Perhaps the most honest answer is that many Iranians hold several truths at once. The burden is not choosing between them. It is carrying them all. www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/16/s...

Wonderwall has taken on a life of its own, becoming a defining post-match ritual as fans, with a hint of mischief, defy the tedious anti-English monoculturalism peddled by Vance and Musk. www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/10/w...

Catastrophes rarely begin with madness alone. They begin when nobody in the room is ready to tell the most powerful person they are wrong. www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/08/t...

When Britain finally recognised American independence in 1783, many of the Native nations that had fought alongside Britain found themselves abandoned to an expanding United States. www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/03/t...

"Some of humanity’s largest emergencies unfold in relative obscurity. History is full of such examples. Entire populations suffer while the rest of us scroll past." Bring Me Your Neglected Crises by Peter Bach (@lyst.bsky.social) www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/25/b...

We assume that what matters will naturally dominate headlines, social media feeds, and public debate, forgetting that algorithms—not public judgment—now determine much of what we see. www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/25/b...

www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/21/t... Behind a paywall I’m afraid.

You know something is amiss when a World Cup referee is denied entry to the United States while Canada and Mexico appear to present no such obstacles.

From above, the scene looks like spontaneous public anger. On the ground, it proves rather more organised than that. www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/11/u...

"...outbreaks like this expose something fundamental about how interconnected human beings really are. A virus emerging in a remote forest region can eventually become a regional or global concern." – Peter Bach (@lyst.bsky.social)

World Cup, Victory Day, unions, Rosalía not Emin, Franco-British maritime security missions, Camavinga and Mbappé. www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/12/o...

#andrewcampbell #britishartist #art #subvert #meta #agitate #algorithms #provoke #X #attack #openai #resist #io #disrupt #instagram #artforsocialmedia #facebook #dissent #tiktok #painting #maquette #notai #oiloncanvas #visualbites #netscape #prototype #study #contemporaryartist #wwwandrewcampbellcom

"This one glacier presently loses several metres of thickness each year. "This is measured. Cross-checked. Published. The numbers grow with a clarity that resists metaphor. "And still, people come. They lay out their blankets. "Not in denial of the data, but in its presence." – Peter Bach

By late morning, the light will be hard and precise. The surface—what remains of it—will not be the smooth, mythic white that people expect, but a kind of broken grey: meltwater channels, soot, wind-scored ridges. www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/08/p...

“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...

"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

"...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

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...

"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."

"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)

"...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

"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)

Bunch of us rubes read it during a mountaineering phase.

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

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

"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.

"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."

"'...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 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...

A poem from the Iran-Iraq war from award-winning Iranian poet Ali Asadollahi, author of six Persian poetry books. Me, a rotten sofa in the rain. You, an outlying soldier with a bullet in the flank. How late                                 we found each other.

"For years the border has simmered—tense, theatrical, contained within the oddly fetching grammar of skirmish and denial. That grammar now seems broken." – Peter Bach, @lyst.bsky.social, on a history of suspicion and conflict along the disputed Afghanistan/Pakistan border.