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The Pardon of Marc Rich: How Hillary Clinton Served as the “Secret Weapon” for One of the Biggest Tax Cheats in American History
President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton has never addressed her role in the midnight pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. In fact, she’s rarely been asked her opinion on the free pass given to one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, a man who violated embargoes against Iran and South Africa and fled the country rather than face More
Plan Colombia Vindicated: Colombia Rejects Peace
The mood in this improvised Colombian town on the Caribbean coast is somber tonight. The national peace plebiscite was just defeated by a mere 0.43% or 60,000 votes.
The government of Colombia and the FARC insurgents signed peace accords six days ago to much public jubilation. Today the peace accords were put to a public vote. Polls predicted a landslide approval of 60%. More
Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance
What happens to a society when thinking is eviscerated and is disdained in favor of raw emotion? [1] What happens when political discourse functions as a bunker rather than a bridge? What happens when the spheres of morality and spirituality give way to the naked instrumentalism of a savage market rationality? What happens when time becomes a burden for most people and surviving becomes more crucial than trying to lead a life with dignity? What happens when domestic terrorism, disposability, and social death become the new signposts and defining features of a society? What happens to a social order ruled by an “economics of contempt” that blames the poor for their condition and wallows in a culture of shaming?[2] What happens when loneliness and isolation become the preferred modes of sociality? What happens to a polity when it retreats into private silos and is no longer able to connect personal suffering with larger social issues? What happens to thinking when a society is addicted to speed and over-stimulation? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers not just as an ideal but also as a reality, and individual and social agency become weaponized as part of the larger spectacle and matrix of violence?[3] More
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Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch
How Hillary Could Provoke a Nuclear War
Alan Nasser digs into Hillary Clinton’s horrifying nuclear weapons policy, where the use of a new generation of nukes is viewed as a legitimate tactic for conventional warfare. Hillary’s Mother Complex: Ruth Fowler dissects Hillary’s strange brand of feminism. Inside Our Camps: Lee Ballinger recounts the appalling history of the US internment camps for Japanese Americans; Up in Smoke: Josh Schlossberg investigates how the corporate environmental movement quietly promotes biomass energy; Beyond Progressivism: Andy Smolski charts how the progressive movement got coopted by Big Capital. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on melting glaciers; Yvette Carnell on the meaning of Colin Kaepernick; Paul Buhle on Margaret Sanger; Mike Whitney on Janet Yellen and Big Money; Ed Leer on the films of John Carpenter; Chris Floyd on ISIS and the new neocons; Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark on Europe’s Rebel Cities; and Alan Wieder on Studs Terkel on Third parties.
