I've long been a critic of useless, merely performative "activism." Likewise, I am always astonished at the intellectual and theoretical poverty of people who have the enormous privilege to be able to have paying careers that deal with left-wing causes. All that time, all those years, and while they've been there collecting their paycheques, practically nothing is done and, definitely, less than nothing is achieved. Mewling leftists request information from others about "victories" because they are so few and far between and often so small that you can miss them if you blink.
I probably read CounterPunch in a happy mood until they got it into their heads to repeatedly trash Caitlin Johnstone when she first started to become popular. Writer after writer twisted her words about working with the anti-war, right-wing isolationists TO STOP WARS into her being some sort of disguised fascist and apologist for rapists. It was clear to anyone who didn't have their head up inside their anus that she was only talking about uniting on a single, hugely-important, issue, and not endorsing anything else that these people said.
After that, I always read CounterPunch with a degree of suspicion. Also, now that I'm thinking about it, I also remember being unpleasantly surprised that CounterPunch's former head honcho, Alexander Cockburn, was a global warming denier. He said the whole thing was a hoax, cooked-up by liberal environmentalist groups to raise funds on.
Current editor Jeffrey St Clair likes to sneer at other leftists for their cowardice and failure, but on Cockburn's idiocy he held his tongue until Cockburn died, whereupon their website acknowledged the reality of global warming with no mention of their previous delusional stupidity. Not exactly a profile in courage.
St Clair has been at it for decades. And not only has he not achieved anything greater than a reader-supported website, it's not even a particularly useful website. I mean, I guess it's healthy to have a bit of a back-and-forth debate on some topics. But unless you're going to advertise yourself as one of those right-wing vs left-wing shows, some sort of editorial consistency is required.
I mean, it seems to me pretty fucking foundational to decide whether the Russia-Ukraine war was the result of reckless NATO imperialism or whether it was the mad-man Putin's illegal, unprovoked invasion meant to be the start of the re-creation of the Czarist-Soviet Empire. A news outlet that comes down on both sides of that issue cannot be a source of serious analysis.
I write today because of three recent posts. This morning they ran a piece criticizing a flurry of anti-Sandinista articles: "A Quartet of Nicaragua Critics Sing From Washington's Songbook"
Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda. Jaden Hong tells “Gen Z” in The Teen Magazine that Nicaragua’s democracy is fading. Jared O. Bell, who lost his USAID job in Managua when Trump shuttered the agency, complains in Peace Voice about the country’s “stolen democracy.” Barb Arland-Fye, in The Catholic Messenger, writes glowingly about a key organizer of the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. Novelist Gioconda Belli is given a guest essay in the New York Times to lament her “country’s dictator.”
...
The article by Bell, a former USAID worker, is perhaps unintentionally the most revealing. Prior to the 2018 coup attempt, USAID spent millions of dollars creating Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. After the coup attempt failed, the Sandinista government justifiably closed NGOs and media outlets funded by USAID or its auxiliary body, the National Endowment for Democracy. They did so based on legislation patterned after the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nevertheless this funding continues – going to anti-Sandinista outfits in Costa Rica and in the US itself.
USAID had maintained a Nicaraguan presence by having staffers like Bell in the US embassy in Managua. Their role, as his article makes clear, was not to assist the government in fighting poverty but to engage with “exiled civil society leaders and independent [sic] journalists” opposed to the revolution. The ”independence” of US government-funded journalists goes unquestioned.
Meanwhile, the USAID, while formally independent, now operates under the direction of the State Department. But its clandestine work assuredly continues.
The authors of the piece, Roger D. Harris and John Perry, appear not know that Bell's article didn't only appear in Peace Voice. It was also featured on CounterPunch's website on August 6th!
As you read the title, anyone with a sharp eye for spelling or a love of language is probably scratching their head and asking, “What the devil is ‘Orteganization’?” No need to Google it or dust off your old Webster’s, if you still have one. It’s a term I coined to describe the creeping autocratic tint the United States seems to be adopting, one day, one law, one norm at a time, echoing the playbook of Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega.
Once seen as a revolutionary hero, Daniel Ortega has turned Nicaragua into one of the most autocratic regimes in the Americas, rivaled only by Cuba and Venezuela. After helping oust the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, he served briefly as president in the 1980s, then returned to power in 2007. Since then, he has “won” sham elections, named his wife Rosario Murillo vice president in 2016, and by 2025, co-president. Constitutional changes removed term limits and gutted democratic checks, turning a revolution against tyranny into a dynasty of repression and fear.
The true face of the Ortega regime was laid bare in 2018, when student-led protests over social security reforms were met with brutal, deadly repression. More than 300 people were killed, and hundreds more were jailed, tortured, or driven into exile. Human rights organizations documented a systematic campaign to crush dissent, especially among the young. The message was chillingly clear: challenge the regime, and the state will make you disappear.
When I read this clap-trap (that I knew was garbage from previous article on CounterPunch as well as from analysis from The Grayzone) I was so shocked that I sent the link to a friend of mine with a big WTF???? added to the message.
One really has to ask if Jeffrey St Clair has gone insane or (more likely) if he's just so lazy and entitled that he puts up anything just to fill up space. Perhaps one day soon we'll click on CounterPunch and find articles extolling the paradise the Israelis have made of the former Gaza Strip now that the antisemites of Hamas have been exterminated.
Added to the insanity of running an anti-Sandinista diatribe by a former USAID employee, St Clair then descends into brazen sexism.
In this time of genocide, I have been sickened by idiotic media about the "controversy" of American Eagle jeans having advertisements featuring Sydney Sweeny wearing their product and saying that she has "good jeans." Because Sweeny is blond (She's not. She joked about it.) and has blue eyes, that American Eagle is promoting fascist white supremacy. "Jeans" = "genes" = "genetic" = "eugenics" = "fascism."
For all I know maybe American Eagle is trying to appeal to white supremacists. But to make that case you have to do more than just mention that they've hired a white model and they're using an expression that has long been said about good-looking people (of any ethnic type) and, furthermore, is just a simple joke based on "jeans" rhyming with "genes." Because they're selling jeans.
The only reason that I'm bothering to type about this nonsensical "controversy" is because St Clair, discusses it, posting this image:
And then commenting:
+ I’m probably missing something (though she’s left very little to the imagination), but I just don’t find the pin-up for Teutonic purity (though I’ll wager her DNA profile wouldn’t end up that “pure”) Sydney Sweeney that “hot”–not Claudia Cardinale, Anna Karina, Pam Grier, Isabelle Adjani, Angela Davis, Julie Christie, Gong Li, Juliet Binoche, Chaka Khan, Francesca Albanese, or Béyoncé “hot.” Though I’m sure Fellini (despite her limited skills in the acting profession) would have made rich sport with her assets, she strikes me as someone who teenage boys and septuagenarians still stagnating in the oral stage of development would find “hot.”
Really Jeffrey? Who the fuck cares? Perhaps you could give Ms. Sweeny equal time and have her write about whether she thinks you're hot, while mentioning a bunch of other men she finds more attractive. Nobody gives a fuck about some middle-aged guy's appraisal of a young woman's looks.
Jeffrey St Clair has had a lifetime to put together an analysis and a strategy and a set of tactics for advancing the cause of the Left. But instead, all he's done is host a website that mostly features other people's reports of how bad things are and how they're getting worse.
In one recent article he narcissistically jabbered about working 17-hour days. Doing what??
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