CounterPunch

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain Ceasefires in the Middle East seem especially susceptible to revision, alteration and contradiction. Missiles still get fired; airstrikes initiated. Destruction to infrastructure, and death, follows. Yet despite the misunderstandings, the sniping and the harrying, these odd understandings are often described by those funny political coves as “holding”.

Lindsey Graham on Meet the Press. (Screen capture from video posted to X.) Lindsey Graham said he would die with Israel and it has come to pass. One of the weirdest characters in US politics, Graham’s career was consistent in only one respect: war was his solution to any diplomatic problem. He had the mentality of a red-scare Cold Warrior in a time when the Cold War had ended.

Do universities need to foster more intellectual diversity among professors? Should there be affirmative action for conservative thinkers in disciplines such as sociology and social work? Asked less often, but just as relevant: Should business schools and economics departments hire a few socialists? This long-running debate intensified in Trump’s second term, as MAGA forces ramped up attacks on any challenge to right-wing populist politics.

Photograph Source: Office of Public Affairs from Washington DC – Public Domain Democratic politicians, as they regularly do, have displayed an inverted double standard regarding the Graham Platner affair and serial sexual abuser Donald Trump. Usually, a political party covers up its own misbehavior even as it accuses its political opponents of similar misdeeds.

Image by Md. Hasanuzzaman Himel. This article is a warning. A global food crisis is likely approaching — driven by the collapse of supply chains feeding the agri-food system, a consequence of the war against Iran and the resulting blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The prospect has gone largely unnoticed by most political and economic actors. Supply crises, as a rule, are resolved through the Law of Supply and Demand.

Donald Trump has made reducing the trade deficit a centerpiece of his economic agenda. As he has put it, the deficit means foreigners are ripping us off. Trump’s whole “Liberation Day” story was about putting an end to the rip-offs. We can debate the extent to which the trade deficit means we are getting ripped off, but even accepting Trump’s claim, he is not doing a very good job by his own metric.

Photograph Source: Arun Sreeranganathan – CC BY 4.0 Marcelo Assis recalled how his family arrived in the United States about 35 years ago, “poor as hell”—yet certain that America offered the path forward that they’d never find in their native Brazil or anywhere else. The following years brought ups and downs, with Marcelo serving as a combat medic in the Army and then falling disillusioned with low-paying nonunion work that held him back instead of helping him move ahead.

Photograph Source: Venezolana de Televisión – Public Domain On 24 June, Venezuela was celebrating two important holidays: the 205th anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo, the battle that sealed the country’s independence, and the feast of St. John the Baptist, declared by UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a celebration with deep spiritual significance, especially for the Afro-descendant communities of Venezuela.

Still from the opening scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. (Fred Gardner was one of the screenwriters.) I’m always encouraged when Democratic Socialist candidates advance at the polls. I never had a negative thought about the party itself, until a friend forwarded this document, which helped me picture a membership meeting (as noted in italics). DSA Guidelines for Respectful Discussion Meetings are more productive — and more fun — when the conversation includes everyone.

An RSF militant and perpetrator of the massacre performs a V sign in front of victims about to be executed. Photo: Edres Kafuti. Wikimedia Commons. Fair use. This is the year 2026. One might have hoped that, after thousands of years of war, humanity could have come up with a better way to resolve conflicts than killing and mass destruction. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There is now more war and bloodshed raging across the world than at almost any point in decades.