As you might expect, the very secular “Angry Arab, As’ad AbuKhahlil, has some pertitent observations on the Charlie Hebdo attack. You should read the whole piece, but here are some excerpts from his “Notes on the shooting in Paris“: I feel strongly about the right to offend and to mock as an artist (and as a human being).  That right should be absolute. .. Muslims do need to lighten up, and should feel secure enough to stomach mockery and satire against their religion. And they should not allow their enemies (even the bigots among them) to provoke them so easily….

Looking for something else tonight, I ran across this piece from six years ago. Thought it was worth a reprise. As I put it then: Here are some lines first set down in the typescript of a 14-page songbook, “Alonzo Zilch’s Own Collection of Original Songs and Ballads,” written by a 23-year-old high school dropout named Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in 1935. With only the slightest revision in the presidential moniker, it could stand as a viable and vibrant political program for our day. If I was President RooseveltI’d make the groceries free —I’d give away new Stetson hatsAnd let the

Below is my column from the December issue of CounterPunch Magazine. Although we live in an age of outrages that keep the mind in a state of continual embogglement, it was still something of a shock to see the brazen hypocrisy displayed by the Lords of the West recently when they “confronted” Vladimir Putin at the five-star freakshow known as the G20. As the breathless headlines in the entirely free and not-at-all government-influenced Western media related, the paragons of the “Anglosphere” lined up to deliver some stark home truths to the Russian honcho about his wanton “interference” in the sovereign

Here’s one for anyone away from one home or another, for one reason or another, in the season of merriment and memory….

Following up from the previous post, we see the woman-bashing beat goes on. A Missouri pol has introduced a bill that would require women to get the written approval of a man in order to obtain an abortion; that is, the signature of the one what knocked her up. Rick Brattin, statesman from Kansas City, says the only exception to his man-mandating abortion restriction is in the case of “legitimate rape.” But as Mother Jones reports, Brattin is quick to assure us that he doesn’t mean “legitimate rape” in the same way that his fellow Missouri statesman Todd Akin employed

Salon.com relays yet another horror story in the ongoing effort to criminalize American women for being …. women. From Salon: Tamara Loertscher had a feeling she was pregnant, so she went to see a doctor last summer. She didn’t have health insurance, but sought care anyway. It turns out that her suspicions were right, a pregnancy test revealed she was 14 weeks along. After a urine test, Loertscher said she disclosed to her doctor that, because of a thyroid condition and depression, she had been self-medicating with marijuana and methamphetamine, but had stopped when she suspected she was pregnant. It

In a time of national shame, in an age soaked in pervasive evil, a search, a plea to find a way to stay human …

One of the “revelations” of the Senate report on CIA torture has been the role played by two psychologists in devising the regimen of torture used by the Agency. [A quick but necessary digression: please note that this torture regimen has been lauded as “effective” and “life-saving” by the Obama Administration — even after the release of the report; indeed, the Administration says that the fruits of these crimes still “inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.” Just bear that in mind as you read the reams of justified denunciations of the Bush Administration for the commission of these particular

A truncated version of the Senate investigation into the CIA’s Terror War torture regime has finally been released. Even in its limited form, it details an operation of vile depravity, one which would plunge a civilized nation into a profound crisis of conscience and spark a deep and anguished debate on how best to transform a system of government — and a national ethos — that could lead to such putrid crimes. It would also occasion a wide-ranging effort to subject the originators, perpetrators and accomplices of the torture program to the full measure of legal punishment they deserve. Needless

Eric Garner. Another unarmed black man gone down for no good goddamn reason, with not even a charge for those who caused his death. Not even a charge, not a trial, no open public examination of the facts. I’m not going to pontificate on this issue, because there are a multitude of African-American voices who can speak more directly and eloquently to this situation than yet another middle-aged white man. I’ll just point to this piece I wrote a few months ago “following the police berzerkery in Ferguson, Missouri.” The post dealt with the fact that this kind of thing