Today's Stories

January 22/24, 2010

Christopher Ketcham
Freedom of Speech for a Fiction

January 21, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
Security Fools

Alan Farago
Fat Tires in the Everglades

Richard Morse
Earthquake in the Red Zone

Stewart J. Lawrence
The Prospects for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Harvey Wasserman
The Weimar Democrats

Carl Finamore
Class Clowns

Ramzy Baroud
Iran and Latin America: the Press Stirs the Pot

Marshall Auerback
Obama Still Doesn't Get It

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Pakistan Love Story

Adam Federman
Did Commercial-ization Kill the Bees?

Website of the Day
How Free Market Theory Destroyed the Free Market

January 20, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
A Richly Deserved Humiliation

James Bovard
How the Patriot Act Perpetuates Official Robberies

Mary Lynn Cramer
Class and Party Differences in Massachusetts

Dean Baker
Making the Banks Pay

Uri Avnery
The Turkish Incident

Kathy Kelly
Tough Minds and Tender Hearts

Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Classquake

Ron Jacobs
Revolution Not a Tea Party

John V. Walsh
Why I Voted for the Republican in Massachusetts

Bouthaina Shaaban
A Wise Strategy for Obama

Gail Dines
The Ideal Partner?

Website of the Day
Water Insecurity in the Colorado Basin

January 19, 2010

Michael Hudson
Wall Street's Power Grab

John Maxwell
No, Mister, You Can't Share My Pain

Stephen Soldz
The Guantánamo Suicides

Richard Morse
Tweets from Port au Prince: "A Hungry Man is an Angry Man..."

Björn Kumm
The Tragedy of Toussaint L'Ouverture

Gary Leupp
Blowback of the Drones

Eric Toussaint /
Sophie Perchellet
Haiti's Odious Debt

Nikolas Kozloff
Chile's New Right

Benjamin Dangl
Profiting From Haiti's Misery: If the Marines Don't Kill You, the Loans Will

Dave Lindorff
The Blackout on Cuban Aid to Haiti

Robert Roth
The Politics of an Earthquake

Website of the Day
Break Up the Big Banks--ASAP

January 18, 2010

Petra Bartosiewicz
The Intelligence Factory: How America Makes Its Enemies Disappear

Nelson P. Valdés
The Rescue Operation's Priorities in Haiti

Bill Quigley
Why the U.S. Owes Haiti Billions

Richard Morse
I See No Evidence of a Government Presence Here: Tweets from Port au Prince

Tolu Olorunda
More Than Aid, Haiti Needs Allies

John Ross
The Silence of the Sub

Manuel Garcia, Jr. The Murder of Masoud Alimohammadi: Assassinating the Iranian H-Bomb

Ralph Nader
Privatizing Everything

Franklin Lamb
How McCain was Greeted in Lebanon

Frederick B. Hudson
Plucking the Chords of Change

Website of the Day
Senator Centerfold

January 15-17, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Bum Rap for Harry, Not for Bubba Bill

Richard Morse
The Streets are Now Haiti's Living Room, Bedroom and Morgue

Bill Quigley
Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should Do for Haiti

Patrick Cockburn
Crushing Haiti, Now as Always

Jeffrey St. Clair
On the Firing Line

Anthony DiMaggio
Remaking an American Myth: Haiti, U.S. Aid and Humanitarian Relief

Tom Reeves
Haiti, Where America Never Learns

Daniel Wolff
Haiti's Ongoing Emergency

Alan Nasser
Obama's Latest Ruse: the Bank Tax

Saul Landau /
Nelson P. Valdes
A Coup in Honduras ... So Twentieth Century!

Andrew Oxford
Afghanistan's Soft-Spoken Rebel

Michael Donnelly
Big Greens and Real Greens: Biodiversity in the Age of Big Money Environmentalism

Russell Mokhiber
Democrats Going Down in Flames

Darwin Bond-Graham
The Green Drillers

Missy Beattie
War Dealer

David Ker Thomson
The Attention Economy

Gary Leupp
War on Yemen

Ron Jacobs
The Untold Story of Afghanistan

Clifton Ross
Nicaragua Now: Living the Farce

Jordan Flaherty
Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans

Marshall Auerback
Why Placating the Tea Baggers Protects the Status Quo

Marjorie Cohn
Keeping Same Sex Marriage in the Dark

Joe Bageant
Bass Boats and Queer Marriage

Tariq Ali
Remembering Daniel Bensaîd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Too Soon to Fail?

Charles R. Larson
Iran at the Seams

Kim Nicolini
Vampires in Hard Times

David Yearsley
Histories of Western Music, From Grout to Kleinzahler

Poets' Basement
Garcia and Bryan

Website of the Weekend
Green Tags: Words That Stick

Support Haiti Action

January 14, 2010

Ashley Smith
The Incapacitation of Haiti: Before and After the Quake

Harvey Wasserman
Hard Core Green: How to Kick Corporate Butt

Dean Baker
The Case for Bernanke: a Really Bad Joke

Brian Cloughley
Selective Compassion

Brock L. Bevan
One Night in Sana'a: Parties, French Girls and Security in Yemen

Don Monkerud
The Health Insurance Monopoly

Winslow T. Wheeler
More Pentagon Spending

Gideon Levy
Only Shrinks Can Explain Israel's Behavior

Adam Federman
The Exxon Clause

James McEnteer
This Week in Stupid

Brian Concannon Jr
Working with the Haitian Government

Website of the Day
Protest at Wall Street

January 13, 2010

Patrick Haenni /
Sami Amghar
The Myth of Muslim Conquest

Jonathan Cook
The Iron Dome

Cecil Brown
Knocking on Woods: What Tiger Woods Jokes Tell Us About the American Character

Steven Higgs
Mercury and the "Environmental Soup"

Paul de Rooij
A People's Cartoon History of Gaza

Richard Forno
What Happens When They Change Targets?

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists in an Age of Torture

Daniel Drennan
A Black Panther in Beirut

Martha Rosenberg
The "Good Cancer" Spin

Brenda Baletti, Gilson Rego and Antonio Sena
Battle in Amazonia

Website of the Day
Haiti Aid: Artists for Peace and Justice

January 12, 2010

Bill Salganik
The Myth of "Cadillac" Health Plans

Uri Avnery
The Quiet American Goes to Yemen

Dean Baker
Big Bank Theory

Dan Kovalik
Chiquita Lauded for Human Rights Abuses

Raza Naeem
Yemen's Memories of Revolution and Resistance

George Wuerthner
Up in Smoke: Why Biomass Wood Energy is Not the Answer

Dave Lindorff
Looking for Those Green Shoots

David Macaray
I am Blacker Than Rod Blagojevich

Tolu Olorunda
Bono Bombs, Again

Patrick Bond
Copenhagen Inside-Out

Website of the Day
Unfortunate Checkout Aisle Juxtapositions: Tiger and Abdulmutallab

January 11, 2010

Patrick Cockburn
Only Fools Rush Into Yemen

Gareth Porter
Potemkin Tunnels: Iran Uses Fear of Secret Nuclear Sites to Avert Attacks

John Ross
Mexico Welcomes 2010 With Bombs and Riots

Gregory V. Button
TVA Health Assessment Report on Coal Ash Raises Troubling Questions About the Agency

Ralph Nader
The Last of the Prairie Populists: Losing Byron Dorgan

Tom Barry
Not Systemic Failure, Failed System

Mikita Brottman
The Healing Powers of Facebook

David Michael Green Lost in the White House

David Swanson
Obama as the Secret Decider

Kevin Zeese
The Baucus 8 Are Free

Website of the Day
Solitary Watch: News From a Nation in Lockdown

January 8 - 10, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Acting Responsible

Andrew Cockburn
How the Teamsters Beat Goldman Sachs

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle to Claim the New West

Alison Weir
Calling Bono: Your Palestinian Gandhis Exist ... in Graves and Prisons

Peter Linebaugh
Some Principles of the Commons

Vijay Prashad
The Long March in Latin America

Saul Landau
Naked Empire

Tim Simons /
Ali Tonak
The Dead End of Climate Justice

Andy Worthington
Putting an Afghan Nobody on Trial

Missy Beattie
Shall We Gather at the CIA?

David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Labor

Ron Jacobs
A Life Worth Saving

Randall Amster
The Road to Health Care Reform is Paved With Bad Intentions

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is Accountability Expendable?

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan and the Afghan Insurgency

Dan Bacher
Big Ag's Big Lie About Feeding America

Christopher Brauchli The Senate and the Filibuster: a Helpless and Contemptible Body

Carl Finamore
Negotiating Separately, Fighting Together

Walter Brasch
Giving the Homeless the Cold Shoulder

Charles R. Larson
Is Tash Aw the Malaysian Graham Greene?

Kim Nicolini
"The Messenger:" a Story of Absent Bodies

David Yearsley
So You Want to Play in a Band in the Piazza San Marco?

Phyllis Pollack
Soul Serenade: the Legacy of Willie Mitchell

Lorenzo Wolff
Hoarding William Bell

Poets' Basement
Stevens, Kaung, & Yankevich

Website of the Weekend
Haitian Immigrant's Detention Story Leaves ICE Cold

January 7, 2010

Bruce Patterson
PTSD: Welcome Home, Hold Your Tongue

Alan J. Singer
How I Almost Became a Terrorist

Mark Weisbrot
Bail Out the Poor

William Blum
The American Elite

Joshua Frank
Bombing the Land of the Snow Leopard: the War on Afghanistan's Environment

Ramzy Baroud
The Media Vultures

Suzan Mazur
Turmoil at the NAS

D. K. Wilson
Guns, Race and Sports

Ray McGovern /
Coleen Rowley
CounterTerrorism in Shambles

Website of the Day
Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

January 6, 2010

Gareth Porter
The Iran Nuclear Trigger Forgeries

Mike Whitney
The Stimulus Killer: Rubin Rides Again

Dean Baker
The Undignified Death of the Washington Post

Adam Federman
Swimming in Natural Gas: the Greenwashing of an Industry

Tariq Ali
From Reconquista to Recolonization

Bouthaina Shaaban
2009: Some Arabs, Some Jews

Nikolas Kozloff
Converting Tiger Woods: Brit Hume's Slurs on Buddhism

Emily Ratner
Palestine Vivre!

Carl Finamore
The San Francisco Hotel Dispute

Anthony Papa
Panic in Needle Park: Return of the Fear Mongers

Website of the Day
Paul McCartney: the LSD Interview

January 5, 2010

Joseph Shansky
Killing Organizers in Honduras

Nadia Hijab
When Does It Become Genocide?

Steven Higgs
Evidence of Harm Revisited

Franklin Lamb
Obama Adds 675 Million Muslims to the Ultimate US Terrorism List

Frank Joseph Smecker
Coal's Ruptured Landscape

Paul Craig Roberts
The Law is Lost

Ellen Brown
Escape From Pottersville: the North Dakota Banking Model

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Time for a Peace Budget

Martha Rosenberg
Do You Know Where Your Child Is?

Laura Flanders
Dubai's Tower of Debt

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

January 4, 2010

Uri Avnery
The Iron Wall

Mike Whitney Bernanke in Atlanta

Patrick Cockburn
The Ugly Fortress

Dave Lindorff
Are U.S. Forces Executing Afghan Kids?

Dr. Susan Block
About a Boy: Inside the Two Heads of the Crotch Bomber

Lynda Brayer
Revenge and Retaliation in Gaza

Deepak Tripathi
Rebuff to Karzai or Occupying Powers?

David Michael Green
The Perils of Passivity

Lucinda Marshall
The Handmaid's Tale Comes to Life

K. Webster
A Flash of Anger, Then a Youth's Light Fades

Website of the Day
David Byrne: Art Funding or Arts Funding?

January 1 - 3, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye to 2009, Hello to 2010: Year of the Tiger

Afshin Rattansi
Hostage to Fortune

Jeffrey St. Clair
Disquiet on the Western Front

Ralph Nader
The Awful Truth

Andrew J. Bacevich
Obama's Post-Modern War of Attrition

Joanne Mariner
Terror Suspects and U.S. Courts

Judith Blau, M. Rafael Gallegos Lerma and Alfonso Hernandez
In the Face of Immigrant Bashing

John Feffer
Emulating Nixon: Peacemaker as Warmonger

Fatma Elshhati, Miho Seki, and Anthony Löwstedt
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: an Interview with Ilan Pappe

Kevin Gallaher / Timothy Wise
Lessons From NAFTA

Dave Lindorff
The Year of Our Discontent

Missy Beattie
Backward, Into Fear

David Macaray
Why Men Really Read Playboy

Natanya Robinowitz
Mexico's Abortion Laws

Franklin Lamb
The Israel Lobby's War on Al Manar TV

Bob Sommer
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

Floyd Rudmin
Kant on War

Jim Goodman
Obama's Wallflowers: Dancing With Those Who Brought You

Charles R. Larson
In the Cracks of the City

Gilad Aztmon
Avatar: a Humanist Call From Mt. Hollywood

Poets' Basement
Adler, Wróblewski and Wink

Website of the Weekend
Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency

December 31, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminate the Senate

Patrick Cockburn
Touch Yemen, Get Burned

Mike Whitney
Lining Up for the Wall Street Gravy Train

Greg Moses
The Fear Stimulus

Ramzy Baroud
Egypt's Steel Wall

Ron Jacobs
Interventions R Us

Tom Stephens
"The System Worked"

Dave Zirin
The Man Who Would Reclaim Sports

Paul Richards
Tiger Max, Evel Denny, Buffalo Brian and Mini-Max Jon

Nick Egnatz
The Lesser Evil

Website of the Day
Roger Waters Blasts Israel's Siege of Gaza

December 30, 2009

Stephen Green
A Lawless Presidency

Thomas Mountain
What Did Angelina Jolie Pay for Her Baby?

Stewart J. Lawrence
Baluchistan and the Af/Pak War

Ray McGovern
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Toys for Tots ... with Green Cards

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel Rules

Jeff Cohen
If It Was Wrong Under Bush, It's Wrong Under Obama

Binoy Kampmark
The Grand Placebo

Brenda Norrell
Hate and Death on the Border

Charles R. Larson
The Affluent Terrorist: Sexual Frustration and the Crotchbomber

Website of the Day
The Year in Coal

December 29, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Nuke Forgeries

Patrick Cockburn
Yemen Next

Steven Higgs Growing Up Toxic: Defeating Autism, Now

Susan Albulhawa /
Ramzy Baroud
Share the Land

Emily Ratner
Winding Our Way to Gaza

Dave Lindorff
Krugman's Health Care Sell-Out

David Macaray
Who is the Ideal Labor Leader?

Rev. William E. Alberts
Prince of Peace or Evangelistic Predator?

Deepak Tripathi
Compromised Domestic Policy, Militarized Foreign Policy

Walter Brasch / Rosemary Brasch
The Courage of Michael Vick: Dog Hanger as Model Citizen?

Website of the Day
Thinking Forward, Looking Back

December 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
Cast Lead II

Gary Leupp
Eyes on Yemen

Bouthaina Shaaban
Hearing is Not Like Seeing

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Decriminalize Political Speech

Sam Husseini
The Egyptian Puppet State

Greg Moses
Avatar's Jungle of Technology

Sonja Karkar
Gaza in Crisis

Patrick Bond
The Life and Death of Dennis Brutus

Michael Simmons
A Secret Masterpice: The Only Album "Bob Dylan" Ever Produced

David Michael Green
Good Riddance to the Devil's Decade

Alan McConnell
Who Will Organize the Organizers?

Website of the Day
Baucus: Shitfaced on the Senate Floor?

December 25-27, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Disappointments in Samarra

Mark Rudd
What It Takes to Build a Movement

Ralph Nader
Read, Then Act: the Year's Best Books

Nicola Nasser
Palestinians on the Brink of Explosion

John Ross
Where the Holidays are a Cruel Hoax

Rannie Amiri
Jimmy Carter's Yuletide Apology

Christopher Brauchli
When Prosperity Comes to Bad Men

Shamus Cooke
Who Will Pay For the Economic Collapse?

Ramzy Baroud
Paying the Price for Europe's Identity Crisis

John Blair
My Moral Dilemma on Hydrofracking

Michael D. Yates
Fear and Loathing at St. Vincent College

David Macaray
The Gift Nobody Wanted

Charles R. Larson
Love in an Inhumane Country

David Yearsley
From the Little Ice Age, a Hot Christmas from Purcell

Kim Nicolini
Further on Down the Road

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Gina Myers

Website of the Weekend
A Xmas Gift From Ray Charles

December 24, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Cooing with Cash

Franklin C. Spinney For Better or Worse? the Afghan Escalation and Women's Rights

Nadia Hijab
The Jailing of Jamal Juma

Mike Whitney
Obama, Progressives and the Press: an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Reform in Name Only: Individual Mandates

William Loren Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters

Martha Rosenberg
First, Kill No Celebrities: New Year's Resolutions for the Drug Industry

Stephen Fleischman
A Pound of Flesh: Interest and Profit

Anthony Papa
Chase Bank Says F-You to Students at Holiday Time

Dave Lindorff
An Afghan Christmas: a Visit From St. Barack

Website of the Day
A Tale of Two Pigs

December 23, 2009

David Price
Hollywood's Human Terrain Avatars

Dean Baker
Bernanke and the Corruption of Washington Culture

Andy Worthington
The Afghan Four

Neve Gordon
Breaking Palestine's Peaceful Protests

Helen Redmond
Beware the Progressive Democrat

Debayni Kar
Can Migrants Save the Global Economy?

Fred Gardner
The Calender Girl Conspiracy: Could Pot Have Saved Marilyn?

Brian Tokar
What Really Happened in Copenhagen?

Dave Zirin
More Than a Sportswriter

Randall Amster
Et Tu, Barack?

Website of the Day
How Einstein Divided America's Jews

December 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Relocating Guantanamo

Dave Lindorff
A Longer, Deeper Recession Looms

Ralph Nader
Obama in the Shark Tank

David Rosen
Sexual Politics in the Age of Obama

Laurie Kirby
Woodstock's Dirty Secret

Ron Jacobs
The Best Way to Stop a War

Dick J. Reavis
Insurance Reform, in Brief

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Palestine's Gift of Christmas

Norman Solomon
Flares in the Darkness

Rannie Amiri
The Death of the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri

Website of the Day
Nader: From W. to Obama: a Seamless Transition on the War

December 21, 2009

Alan Farago
Destroying the Everglades at 25 Cents Per Ton

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Af/Pak War is Illegal

Uri Avnery
Bordering on the Ridiculous: "Oybama" in Oslo

Mike Whitney
Bernanke Tightens the Noose

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Medicare Murder Mystery

Mark Scaramella
The Fate of California's Forests

Walter Brasch
Law & Order in Pennsylvania: Corruption, Murder and Race Hate

David Michael Green
Now, I'm Really Getting Pissed Off

Ingmar Lee
Why I Climbed the Flagpole

Farzana Versey
Whose Euthanasia Is It, Anyway?

Binoy Kampmark
The Conservative Dissident

Website of the Day
My Father Was a Freedom Fighter

December 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Turning Tricks, Cashing In on Fear

Michael Colby
The Health Care Charade: Bernie the Quitter Fools Us Again

Jeremy Scahill
Stunning Statistics About the War That Everyone Should Know

Stewart J. Lawrence
Pakistan's Refugee Disaster: Symptom of a Deeper Malady

Mike Whitney
Chavez's Venezuela

Andy Worthington
The Case of the Unwilling Yemeni Recruit

James Ridgeway
How Health Reform was Killed by Triangulation

Saul Landau
Almost Year One: an Assessment

John Ross
Tragicomedy in Ixtapalapa

Danny Weil
Race to the Slop

Rannie Amiri
Year 1431: Off to a Rocky Start in the Middle East

Franklin Lamb
Life in Lebanon

Steve Early
Green Mountain Mustering for the War at Home or Abroad?

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Sovereignty of Muslim Nations: a Casualty of U.S. Foreign Policy

Fred Gardner
Pot Specialists Plan to Study New Strains

D. K. Wilson
Tiger Woods: Lessons Not Learned ... Again

Missy Beattie
It Takes a Conscience

Jim Goodman
Hope is Dead: the Ongoing Tragedy of Rural Health Care

George Wuerthner
Turning Montana Into the Nation's Woodbox

Charles R. Larson
Windows Into Non-Western Cultures

Lorenzo Wolff
Recession Punks

David Yearsley
That Nauseating Peace Concert

Ben Sonnenberg Lordura di Napoli: the Best DVDs of the Year

Wajahat Ali
Invading Eden: James Cameron's "Avatar"

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Pommy Vega and Cirino

Website of the Weekend
Rage Against the Machine: Uncensored for Xmas

December 17, 2009

Steven Higgs
Heavy Metal Kids

Barbara Koeppel
How Banks Prey on the Unemployed

Dave Lindorff
Abort the Democratic Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
The Lobby Within

Ron Jacobs
Selling a "Just" War: From Panama to Afghanistan

Shamus Cooke
The Democrats' Faux Fight Against the Banks

Christopher Brauchli
Suffer Little Children

Binoy Kampmark
The "Inevitable" War?

Norm Kent
Death by Baggie

Patrick Bond
Green Market Punks

Website of the Day
Grayson: End the War Now

December 16, 2009

James Bovard
How Bush Redefined American Freedom

Gregory V. Button
The TVA Ash Spill One Year Later

Dan Schiller
It's a Wired World: the Communications Revolution

Gareth Porter
The Taliban's Offer

Farrah Hassen
The Cairo Detour

Nicola Nasser
U.S. Creates Its Antithesis in Iraq

Daniel C. Maguire
Why Obama Flunks the "Just War" Test

Martha Rosenberg
The Sex Scandal No One Wants to Talk About

David Macaray
Education's Dismal Cycle

Ellen Brown
An EU / IMF Revolt

Robert Bryce
The Copenhagen Conundrum

Website of the Day
Double Trouble for Polar Bears

December 15, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Resistance in Bethlehem's Villages

Chris Floyd
Blair, Obama and the Narcissist's Defense

Anthony DiMaggio
Larry Summers and the Jobless Recovery

Dean Baker
Financial Transaction Tax: Easy and Fun Money

Andy Worthington
Tortured in the "Dark Prison"

Mike Whitney
Malalai Joya Among Warlords

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War Rebate?

Jeff Ballinger
Advocating Sweatshops: NPR, NYT and Nick Kristof

Raymond Lawrence
Tiger's Fix

David Rovics
Report From Cop-enhagen

Weekend Edition
January 22 - 24, 2010

Why Do They Bother? What Do They Want?

Art on Trial in the Capital of Culture

By MICHAEL DICKINSON

The skies over Istanbul were illuminated with firework displays twice recently. First, at the stroke of midnight to usher in the new decade and the crossover from the noughties to the pre-teens. And again last week the firmament sparkled and the streets echoed with bomb-like explosions to celebrate the proud official inauguration of Istanbul as 'The European Capital of Culture'.

Culture. An interesting word, covering a multitude of ideas, particularly in the Arts, surely. Music, dance, theatre, books, painting, drawing - collage?

I'm an English teacher who has lived and worked in Istanbul for over 20 years, and since 2001 have been making collages in my spare time, usually with a political theme, and often featuring caricatures of British and American politicians, particularly the odious Bush and Blair. I've had several exhibitions of my work in bars and cafes in Istanbul with no trouble, until 2006, when police took exception to two caricatures of mine displaying the Prime Minister, Tayy?p Erdo?an (my first pictures of a Turkish politician) as a pet dog of America. This led to my arrest and imprisonment for 10 days, followed by expulsion from the country.

After a brief holiday I returned to Turkey, only to find myself summoned to court, charged with 'insulting the dignity of the Prime Minister', a 'crime' which can carry a sentence of up to 2 years in prison. The first trial was followed by a second and a third and a fourth as the judge made up his mind as to whether my collages could be construed as 'art' rather than 'insult', even calling for the opinions of professors of Fine Art from two Istanbul universities.

Eventually, in September 2008 the judge gave his final verdict. As Turkey is keen to join the European Community, he said, and as my kind of artistic comment is not a crime in European countries, he had reluctantly decided to aquit me of the charge. I was delighted. At last I could get back to living without that dark cloud hanging over me.

But then one morning in May 2009 I got a call from a Turkish friend.

'Did you hear the news?' she gasped.

'What news?' I asked.

She told me that her husband had been watching TV the night before, when suddenly along the bottom of the screen he had read: 'BRITISH ARTISTS AQUITTAL QUASHED. NEW TRIAL TO OPEN.'

'Get out of the country quickly before the summons arrives!' she urged.

Actually, I had already been thinking of leaving Turkey and going back to England but hadn't set a date, wondering what to do with all the stuff I had accumulated over the years. I'd been taking my time, but the idea of going through the whole business again of trials and threats of fines or prison spurred me to haste. In a kind of panic caught from my Turkish friends to get out before the summons arrived, I fled/flew to England with as much luggage as I could carry, leaving the poor delighted doorman of the apartment building with the contents of my flat - books, tv, computer, Turkish carpets etc. to sell for himself.

In England I made my base at a friend's house in Consett, in the North East. I signed on at the labour exchange - Jobseekers Plus - applying for jobseekers allowance (social security). Told to sign on every two weeks, I was assured that the application would soon be processed.

No work for English teachers is to be found in Consett - once a busy steel and mining town, now populated by ghosts, pensioners and obese zombies, the Altzheimers Club the swingingest place in town. Not much of any other work either, apart from shelf-stacking at the supermarkets or sweeping up in the bookies. Of course you could always join the Army. Not me, I'm too old, but young British lads are always welcome - the Jobcentre features Army jobs heavily. Good pay - get out of this dump. In the pubs there are military posters on the wall over the urinals - 'Get A Real Weapon In Your Hands! Join the Army!'

No work to be had for me in nearby Newcastle, nor in London or Brighton, as I discovered over the next couple of months when I visited those cities to investigate, staying in hostels and signing on at the local jobcentres every two weeks, (they annoyed - 'You're supposed to sign on in the place where you stay!')

Eventually, back in Consett, an official letter arrived from Jobseekers Plus. It read:

'The Decision Maker has decided that we cannot allow your claim for Jobseekers Allowance (Income Based.) This is because you have not been here an appreciable period of time to show that you are habitually resident in the UK.'

It wasn't even signed.

What was I to do? How was I to earn my living? A friend had suggested that I could probably get a job in Greece, so I went to Athens, with much less luggage, cutting down to essentials to get rid of weight, but I learned there that foreign English teachers must pass a proficiency test in the Greek language, and I really couldn’t speak or read a word.

A Canadian friend teaching in Syria emailed suggesting I might try my luck there, so I thought right – I’ll get the train which goes once a week from from Istanbul to Alleppo.

So there I was back in Istanbul, aiming to get out before any news of the summons reached me. First I had to get a Syrian visa. At the embassy I was told that British subjects must first get a ‘letter of reccommendation’ from the Britsh Consulate. When I went to get it I was shocked to discover that one has to pay an exorbitant fee for the said letter – costlier than the price of the train ticket. Learning that I would also have to pay a hefty sum for the visa and that I wouldn’t be entitled to legally work in Syria gave me pause.

And while I was pausing, staying in a cheap little hotel in a back street (I’m still there) near the vibrant centre of town, deciding what to do, I got a call from my lawyer. The summons had arrived.

And so it begins again. Actually, I didn’t know aquitalls could be quashed. Why did they bother? What do they want? I’ve decided to wait and find out, determined not to pay a fine.

My lawyer and me appeared in court before the new judge on the appointed day. After about half an hour he announced an adjournment until the 27th of January, when he will make his final decision. (Another Decision Maker! Just like the Jobcentre Plus. All these Big Brothers deciding our fate for us.)

Abdullah Gül, the President of Turkey recently made a public statement, saying: “Protecting the freedom of expression is a must for a healthy flow of information to society, resulting in flourishing different views.”

Let’s hope the judge bears the President’s words in mind when making his decision next week. Let’s also hope he remembers that Istanbul currently holds the title ‘European Capital of Culture’.

It would hardly be considered cultured behaviour at such a time to punish an artist for expressing himself with artistic images, and certainly not for the police to close down an exhibition of his work because they don’t like his pictures. (- I’m having a retrospective show of my collages at a bar in town to coincide with my final appearance in court...)

Michael Dickinson can be contacted through his website - http://yabanji.tripod.com/

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time
by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

Click here to Buy!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

2010 Country Mamas of Petrolia
Calendar Now Available!

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont