This Week on CounterPunch Radio
DAVID HEARST
The Cold War, Continued: Post-Election Russophobia
Mainstream TV news anchors including MSNBC's Chris Hayes are reporting as fact---with fuming indignation---that Russia (and specifically Vladimir Putin) not only sought to influence the U.S. election (and---gosh!---promote "doubt" about the whole legitimacy of the U.S. electoral system) but to throw the vote to Donald Trump.
The main accusation is that the DNC and Podesta emails leaked through Wikileaks were provided by state-backed Russian hackers (while they did not leak material hacked from the Republicans). I have my doubts on this. Former U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan and torture whistle-blower Craig Murray, a friend of Julian Assange, has stated that the DNC emails were leaked by a DNC insider whose identity he knows. The person, Murray contends, handed the material over to him, in a D.C. park. I have met Murray, admire and am inclined to believe him. (I just heard now that John Bolton, of all people, has also opined this was an inside job.) More
Sorry, Not Sorry: Neither the Media Nor Their Owners are Going to Change
The leftist heretic and popular scourge of religion Christopher Hitchens wrote in his superb Bill Clinton takedown, No One Left to Lie To, that the essence of American politics is “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” Unfortunately, this tactic didn’t work so well for the Clintons in November, as the reviled populists had the last irrational, racist, sexist, brutish and barbaric word on the matter (according to assembled liberal punditry). But the statement still rings true. This is, after all, the job description of corporate media. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald says, the “supreme religion of the U.S. press corps is reverence for power.” Their priesthood is a cabal of anonymous sources; their catechism is war everlasting. And so, the vulgar philistines on the plains, who foolishly prefer peaceful relations, steady work, and free healthcare to profiteering wars abroad, must be endlessly misled. More
That Magic Feeling: the Strange Mystique of Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders had come home. Home to New York. Home to the city that fit his accent. Home to the borough that suited his cranky demeanor, his Jewish heritage, his gritty politics. Bernie Sanders wasn’t Clean Gene McCarthy. Sanders could be petulant, moody, even vindictive. A little bit of Brooklyn was still hardwired into his character. Frankly, Sanders always seemed like an interloper in Vermont. Too prickly, urban and disputatious for that verdant and mountainous sliver of WASPish New England. If more of the Brooklyn Bernie had leaked out during the campaign, things might have ended differently.
On a cool night in early April, Bernie stood on the stage in Prospect Park, facing more than 28,000 adoring fans, the largest gathering of the campaign. As he worked his way through his speech, Sanders hit all of the familiar notes—on the minimum wage, single payer health care, free college tuition, the corrosiveness of Super PACS--but he stood a little taller, his voice sounded a little friskier, he seemed fueled by the sense that he just might win the New York primary. More
Top Stories
Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch
Trump and The Failure of Identity Politics
Yvette Carnell explores the failure of identity politics; Mike Whitney dissects Trump’s economic policy, which looks like the same old trickledown with a few troubling wrinkles; Chris Floyd charts the rise of Trump on the continuum of American politics; Jeffrey St. Clair dissects the Democrats’ abandonment of the working class; Anthony DiMaggio reports on the street protests against Trump and Alena Wolflink examines how Trump’s campaign hit all the right nerves. Plus: Jason Hirthler on whitewashing the crimes of empire; Joshua Frank on climate change and the future of the grizzly; Seth Sandronsky and Dan Berman on the struggle for workplace safety; Ruth Fowler on police violence and gentrification; Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark on the refugee crisis; Robert Hunziker on spiking radiation levels in the Pacific Ocean and much more.