Episodes

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250718.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Truthout (6/11/25) This week on CounterSpin: The US official stance about the UN is, basically, they’re not the boss of us. But: If it looks like they can make hay with it, then sure. That’s why Secretary of State Marco Rubio is declaring “sanctions” against Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, following an ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250711.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Intercept (7/8/25) This week on CounterSpin: Along with many other hate-driven harms, the budget bill puts Stephen Miller’s cruel and bizarre mass deportation plan on steroids. $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers; that’s a 62% larger budget than the entire federal prison system. The goons hiding their faces and IDs while...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250704.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). (photo: Jim Naureckas) This week on CounterSpin: White supremacy, Islamophobia and antisemitism are irreducible dangers in themselves. They are also tools that powerful, wealthy people take up to protect their power and wealth, and to deflect everyone’s attention from who is, actually, day to day, threatening all of our well-being. That brazenn...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250627.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Column (6/22/25) This week on CounterSpin: Prosecutors at the 1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared: War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the sup...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250620.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). CEPR (3/3/25) This week on CounterSpin: We’ve always heard that racists hate quotas, yet Stephen Miller’s “3000 a day however which way” mandate is terrorizing immigrant communities—brown immigrant communities—around the country. The response from people of conscience can look many ways: linking arms around people in danger, absolutely; vigorou...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250613.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). (Creative Commons photo: Diane Krauthamer) This week on CounterSpin: Media are focused on public protests in LA, but seem less interested in what’s making people angry. That’s in part about the federal government’s stated bid to capture and eject anyone they determine “opposes US foreign policy.” Protesters and witnesses and journalists in LA a...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250606.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). White House photo (5/30/25) of Elon Musk’s farewell press conference with President Donald Trump. This week on CounterSpin: An email we got this week tells us: “The radical left is up in arms about DOGE. Just think about it—DOGE has exposed BILLIONS in wasteful spending, and is rooting out fraud and corruption at every turn. They’re making the ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250530.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Tom Morello at Occupy Wall Street (CC photo: David Shankbone) This week on CounterSpin: Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and…Oprah? They’re among the entertainers in Trump’s ALLCAPS sights for, it would seem, endorsing Kamala Harris in the election? And/or maybe saying something unflattering about him or his actions—which, in his brain,...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250523.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Common Dreams (5/14/25) This week on CounterSpin: On a Sunday night, not when officials do things they’re most proud of, House Republicans passed a plan to give more money to rich people by taking it from the non-rich. Call it what you will, that’s what’s ultimately happening with the plan to cut more than $700 billion from Medicaid in order to...

It seems like an odd moment for the US media to do a hit job on Brazil’s coffee industry. Protective tariffs have been used since the 1800s in the US to protect domestic industry and increase employment. As Raúl Prebisch, Celso Furtado and other economists influential on Latin America’s “Pink Tide” argued, tariffs are also fundamental for Global South nations to escape from the prison of agricultural commodity export dependence, by enabling them to industrialize through import substitution. Re...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250516.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Reuters (5/2/25) This week on CounterSpin: As part of its deadly denial of food, water and medicine to Palestinian people, Israel attacked a civilian aid ship endeavoring to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, setting it on fire, injuring crewmembers, cutting off communications. The ship was called the Conscience. Millions around the world ask ever...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250509.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). $Trump marketing website. This week on CounterSpin: They say ignorance is bliss, but I know that, for myself and others, our lack of knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency will only hurt us in our response to the effects that the dealings around that stuff are having on our lives. Bartlett Naylor breaks it down for us; he works at Public Citiz...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250502.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Ruby Bridges challenged US segregation in 1960. This week on CounterSpin: You can say someone ‘supports the rights’ of people of color to vote, or to have our experience and history recognized—as though that were a passive descriptor; she ‘supports the rights’ of people of color to be seen and heard. The website of the Kairos Democracy Project ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250418.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). The Nation (3/27/25) This week on CounterSpin: CBS News on April 14 said: We’re following new violence in the Middle East. Israeli strikes hit a major hospital in northern Gaza. At least 21 people were reportedly killed. The emergency room is badly damaged. Israel accused Hamas of using the hospital to hide its fighters. Meanwhile, Houthi mil...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250411.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Intercept (4/8/25) This week on CounterSpin: We’re learning from Jonah Valdez at the Intercept that the Trump administration is now revoking visas and immigration statuses of hundreds of international students under the Student Exchange and Visitor Program—not just those active in pro-Palestinian advocacy, or those with criminal records of any ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250404.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). New York Times (11/14/24) This week on CounterSpin: If “some people believe it” were the criterion, our daily news would be full of respectful consideration of the Earth’s flatness, the relationship of intelligence to the bumps on your head, and how stepping on a crack might break your mother’s back. News media don’t, in fact, use “some people ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250328.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Mondoweiss (3/18/25) This week on CounterSpin: Israel has abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, a war that has destroyed the region and killed tens of thousands of human beings. The ceasefire, as Gaza-based writer Hassan Abo Qamar among others reminds, still allowed Israel to deprive Pal...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250321.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Public Information (3/17/25) This week on CounterSpin: News site Popular Information alerted us to new Social Security Administration policy effectively requiring tens of thousands of recipients, by the agency’s own estimation, to travel to a field office to verify their ID. An internal memo predicts the shift will create “service disruption,” ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250314.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). This week on CounterSpin: In early February, when Rep. Maxwell Frost tweeted that he and Rep. Maxine Waters were denied access to the Department of Education, Elon Musk responded on the platform he owns: “What is this ‘Department of Education’ you keep talking about? I just checked and it doesn’t exist.” That, we understand, was the shadow pres...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250307.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Reuters (3/6/25) This week on CounterSpin: A NASA official warned workers to maybe think about not wearing their badges in public, to protect themselves from harassment against people identifiable as federal workers by MAGA randos who feel deputized by Trump and Musk to do…well, whatever it is Trump and Musk suggest. It’s early days of the Tru...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250228.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). EarthRights (2/20/25) This week on CounterSpin: Just because we might witness the daylight robbery of the social benefits we’ve been paying for and counting on for the entirety of our working lives, and just because Black people are no longer officially allowed to even mentor Black people coming in to fields they’ve been historically excluded f...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250221.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). CNN (2/21/25) This week on CounterSpin: Donald Trump has declared that the US is going to “take over” the Gaza Strip, that the Palestinians who live there will be “permanently” exiled. Asked whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza under his scheme, Trump said “no.” But even those corporate media who aren’t actually endorsing...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250214.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). New York Times (1/29/25) This week on CounterSpin: A number of federal agencies rushed to make clear they would be scrubbing activities and events that “celebrate cultural awareness” in an effort to stay on the good side of the weird new White House. Trump and his abettors’ anti-anti-discrimination agenda is as subtle as a sledgehammer. “DEI hi...

Donald Trump is back in the White House, and faux opposition is once again the order of the day for the Western media and the Democratic Party. Whether it comes to criminalizing migrants (FAIR.org, 1/25/25), maintaining US “soft power” via USAID, downplaying anti-democratic power grabs (FAIR.org, 2/4/25) or whitewashing Nazi salutes (FAIR.org, 1/23/25), the centrist establishment seems quite content to normalize Trump or even outflank him from the right. There is, of course, no area of greater ...