Add to playlist: the sweaty, unvarnished electropop of Punchbag and the week’s best new tracks The sibling duo’s follow-up EP spikes their off-kilter pop with new darkness, adding atmospheric balladry to their glorious racket

www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a...

Twilight of the Strongmen Orbán is not yesterday’s story so much as a figure already ripe for perspective. A proper valediction might do more than mark the end of one career. It could help frame the twilight of a political gen...

“You should write about Viktor Orbán,” a close English friend told me before heading back to the Himalayas. www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/17/t...

The Ballroom and the Brink A lot of people argue that we Brits should stop obsessing over the United States. After all, we have enough on our plate, not least energy bills set to

"Someone once said to me that everyone in the Middle East deserves each other...Do they really? Can that be said of anyone, anywhere? I cannot believe that in the mind of a child there is an appetite for wanton destruction, no matter which side they are said to belong to."

– Peter Bach

The Ballroom and the Brink A lot of people argue that we Brits should stop obsessing over the United States. After all, we have enough on our plate, not least energy bills set to

Well said. www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/15/t...

The Ballroom and the Brink A lot of people argue that we Brits should stop obsessing over the United States. After all, we have enough on our plate, not least energy bills set to

www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/15/t...

Don’t Forget Ukraine Was it just me or was there nothing more weird than when the US over a year ago opened up direct US-Russian talks on Ukraine without even having Ukraine

www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/13/d...

When America Becomes Its President Since the latest tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has pointed out that US military planners had long considered conflict scenar...

"...at what point does responsibility stop sitting solely with those in power, and begin, however reluctantly, to extend further outwards? When do repeated political choices begin to reshape how a nation itself is perceived—fairly or not? "

– Peter Bach @lyst.bsky.social

Portrait of an elderly couple, C.C. and Given, sitting in front of a frayed wall hanging in a Tangier café, 2023.

A long update posted to @liznangel3.bsky.social's appeal for us, about our efforts to settle ashore, repair Wrack, find regular income, and overcome the risk not just of being homeless but shelterless.

Please read and if you can, help us. The appeal closes soon.

www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-i...

When America Becomes Its President Since the latest tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has pointed out that US military planners had long considered conflict scenar...

www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/08/w...

A Terrifying Yield of Control It is one of those moments when the artist is out of London and I am back from abroad before seeing her again. The studio is empty. Dozens of paint pots

www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/03/a...

The UK, Repackaged for US Culture Wars An odd patchwork of British figures—among them Liz Truss, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage, continue, in varying forms, to present the United Kingdom to US audiences as a cautionary tale. Nor is this ...

www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/02/t...

"Europe may now be exposed: dependent on seaborne energy and limited in naval capacity, it is vulnerable to prolonged disruption. Hormuz becomes not an incident but a pressure point—a place where, quietly, other outcomes are decided. 'We live as we dream—alone,' Conrad writes, and so too do states."

Conrad, Konrad, and the Uses of the Sea “The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.” So wrote Joseph Conrad in The Mirror of the Sea,

"A willingness to weaponise chokepoints, insurance markets, and energy flows raises uncomfortable questions. The implications are not merely strategic but moral. Recall Conrad again: 'A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.'"

– Peter Bach (@lyst.bsky.social)

Conrad, Konrad, and the Uses of the Sea “The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.” So wrote Joseph Conrad in The Mirror of the Sea,

www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/27/c...

Where the Horses Are Still Running I hadn’t expected to go to Greece. Least of all to be invited to meet a man whose life seemed to belong to another era—a life that moved so easily between

www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/25/w...

Thank you for re-posting this.

"...wars did not become less consequential simply because the world had begun to look elsewhere. Long after wars fade from headlines, this quieter work goes on."

Via @counterpunchmedia.bsky.social

Choosing Life: Ukraine’s Quiet Work of Healing War Trauma The online gathering carried a quiet urgency. Veterans, psychologists, and aid workers had come together to discuss something rarely visible in wartime

"What did it mean for a society when large numbers of people returned from war carrying injuries that could not always be seen? How did communities prepare themselves...to live with the long emotional aftershocks that conflict leaves behind?"

– Peter Bach (@lyst.bsky.social)

Choosing Life: Ukraine’s Quiet Work of Healing War Trauma The online gathering carried a quiet urgency. Veterans, psychologists, and aid workers had come together to discuss something rarely visible in wartime

www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/20/c...

Bunch of us rubes read it during a mountaineering phase.

Kerouac Reconsidered I came across Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums in a chain bookshop at King’s Cross station. I was on my way to interview a radical publisher and ended up

I enjoyed writing this for CP+ on Kerouac. www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/15/k...

Thanks for reading.

"Stronger enemies could often be worn down through distance, manoeuvre, and patience...survival itself could count as success."

The Long War: Iran’s Oldest Strategy Most discussions of Iran revolve around oil, escalation, and regime change. Yet Iran today feels easier to understand as part of a much older pattern. For

"Foreign powers have underestimated Iran for more than twenty-five centuries—and repeatedly discovered that Iranian states possess a stubborn capacity to endure, adapt, and outlast stronger enemies."

– Peter Bach (lyst.bsky.social), on how Iran has so often survived terrible conflicts.

The Long War: Iran’s Oldest Strategy Most discussions of Iran revolve around oil, escalation, and regime change. Yet Iran today feels easier to understand as part of a much older pattern. For

www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/13/t...

Thank you for reading.

"I still think about those selfishly gleeful departures from Kabul—the mountains rising beyond the runway as the aircraft climbed southwest towards the Gulf. Impending Dubai was always a place where the war could not quite reach you.

"In reality, it was only ever a missile away."

The Dubai Decompression Loop The mountains always felt close when the aircraft lifted out of Kabul. During the Afghanistan war, Dubai became a strange airlock between two worlds—where

"'...a place where the war couldn’t get at you for a while.'”

Peter Bach — @lyst.bsky.social — recalls his several furloughs to Dubai as "a one-person filmmaker with special access working out of Kabul" during Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

The Dubai Decompression Loop The mountains always felt close when the aircraft lifted out of Kabul. During the Afghanistan war, Dubai became a strange airlock between two worlds—where

The mountains always felt close when the aircraft lifted out of Kabul. During the Afghanistan war, Dubai became a strange airlock between two worlds—where the conflict seemed, briefly, to stop. www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/10/t...

Warm wishes from London to the City of the Seven Pills.