Articles

BY MATTHEW HOH Photograph Source: Tiomax80 – CC BY 2.0 At the end of May, just before Pride Month in the US began, Uganda enacted a law allowing for the death penalty for LGTBQ+ people. Uganda, already one of the 66 nations to criminalize LGTBQ+ people, became the 12th nation to set capital punishment for sexual and gender minorities. The US provides weapons and military assistance to 10 of those 12 countries, including Uganda.* Overall, the US provides weapons and military assistance to more than 85% of the nations that treat LGTBQ+ people as criminals. As the White House, State Department and the Pentagon celebrated Pride Month, the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the US’ militarized foreign policy were exposed, a foreign...

BY DAVID YEARSLEY After Beethoven, few have been the composers named Ludwig. Number two on the list was Ludwig Spohr, reasonably big in his day, though only fourteen years younger than his illustrious predecessor. Spohr’s posthumous reputation makes only the tiniest scratch in the earth darkened by Beethoven’s giant shadow. Today’s leading Ludwig is Ludwig Göransson, a Swede now settled on Hollywood’s golden shores. Back in 1984 this latter-day Ludwig’s parents had the charming chutzpah to name him after the crazy-haired, hard-of-hearing symphonist. Undaunted by the anxiety of influence (or subjecting their progeny to same), they unleashed their little Ludwig into a musical life that eventually led him to an Oscar for Best Soundtrack and a thriving career scoring for the biggest...

BY ROBERT HUNZIKER Image by Jametlene Reskp. Nuclear reactors are directly in the line of fire of global warming. In fact, nuclear reactors cannot survive global warming. But that’s only the start of serious issues with the world’s newly found love affair with nuclear energy. This article examines the likelihood of nuclear energy as a fixit for global warming, or is it a victim? The world is turning to nuclear energy as one solution for raging global warming, which has been in the news on a real time basis drying up commercial rivers, depleting major reservoirs and spreading wildfires like there’s no tomorrow. Yet, that’s only a sampling of global warming knockoffs. Significantly, it’s getting worse by the year, and there are some who wonder how much worse before the clima...

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR + About 10 years ago, an irate Sinéad O’Connor rang up the CounterPunch office and threatened to sue us over a piece we’d run. Becky sensibly gave her my number. I was walking the dog when my iPhone buzzed. “This is Sinead.” “Sinead who?” I inquired, playing for time. “Who the fuck do you think, asshole!” “Oh, O’Connor,” I muttered. As if there could be any other. It turns out this was the beginning of a fraught but beautiful relationship. I let her unload on us for about 40 minutes and then said, “Why don’t you write that up for us?” “You want me to write for you?” “Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you, thank you! Nobody’s ever responded that way to one of my calls before,” she said. And she did. Over the next few months we got a few p...

The famed director said that voting for the aging Democrat was “a mistake” Oliver Stone poses for photographers at the 74th international film festival in Cannes, France, July 13, 2021 ©  AP / Vadim Ghirda US President Joe Biden is following a “suicidal” course in Ukraine and may drag the US “stupidly into a confrontation” with Russia, acclaimed director Oliver Stone said during a recent podcast appearance.  Speaking on an episode of British commentator Russell Brand’s ‘Stay Free’ podcast released on Friday, Stone blamed the conflict in Ukraine on the "neoconservative movement who started the war in Iraq," and who still occupy prominent positions in Biden’s government. “Biden is an old Cold Warrior, and he really ...