On Friday, April 9th, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union was defeated in its effort to organize Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, AL. The union accuses Amazon of unfairly interfering with the vote and plans to appeal. However disappointing is the Amazon defeat, it signals something more telling.  During the fin de siècle and the early-20th century, large corporations cornered whole segments of America’s economy using predatory pricing, exclusivity deals and other anti-competitive practices to undercut smaller local businesses. And numerous strikes were defeated, often leading striking workers injured, arrested or killed. More

Twenty-two years ago in CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn aptly described the press’s coverage of federal atrocities at Waco, Texas as “one of the great failures of American journalism, one of the most sickening, one of the most predictable and one of the most revealing.” They observed that the “central mission of the Fourth Estate” was to serve as “accomplices in the great and ongoing Cover-up of Everything that Really Matters.” The Waco coverup is once again relevant since one of its prime players, President Joe Biden, has re-ignited the fire. More

Sustainable, local, organic food grown on small farms has a tremendous amount to offer. Unlike chemical-intensive industrial-scale agriculture, it regenerates rural communities; it doesn’t pollute rivers and groundwater or create dead zones; it can save coral reefs; it doesn’t encroach on rainforests; it preserves soil and it can restore the climate. Why do all governments not promote it? More

On Thursday 8 April, Emmanuel Macron announced the closure of the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration, France’s elite school for turning out senior civil servants and politicians. The president’s announcement sounded familiar – he had already pledged to reform the ENA, a school renowned for its conservatism and aversion to change, back in 2019 – but this time it’s final: Macron said that the time had come to abolish an institution that is widely regarded as a symbol of elitism and inequality. More