We Only Ask Once a Year!
It’s hard to believe this is CounterPunch’s 20 year. It’s even harder to comprehend celebrating this anniversary without our guiding spirit Alexander Cockburn. The last year has been an extreme challenge for all of us CounterPunchers. But we’ve put our noses to the grindstone and tried very hard to live up to Alexander’s lofty standards to produce every day a style of radical journalism that is smart, unconventional and enlivened with wit and humor.
Many of you have told us you’re proud of the work we’ve done keeping CounterPunch going and developing the magazine format that was one of Alex’s last wishes. Now it’s the time of year when we need to implore you for your financial support. We only interrupt you with one fund appeal a 
year. And you can be assured that when we ask you for your financial support, we really mean it.
We’ve been telling you for a week that either we meet our fundraising goal of $100,000 over the next month or we’ll be forced to drastically curtail the operation of our website. Many, but not nearly enough of you have rallied with donations. With three more weeks of our fundraiser to go, we’re still far from our make-or-break target.
We’ve been asking some of our readers and writers for our website to say why they value CounterPunch.
Here’s what NOAM CHOMSKY wrote us:
“It is, regrettably, no exaggeration to say that we are living in an era of irrationality, deception, confusion, anger, and unfocused fear — an ominous combination, with few precedents. There has never been a time when it was so important to have a voice of sanity, insight, understanding of what is happening in the world. CounterPunch has performed that essential service with unusual success. It is a matter of paramount importance to ensure that it will continue to do so, with even greater resources than before.”
And RALPH NADER:
“A roaring colosseum of commentary, columnists and tell-it-like-it-was,-is,-and-should be original reportage, complete with a bookstore whose readable volumes tear away the lies, evasions, cover-ups and myths of a censored world. Taste, digest and deepen your mind from this fresh cornucopia called CounterPunch.”
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Unlike many other outfits, we don’t hit you up for money every month … or even every quarter. But when we ask, we mean it. So this month we humbly ask for your support. We offer in return our independence, our unique position and our editorial choices.
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How Human Rights Watch Covers for Companies in Colombia
On the CounterPunch masthead are these words proudly written, “Tells the Facts, Names the Names.” It’s because CounterPunch lives up to these words that I happily write for it and proudly donate to it.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), on the other hand, fails to name the names in its recent report on Colombia entitled, “The Risk of Returning Home, Violence and Threats against Displaced People Reclaiming Land in Colombia.” [1] And, this is much to HRW’s discredit.
Before diving into the report and its grave shortcomings, some general comments about HRW are in order. For years, I have been concerned about what appears to be HRW’s penchant for helping lay the groundwork for U.S. and NATO strikes against claimed enemies of the West. Most recently, HRW’s Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, has been fulminating on his Twitter account against anyone, including the EU, who refuses to acknowledge what has yet to be proven as fact – that the Syrian government was allegedly responsible for the chemical attack of August 21, 2013.
This is an obvious attempt by Roth and HRW, proponents of the so-called “right to protect” doctrine, to gin up support for an attack on Syria in the ostensible name of human rights. Of course, given that HRW has a former Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, on its Board of Directors [2], this pursuit should come as little surprise. Meanwhile, Roth is also promoting what he calls a “New alliance formed to secure fair #Afghanistan elections, protect women’s rights & civil society, improve governance httrib.al/Y6L9oty.” If you click on the link, you’ll see an “alliance” headed by such rogues as Stephen Hadly, Former National Security Advisor to George W. Bush; Michele Flournoy, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Obama Administration; and, of course, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis. That is, the alliance that Roth believes will secure human and women’s rights in Afghanistan is made up of the very individuals who have undermined these rights for years.
In its report on Colombia, HRW betrays not its pro-NATO proclivities, but rather, its pro-corporate ones. In this report, HRW does do a good job of detailing the grisly violence — including threats, assaults, rapes and murders — which continues to keep Colombia in the number one spot in the world for internally displaced peoples (IDPs) at nearly 5 million. And, as HRW relates, it does so despite a recent law which was passed to allow these peoples, disproportionately Afro-Colombian and indigenous, to return to their farms and ancestral lands which was forcibly taken from them.
However, while HRW, throughout a 184-page report, gives details and names of both the armed perpetrators as well as the victims of the violent attempt...
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