer and Arkansas Black sharecropper organizing, met, completely by chance, at the Atlanta office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). So began almost 60 – and counting – years of their lives and work together in what was to become […]
The post Black Power Remakes the World appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Timothy Leary at The Ranch, during a 1967 interview with ABCNews.
What would Timothy Leary have made of today’s counterculture becoming in some ways like the sole preserve of the right? Was there not something of Leary in the ‘QAnon Shaman’ guy with his painted face and horned hat and tattooed chest at the US Capitol riot on January 6 last year? I don’t believe so. Besides, Leary had he still been alive may have been the first off the block to interrupt the shouting match, possibly even with a resurgent call for peace.
The post Did Timothy Leary Save my Life? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Declassified US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents from the 1980s reveal that the Agency expected that Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), future President of South Africa, would die in prison. The CIA hoped that the Ronald Reagan administration (1981-89) would be able to co-opt the African National Congress (ANC), of which Mandela was a leading figure, and […]
The post Mandela’s Death or Other Dramatic Developments… appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
“Black policemen were another matter. We used to say, ‘If you must call a policeman,”–for we hardly ever did–“for God’s sake, try to make sure it’s a White one.” A black policeman could completely demolish you. He knew far more about you than a White policeman could and you were without defenses before this Black […]
The post The Murder of Tyre Nichols and the Death of Police Reform appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
It spread through our living unit in a matter of weeks. We were sick, and most of us knew it was probably COVID. A staff member that worked in the prison’s Correctional Industries Laundry Service had tested positive and been placed on leave. Prisoners knew they were sick, but no one wanted to report the […]
The post The Harms of Solitary Confinement During Covid appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Dear António Guterres, You rightly say, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”. This is evident to most people. What isn’t so evident is that the UN’s foot has been among the heaviest because of its role, for more than six decades now, in the covered-up genocide […]
The post West Papua: What the UN Did and Must Undo appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Carl Schmitt, the Nazi whose thought is still inexplicably in vogue at various Anglo-American political science departments, believed that the fundamental political distinction is the division between “friend” and “enemy.” That this division underlies much of politics, even in societies with the most genteel of political systems, is undeniable. On the Left, we view politics as a power struggle, a conflict between workers and capitalists, a battle between advocates of genuine democracy and adherents of economic and political autocracy. But members of the far right in many Western countries seem to be reviving the notion in a more violent, disturbing way. Trump’s rhetoric about the press, the Left, and other bugbears of his being “enemies of the people” culminated quite recently in the January 6 insurrection. Recent concerns about polarization and the calcification of domestic divisions between friend and foe have motivated a slew of op-eds and books about tribalism in the United States and Western Europe. In societies plagued by civil war or gang violence, the friend-enemy distinction is much more apparent. But it’s in the space between societies where the friend-enemy dichotomy becomes most salient: in fact, it is central to most international relations analyses.
The post The Enemy Paradox appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Image by Ibrahim Boran.
Wishing for central banks to act in the interest of working people rather than the financial industry is about as fruitful as hoping a starving wolf won’t eat the chicken that was just placed next to it. Pigs will fly, the Amazon will freeze over and Wall Street will give all its money away before a central bank in the capitalist core goes against its raison d’être.
The post Central Banks are a Symptom, Capitalism is the Cause appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
A major media story last month, Israel’s deportation of Palestinian attorney Salah Hamouri from East Jerusalem to France – though widely recognized as a war crime – is now old news. Another forgotten news item occurred a year earlier, in 2021, when the Israeli government, offering as evidence only “secret information,” summarily designated six Palestinian NGOs illegal “terrorist organizations,” claiming they were linked financially to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP]. These NGOs – Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International–Palestine, Union of Agricultural Workers Committees, and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees – exist solely to defend the human rights of indigenous Palestinian children, women, prisoners, and farmers. Israel’s calling them terrorist seems tantamount to the United States calling the ACLU dangerous and illegal … which, according to Sahar Francis, could someday happen.
The post On Being Called “Terrorist” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Sometimes when I’m tired and my mind meanders into the weeds, into the scraggly irrelevancies that cling with weak and shallow roots to the flyblown edges of consciousness, I think of Matt Taibbi. We all know Matt: the one-time pseudo-gonzo heir of Hunter Thompson who is now embarked on a predictable, tedious, common-as-muck journey to […]
The post Contra Contrarianism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
Vicky Krieps as “Empress Elizabeth of Austria” in Marie Kreutzer’s “CORSAGE” Courtesy of Film AG. An IFC Films Release.
For some reason, royalty has been much in the news lately. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee was observed during the first half of 2022. Her Majesty’s September death set off a period of mourning. On November 9, the fifth season of the Netflix series about the Windsors, The Crown, dropped. In December, William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales, visited the USA. Not to be outdone, while they were in the “colonies” the Sussexes released the coming attractions for and then the multi-part Netflix series featuring Harry and Meghan. On December 7, an attempted coup plot to install Heinrich XIII Prince of Reuss as the head of state was foiled in Germany.
The post Corsage, a Review appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
What will ignite the fall of the Islamic Republic following the current mass protests by young women? The revolutionary spark for over three months seems to have become a mass wall of no fear. Backed by virtually the rest of the Iranian population from urban centres to rural areas; from oppressed provinces of Iranian Kurdish […]
The post The Future of Iran appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.