Today's Stories

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 16, 2008

The Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo

By JASON HRIBAL

While bread and circuses might work on the human species, orangutans require a different combination of incentives. Their control lies in bananas and sex. Orangutans are almost helpless to such things. It’s instinct, don’t you know. Surely, if San Diego Zoo officials could just discover the correct instinctual cocktail, they could solve their orangutan problem before it got any worse. All they needed was a lot of bananas, some willing female participants, and time.

Efforts on this project began in earnest in the summer of 1985. The new Heart of the Zoo exhibit had opened three years earlier, and day to day operations could not have been going better. But then that darn Ken Allen started acting up. Ken was born in February of 1971 to San Diego’s Maggie and Bob. He was, officially speaking, a Bornean orangutan - although he never stepped foot on the island nor knew anything about arboreal culture. It might be more correct to classify him as a zoo orangutan. Institutional life was the only one that Ken ever experienced. The zoo is where he was born, and the zoo is where he died of lymphoma in 2000. In between, Ken had to deal with captivity on a daily basis. Interestingly, the San Diego Zoo understood from the very beginning that he was going to be more difficult to handle than the facility’s previous orangutans.

In his nursery, Ken would unscrew every nut that he could find and remove the bolts. Keepers would no sooner put them back when he would be at it again. Nor could he ever be kept in his room. One of his favorite schemes, a trainer described, was to “grab someone’s hand who was waving at him, and swing himself up.” Good luck trying to catch the little red ape after that. Yet, for the zoo, his later life would represent a much greater challenge. In fact, when Ken was first moved into the Heart of the Zoo exhibit, he was caught throwing rocks at a television crew that was filming the neighboring gorillas. When he ran out of rocks, Ken threw his own shit. The crew scattered. In an ironic twist, there would be a similar problem at the zoo several years down the road. Large glass windows had been installed in the exhibit, and the orangutans took to pitching rocks at them. San Diego officials, thinking quickly, instituted an exchange program. One non-thrown stone would get you a banana. But the orangutans were not interested and kept trying to break the windows. The park finally had to bring in a contractor to dig up the entire ground floor of the exhibit in order to remove all of the rocks, as each shattered window cost the zoo $900 to replace. What happened next? The orangutans began to tear the ceramic insulators off of the wall and threw them instead. Evidently, these animals really wanted out.

Ken Allen would make his first successful escape on June 13, 1985. Keepers found him mingling among visitors outside of his exhibit. After he was placed into isolation, officials set to work trying to figure out exactly how he did it. A few years previous, Ken had constructed a ladder out of some fallen branches. “He was very methodical about it,” one employee noted. “He would carefully put the foot of the ladder on the ground, and pound it with his hand to be sure it was solid, and then he would climb to the top of the wall and climb back down.” But there was no ladder to be seen this time. So that was ruled out. It might have been human error: a door left ajar or something. But that did not appear to be the case either. The zoo was definitely stumped. Nonetheless, it was not going take any chances. Cinder-blocks were stacked to raise the height of the retaining wall, and several portions were smoothed over to prevent any handholds. These alterations, the zoo anticipated, would do the trick. They didn’t.

Ken escaped again on July 29th and then again in early August. Each time, San Diego would make additional changes. The walls were made taller. The surfaces were made smoother. Electrified wires were added to guard the perimeter. Keepers brought in new females into the exhibit. The hope here was that one of young ladies might attract Ken’s attention. We want, the trainers’ stated bluntly, “to turn his wanderlust into just lust.” San Diego even started using spies. Zoo employees would disguise themselves as visitors. They would dress up in blue jeans, sunglasses, and a Hawaiian shirt, and watch from afar to see if they could spot anything unusual happening. The zoo eventually began utilizing two spies at the once, as it was certain that Ken was recognizing its informants. This belief would be affirmed.

Less than an hour after being released from solidarity confinement on August 13th, Ken was spotted standing with a small crowbar. Uncover trainers figured that someone must have forgotten it during the last round of construction, and they were alarmed. What would Ken do with it? Should they clear the area just to be safe? Those worries were put to ease when the orangutan tossed the tool aside. Ken did not appear to be interested in it - although the trainers should have known better. As one noted expert warned, if a tool like a screwdriver is ever accidentally left in a cage, an orangutan will “notice it immediately but ignore it lest a keeper discover the mistake. That night, he’d use it to dismantle his cage and escape.” Strangely enough, the crowbar itself landed only feet from a fellow inmate, Vicki, but this was not of particular concern either. The keepers’ focus was on Ken, and they followed him as he meandered across the exhibit to the far side. Within minutes, a loud noise disturbed their concentration. Vicki had been hard at work in a secluded spot, attempting to pry open the molding between two glass panels. The glass cracked but held in place. “I’m having a lot of trouble staying one step ahead of this group,” the head trainer admitted afterwards. Some at the San Diego Zoo believed that the two orangutans were in on this escapade together with Ken supplying the distraction and Vicki the muscle. To err on the side of caution, administrators placed both animals into isolation.

It was not long after being released, now for the fourth time, that Ken made yet another attempt at escape. Only on this occasion, spies were finally able to catch him in the act. He was hip deep in the shallow end of the moat when he pressed his feet against one wall and his hands against other. Slowly, he inched his way up. The keepers were amazed for two reasons. First, orangutans are supposed to be scared to death of water. That’s why zoos use water-filled moats as a deterrent. Second, they had no idea that an orangutan could climb in that manner. Such feats, though, are not unheard of. At the Houston Zoo, for instance, Mango once escaped by pressing his fingers against a glass edge, toes against another nearby edge, and scaling his way upwards. “It’s incredible,” said the curator of primates. “There wasn’t even enough to grasp. It was all finger pressure.” Houston ordered an angled window. As for Ken, his trip was brought to an abrupt conclusion after he touched the newly installed electrified wires. The shock sent him running back into the exhibit, and the zoo was marginally pleased with itself. “We have discovered his way out,” a spokesman explained with a measured tone. “But once he realizes we’ve blocked that exit and turns his wits to the rest of the enclosure, we may wind up chasing him again.”

With the months ticking by, Ken seemed to quiet down. The structural modifications, in all appearances, must have been working, and San Diego breathed a sigh of relief. Everything had returned to normal. In April of 1987, this relative peace came to an end, as the orangutan was spotted outside of his exhibit. It seems that repairs were being performed on the moat’s water pump that particular day, and the orangutan used this opportunity to flee. Ken was just biding his time until the electricity was shut off. How he came to understand that fact, we do not know. Perhaps he was watching carefully. Or maybe he performed random checks on the wiring and just got lucky that day. Significantly, there was a similar case that occurred at the National Zoo in Washington DC. Keepers there discovered that one of their orangutans had learned to recognize the very slight buzzing noise given off by an electronic gate when it opened and closed. On those rare occasions when the door did malfunctioned, this animal would head straight for it and walk out. But for the San Diego zoo, its exhibit gate had remained lock. Moreover, the zoo did widen the moat after Ken’s last attempt. So even if the electrical wires were shut off and the orangutan noticed it, he still should not have been able to scale the wall. “It really surprised us,” a spokesman chirped. “We honestly felt that we had him contained.” Nonetheless, Ken had escaped and he was currently on the loose.

During the previous getaways, keepers were able to coax Ken back into his enclosure with little difficulty. A few bananas usually did the job. But this time, it was different. Ken had no interest in complying with anyone. He was on the run, and the zoo knew it. Facility personnel armed themselves with darts and live ammunition, and went in pursuit. They were, according the subsequent reports, prepared to shoot Ken if necessary. The guards at the San Diego Zoo are trained to do so. “If he were to have attacked somebody, we would have had to kill him because a tranquilizer takes time to take effect.” In the end, Ken chose to avoid using any means of violent resistance. Some orangutans, however, have gone in another direction.

Frank Buck had considerable experience in dealing with the red ape, as he was one of most prolific animal collectors in the modern era. It is with a combination of amazement and horror that one reads his travel journals, as the sheer numbers of animals which he killed and captured is staggering. Indeed, after scrolling through the writings of Buck, Carl Hagenbeck, Alfred Wallace, Henry Ward, and the rest of the 19th and 20th century collectors, one can argue with strong confidence that the natural history museum and zoological park have been a primary cause in the diminution and extinction of animal species on our planet. But back to Buck and orangutans. He would usually kill the mothers and take the children. Adults were too difficult to control - plus museums would buy their cadavers for taxidermy. The young ones were much easier to deal with, although there certainly could be problems. “Put your hand too close to the bars of these tree-dwellers that resents his captivity,” he warned others, “and there’s a good chance that you’ll get only part of it back; or, if you get it all back, it won’t be in working order.” Buck’s favorite method to discipline these apes was to use a crowbar, as a blow to the head was better than a gunshot to the body. The key was to bring them back alive, so that the animals could be sold in one piece.

Zoos, in fact, have very strict protocol when it comes to dealing with orangutans. All locks must be double checked, because the animals watch everything you do. Weapons must be kept nearby but must remain “OUT OF SIGHT of the animal.” Orangutans know what guns are, and they don’t like them. Employees must never cross the lines painted in front of the cages, because the orangutans will grab you. This is what happened at the Miami Metro Zoo in 2003, when a veterinarian got too close to Thelma. The 20-year old reached through the bars and pulled the employee’s arm in for a bite. Zoos must also practice yearly drills, preparing for the inevitability of escapes. Each facility must have a command center. Each must have warning codes. The color red means danger and all visitors must exit the zoo or be placed into secure positions. The color green means that an incident is taking place, but that the zoo will try to keep it confidential. When an escape does arise, a keeper must never engage the animal without assistance. Orangutans “may act VERY differently” when free. Furthermore, after the response team has been assembled, only those individuals that have “a positive relationship” with the animal should advance. Orangutans “may become dangerously aggressive if confronted by people whom they dislike.” Even with these precautions, attacks still do occur.

There was the case of Sara at the Gulf Breeze Zoo in Pensacola, Florida. She had fled from an unlocked cage in September of 2000 as it was being cleaned. A trainer tried to lure her back. “If she had seemed the slightest bit unsettled or crazy, I would never have approached,” the woman remembered. “But she was perfectly calm.” Despite this, Sara jumped on top of the trainer and bit her repeatedly. The orangutan evidently did not like the woman. “Sara was born in quarantine,” the head zoo administrator deadpanned, “and will remain in quarantine.”

More recently, there was the rampage at the Shaoshan Zoo in Taiwan. A local television station happened to be filming at the park that day and caught the entire incident on tape. An unidentified male orangutan was running loose. As he overturned motorbikes and smashed picnic tables, visitors screamed and hid inside of buildings. Police arrived, chased after the ape, and then were themselves chased by the ape. For two hours, the standoff continued. It would conclude with a shot to the chest by a stun gun. The zoo used a small bulldozer to move the orangutan’s unconscious body back to the cage.

As for Ken Allen in San Diego, his standoff may have concluded more peacefully but that did not mean he was happy about being captured. “He was very, very agitated and upset and wound up because this time it had been a real chase,” a keeper commented. It ended up taking the zoo over three hours to get the orangutan downstairs and into his basement holding cell. The struggle was considerable. At least the zoo could now rest easy in the knowledge that, if the electricity stayed on, Ken Allen should remain enclosed. But what San Diego did not count on was the fact that another orangutan was about to make her own brand of trouble.

In late August of 1987, Kumang made her first escape from the Heart of the Zoo exhibit. Visitors stumbled upon her and alerted officials. This 9-year old orangutan had been exploring the park for about half an hour. Unsure of how she fled, San Diego turned to professional rock-climbers for consultation. “The keepers don’t feel real secure; they think its just a matter of time before the orangutans get out again.” As the climbers inspected the walls looking for hidden crevices, each of the animals was tucked away in the basement. It was just better not to take any chances on them witnessing any of this activity – for in the battle of wits, the orangutans were clearly winning.

Eight months later, Kumang would make another successful escape. Only this instance, she had enlisted the help of her sister, Sara. Zoo keepers quickly discovered the orangutans’ means. It was a mop handle: a device which, in order to be used effectively, required cooperation between two participants. One of animals had to hold the stick in place while the other climbed. Organization and mutual aid are essential aspects in most animal cultures, including orangutans. Zoos, however, are places wherein that culture is restricted or even destroyed. This is done, whether intentionally or not, through the removal of autonomy, break up of the family unit, restriction on corporeal movement, continuous transfer of animals from one facility to next, and in the alternation of other living patterns. Psychologists would call this a process of alienation and institutionalization. Hence what we tend to see in zoos is a much more individualistic-based community, regardless of the species. Yet, cooperation and cooperative resistance can occur.

For example, in October of 1991, a mass escape took place at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. Here, five orangutans were able to slip through several security doors and scale a high wall. The response team initially tried to entice the group back to their enclosure with bananas. It did not work. Woodland then turned fire-hoses upon the orangutans. But this method failed too. The group, holding together as one, simply would not budge. It was only after each of the five was tranquilized that the altercation was brought to a close. “Our first relief was that we were able to dart the large male, Towan,” a general curator detailed. “He can be very dangerous. Ironically, we just recently had an emergency escape drill and the animal I chose was Towan.” The zoo was certain that he was the ringleader, and it needed to be extra careful with him from now on. This best way to accomplish this, administrators decided, was to purchase a brand new security system. Two years later, though, Towan would beat that system and broke out once more. We don’t know if he had help.

Then there was Siabu, Sara, and Busar at the Chaffee Zoo in Fresno, California. In 2004, they spent weeks, maybe months, unraveling a small section of the nylon netting that surrounded their enclosure. On October 14th, one of them was finally able to push his body through the hole and make it outside. “They’re very, very smart,” an official admitted. “They may have been hiding it from us what they’ve been working on.” All three animals were placed into special holding pens for the immediate future.

As for Kumang, she would escape two additional times from her San Diego exhibit. The first was on June 9th, when she was found sitting among the flowers in a nearby orchid garden. Refusing to be taken on her own accord, Kumang was shot with a tranquiller. Significantly, a trainer later commented that these orangutans know full well that, if they choose to escape, there will be severe consequences. “Good, bad or indifferent,” every action leads to a counteraction, and these creatures understand this. Kumang evidently believed that some risks were worth the taking.

The second escape happened the following day. Kumang was spotted standing outside of the douc langur monkey enclosure. When confronted, she climbed atop the bird sanctuary and awaited her captors’ response. They shot her with another dart. It was soon thereafter that the zoo uncovered Kumang’s method of escape. “She has learned how to ground the hot wire,” a trainer explained to the local reporters. “She’ll take sticks and pieces of wood and lean them up against the wire so that it is grounded. Then she pulls herself up by using the porcelain insulators on the wire as hand-holds.” “I’m not sure I would have been able to figure it out,” the employee finished.

Over the years, zoo orangutans have developed a variety of creative means to overcome technology and their captors. Some, like Kumang, figured out the basic principles of electricity, and thus have used a piece of wood or a rubber tire to ground wires. Others came to learn the engineering of locking mechanisms. The writer Eugene Linden explored two such orangutans in his book The Parrot’s Lament (1999). Fu Manchu at the Omaha Zoo would employ a thin piece of metal wiring, which he kept hidden in his mouth, to pick open his cage lock. Jonathan at the Topeka Zoo crafted a device out of a slab of cardboard in order to release himself through a complex guillotine door. Both of the animals would eventually be found out, but that did not diminish their accomplishments or their hope.

The San Diego Zoo, for its part, decided that the best way to deal with its own meddling orangutans was to put all of them into their basement holding cells until the exhibit could be completely redesigned. This time around, the facility was going to take an “aggressive” approach to the problem, and it budgeted $45,000 for the task. “The escapes have been a source of frustration for everybody involved,” a spokesman bristled. The orangutans had to be stopped. Construction began immediately.

For the next three months, the remodeling continued. The walls were made taller and smoother. Every corner was rounded. The current hot-wiring was ripped out and replaced with a more advanced system. New, stronger doors were installed. In the meanwhile, Kumang, Ken, and the others sat in their dank, underground quarters. One employee spoke candidly about the situation. “People might think this is horrible, but at zoos back East or in the Midwest, this is where their animals live all winter long. Every year. We’re real fortunate with our climate. It certainly is not ideal by any means, but it could be worse.”

In February of 1989, the exhibit was at long last completed. Administrators, though, took one more precaution before the animals were released. They paid a contractor to sweep the entire enclosure with a high-powered magnet. No way were these little red apes going to get their hands on anything of use. With that done, the grand opening took place. What a great day for the city of San Diego and its tourist trade, the zoo boasted. The orangutan exhibit was back in business. Yet, behind the scenes, confidence was not so high. “You never guarantee anything with these guys,” one person grumbled of the orangutans, “because their nature is very manipulative, very observant, hard workers.” “We won’t really know if it’s been successful from an escape standpoint until maybe two, three, four years down the road, until these guys have had time to scrutinize our repairs.” Indeed, four years later, an orangutan named Indah finished her examinations and escaped from the exhibit. It was back to the drawing board for the San Diego Zoo.

Jason Hribal is the co-author of The Cry of Nature: an Appeal for Mercy on Behalf of Persecuted Animals. He can be reached at: jasonchribal@yahoo.com

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