"Counterpunch", with a wide-range of excellent journalists, authors and activists is an invaluable source of information that is rarely found in the establishment media. Since it dares to question the militarism of powerful states like the U.S. (and its Sparta - Israel), it is ignored by those who avoid inconvenient truths about state terror; but it serves open-minded people of all stripes quite well. Some regular contributors include Jeffrey St. Clair Grand Theft Pentagon :Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror, Patrick Cockburn The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Kathy Kelly Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison and Saul Landau The Business of America: How Consumers have Replaced Citizens and how we can Reverse the Trend. "Counterpunch" is also home to former right-wingers like Paul Craig Roberts who wrote The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
A visit to its website will give people a good feel for the sort of insight "Counterpunch" offers. Since it is sustained by many appreciative readers, "Counterpunch" is free of the sorts of economic and political pressures that constrain so much of our media; and is a stark contrast to so many information sources that are corrupted by advertising dollars, Pentagon PR firms (like the Rendon Group), and corporate think tanks (like the Heritage Foundation).

"One of the best ways of enslaving people is to keep them from education. The second way of enslaving people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"We have all the right enemies!"

That's the proud boast of Counterpunch.

But just because plenty of your customers (or prospective customers) all find fault with you, that does not mean you are doing anything right.

If you are looking for a liberal publication that is willing to delve into what is going on in this country, I'd recommend The New Republic. Counterpunch is too much into wild viewpoints which are poorly backed up.

I'm a liberal who is opposed to most of the policies of the Bush administration, and I find Counterpunch an embarrassment that makes opponents of Bush look bad.

On top of that, Counterpunch is way off on the Far Right on its biggest issue, Jewish rights in the Middle East. For authors such as Kathleen Christison, Norman Finkelstein, and several others, any land lived on by Yeshan Jews is simply stolen. Religious Jews are mocked for having a religious attachment to the Levant, but when it comes to Muslims, Levantine land is perpetually Arab, no matter how often it is sold to Jews, and no matter for what prices, as if by Divine Right.

Will you find anyone on the Far Left here who supports Jewish rights in Israel? Such as, say, Francisco Gil-White? No.

So I feel that Counterpunch is untrustworthy in both its reporting and its politics.

But there is one more issue for those of us reading this review.

I truly enjoy reading the reviews on Amazon. Some reviewers have done us all a great service by making some excellent comments about the products they have tried and books they have read. And I have written my share of reviews. I've enjoyed doing this. I've been able to write sincerely about a wide variety of books. And I've received quite a few e-mails from people who have enjoyed my reviews (including some authors). In the process, I've only received a couple of critical e-mails and even those have been polite. It has all been a wonderful experience, and I would like to thank Amazon for it.

Well, what does this have to do with Counterpunch? Read on.

When I looked at the Counterpunch website as part of the process of writing this review, I noticed that the feature article mentioned Amazon, as well as one of Amazon's finest reviewers. I have been particularly impressed by this reviewer's many fine contributions, the overall quality of her reviews, her research, and her writing style. But instead of praise, there was a call to censor both her and Amazon. The article said that her "activities undermine what could be a valuable resource of bona fide book reviews; instead her propaganda imperatives transforms the book review section to just another ideologically debased space. Amazon may well want to implement a more stringent policy to avoid dragging its website further into the mud."

That's what Counterpunch is all about.