(This is my column from the latest edition of CounterPunch Magazine.) As the title of this column suggests, I’m an admirer of Bob Dylan’s work, from the world-shaking epics to the off-the-wall obscurities. But I admit that even I quailed this March when I heard he was about to release yet another collection of classic crooner covers — in a three-record set, no less! I’d enjoyed his first couple of forays into this area, especially the moody “Shadows of the Night,” where he sang with more genuine emotion than he’d shown in years on record. But the thought of 30 more of

In recent days, a disturbing trope has appeared among the self-declared “Resistance” to Trump. Citing “research” that often has the scientific rigor of Donald’s Trump’s investigations of Barack Obama’s birthplace, they say that Russia is fanning the flames of the Black Lives Matter movement and the “Take a Knee” campaign. Some of these progressive Resisters are taking it a step further, tracing Kremlin perfidy in stirring up trouble in God’s perfect American heaven back to the Sixties. Yes, liberals are now aping the John Birchers and Klan goobers and American Nazi goons of old who claimed the Civil Rights movement

I wrote the column below on  Sept. 12, 2001; it was published in The Moscow Times on Sept. 14. As I noted a few years ago, a lot of water – and a lot of blood – have gone under the bridge since then, but I think most of the piece still holds true, unfortunately. Perhaps their knives were made of stone – chipped flints, sharpened to a deadly point: the earliest human technology. Stone knives would have baffled the sleek security machines, scanning for metal, for iron and steel. Perhaps that’s how the guardians of the world’s greatest power

Everywhere you look these days, you see the trope: the “end of the world” is nigh from a nuclear war. It’s there in somber headlines, in weighty punditry, even in throwaway jokes in the middle of, say, a TV review: “Looks like the BBC finally has a comedy hit — just as the world is about to blow up!” Ha ha. The current situation with North Korea is being portrayed as if it’s a reboot of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with two massively armed superpowers on the brink of all-out global conflagration. But putting aside the entirely context-less hype and

Trump Forges Ahead on Costly Nuclear Overhaul, Sweeping Aside Doubts (NYT). This is a remarkable story. Its import is that Trump is plunging forward with a reckless overhaul and expansion of the nuclear arsenal. Then it notes that in doing so, he’s continuing plans & contracts designed by Obama. Then it tells us, with a straight face, that Obama designed this $1 trillion “upgrade” of the nuclear arsenal … because he thought Clinton would win in 2016 and “drastically cut back” the plans. The spin here is a brazen insult to the readers’ intelligence. Yes, the “updgrade” of the nuclear

At last, the “paper of record” runs a long, detailed story about the death spiral in Yemen. However, it seems to be short a few details. It paints the Saudis as champions of freedom simply trying to restore a democratically elected leader to office. It neglects the detail that the leader was “elected” in a “vote” (backed by the US & Saudis) that allowed only one candidate: the one favored by the US & the Saudis. It is also scant of detail on the US involvement. A few short paragraphs from the very end, it allows that the US is

(Written on Facebook early Saturday morning; updated below) (UPDATED AGAIN): American nazis (many of them no doubt radicalized by the self-proclaimed “godfather of the alt-right,” Steve Bannon) were on the march Friday night, chanting the actual Nazi slogan, “Blood and Soil.” Close-ups reveal most of them to be young white college-boy types, pudgy, coddled, comfortable, smug. They’re not driven by, say, economic privation or lack of opportunity or lack of education or dire threat or any of the other reasons often adduced for people turning to extremism. No: these smug, well-wadded bastards are driven solely by cankered bigotry & their

(This is my latest column for the print version of CounterPunch, edited slightly.) “And if my thought-dreams could be seen They’d probably stick my head in a guillotine.” Thus quoth the Bard, more than half a century ago. At the time, these lines were an electrifying insight into human nature, lighting up dark corners of the psyche not usually explored in popular music. They were also a jolting reversal of the usual protest song dynamic: a righteous hero denouncing evil from a position of moral purity. Here, at the end of a long, incandescent jeremiad against a sick society, we

I reckon Mike Bloomberg took a good long gander at that GOP “Massive Tax Cut for the Super-Rich Disguised as Healthcare” bill and liked what he saw. (Salon: Michael Bloomberg says Democrats should “get behind” President Trump) Pivoting on a dime — or rather, on a gargantuan pile of extra loot for himself — he dropped his opposition to the “dangerous demagogue” Trump and called on Democrats to stop opposing him too. One should recall, as the story notes, that Bloomberg owns “several media outlets.” So it’s a safe bet that this “get with the program and get behind the

Just days after President Trump came out firmly on the side of the Saudi Islamic extremists in their tiff with the Qatari Islamic extremists, his State Department, led by the rape-the-environment extremist Rexxon Tillerson, has denounced the Saudis for not coming up with a justification for their embargo of Qatar — a move that Trump himself took credit for. The story is here. This is the FUBAR form of government. This is rule by SNAFU. It also shows in stark relief the reality of the US government today. Exxon man and the generals are in charge of foreign policy. The