You might not believe a 24-year-old could run CounterPunch’s business office, but Alexander Cockburn believed I could, and hired me close to three decades ago to be the Miss Moneypenny… the Janine Melnitz… the Pepper Potts of CounterPunch. Working for Alex was a joy but not without frustrations. I had to convince him of the importance of running a proper business: setting up proper bookkeeping, getting our non-profit documents in order, and building a proper way to manage subscriptions. More
The eminent theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about Moral Man and Immoral Society almost a century ago. But what happens when an immoral man leads the United States? And what happens when our society has computers and algorithms questioning whether machines can be moral? In our politically polarized world, we are used to hearing the Evangelical Right use religious language. So we should take notice when public intellectuals like Fintan O’Toole and Susan Neiman use moral language to describe the Trump era. Even Tom Friedman in the New York Times refers to Trump as “morally warped.” And when questions about AI’s overwhelming humanity become questions about morality itself, traditional secular language seems inadequate to describe the AI revolution. More
With Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the continuing land grab and current killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, we see the shocking support of these atrocities by many feminists, liberals and progressives in the West. The pushback many of us get when we question the inhumane and disproportionate murder of Palestinians is that Hamas started the war and they are using their own civilians as human shields. These objections have now become strawmen and have already started to crumble in the face of reports of human rights violations coming from within Israel, from B’Tselem, from reporting by Haaretz, and more recently shown in the film, Naza. More
The Liberal Party (PL) of the Bolsonaro clan, guided for months before the elections by the US Big tech companies behind Donald Trump’s neocolonial program, offered not a government program but a narrative of restored self-esteem. With this, Flávio Bolsonaro’s deplorable public behaviour can coexist with a redeeming narrative without the voter noting any contradiction. More
This is part two of our series with Palestinian solidarity activists from Malaysia. Dr. Fauziah Hasan and Azra Banu of the Asia Pacific Women’s Coalition for Al Quds and Palestine discuss the importance of consisent, coalitional efforts to support Palestinian women. Dr. Fauziah sailed on the Women’s Boat to Gaza in 2016 and again on the 2025 Freedom Flotilla that was abducted by Israel. Azra participated in a humanitarian land convoy in 2010 that drove from London to Gaza, and went on a second mission to Gaza in 2012. As mothers and grandmothers, they emphasize the passing on of intergenerational activist knowledge and the necessity of nurturing a generation of young people committed to Palestinian Liberation in the Asia-Pacific.
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Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt speaks with Norma Hashim and Dr. Nazari Ismail from the Hashim Sani Center for Palestine Studies at Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in this two-part podcast with solidarity activists from Malaysia. Hashim and Dr. Ismail share reflections on almost two decades of grassroots organizing with BDS Malaysia and Viva Palestina Malaysia. They discuss the recent closure of The Network School, an experimental project in “tech zionism”, and other successful campaigns to divest from Israeli companies. The Malaysian consumer boycott of Starbucks led to the closure of over 45+ locations. Their McDonald’s boycott sparked a viral legal battle, and the struggle continues against complicit corporations like Google, Amazon, Caterpillar, and resource extraction companies that serve the Pentagon, including the Australian rare earth miner Lynas. Alongside their advocacy work, Hashim shares updates from daily relief work to support communities in Gaza, who continue to survive in the unbearable living conditions.
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This week, journalist and author Dave Zirin joins Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank to discuss his new biography of the late, great Howard Zinn. The book, The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, chronicles the inspiring life of one of our greatest radical historians. Dave is embarking on a national tour in support of the book; find out if he’ll be in a city near you.
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