CounterPunch is a leftist, bimonthly Internet newsletter and a book publisher. Founded in December 1993 in Washington, D.C. by former Associated Press Brazil correspondent Ken Silverstein, the six- to eight-page newsletter soon became home to writers Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn (whose father Claud Cockburn was an infamous British journalist who used his talents to serve the Kremlin.) Alexander Cockburn was a supporter of Communism and a backer of the last Communist coup against the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev. Cockburn and St. Clair have been co-Editors of CounterPunch since Silverstein's departure in 1996.

"Ours is muckraking with a radical attitude," say Cockburn and St. Clair, "and nothing makes us happier than when CounterPunch readers write in to say how useful they've found our newsletter in their battles against the war machine, big business and the rapers of nature."

Seething with disdain for America, CounterPunch reflects the views of the extreme anti-American, anti-capitalist left and attacks Democrats as well as Republicans. Among the writers appearing in CounterPunch are the late Palestinian propagandist and Marxist academic Edward Said, radical journalist Robert Fisk, as well as Cockburn's brothers Andrew and Patrick.

For years the newsletter described itself as a "project" of "the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit corporation."

CounterPunch Books are written or edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. The titles include:

• Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan & Yugoslavia ("...chronicles the lies that are now returning almost daily to haunt the liars in Washington and London, the secret agendas and the under-reported carnages of these wars")
  
  
• The Politics of Anti-Semitism: (argues that "the slur 'anti-Semite' has been used to intimidate critics of Israel's abuse of Palestinians")
  
  
• Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press: ("...a shocking chronicle of the U.S. intellgence agencies' ties to drug runners, stretching from World War 2 through the Contra Wars and the Taliban in Afghanistan")
  
  
• Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison: ("...Kathy Kelly's gripping account of her time in Iraq from the first Gulf War through the misery of 12 years of sanctions to US invasion ... and ... the bloody Occupation")
  
  
• A Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils: (a "manual on the presidential stakes and the two-party pantomime"; One chapter, written by Jeffrey St. Clair, is titled "Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole" - a disparaging reference to Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.)
  
  
• Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature: ("...shows how the [environmental] compromises of the Clinton era … opened the floodgates for the wholesale rape-and-pillage of the Bush years")
  
  
• This Can't Be Happening: Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy: "... Bush--or Hitler? In this scathing collection of articles, Dave Lindorff suggests some of the uncomfortable parallels between the two.")
  
  
• The Case Against Israel: ("...systematically dismantles the rationales for Israel put forward by Alan Dershowitz and other defenders of the Zionist state")