CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Mamdani Peace Dividend?

Photograph Source: NYC Mayor’s Office – CC BY 4.0

On March 5, 1770, a crowd of Boston colonists gathered to protest British soldiers quartered among them, taxing them without parliamentary representation, occupying their city like a conquered territory. When the redcoats fired, the first man to fall was Crispus Attucks—a sailor of African and Wampanoag descent, possibly an escaped slave, certainly a man for whom the freedoms being contested that night would not be extended. Certainly, Crispus Attucks did not embody the founding myth that the commemorative plates portray. The Boston Massacre ignited the spark of revolution, leading to the eventual emergence of the First Amendment. James Madison, refusing to include it in the Constitution and threatening to withhold his signature until a Bill of Rights was enshrined, enshrined the principle that press freedom and the right to protest were not privileges the state could revoke on a bad morning but foundations without which the republic had no legitimate claim to its name. History is not short on irony. However, its humorous approach has consistently sparked controversy.

Over two and a half centuries later, the empire that those documents aimed to scrutinize has evolved into the very entity they rebelled against. Of course, the point lies in the systematic elimination of journalists who could document this transformation. Nick Turse’s Costs of War report, “News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World,” published by Brown University’s Watson Institute, makes the case with damning specificity: the war in Gaza has killed more journalists than the U.S. Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s, and Afghanistan combined. By 2024, a journalist or media worker was being killed every three days. Not collateral damage. Policy. The Israeli government banned foreign reporters from Gaza and then made sure there would be fewer Palestinian reporters left to say so.

Chris Hedges has extensive........

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