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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers!

Why Hillary Clinton has Always Been a Republican

In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.

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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories

July 21 / 22, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Giuliani and the Dogs of War

Werther
How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate

Ralph Nader
Atomic Blowback

David Keen
Buy Hard: How to Sell an Endless War

Fred Gardner
Karl Rove, Pothead: When Good Drugs Happen to Bad People

Gary Leupp
Edelman's Edict: Is Hillary "Reinforcing Enemy Propaganda?"

Robert Fantina
Fear in Iraq

Saker
The Future of Palestine: an Interview with Jonathan Cook

Rannie Amiri
Nasrallah in the Crosshairs: How will the Third Lebanon War Start?

Mike Whitney
The Crisis in Hedgistan

Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD
The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness: Linking Alienation and Dissociation

Monica Benderman
Facing the Truth

Dan Bacher
Deltagate: the Politics of Fish Kills

Michael Baney
Fujimori's Long Race From Justice

Missy Beattie
Here, There and Everywhere

Ron Jacobs
Tremble, Tyrants

Thomas Naylor
California Split: an Open Letter to Schwarzenegger

 

July 20, 2007

Eliza Szabo
Fatal Neglect: Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan

Pam Martens
Doctoring the News: CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Laura Bush and Merck

Alan Farago
Winners and Losers in the Housing Market Crash

Harvey Wasserman
Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed "No Nukes!"

Marjorie Cohn
Iraqis will be the Deciders

Dave Zirin
White Noise and the Black Athlete

Anthony DiMaggio
American Public Opinion and Israel

Scott Liebertz
Oaxaca on Edge

Linn Washington, Jr.
British Cops Assault Rape Allegations

Bill Piper / Anthony Papa
Flying High?: The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar

Ramzy Baroud
Bush's War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing

Website of the Day
The Prankster Art of Mark Jenkins

 

July 19, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Next Invasion of Iraq

Remi Kanazi
Is This Ben Gurion or Hell?: a Palestinian Adventure Through Israel's Largest Airport

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Surging Costs of the Iraq War

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Health Care: Behind the Rhetoric

Dave Lindorff
Killing Cabbies in Iraq

Conn Hallinan
Have Gun, Will Travel: Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan

D. K. Wilson
The Michael Vick Case Pulls Back the Veil on Who We Really Are

Joshua Frank
Democrats as Leviathan: Another Step Toward War with Iran

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of Wayne Morse

Russell Hoffman
Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks at the World's Largest Nuke

Ray McGovern
Bush's Wooden Headedness Kills

Website of the Day
Protesting Power


July 18, 2007

Brenda Norrell
Spy Towers on the US Border

Col. Dan Smith
How the US Could "Lose" Saudi Arabia

Martha Rosenberg
Lord of Crookharbour: the Trial of Conrad Black

Conn Hallinan
Bombing and Spraying Afghanistan

Binoy Kampmark
The SIM Card Terror Case

Patrick Bond /
Rehana Dada

Who Killed Sajida Khan?

Tom Johnson
The Long Road ... to Nowhere

Paul Craig Roberts
A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?

Bob Quellos
Pushing the Poor Out of House and Home

Felice Pace
Falling for Lieberman's Iran Resolution

Robert Weissman
National Health Insurance: More Humane and More Efficient

CP Newswire
Shocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists in Torture

Website of the Day
Gilad Atzmon Live!

 

July 17, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 Fathers, Mothers and Children Killed

Marjorie Cohn
Out of Control: Executive Power Plays

Evelyn Pringle
Inside Bush's FDA

David Rosen
Moral Hypocrisy on the Hill: the Christian Right, Sexual Scandal and the Pleasures of the Courtesan

Susan Miller
Width Matters: Displacement and Israel's Wall

Franklin Lamb
Did the UN Cave to Israel on Lebanon's Shabaa Farms?

Don Monkerud
Considering Victory in Iraq

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Surge

Russell Hoffman
Japan Dodges a Radioactive Bullet

Dave Lindorff
Feingold Turns to Dross

Dave Zirin
Reclaiming Sports as True Fiction

Website of the Day
Che at the UN: 1964

 

July 16, 2007

Gary Leupp
Cheney Urges Bush to Strike Iran

Ellen Cantarow
The Untold Story of Iraqi Women

Paul Craig Roberts
Impeach Now

Allan J. Lichtman
The D.C. Madam's Public Service

Dan Bacher
Cheney and the Klamath: Was the Veep Behind the Nation's Worst Salmon Kill?

Patrick Cockburn
The Killing of Khalid W. Hassan

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Property is Racism

James Brooks
AIPAC and Mahmoud Abbas: the Undemocratic Road to Defeat

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Judicial Crisis in Pakistan

Julie Flint
Suleiman Jamous in Limbo

Website of the Day
Free Suleiman Jamous!

 

July 14 / 15. 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Support Their Troops?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majhid Khan, Dubious US Convictions and a Dying Man

Ralph Nader
Lawlessness, Waste and Incompetence

Robert Fantina
The Illegalities of the Iraq War

Ron Jacobs
Architecture as Military Strategy

Joshua Frank
Eat, Fight, Screw, Pray: An Interview with Joe Bageant

Conn Hallinan
Guns, Foundations and Free Trade: How the Right Targets Africa

Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD
War and Dissociation

John Ross
No En Nuestro Nombre!: a Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement

Fred Gardner
Who's Afraid of Cannabidiol?

Rannie Amiri
A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak

Charles Modiano
ESPN's Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man

Anthony DiMaggio
America's Parochial Press

China Hand
Executive Orders and Coercive Diplomacy

Missy Comley Beattie
Reprobate Rhetoricians

Dr. James J. Murtagh, Jr.
Harry Potter Battles Big Brother

Kenneth Rexroth
On Thomas More's "Utopia"

Poets' Basement
Engel, Davies and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
GOP Sex Hypocrites: a Slideshow

 

July 13, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Decider in Denial

Winslow T. Wheeler
Bush's Iraq Benchmarks Assessment: Grading on a Curve for the Wrong Test

Imran Khan
When Dictators Serve US Interests

Todd Chretien
The Wal-Mart of Garbage

Sam Husseini
Killing the Constitution

Dr. Herman Mindshaftgap
Why, in Truth, There is No Surge

Anthony Papa
The Hard Road Home

D. K. Wilson
The Wonderful World of Mike Greenberg and Barry Bonds

David Michael Green
In the Last Throes, Judiciously

Website of the Day
Strange Attraction: Mrs. Thompson and Mr. Wolfowitz

 

July 12, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Restoring the People's Power

Robert Jensen
Lessons from the Lal Masjid Tragedy

Dr. Susan Block
Hookergate II: The Senator and the Veep

Joshua Frank
The Liberal Thrashing of Ward Churchill

John Chuckman
How Terror Lost Its Meaning

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Problem with Bribeline

Mike Whitney
Demonizing Putin

Nicola Nasser
Will New Delhi's Palestinian Policy be Neutralized?

Richard Rhames
Requiem for the Paxilated

William S. Lind
Not Fourth Generation Warfare

Website of the Day
Video: World's Largest Nuclear Explosion

 

 

July 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Benchmark Blame Game

Richard Neville
Is This Man a Psychopath? Bomber McNeill, the Faceless Pol Pot of the Sky

Debra McNutt
Privatizing Women: Military Prostitution and the Iraq Occupation

John V. Walsh
A Plea to Ralph Nader

Scott Liebertz
Where's the Outcry? Mexico's Monitor Radio vs. RCTV

George C. Wilson
Beware the Iran Hawks

James McEnteer
My Impossible Dream Candidate

Philip Rizk
Submission or Resistance in Gaza?

Johnny Hazard
Mexico Commemorates a Fraud

Dave Lindorff
On the Road with Impeachment

Website of the Day
Sly Stone's Higher Power

 

July 10, 2007

James Ridgeway
True North: Big Oil in the Arctic

Tariq Ali
New Clashes in Islamabad: Judges and Jihadis Torment the Regime

Javed Hussein
Pakistan's Waco?: The Storming of the Red Mosque

William Blum
Neocons, Theocons, Demcons, Excons and Future Cons

Ralph Nader
Grown in China

Jay Arena
New Orleans, Public Housing and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Anthony DiMaggio
A Begrudging Reversal: The New York Times and the "Anti-War" Turn

Eva Liddell
Has Ann Coulter Got the Hots for John Edwards?

Jerry Kroth
Democratic Defectors and the Israel Lobby

Alice Woodward
White Supremacy and the Jena Six

Nikolas Kozloff
Where's Jerry?: On Cheney Impeachment, Rep. Nadler's a No Show

Paul Shannon
It's Time to Reform Sex Offender Laws

Website of the Day
March for Remembrance

 

July 9, 2007

Fidel Castro
The Killing Machine: Reflections from a Target of the CIA

Diana Johnstone
King Sarko the First

John Walsh
Will the Greens Seize the Moment?

Uri Avnery
The Jordanian Option

Ramzy Baroud
The Palestinian Left: a Lost Opportunity?

John Ripton
The New West Bank Palestinian State

Stephen Lendman
Making Gaza Scream

Bruce Jackson
Bush Going Down: the Correct Way to Affix a Stamp

Michael Donnelly
What's the Matter with Winchester?

Doug Giebel
Wanted: Old Men with Nothing to Lose

Website of the Day
Ron Paul on This Week with George

 


July 7 / 8, 2007

Saul Landau
Blame the Puppet

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Parasitic Imperialism

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
What Lies Beneath: Dispatches from the Frontlines of t he Burqa Brigade

Alan Maass
Will "Sicko" Spark a Movement?: a Film, Militant Nurses and a New Opportunity for Single Payer Health Care

John Ross
The Fire Last Time

Pat Williams
The Supreme Court and Mr. Peanut

Rannie Amiri
The Unbreakable Mordechai Vanunu

Farzana Versey
Does the Taj Mahal Deserve to be a Wonder of the World?

Bart Gruzalski
Bush, the Revolution and the Iraq War

Paul Rockwell
An Army of None

Reza Fiyouzat
Tax Cuts for the Rich Only Benefit the Economy of the Rich

Monica Benderman
Americans, Honestly!

Kenneth Couesbouc
Total War: From Clausewitz to Clinton and Bush

Dave Lindorff
Poll: Impeach the Bastards

Charles Modiano
History's Hit Job on Thomas Paine

Missy Beattie
King Cretin

Dal LaMagna
A Peacemaker's View of Baghdad

Jean Gerard
Those So-Called Oil Contracts in Iraq

Anne Dachel
Autism: an Epidemic of Fairly Recent Origin

Ron Jacobs
Modes and Melodies of Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Engel and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Van Morrison and Bob Dylan in Athens


July 6, 2007

Daniel Ellsberg
When the Crimes of the White House are Unpunishable

Gary Leupp
The Cracks in Cheney's World

Harvey Wasserman
Leonard Peltier vs. Scooter Libby: the Hero and the Henchman

Omer Subhani
Our Dead are Not the Same: Ignoring Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Marjorie Cohn
Compassion, Conspiracy and Commutation

Christopher Brauchli
Kingly Edicts: Bush's Executive Orders

David Michael Green
Scalia Time: the Wrecking Ball Court

China Hand
Catfish Blues: Food Safety, the FDA and the Emerging Trade War with China

Renee Saucedo
and Todd Chretien
The New Challenges Facing the Immigrant Rights Movement

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Crime Wave Behind the Media Curtain

Website of the Day
Jean Bricmont on the Humanitarian Interveners

 

July 5, 2007

Andy Worthington
Two Americas, Both Unjust: Scooter Libby vs. the "Enemy Combatants"

Mike Stark
Double Standards of North Carolina "Justice"

Norman Solomon
The Keyboard Hawks: a Bloody Media Mirror

Michael Schwartz
Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

Susie Day
Killer Lesbians Mauled by Killer Court (and Media Wolfpack)

Jacob Hornberger
A Tangled Web of Lies: Bush and the Libby Case

Bill Hatch
Smoking with Arnold: The Strange Return of Toxic Mary Nichols

Don Fitz
When Building Green Ain't So Green

John Wright
The Crisis of Imperialism

Website of the Day
Anti-Flag and Tom Morello: "This Land is Your Land"

 

July 4, 2007

St. Clair / Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambitions

Vijay Prashad
Democrat (Punjab): Obama and Outsourcing

Carl G. Estabrook
The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Exist

Ron Jacobs
Texas Wants to Kill Another Man, the Law be Damned: the Disturbing Case of Kenneth Foster

David R. Dow
The Quality of Bush's Mercy: the Ghosts of Texas

Claudia Johnson
Is My Doctor a Terrorist?

William S. Lind
What Israel's Defeat in Lebanon Means for Defense Industry Fat Cats

Gregory Afghani
Truth and Tenure: Finkelstein and the Perils of Impeccable Scholarship

Paul Edwards
End It Now!

D. K. Wilson
The Sliming of Tank Johnson

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Mr. President: Bush/Cheney for Dummies

Thomas Jefferson
The Spirit of Resistance: Lethargy is the Forerunner of the Death of Public Liberty

Cindy Sheehan
Call Out the Instigator

Website of the Day
Springsteen: 4th of July, Ashbury Park


July 3, 2007

Bill Quigley
Injustice in Jena: Black Nooses Hanging from the "White" Tree

Gary Leupp
Civil Strife in Palestine: a Broader Context

Lynda Brayer
Norman Finkelstein and the Catholic Church

Richard Thieme
Mind Wars: Brain Research, Nanotech and the Military

Helen Redmond
They Don't Come Back the Same: the Mind of the Returning Iraq War Vet

David Swanson
Scooter and the Commuter: When Presidents Pardon Their Own Crimes

Jacob Hornberger
Martha Stewart vs. Scooter Libby: Commutation as Cover-Up

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Pakistan's New Jihad

Franklin Lamb
The Edginess of Lebanon

Ray McGovern
Unimpeachably Impeachable: Start with Cheney

Kevin Zeese
The Air Force vs. Rev. Lennox Yearwood

Dave Lindorff
Nancy Pelosi and the Low Bar Democrats

Website of the Day
A Military Guide to the Iraq War


July 2, 2007

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Whistleblowers

Nina Serrano
The Assassination of a Poet: Memories of Roque Dalton

Jack Hirschman
The Nation and the Assassin: a Shameful Blunder

Paul Craig Roberts
Enter Turkey

Bill Williams
The Commissar Two-Step at DePaul

Anthony Papa
A Taste of the Gulag: What Paris Learned

Sonja Karkar
Who Will Save Palestine?

Louay Safi
Steve Emerson's Fantastic Obsession

Anthony Gregory
When Killer Cops Walk

Monica Benderman
In Consideration of War

Website of the Day
Dylan's Masters of War, at West Point, 1990

 

June 30 / July 1, 2007

John Ross
Free Frida Kahlo!

Alan Farago
Fakery, Inflation and the Housing Market

Peter Quinn
The Political Paranoia Over Immigration: Two Centuries and Counting

Christopher Brauchli
Cheney Does the Constitution

Robert Fisk
Abu Henry and the Mysterious Silence

Uri Avnery
A Dark Summit

Judith Siers-Poisson
The Politics and PR of Cervical Cancer

Saul Landau
Israel is Bad for Jewish Ethics

Abbas Zaidi
The Ad Hominem World of Pakistan Politics

Ron Jacobs
Ending the War, Organizing for Change

Ralph Nader
Move Over Oprah: a Summer Reading List

Donald Worster
Which City is Worse Off Today, New York or New Orleans?

Mike Whitney
The Fed's Role in the Bear Stearns Meltdown

Jacob Hill
Fast Track to Trade Failure

Kenneth Couesbouc
Why Global Trade is Rarely Fair

Missy Beattie
Kakistocracy

Mohammad Kamaali
Envoy for the Quartet

Ramzy Baroud
Finding Lessons in Gaza's Bloodshed

Leonard Peltier
A Gathering at Oglala

Phyllis Pollack
Seven Hours of Banging with the Stones

Poets' Basement
Reed, Orloski and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
A Podcast Interview with Cpt. Ward Boston on the USS Liberty

 

June 29, 2007

St. Clair / Frank
Toward a New Environmental Movement

Brian Cloughley
Losing the War in Afghanistan: One Civilian Massacre at a Time

Patrick Cockburn
End the Occupation: an Open Letter to Gordon Brown

Gilad Atzmon
The Peace Envoy: Tony Blair on Work Release

Dave Lindorff
Subpoenas, Executive Privilege and Liberal Pipedreams

Jennifer Matsui /
Carl Kandutsch

Electric Larryland

Kevin Zeese
A Different Kind of Peace Candidate

Daniel Klimek
Fasting for Justice at DePaul

David Michael Green
The Founding Fathers Never Met Dick Cheney

John Chuckman
The London Car Bomb

Website of the Day
BAM!

 

June 28, 2007

Bill Quigley
How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps

Vijay Prashad
Once More on the New York Times

Margaret Kimberley
The Whitening of Marianne Pearl: When White Actors Play Black Characters

Winslow T. Wheeler
House of Pork: Changing Lightbulbs in the Democrats' Bordello

Philip Rizk
The Failing of Gaza

D. K. Wilson
The Black Villains Club

Bill Williams
Strange Calculus at DePaul

Mahmoud El-Yousseph
The Deportation of Yardlin Jimenez

Richard Rhames
The Liberation of Paris

Paul Krassner
Bong Hits for Repression: the Giant Sucking Sound of the Supreme Court

Website of the Day
Free Lightnin' Hopkins

 


June 27, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Targeting Dissent: FBI Spying on the National Lawyers Guild

Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD
Sick and Sicker: Two Models of Health Care Rationing

Alan Farago
Bush and the Everglades: Rebranding Failure as Success

Carla Blank
"America, the Beautiful": the Queen, Jamestown and the Eye of the Beholder

Matthew Abraham
The Smearing of Robert Trivers, Dershowitz-Style

Sunsara Taylor
The Deadly Consequences of Compromise: Abortion Rights Under Assault, Where's the Women's Movement?

Russell D. Hoffman
16 Dirty Secrets About Nuclear Power

Robert Weissman
Blackstone and Capital's Grand Scam

Sen. Russ Feingold
Secrecy and the Federal Death Penalty

Paul Buchheit
The Footprints of Democracies

Website of the Day
Anarchy for the USA: an Interview with Josh Wolf

 

June 26, 2007

Jonathan Cook
Divide and Rule, Israeli-Style

Ralph Nader
Sicko and the Politics of Health Care

Corporate Crime Reporter
Which Side Are You On, Michael Moore?

Ron Jacobs
Are the Neocons Really Going?

Martha Rosenberg
Mad Cow in God's Country

John Chuckman
China's New Weapons

Denny Haldeman
Ethanolics Anonymous

Anthony DiMaggio
Free Speech Hypocrisy at the Supreme Court

Stephen Fleischman
The Tightrope Economy

William S. Lind
Legitimacy, Toujours Legitimacy

Website of the Day
The CIA's Family Jewels

 


June 25, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Goodbye to the City on the Hill

Jennifer Loewenstein
The Triumph of US / Israeli Policy in Palestine

Bob Anderson
The Grooming of Bill Richardson: New Mexico's Nuclear Governor

Robert Pollin
The Realities of Microlending

Patrick Cockburn
Chemical Ali Faces the Hangman: the Life and Crimes of al-Majid

Eva Liddell
Why They Want to Fire Ward Churchill

Dan Bacher
Democrats and the School of the Americas: 42 House Democrats Back Torture Academy

Larry Atkins
The Case of the Judge and the $54 Million Pair of Pants: an Embarrassment, Not an Argument for Tort Reform

Mark Brenner
SEIU Ends Nursing Home Partnership

James Rothenberg
Hillary Does Iraq

Website of the Day
"A Long Train of Abuses"

June 23 / 24, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Zyklon B on the US Border

Jeff Taylor
The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama

Oren Ben-Dor
Israeli Apartheid is the Core of the Crisis in Gaza

Gary Leupp
In Defense of Academic Freedom: the Ward Churchill Case

Robert Fisk
The Bumbling Envoy

David Rosen
The Hidden Cost of War: Genital Injuries, Prosthetic Devices and the War on Terror

Russell Mokhiber
Ins and Outs for 2008: Up with Spoilers!

Alison Weir
USA Today and the USS Liberty

Robert Fantina
The Floundering Congress

D. K. Wilson
Of Gangstas and Spearchuckers, Sex and Zulus

Nicole Colson
Litigating Gitmo

Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson
Torture, Psychologists and Colonel James

Dave Lindorff
Exodus of the Puppets: Bush's Incredible Shrinking Coalition

Benjamin Dangl
Cerámica de Cuyo: a Profile of Worker Control in Argentina

Michael Dickinson
The Catholicization of Tony

Poets' Basement
Davies, Engel, Gerard and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Incarcerex: a Drug War Video

 

June 22, 2007

Andy Worthington
A Tunisian in Gitmo: the Story of Prisoner 660

Sherwood Ross
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret: the Big Profits in Biowarfare Research

Eliana Monteforte
The Torture Academy

Robert Weissman
Things Can Be Different

Richard Rhames
Farmer Preservation

Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Uighurs: an Encounter in Albania

Ramzy Baroud
Chronicle of a Chaos Foretold

Ehud Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon
Facing an Imminent Threat of Expulsion: Palestinians in S. Hebron Hills Need Your Help!

David Michael Green
If Reid Were Rove

Kathryn Webber
Boycotting DePaul

Website of the Day
Stop Me Before I Vote Again!

 

June 21, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
The Day of the Rope

Natsu Saito
The Regents and Ward Churchill: Now is the Time to Speak Out

Ron Jacobs
The Intimidation of a Vet

Saree Makdisi
The West Chooses Fatah, But Palestinians Don't

John Stauber
Blessed Unrest: an Interview with Paul Hawken

Scott Liebertz
Fox News and Venezuela: an Analysis of How the Network Deliberately Misinforms Its Viewers

Tom Clifford
The Ghost Prisoners

Robert Jensen
The Last Sunday?

Michael J. Smith
Who Among Us Will Step Up to Destroy the Democratic Party?

Jeb Sprague
Pain at the Pump in Haiti

Website of the Day
Dion: Hey Paris


June 20, 2007

Omar Barghouti
A Secular-Democratic State Solution

Andy Worthington
Repatriated to Torture

Margaret Kimberley
Supreme Injustices: the Bush Court

Robert Weissman
Sicko, Part One: the Human Tragedy

Russell D. Hoffman
Time to Choose: Meltdowns or Solar Power?

Rannie Amiri
Mideast Alight

Stephen Lendman
The New York Times vs. Hugo Chavez

Dave Lindorff
Democratic Disconnect

David Swanson
Booing Hillary: Platitudes from the Drone Machine

Anne Dachel
Autism & Vaccines: Why are They Afraid to Look?

Website of the Day
Revolution By the Book

 

June 19, 2007

Ralph Nader
Hillary's Stock and Trade: the NAFTA Two-Step

Dr. Shepherd Bliss
Torture's Long Reach

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Demostrating Against the Catholic Church in Santa Fe

Jeff Leys
Swarming Congress: Building a Resistance to the 2008 Iraq War Supplemental Funding Bill

Dave Zirin
The Unforgiven: Barry Bonds and Jack Johnson

Chris Floyd
Hitchens Takes a Roll in the Hay

Ben Terrall
Iraq Union Leaders Speak Out Against the Occupation

Anthony Papa
Veronica's Story: a Dying Wish to Governor Spitzer

VIPS
Countering Terrorism: How Not to Do It

Linda Flores
Criminalizing the Classroom

Website of the Day
Sign On to the Iraq Moratorium


June 18, 2007

John Ross
The Annexation of Mexico

Paul Craig Roberts
The Reign of the Tyrants is at Hand

Martha Rosenberg
Let Cheney at Him: Richardson the Oryx Hunter

Norman Solomon
War at the Remote

Don Santina
Memo to the Queen: Bobby Sands Died for Your Sins

Isabella Kenfield
Landless Rural Workers Confront Lula

James Brooks
America's Guilty Silence

Eva Liddell
Planning to Lose: Democratic Stratagems

Sam Husseini
Clinton Health Care Scam Revisited

Akiva Eldar
Ariel Sharon's Dream

Website of the Day
Frank Zappa: the Cop Interview

 


June 16 / 17, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Psychopathology of Shrinks

John Halle
Finkelstein and "The Progressive"

Robert Fisk
Welcome to "Palestine"

Andy Worthington
Return to Torture?

Uri Avnery
The Gaza Cage

Fred Gardner
Paris Hilton's Punishment: a False Parable

Saul Landau
Our Gang of Thugs: The 1970s as a Context for Terrorist Violence

P. Sainath
Heaven Can Wait: Creditors and the Widows of Vidharbha

Missy Comley Beattie
Calling Evil Its Name

Alan Gregory
When ADM Comes to Town: Killer Tax Breaks for Wildlife Destruction

Walter Brasch
Bush and the Philosophy of Swiss Cheese

Website of the Weekend
Obama Girl

 

June 15, 2007

Alan Farago
View from the Construction Crane: Sex, Taxes and Real Estate Scams in Miami

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of Ali al--Marri

Michael Simmons
Terrorizing Artists in the USA

Franklin Lamb
Blowback Across Lebanon: The Failed Sunni Army Solution

Gary Leupp
The Day After We Attack Iran

John Ross
Ballot Burning Time in Ol' Mexico

Website of the Day
The American Rationalist

 

June 14, 2007

Michael Donnelly
Charred SUVs and the End of Citizen Eco--Activism

Faisal Kutty
Scare Canada: The No--Fly List's False Sense of Security

Harry Browne
Ireland's Green Party Sells Out

Charles Jonkel
From the Arctic to Yellowstone: Bears in a World of Indifference

Steven Higgs
Murder in a Small Town: "Gay Panic" in Indiana?

Bruce Dixon
Black Power Through Low Power Radio

Bruce K. Gagnon
What Do We Do Now? A 10--Step Plan for Antiwar Activists

Website of the Day
Finkelgate

June 13, 2007

Glen Ford
Obama's Siren Song

Marjorie Cohn
Repression in Oaxaca

Bill Christison
A Grave Injustice at DePaul University

Charles Jonkel
Bears in a World of Indifference

Silvia Cattori
"I Was Not Prepared for the Horrors I Saw": an Interview with Hedy Epstein

Richard Gott
Racism and TV in Venezuela

Firmin DeBrabander
How the Neocons Misread Machiavelli

William S. Lind
The Perfect (Sine) Wave: Bombing Railroad Stations in Iraq

Keith Rosenthal
Workers Score a Victory at Harvard

Website of the Day
GOP and Monty Python Explain: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

June 12, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Sell a War

Paul Craig Roberts
The Neocon Threat to American Freedom

P. Sainath
India's Plutocrats and the Press

Ralph Nader
The Biggest Scam in the World

Omar Waraich
A Black Day for Pakistan's Press

Dave Lindorff
Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You

Harvey Wasserman
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July 21 / 22, 2007

An Introduction

Radical Language

By ADAM ENGEL

Language has been so debased by media that even in so-called "high art" (poetry, drama) sentences that one might easily hear spoken on Oprah or some other "real people" show, or sit-coms, has been "current" for the past 20 years.

While poets like William Carlos Williams wanted poetry to represent "natural" speech, his work became more complicated later in life when he realized there is no "natural" speech. There are as many different dialects of English as there are Burroughs in every English-speaking city.

Politically, poems and novels written in "regular" language, are using the language that injected racism, sexism, capitalism and nearly everything we know into our brains, where language either is or influences thought.

Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky, who remain unreadable to many, though it is not difficult to learn to read them (the idea that art and literature be "demanding" of close scrutiny, as opposed to "throwaway culture" of mainstream media is consistent throughout the avant garde in the 20th century) began to challenge the language of the dominant society by repeating words and sentences, re-ordering syntax (grammar rules either form spontaneously or are dictated from ON HIGH) etc. They were followed by the New York School of poets and painters, which included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Larry Rivers, De Kooning and other radical artists.

Since the early seventies, a new group of artists, loosely referred to as the LANGUAGE school, took the breaking off of "allegedly reality-based natural language" as a serious political issue. First of all, they began, taking off from Stein, to view words as signifiers first and foremost, rather than as "pointers" to the signified. This means that, rather than describing an object "realistically," which is a form of artifice in itself, they would use words as singular units of both meaning and ambiguity. For instance, the famous Gertrude Stein sentence, "A rose is a rose is a rose," refers to the fact that the word, "rose," means nothing but itself. Also, Stein, and later the LANGUAGE poets, described objects often with nouns and syntax that evoked the thing without using dead, cliched, description.

More recently, LANGUAGE poets such as Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman (also an inveterate blogger) have conducted poetry and prose "experiments" in which, for instance, in the case of Silliman's "Ketjak," each sentence is viewed as an individual unit, often unrelated to the ones that came before and immediately after. In the same work, he repeats various sentences throughout, in order to show that the same sentence can have numerous meanings, depending on context.

In addition to creating what Silliman called "The New Sentence" these writers have written brilliant literary criticism on how to read their work, why they write against, rather than for the language of Newscasters and politicians and even many respected writers. Marjorie Perloff's "Radical Artifice," is an excellent introduction to avant garde poets and painters who create "unorthodox" works, like Jackson Pollok and Andy Warhol, and others who influenced both poetry and painting (the two have had an incredibly creative relationship with each other since the turn of the century, when Stein began to try to write like Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and others painted, creating "landscapes" with words). Her "Tender Buttons," which you can download for free on line, and "The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolklas," are also primary introductions to this radical theory of art.

I am writing a series on Stein, Zukofsky, the New York School and the LANGUAGE school not to enhance people's appreciation for poetry, but rather because I believe the Left, in order to create a new world, must toss the racism, sexism, egotism etc. that is inherent in "regular" language, the language we were born to, receiving daily doses of images and words by the thousands each day. What one learns immediately is that nearly all the sentences created by copywriters, who often write better poetry for advertisements than many Establishment poets publishing in the New Yorker, are in accordance with the alleged "plain speech" and grammar approved by the corporate culture that commissioned them.

This is directly applicable to the cliches, tropes, "pre-fab" sentences (i.e. "Have a nice day!") of corporate, mainstream media and advertising, print and image, that leftists rightly complain about. Yet, though the average article found in most "alternative" zines/sites is better written and reported than anything one might find in the mechanistic "journalese" of the Post or Times or reinforced, along with carefully selected sound bytes and video clips of TV, they are using the language of the Master to tear down HIS house.

Thus far, only a small group of avant garde artists have found the means to combat this language. Rather than complain that Americans are duped by the Media into wars, corporatism, environmental neglect etc. etc., we should present an alternative method of reading as well as writing. William Blum's "Killing Hope," was researched by Blum using the radical technique of relegating his sources to mainstream reports available to anyone. For him, it is not so much a matter of reinvigorating the language with real (original) sentences and syntax, but teaching people to "read between the lines."

In addition to teaching us a different way of reading, many writers are creating texts, such as Lyn Hejinian's wonderful, short (115pp) MY LIFE, an autobiography in which places, times, dates, are deliberately ambiguous, and proper nouns are never used. The author transitions continually between "her" and "she" and the present and past tense, and reaches an element of "strangeness" which I'll talk more about in a later essay, that one will almost never encounter in mainstream TV, advertising, or literature. Reading LANGUAGE poetry requires thought and concentration, as contrasted to "mind candy" of Media.

Linear narratives, a phenomenon of 19th century Industrial culture, are no more "real" than non-linear. Does the story really end on the last page? Does "realism" actually describe reality? Perhaps the surface world created by corporatism, but it is no more absolute than Newtonian physics, which was taken to be "reality" until Relativity and Quantum Mechanics went deeper into the "unseen" in the 20th century. Just as painters became more abstract when "realism" was supplanted by photography and film, language must reflect the subjectivity of the author, not the accumulation of artificial detail and dialog that creates the "heroes" and "characters" of mainstream fiction. In LANGUAGE writing, the main event is the language itself, in which the smallest unit of signification is not the paragraph, as with the novel and many poems and plays, but the sentence.

Thousands if not millions of brilliant essays have appeared on the web, but how can we expect people whose minds were deliberately closed by the age of 12 or so by media and "education" to refute corporate media or even understand alternative ways of thinking if their deepest thoughts were not come upon by research or experience but "injected" by media? People say we are a nation of children, and they are right, but that is because the language of capitalism/corporatism/militarism, the language we were born to, is supplemented daily by the very sources that are allegedly "informing" us, i.e. mainstream "news," political speech, corporate advertising, and even corporate approved Pulitzer prize winners who appear on Oprah. Does anyone even know who Pulitzer was and what he was about? It sure wasn't excellence in what we might call reporting or literature, but tabloid, "yellow journalism," like that of William Randolph Hearst's empire, pointers to the status quo and compliance to corporate/government authority.

I will try to present various "alternative" writers not to study literature or writing, but to explore how various techniques of reading, writing and the creative use, of grammar, idiom and words, once learned, can literally radicalize readers by pointing to new ways of thinking and deflecting the explosion of propaganda that fills our days, whether we're looking at magazine ads, billboards, TV, listening to radio, or even reading mainstream newspapers without seeing what the words, in their "correct" (economically and politically authorized) grammar are really saying.

STUMBLING UPON IDEOLOGY

In the spirit of LANGUAGE writing, I tried an experiment of my own. Using a program called Stumble , which "spins" the web like a roulette wheel, stopping randomly at a site culled from the millions of English language pages in existence, I "lifted" a sentence from each site, then randomly stumbled on to the next. Of course, there is an element of subjectivity, for I chose the sentence from each website; nevertheless, my options were limited to the sentences available on each site. A few times I linked some sentences with connectives or added a word or two of my own ­ in brackets ­ but ultimately, this is a sampling of the language of the web (I did deliberately skip the occasional "lefty" site.). My "theory" was that, outside the small number of left/progressive sites, a more-or-less random sampling of sentences pulled from mainstream websites would create a "collage narrative" of our culture. Additionally, though I chose sentences from numerous sites arbitrarily, one sentence per site, the "voice" of the piece would sound as if it were written by one author, for in the general discourse of our "society," there really is one AUTHOR, and that is the language itself, an "official" language reflecting our obsessions with money, technology, violence. Again, my purpose is not literary so much as political. To explore the possibility of subverting the language of Media, suffused as it is with the predatory, authoritarian propaganda that, regardless of the text or who actually "wrote" it, is ultimately the language of Power in the form of technology/corporatism/militarism.

"The page is only the documentation," wrote the poet/blogger Silliman, "or the page is more, the field, resistance."

Below is the result of my experiment of creating a "prose-poem" using a sentence from each page I randomly "stumbled upon:"

MEDIA FRANCA, by THE INTERNET

At about the same time University College London published a number of establishment legal positions, the US declared itself Libya. "The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it," said Oscar Wilde (or maybe he wrote it). Archery goes back thousands of years, yet today's equipment has made improper advances. Anyway, there are various ways to exploit and use the Internet profitably.

Where did that end and this begin? 'This' is everything to everyone, regardless, so why not let our mortgage experts help you determine "how much house" you can afford. Or perhaps refer the matter to Mr. Johnson Wang, Managing Director of Sinosteel Corporation. We deal on the following Products listed: [product product product, uhn; product product product, uhn!] One of our backers is an American soldier about to eat the spilled brains of a dead Iraqi man with his brown plastic Army-issue spoon.

"You want to catch them off guard," he whispered. "You want to catch them in their sleep," he winked.

A kitchen then they have a storage shed-type deal. Each tool is described by one or more attributes: natural cleaning formulas, concoctions and witches brews. MOST are non-poisonous.

As any geek can tell you, Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and of course, flags everywhere, not to mention the C++ and AWK programming languages.

Arrogance, ignorance, and principal errors of judgment created the anarchy and warfare that engulfs Iraq today. And lest we forget, "seven" is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that is not constructible by straightedge and compass. [On the lighter side], hundreds of well-known on line stores like Barnes and Noble, Staples, and Amazon.com have a place within their shopping cart that gives a percent or dollar amount off your purchase. You might even know someone who has had it removed.

As Sun Tzu said, "All war is based on deception." This is only the beginning of proof we were all lied to. For instance, according to the Constitution, Congress cannot suspend habeas corpus except in times of rebellion or when public safety requires it.

George Bush originally displayed neither a love for nor disdain for religion, but the feeling that the New World Order should not involve itself in matters of religion. He had fallen into a classic trap -- he forgot why he went into politics in the first place. But, he reasoned, fundamentalist skills make you look great in the kitchen. Final Signs are everywhere. APOCALIPSA is coming Soon. Your picture will be shown.

Whether you work for a business or want to start your own, check out our articles on marketing, hiring and more. String theory is radically changing our ideas about the nature of space, opening up the possibility that extra dimensions, rips in the fabric of space, and parallel universes actually exist, leading to focuses on top management and those aspiring to positions of corporate leadership in business. Don't keep it to yourself.

Want to melt those years away? Travel to an outer planet! Stop wasting time folding shirts the normal way!

Here come the odious excuses. If you have set yourself on fire, do not run. A lighthearted measurement of which famous artists have the greatest "mindshare" in our collective culture. Manage your server infrastructure efficiently.

A little known naturally-occurring gemstone called [moishenite] is superior to diamonds in every essential way: cut, color, clarity, durability, fire, brilliance, and cost. The house was designed for young professionals who need minimal space while they focus on career... For everyone's easy reference, let's discuss plunder. If you need help, start here.

A South African monkey was once awarded a medal and promoted to the rank of corporal during World War I. With this in mind I started to ponder making my own book: Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.

Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. Do not feign respect for technical incompetence. We are not claiming to be experts on anything, we are merely doing what we can to gather knowledge and share the acquired information with the public.

We are conducting a survey about your usage of media. It describes the laws of motion for atomic particles and describes the spin of electrons that had previously been predicted.

Where did that end and this begin? 'This' is everything to everyone, regardless.

Adam Engel can be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net






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