From www.counterpunch.org

  • Arizona’s 1864 Abortion Law was Made in a Women’s Rights Desert

    Dora Juhl, a 15-year-old teenager, walked into Dr. Rosa Goodrich Boido’s obstetrical practice in Phoenix in January 1918. Juhl wanted to end her pregnancy. But abortion was illegal in Arizona. Boido, the city’s sole female physician, asked Juhl for US$100 – about $2,000 today – to perform the abortion. Juhl said she could pay $27 More

  • “Have You No Sense of Decency?” McCarthyism Returns to Campus

    The recent Congressional hearings leading to a bloodbath of university presidents brings back memories from my teen-age years in the 1950s when everyone’s eyes were glued to the TV broadcast of the McCarthy hearings. And the student revolts incited by vicious college presidents trying to stifle academic freedom when it opposes foreign unjust wars awakens memories of the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the campus clampdowns confronting police violence. I was the junior member of the...

  • Campus Protests and the Corporate University

    The murder of the four students who protested the Vietnam War at Kent State University on May 1, 1970, was a tragedy. The suppression of student protests on campuses across the United States in the spring of 2024 is a farce. The latter points to how little college administrators and politicians have learned when it comes to students' speech, thinking that repression is the solution for dissent and disagreement. More

  • Twain’s Anti-Imperialism and the Boxer Uprising

    In school, many received a boring, whitewashed version of Mark Twain—a humorist of bottomless wit certainly, and comfortably critical of American slavery and racism, but without a more comprehensive anti-authoritarian worldview. Though the ideological underpinnings of his anti-imperialism have been debated, Twain clearly understood a relationship between monopoly capitalism and imperialism.[8] The anti-imperialism that was so important a part of his life and character has been blotted out...

  • Eco-Collapse Hasn’t Happened Yet, But You Can See It Coming

    Something must be up. Otherwise, why would scientists keep sending us those scary warnings? There has been a steady stream of them in the past few years, including “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” (signed by 15,000 of them), “Scientists’ Warning Against the Society of Waste,” “Scientists’ Warning of an Imperiled Ocean,” “Scientists’ Warning on Technology,” “Scientists’ More

  • Some People Have All the Luck

    How many people do you know who work really hard? Or have a strikingly good sense of what’s becoming popular? Or have a talent for getting things done? You probably know people — maybe even bunches of people — in all these categories. Our world is teeming with hardworking, perceptive, and talented people. Now let’s More

  • Israel’s Anti-UNRWA Campaign Falls Flat

    The Israeli authorities, in their campaign of remorseless killing, doctoring and adjusting the numbers of the Palestinian populace for whatever future awaits, have been found wanting on accusations that Hamas terrorists packed, stacked and filled UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). Not that this, in of More

  • Reliably “Blue” Minnesota Could Be Up for Grabs in November

    Minnesota has long been considered a reliably “Blue” voting state. Even when GOP presidential candidates Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan managed to win massive electoral college landslides – in 1972 and 1984, respectively – the Wolverine State was the one place that remained stubbornly in Democratic hands. And no wonder. Minnesota enjoys a long tradition of grassroots More

  • Let's Rethink the War in Ukraine

    Now that the Ukrainian military aid bill has been passed we have an opportunity to assess the developing conflict and offer suggestions. Here we will argue for more diplomacy and less war. None of this essay should be construed as support for Russian behavior – which has been abysmal. And at the end, there will More

  • A Sombre Mood in South Africa Thirty Years After Apartheid

    Ten years ago the black middle classes, of which I am part, were still in the mood to celebrate Freedom Day. For many of us our lives are fundamentally different to those of our parents and we enjoy opportunities and lifestyles of which they could only dream. But today even the black middle classes are disillusioned. The collapse of public services and infrastructure means that education, health care, security, electricity and now even water are increasingly privately sourced by those with the...

  • India’s Billionaire Wealth is on Display as Nation Votes

    Indian corporate interests are counting on incumbent Modi winning another five years in office, “hoping for further easing of stifling investment restraints,” as per the Financial Times. This dismantling of regulations, which began a few decades before the BJP gained power, ushered in an erosion of India’s socialist infrastructure. Economists Subhashree Banerjee and Yash Tayal explained in the Deccan Herald, that India’s 1991 reforms ended up “liberalizing the Indian economy to an unprecedented...

  • Between Big Money and A Black Socialist

      In late October, 2018, East Bay DSA members and other progressives organized a pre-election rally at a Berkeley High School auditorium. A wildly-cheering crowd of several thousand came to hear Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Welcoming everyone to the event was 34-year old Jesse Arreguin, who was backed by Sanders when he More