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Today's
Stories
January 1,
2008
Iain A. Boal
City
of Disappearances
December 31,
2007
Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye
2007 and Good Riddance!
Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath
Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers
Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?
Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?
Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark
Future
Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential
Election Campaigns
Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome
Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?
Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship
Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated
December 29
/ 30, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Options
in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby
Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto
Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance
China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan
John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics
Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard
Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?
Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something
Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security
Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas
Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing
Kristin Van
Tassel
Seeing in the Dark
Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More
Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan
December 28,
2007
Farzana Versey
The
Complex Electra
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives
Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq
Ray McGovern
Creeping
Fascism
Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted
Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild
Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
December
11, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
What's Really Happened During
the Surge?
Diana
Johnstone
The Next Kosovo War
Paul
Craig Roberts
It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution
David
Macaray
Impasse in Hollywood
Ralph
Nader
Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result
Martha
Rosenberg
No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers
Steve
Champion /
Anthony Ross
Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams
Kim
Nicolini
Tangled Up in Dylan
Michael
Dickinson
Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent
Website
of the Day
A Charming (and Worthy)
Pitch
December 10, 2007
Uri
Avnery
How They Stole the Bomb From Us
Debbie
Nathan
The Perils of Journalism and Child
Porn
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Is There a Left Here Left?
If So, What Can It Do?
Steve
Kelly
Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness
Donna
J. Volatile
Welcome to the Revolution
December
8 / 9, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The Coup Against Bush and Cheney
Brenda
Norrell
Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists
Saul
Landau
The Ruins of Empire
R.
F. Blader
A Rape in Every Drink?
Ray
McGovern
Spinning Iran's Centrifuges
Allan
Nairn
Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in
Indonesia
Linn
Washington, Jr
Spotlight on Death Row
Paul
Craig Roberts
When Will Bush Come Clean?
December
7, 2007
Sean
Penn
Piano Wire Puppeteers
Arthur
Versluis
Mining Water in the Desert
M.
G. Piety
Racism and the American Psyche: Some
Thoughts on Race and Intelligence
Pam
Martens
Banksters Gone Wild
Alan
Farago
Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia?
Sprawl and the Credit Crisis
Allan
Nairn
It Takes (Out) a Village
Col.
Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday
Alice
Slater
The Iran Opening
Robert
Weissman
The Story of Stuff
Website
of the Day
Something
About Mitt
December
5, 2007
Mike
Whitney
Why the CFR Hates Putin
Sharon
Smith
The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden
and the Dead End Democrats
James
Petras
Venezuela in the Aftermath
Ron
Jacobs
The Iran Charade
Dave
Zirin
Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor
John
V. Whitbeck
Two States or One? Time to Choose
Peter
Zinn
Covered in New Orleans
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Impeach Pelosi Instead
Alan
Farago
The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida
Heather
Gray
US Meddling in Australian Politics
Website
of the Day
A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas
December
4, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in
Ann Arbor
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme
Court
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Lies at the End of the American
Dream
Ray
McGovern
No-Nuke Iran
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are
Too Small
Allan
Nairn
The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just
Want Food"
Russell
Mokhiber
The USA v. Al Arian
Nikolas
Kozloff
As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American
Left
John
V. Walsh
Peace Movement Paralyzed
Ghada
Ageel
Will Peace Cost Me My Home?
Stephen
Soldz
The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist
Involvement in Interrogations
Website
of the Day
Hands Off the People of Iran
December
3, 2007
Tariq
Ali
Venezuela After the Referendum
Bill
Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor,
Tax Credits for Developers
Eric
Walberg
The Bible and Middle East History
Uri
Avnery
After Annapolis
Marjorie
Cohn
Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed
Dave
Lindorff
Vengeance Isn't Sweet
Stephen
Fleischman
Homeless in Paradise
Martha
Rosenberg
Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile
Website
of the Day
So Just Lead!
December
1 / 2, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift
in a Sea of Booze
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and
the Future of the Rocky Mountain West
Mike
Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir
Rosen
Shemon
Salam
A Visit From the FBI
Roger
Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia
Benjamin
Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia
Brian
M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to
the Surge?
Greg
Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story
Sonja
Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference
Saul
Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston
Margaret
Kimberley
Black America Left Behind
John
Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?
Reza
Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran
Judith
Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays
Lance
Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy
Christopher
Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots
Robert
Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony
Dan
Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island
Michael
Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency
Website
of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices
November
30, 2007
Peter
Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan
Wajahat
Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's
Former Minister of Information
Allan
Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers
Alan
Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash
John
Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution
Corporate
Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals
Lucia
Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future
James
Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle
Website
of the Day
Bio-Bling?
November
29, 2007
R.
F. Blader
The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe
Ismael
Hossein-Zadeh
Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran
Stephen
Soldz
War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire
Sheldon
Richman
Iraq 3.0
George
Wuerthner
Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws
Felice
Pace
Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?
Col.
Dan Smith
The Meaning of Annapolis
Harvey
Wasserman
Terror Target Nukes
Nikolas
Kozloff
Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08
Paul
Krassner
Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike!
Dave
Lindorff
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?
CP
News Service
The One State Declaration
Website
of the Day
A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
November
28, 2007
James
Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces
on Venezuela
Jeff
Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One
Way Street
Pam
Martens
Crashing Citigroup
Peter
Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession
Mohammed
Khatib
Separate and Unequal in Palestine
Helen
Redmond
The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America
William
S. Lind
In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm?
Ben
Tripp
We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons
Liaquat
Ali Khan
Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges
Jeff
Berg
Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran
Website
of the Day
The Lies of Joe Klein
November
27, 2007
Joe
DeRaymond
On the Road to the Torture School
Paul
Craig Roberts
Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary
and Rudy
Marjorie
Cohn
Remembering Victor Rabinowitz
Mike
Whitney
A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp
Ron
Jacobs
The Myths of Military Progress
Col.
Dan Smith
The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work
Ralph
Nader
Family Learning
Karim
Makdisi
Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut
Christopher
Ketcham
Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop
Ronan
Bennett
Martin Amis Does a Coulter
Website
of the Day
Celebrating the Uncensored Media
November
26, 2007
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Heading for Annapolis
Paul
Craig Roberts
The End of All That
David
Macaray
Enter Mediator
Sameer
Dossani
Pakistan's Wounded Dictator
Roger
Burbach
The Final Battle in Bolivia
Mark
Scaramella
Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire
Brian
McKinlay
Howard's End
Rick
Kuhn
The Fall of a Racist Union Buster
Binoy
Kampmark
Ruddslide and Dull Alec
Monica
Benderman
What Do You Know of War?
Brenda
Norrell
Return to Alcatraz
Website
of the Day
Ghostworld by DJ Spooky
November
24 / 25, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson,
MD
Robert
Fisk
Darkness Falls on the Middle East
Saul
Landau
Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P.
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal
Environmentalism
Rannie
Amiri
Beirut's Black Friday
Christopher
Brauchli
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace
Daniel
Gross
The Gap and Black Friday
Mike
Whitney
"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"
Marjorie
Cohn
Iran and the 2008 Elections
David
Rosen
Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans
David
Michael Green
If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom ....
Kenneth
Rexroth
When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in
Afghanistan
Muhammad
Iqbal
Trans. Shahid Alam
Ghazal
Website
of the Day
Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill
November 23, 2007
Gary
Leupp
Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat
Valley
Laura
Carlsen
Coming to Terms with Diversity in
Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP
David
Macaray
Keeping Labor Unions Out
Andy
Worthington
Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden
Clifton
Ross
Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant
Seth
Sandronsky
Battling Sodexho
Dan
Bacher
Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation
William
A. Cook
The Myth of Middle East Peace
Website
of the Day
Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short
Film
November
22, 2007
Alan
Farago
Who Lost America's Everglades?
Greg
Moses
A Thanksgiving Basting
Dave
Lindorff
Impeachment is Back on the Table
Mike
Ely
Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving
Omar
Azfar
Gore for President of Pakistan?
November
21, 2007
Vijay
Prashad
Our Dictator, Their Democracy
Martha
Rosenberg
Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
Epiphany on the Glacier
John
Ross
The Last Days of Mexican Corn
Brian
McKenna
Cancer Terrorists Unmasked
Stephen
Soldz
Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo
Monica
Benderman
Needing Peace
Ben
Terrall
Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar
Website
of the Day
Mercy for Animals
|
New
Year's Day Edition
January 1, 2008
Dispatch from London
City
of Disappearances
By IAIN A. BOAL
"We've been sold down the river",
said one of the draymen, "right down the fucking Wandle."
The closing of Young's brewery in Wandsworth in 2006 was a milestone
in the march of gentrification across post-Big Bang London. "A
humiliating, downright cry-in-your-beer travesty", in the
words of one local, whose bulletin from the left bank of the
Wandle ended with this indelible lament: "When a particularly
juvenile men's magazine article challenged British breweries
to organize a piss up, some breweries laid on rock 'n' roll bands...another
had fish and chips delivered by limousine. Young's response was
to lock us in their small, secret bar in an old stable at the
back of the Ram Brewery and give us free Ram and Special until
we had to stop. Their point being: this is Wandsworth, we don't
do bollocks, we do beer. Not any more."
Well, just across the river,
they still do any more. At the old Griffin brewery. A bit of
a surprise, since Chiswick is sinking under the weight of Chelsea
tractors, real estate agents and yellow dumpsters. The Griffin
somehow survives on the original site at the west end of Chiswick
Mall, near the Hogarth roundabout, where Fuller Ales have been
brewed since 1845. I recently returned for a visit.
I first lived in London in
the mid-late sixties, at the other end of Chiswick Mall. My lodgings
were a garret at 16 Hammersmith Terrace. It was the home of the
Zvegintzovs, Mischa and Diana. Mischa's father had been an Octobrist
and president of the fourth Duma; he was killed on the Galician
front in 1915. The Zvegintzov family were enemies of the Tzarist
state but as epitomes of Russian parliamentary liberalism they
had to flee the Bolsheviks. They eventually reached London via
Finland and Sweden. The young Mischa was turned into an English
gent by way of Winchester College and Corpus Christi, Oxford.
There were limits, mind you - his old school chums insisted on
calling him "Zog". He took a job as a research chemist
at the Gas Light and Coke company. In 1940 he joined Political
Intelligence and ended the war as Director-General of the German
Chemical  Industry in the British zone.
Back in austerity Britain he became a pioneer of food processing
for Unilever. When I knew him, he had retired but was energetically
leading the agitation for a Thames barrage. Not from any premonition
of Arctic meltdown, but because the Thames is tidal at Chiswick
and floods daily over the Mall. Indeed when spring tides coincided
with cyclonic low pressure and a strong nor'easter, the gardens
and basements of Hammersmith Terrace were likely to be under
water.
From the high windows of No.
16, one could look east to the ironwork of Joseph Bazaglette's
Hammersmith Bridge, a Victorian baroque structure which was seriously
underbuilt and hence the target of three separate IRA bomb teams.
First in 1939, when Maurice Childs, a local hairdresser walking
home late at night across the bridge, noticed smoke and sparks
coming from a suitcase. He opened it to find a bomb inside, which
he chucked into the river. The explosion sent up a 60ft column
of water.
Beyond the bridge, on the Barn
Elms reach, one could just see the roof of Harrod's massive furniture
depository (long before Mohamed Al Fayed flogged it to the property
development arm of Bahrain International Bank for stockbroker
apartments) and I used to watch flocks of geese on their glide
path towards the reservoirs along Castlenau. Through the window,
when the wind was from the west, the astringent smell of hops
and mashed barley drifted down from the Griffin brewery. Through
the wall, no matter what the wind, came the sound of the New
Zealand Ladies Massed Choir, accompanied by Mischa and Diana's
son, who had a voice like Chaucer's pardoner. He passed his days
listening to antipodean sacred music, captured in a collection
of vintage 78s which he played on an ancient HMV gramophone.
To this day, his thin piping descant mingles in my mind with
the other music that filled my nights that year. Not that he
had the remotest interest in the new sounds emerging from the
Hammersmith Odeon, the World's End, and the Troubador at Redcliffe
Gardens, thanks to John Mayall, Alexis Korner, Stevie Winwood,
John Renbourn and co. All virtually within earshot, owing to
recent developments at the Marshall Amplifier Company.
When I reached the river, the
tide was on the turn and Chiswick Mall glistened with a film
of Thames sludge. The scene at Upper and Lower Mall was remarkably
unchanged, though Hammersmith Terrace had sprouted a fresh crop
of blue plaques. Under New Labor, the heritage industry has been
hard at work commemorating this radical corner of the book world.
Edward Johnson the master calligrapher lived for a while at No.
3, the typographer Emery Walker at No.7, May Morris next door
at No. 8. Her father William lived a few yards away at 26 Upper
Mall, Kelmscott House, from which he sallied forth to harangue
the proletarians of the Hammersmith Socialist League. His neighbor
and fellow socialist, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, was a burned-out
barrister whom Janey Morris thought capable of something therapeutic
with his hands. And so the Doves Bindery and Press came about,
first at 15 Upper Mall and later at 1 Hammersmith Terrace. One
night in 1915, as blood flowed at the second Battle of Ypres,
Cobden-Sanderson, by then a burned-out bookbinder, threw all
the Doves type (from which the Kelmscott Chaucer and Bible were
composed) off Hammersmith Bridge, to spite his old partner Emery
Walker. The business closed down soon after. But not before he
had trained an apprentice, the New Town utopian, Douglas "Care
of Books" Cockerell, whose own son Sydney Cockerell in turn
took on an apprentice, Gillian Cartwright-Allen, who became my
life companion.
T.J. named the Doves Bindery
after the neighboring pub at 19 Upper Mall. The Doves was a coffee
house in the eighteenth century, but lately - since 1796 - has
been serving Fuller's beer. When I was a frequenter of the Dove
(it turned singular sometime in the early 20th century) hot food
was an unthinkable accompaniment to a pint of London Pride. You
could get a bag of crisps (blue touchpaper twist of salt included)
or if you were lucky a "Ploughman's Lunch". It sounded
like a primordial birthright, but was actually a high marketing
concept invented in 1960 by Richard Trehane, chairman of the
English Country Cheese Council. It consisted of a lump of cheddar,
a crust of bread and some Branston pickle. Today the Dove is
a designated "gastro pub", with a two-page menu and
a wide selection of organic vegetables picked at dawn, prepared
by virgins. Eat your heart out, Trehane.
I crossed over Hammersmith
Bridge, and down the steps to the gravel riverside path - pot-holed
and ragged and miraculously unimproved. A rus in urbe
experience, vouchsafed no doubt only by savage cuts in public
works maintenance. The water lapped close to the boathouses at
Putney Hard, and over a pint of Dog's Knob Bitter at the Duke's
Head I pondered the fragility of this riverscape and the coming
deluge. The Thames barrage will soon enough seem like a pathetic
finger in the dyke.
From outside the Duke's Head
I could see the tower of St Mary's Church, at the foot of Putney
High Street. St Mary's was my destination, for an evening of
17th century secular music. Last year there was a poll of
Guardian readers, who were asked to nominate the neglected
event in Britain's radical past that best deserves a proper monument.
Unexpectedly they chose the "Putney debates" over other
potential candidates, such as Bodmin parish church in Cornwall,
scene of the 1549 Prayer Book rebellion; the 1819 Peterloo massacre
site in Manchester; Queen's Square, Bristol, site of the reform
riots of 1831; Discovery House in east London, centre of the
Poplar rate dispute of 1921; the Orgreave coking plant in Yorkshire,
symbol of the 1984 miners' strike.
The Putney debates took place
in the late autumn of 1647 in St Mary's Church, the home base
of Oliver Cromwell's chaplain Hugh Peters who preached fiery
sermons there on the edge of the Thames. (He was also one of
the founders of Harvard University, a role he has come to regret.)
The debates culminated in the execution of Charles 1, the abolition
of the monarchy and the House of Lords, and the institution of
the 11-year English Republic. In the words of Geoffrey Robertson's
introduction to a new edition of The Putney Debates (Verso,
2007): "From its first ascendancy here at St Mary's, there
may be traced the acceptance - centuries later in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and now in two-thirds of the nations
of the world - of the idea that government requires the consent
of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens,
irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth."
On the eve of the 360th anniversary
of the debates, Tristram Hunt, historian and New Labor apparatchik,
reminded Guardian readers (G2, October 26, 2007) of the
events they had voted to commemorate:
By summer 1647, the Roundheads
were winning the English civil war. At Marston Moor and Naseby,
Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army had crushed the Cavaliers and
King Charles I himself was now in custody. But among the victorious
soldiers there was a gnawing fear that parliament and the army
generals (or "grandees") were preparing to sell them
out. Some MPs, fearing the religious militancy of the army and
keen for a settlement with the king, wanted to cut soldiers'
pay, disband regiments, refuse indemnity for war damage and pack
them off to Ireland. Most loathsome of all, they also looked
set to betray the religious and political ideals the New Model
Army had spent the previous five years fighting for. "We
were not a mere mercenary army hired to serve any arbitrary power
of a state, but called forth ... to the defence of the people's
just right and liberties," the soldiers complained. The
Levellers in the Cromwell's regiments demanded religious toleration
("The ways of God's worship are not at all entrusted by
us to any human power"); a general amnesty and an end to
conscription; a system of laws that must be "no respecter
of persons but apply equally to everyone: there must be no discrimination
on grounds of tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth or place";
regular, two-yearly parliaments and an equal distribution of
MPs' seats by number of inhabitants.
With Oliver Cromwell in the
chair, the general council of the New Model Army came together
at Putney church, in October 1647, to argue the case for a transparent,
democratic state free from the taint of parliamentary or courtly
corruption. It proved to be one of the greatest intellectual
encounters in western political thought. What was first of all
remarkable was the active involvement of rank and file soldiery.
And it is thanks to the shorthand notes of the army secretary,
William Clarke, that 360 years on we get to hear their political
theory. "Never again, even up to today, have private soldiers
been allowed to question their officers," as one Guardian
reader remarked during the competition.
On the second day of the debates,
after a good five-hour prayer session, the soldiers focused on
the question of the franchise. Who had the right to vote? For
the Levellers, the answer was clear: all those who placed themselves
under government should have the right to elect it. The vote
was a natural right, irrespective of property or position. "I
think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live,
as the greatest he," in the celebrated words of Colonel
Rainsborough, "and therefore ... every man that is to live
under a government ought first, by his own consent, to put himself
under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in
England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government
that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."
The wealthy, socially conservative
grandees were horrified by this spectre of egalitarian democracy.
To their minds, it presaged anarchy and corruption with wealthy
politicians able to buy up the votes of the uneducated, dependent
masses. Instead, Cromwell's son-in-law, Henry Ireton, proposed
that the franchise be limited to those with a "fixed local
interest", that is, the independent, propertied sort. For
Rainsborough, such a solution was a wretched betrayal of the
civil war sacrifice. "I would fain know what we have fought
for: for our laws and liberties? (Yet) this is the old law that
enslaves the people of England - that they should be bound by
laws in which they have no voice at all!" In the end, they
reached a compromise that the vote should be granted to all adult
males - excluding servants, apprentices, foreigners, beggars
and, obviously, women.
The debates then went on to
discuss how to deal with the problem of Charles I. And it was
during those chilly autumn days, in the pews of Putney, that
the mood hardened against that "man of blood" King
Charles and a deadly momentum developed to put him on trial for
high treason. The road to the English republic - that epic moment
in these islands' history - flowed downstream from Putney to
parliament.
Given such subversive sentiments,
it was unsurprising that Clarke's shorthand manuscript (subscribed
into long hand after the Restoration) was kept hidden. Many of
the ideas expressed at Putney - liberty of conscience; a government
dependent upon the sovereign will of the people; equality before
the law - would, via the ministrations of John Locke, make their
way into American political thought and the US constitution.
But in Britain these philosophies remained buried late into the
19th century until the Clarke Papers were finally unearthed in
Worcester College, Oxford, by the historian CH Firth.
Tuesday's recital of 17th century
music was part of a week of events at St Mary's - drama, readings,
reenactments, dialogues - challenging establishment amnesia and
official history whereby the phrase "English Republic"
cannot even be pronounced and the years 1649-60 are rendered
in Latin for the sake of decency. Never mind the gap, children,
it was only an interregnum, viz., a regrettable hiccup
in the glorious pageant of the British monarchy. So this project
joins the great works of recovery and levelling - Christopher
Hill's pioneering reinterpretation in The World Turned Upside
Down, Kevin Brownlow's film Winstanley, Caryl Churchill's
play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, and Peter Linebaugh
and Marcus Rediker's The Many Headed Hydra.
Further down the Thames, on
the other side of London, some major levelling of quite another
kind has begun. On Saturday I cycled from Shepherds Bush to Hackney
Wick to take a look at the future scene of the London Olympics.
In the last two months an 11-kilometer cyanide blue fence has
been erected around a vast swathe of the East End. The Wandsworth
brewery would be swallowed up unnoticed in the vast new building
site being prepared for three weeks of calisthenics in 2012.
The inhabitants of the Blue Zone have all been evicted; fifteen
families of travellers who settled at Clays Lane in 1971 were
the last to go, earlier this month, not because they refused
to leave but because the date of departure set for them by the
Olympics Delivery Authority (in charge of "land assembly")
was postponed eleven times.
When the chief executive of
the ODA claimed that the purpose of the Wall was "not to
separate communities but to protect them", one local had
this to say: "This is exactly what the East German authorities
said when the Berlin Wall was constructed. What could you possibly
be building that you need to protect the people on the outside
of that wall? You're simply afraid that us we'll sneak in and
start half-inching all your equipment."
I was only able to grasp the
scale of the thing after climbing to the 19th floor of a high-rise
block off Carpenter's Road, at the invitation of a Jamaican pensioner
I'd met in the moribund Stratford Arms, a pub suddenly cut off
from passing trade by the blue barrier. I cycled northwest along
the deserted Hackney Navigation canal in the hope of finding
a gap in the perimeter. There weren't even any viewing ports.
Eventually I came across an active works entrance where a platoon
of security guards were on weekend duty. They were friendly enough,
but got serious when I attempted to finesse my way past. I hung
around and photographed them inspecting a heavy goods vehicles
on its way into "Olympic Park". One of the goons threatened
to seize my plastic Boots camera. "It's throwaway, right,
squire?" Right.
I headed further north, beyond
the Hackney Cut. Apart from one trip long ago to the old Lea
Valley Cycle Circuit, now on the wrong side of the fence and
under the jackhammer, this was a landscape I'd only read about.
I was entering Iain Sinclair territory, the world of White
Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, and Downriver, his playground
of weird connections. Sinclair's psychogeographical fictions
have recently got up the nose of John Barker. He accuses Sinclair
of giving comfort to the colonizers of East London by making
the old docklands exciting and safe for the modern bourgeois
with a taste for the off-beat. Mind you, Barker seems even more
angry at the sterilizing of his favourite Hackney pubs, which
used to cater to the goths and mohicans of the anti-capitalist
movement and where the craic was fierce and wild.
I had no intention of getting
between Sinclair and Barker, or romancing the Hackney Marshes
and the River Lea. I was just aiming to get a feel for the Blue
Zone, so that I could compare London's new enclosures with the
social cleansing also under way in Delhi (for the 2010 Commonwealth
Games, a kind of Olympics lite) and now more or less complete
in Beijing (ready for next year's Olympics). I would like to
understand the evolution of these sportscapes, which are microcosms
of spatial form and urban dispossession under capitalist modernity.
They have a direct connection to Hitler's clearances in Berlin
for the 1936 Olympics, and to land grabs under the cover of Expos
and World's Fairs.
That deeper history of London's
transformation got an airing last Friday night at the launch
of the paperback edition of London: City of Disappearances,
compiled by - who else - Iain Sinclair: " Alongside the
London of noise and celebrity is that other city: of the dead,
the unvoiced, the erased...and urban myths with more blood and
vigour than the contemporary cartoons of manufactured notoriety."
A gathering of weird old England, organized by Penned in the
Margins, assembled in the great hall of the Bishopsgate Institute
behind Liverpool Street Station. We were witness to a rare urban
excursion by the Northampton magus of the graphic novel, Alan
Moore. He was in conversation with the anarchist pasticheur Michael
Moorcock - sometime Hawkwind librettist, lambaster of Heinlein
and C.S. Lewis, the anti-Tolkien, and author of barrowloads of
fantasy, most recently The Metatemporal Detective. There
was also a reading by the performance artist Brian Catling, although
poor acoustics and a uvular delivery combined to obscure his
drift. On the other hand, Kirsten Norrie of the low-tech poetics
group The Wolf in Winter, galvanized the company with her astonishing
vocal improvisation. Using a looper meant for guitar, with a
14 second record time, she built up layers of sound in real time...a
solo massed choir.
A sound, it occurs to me, that
might have tempted even Zvegintzov fils down from his
garret.
Iain Boal is a historian of technics and the
commons, a member of the Retort collective, and co-author of
Resisting
the Virtual Life and Afflicted
Powers. He can be reached at: boal@sonic.net
.
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