Counterpunch, June 16, 2017 When the bitter Bernie Sanders fan James T. Hodgkinson shot up the Republican congressional baseball team on a practice diamond in fashionable Alexandria, Virginia this last Wednesday, five great American pastimes – baseball, bad politics, deadly gun violence, the sensationalist news cycle, and the police state – came together with great [...]
Truthdig, June 23, 2017 Why, a correspondent recently asked me, is there so much animosity between the United States and Iran? On Iran’s side, it goes back to 1953, when the U.S. engineered a coup against the secular and democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadegh. After the coup, there followed a quarter-century of dictatorial [...]
Counterpunch, June 13, 2017 Summer’s here and the time is right for sacrilege in the streets. Here are twelve blasphemous thoughts for the current Russo-phobic season, likely to be a real carbon- and (see below) capital-cooked scorcher. Wouldn’t That Have Been Russia’s Job? Forget for now the question of whether the Kremlin intervened to any [...]
Truthdig, June 10, 2017 I am always darkly amused when I hear one of my fellow Americans call for a return from our current “deep state” plutocracy and empire to the supposedly benevolent and democratic rules and values of the nation’s sacred founders and Constitution. Democracy was the last thing the nation’s founders wanted to see [...]
paul.street.org June 9, 2017 by Paul Street Summer’s here and the time is right for sacrilege in the streets. Here are eleven blasphemous thoughts for the current Russo-phobic season, likely to be a real carbon-cooked scorcher. Wouldn’t That Have Been Russia’s Job? Forget for now the question of whether the Kremlin intervened to any significant degree [...]
Counterpunch, June 2, 2017 A “Hollow” Man Who Was “Unwilling to Fight the Good Fight” What on Earth motivated the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and law professor David J. Garrow to write an incredibly detailed 1078-page (1460 pages with endnotes and index included) biography of Barack Obama from conception through election to the White House? Not [...]
Counterpunch, May 24, 2017 Last year, Daniel Denvir insightfully described Hilary Clinton’s political strategy as “peak neoliberalism, where a distorted version of identity politics is used to defend an oligarchy and a national security state, celebrating diversity in the management of exploitation and warfare” (emphasis added). This “peak” neoliberal identity politics (NIP) is a great weapon on the hands [...]
Counterpunch. May 26, 2017 Liberal and other partisan Democrats have spent no small effort trying to evade adult responsibility for Donald Trump’s presence in the White House and Republicans’ control of all three branches of the federal government along with most of the nation’s state governments – this in a nation that loathes the Republican [...]
Counterpunch, May 19, 2017 United States-of-Americans are routinely told by politicians and corporate media pundits and talking heads that Russia is their enemy – an “adversary state.” The assertion has been normalized. It passes without challenge or justification. Forget for now the question of whether and how “our adversary Russia” intervened significantly on Donald Trump’s [...]
Counterpunch, May 12, 2017 It actually doesn’t take a lot of courage to aid those who are already powerful, already comfortable, already influential. — Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech for the Kennedy Library Foundation’s “Profiles in Courage” Award, May 7, 2017 What could be more absurd than Drone War King Barack Obama getting an award for [...]