Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair It’s maddening, isn’t it? To watch all these establishment politicians and media figures scatter to their personal accounts and feign moral outrage over Gaza… now, after nearly two years. As if this genocide just sprang out of...
Counterpunch
A Rational View of Capitalism vs. Socialism in America and History
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair President Donald Trump declared that America will never be socialist. He’s beating up a strawman, since there has never been a fully socialist country. That’s because, throughout history, every country, whether it considers itself...
The Peril of Spectacle, Especially Jeffrey Epstein’s
Photograph Source: Geoff Livingston – CC BY-SA 4.0 We are so hooked, people, on the Jeffrey Epstein spectacle that Donald Trump might win, to become America’s first lifetime president. Thank God he’s old and creaky, but that’s what he’s after. How could Trump win? ...
Election 2026: Here Come the Gerrymanders
Printed in March 1812, this political cartoon was made in reaction to the newly drawn state senate election district of South Essex created by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the Democratic-Republican Party. It’s only mid-2025, but both “major” US political...
Allies of Genocide?
Image by Duncan Shaffer. MoveOn and the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) hosted a spirited rally and march here in Seattle, on July 26, with the theme of fighting back against Trump and greedy billionaires such as Jeff Bezos (the creepy tech mogul who...
Muslim Women Don’t Need Saving
Image by John Crozier. What sparked me to write this article was the persistent and reductive narrative that resurfaced following the recent U.S.–Israel bombing of Iran. Predictably, media coverage and social media posts quickly recycled the familiar trope: that...
How Hot Might It Get? Uncertainty and Certainty in Climate Models
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. I think of climate as a package in 3 basic parts – temperature, water, and wind. Here in the US, this trio is basic to the Forest Service “Hot Dry Windy Index” for measuring likely risk of...
The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair For decades, countless U.S. officials have proclaimed that the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable. Now, the ties that bind are laced with genocide. The two countries function as accomplices while methodical...
Trump Tariffs and Brazilian Coffee: What to Expect After August 1
One of 32 varieties of arabica coffee growing at Paraiba Federal University’s coffee research program in Areia, Paraiba. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer. It has been important to its national economy since the 1700s, and today it is Brazil’s largest...
How “Tariff Man” is Bringing Back the Gilded Age
Getty and Unsplash+. Count on one thing: if Mark Twain, the famed American author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, were alive today, he would certainly have written a novel about Donald Trump. After all, his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, distinctly...
The EPA’s Repeal of Core Greenhouse Gas Rules
Image by Marcin Jozwiak. “Trump’s EPA to repeal core of greenhouse gas rules,” was the Reuters headline this week as Lee Zeldin, chosen by Donald Trump to be administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, announced what Reuters said “will rescind the...
The Sad History of “Changing the Map” of the Middle East
Image Source: מפה מדינית של המזרח התיכון – Public Domain Over the past four decades, there have been at least three tectonic shifts in the geopolitics of the Middle East, often referred to as efforts at “changing the map” of the Middle East. In 1982, Israeli Defense...