Counterspin

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251128.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Opening ceremony for COP30 in Belem, Brazil (photo: Palácio do Planalto) This week on CounterSpin: US media didn’t exactly mince words: “Climate Summit Viewed as Flop by Many” was the headline the LA Times put on an AP report. The subhead explained: “The COP30 talks held in Belem, Brazil, end without a timeline for reducing fossil fuels.” The future of climate disruption, if not pulled off course, is devastating, but the present is bad enough, if you are placed, or inclined, to see it. So how could a global climate conference that doesn’t put demands on fossil fuel producers at the center be anything but a flop? The answer is not to absolve COP30 or polluting countries, much less industries, of their responsibility. But focusing some conversation on what people, including those most harmed, are doing, along with what’s being

What if SNAP weren’t a story about major political party back-and-forthing, and were instead a story about people who need food?

Housing and home ownership represent a critical vector in the project of a multi-racial democracy.

The argument is so specious a third grader could call it out. But if it comes from the Supreme Court majority, we are forced to consider it as serious.

News media need to locate the climate fight in the boardrooms of greedy people perversely trying to wring every last dime from our shared future.

Corporate reporters scratch their heads over how this bombing campaign might be legal, rather than discussing what tools can respond to wildly illegal actions.

We’re in a fight for our right to speak up, and out—but it’s not the first time.

Major media suggest we use something other than our own eyes and judgment and humanity to assess the Gaza situation, and how to act in the face of it.

Something so vaguely named as a “data center” is actually a physical thing in real neighborhoods affecting real people.

Witness testimony is how we can resist official testimony about people "resisting arrest." And you can tell how much it matters by the efforts to shut it down.

Can the Trump administration, or any administration, declare people guilty and summarily kill them based on that declaration?

It’s only an opinion that it’s wrong that our federal health agency is led by a guy who claims he can diagnose children he walks past at the airport.

You buy insurance in case something bad happens—like a fire, or a flood. But if that fire or flood is driven by climate disruption? Well, wait a minute.

The White House’s assaults on the press corps are part of, and not ancillary to, their direct assaults on Black and brown people.

Voting: Everyone gets a voice; that’s what makes us different, special and better. Is that ideal being subverted? Or have we misunderstood it all along?

Elite news media transmit the weird worldview that it’s appropriate to force tipped workers to please and appease patrons in order to survive.

"I think it's a success of Israel's control of the narrative that sometimes it's really not well understood that the occupation is central to all this."

"The pitting against each other of people who lack housing and people who have housing is so insidious and counterproductive."

Corporate media are now gesturing toward engaging questions of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. But what does that amount to at this late date?

To tell this as a tale about two uniquely bad men is a terrible disservice to a story of the systemic criminal victimization of women.