Venezuela

Outside wartime nothing like it as ever been seen before in modern Western history. The lockdowns by democratic states with their draconian constraints on civil liberties and private enterprise fly in the face of an historical progression that’s seen the size and roles of governments shrunk and individual liberty boosted.As…

A group of Republican senators sent a letter in opposition to the appointment of China to a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) panel yesterday. This move is just the latest example of the fecklessness of the United Nations. Last week, Jiang Duan, minister at the Chinese Mission in Geneva…

Mailing Address CounterPunch PO Box 228 Petrolia, CA 95558 Telephone 1(707) 629-3683 Editorial Jeffrey St. Clair, Editor Joshua Frank, Managing Editor Nathaniel St. Clair, Social Media Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012 Read More

Inmates point from inside of La Modelo prison in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, March 22, 2020. Twenty-three inmates were killed and 83 were injured during protests in that prison against unsanitary conditions, lack of access to water, overcrowding, and inadequate measures to protect them from COVID-19. © 2020 AP Photo/Ivan Valencia…

During the past several years, large-scale protests by citizens against their governments have erupted all over the world. While some cases have not been very surprising—like the latest outbreak of massive demonstrations in France against proposed pension reforms—many others caught the world off guard, like those in Algeria, Egypt, and…

La Modelo prison in Bogotá, Colombia. Photo: Daniel Munoz/AFP via Getty Images By many estimates, the United States is still weeks away from seeing the worst of the novel coronavirus. The illness’s rapid spread, along with expanded testing, are producing higher and more comprehensive infection counts, which currently outpace the…

I’m in a small city in Catalonia called Olot, not far from the Pyrenees. I came here because I knew the coronavirus lockdown would be much rougher in Barcelona. Still, people walk around with masks and keep social distances, barely going out. There are three of us in a two-bedroom…

As COVID-19 passes across the globe, Latin America may be hard-hit, with deep humanitarian, economic, and political consequences. In early March, there was hope that the remoteness or the weather in Latin America might help it escape the virus. But within three weeks, the number of known infections jumped exponentially,…

Nonviolent Action in the Time of Coronavirus Popular movements are confronting the challenge of how to practice social distancing while still acting to advance their demands. Jonathan Pinckney and Miranda Rivers Last year saw a wave of nonviolent action movements, mostly relying on tactics of large public protests and sit-ins…

Nurses working at Kaiser Permanente facilities in California face being fired for wearing their own N95 masks while treating coronavirus-infected patients, health care unions are now warning. The story, broken by The Intercept, is sending shockwaves of disbelief across the internet as people are coming to realize some health authorities…