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Today's
Stories
September 18-20, 2009
Russell Mokhiber
Meet the Real Death Panels
September 17, 2009
Joshua Frank
Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
Brenda Norrell
Cry Me a River: Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country
Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis, One Year Later
Pam Martens
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists
Franklin Lamb
Palestinian Camps Are Ready to Erupt
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: An Insult to Humanity
Jed Bickman
Drone War Over Pakistan
Alan Farago
The Mayor of Coconut Creek Gets Butterflies
Website of the Day
C.R.O.C.
September 16, 2009
Ray McGovern
Torture and Accountability
Stephen Green
America's Strange Health Care Debate
Andy Worthington
Is Bagram Obama's New Secret Prison?
Dean Baker
Short Sellers:
the Unsung Heroes of the Financial Crisis
Anthony DiMaggio
Killing the Messenger
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five:
The Unheard Call
Benjamin Dangl
Justice Follows Direct Action
Robin Willoughby
The World Seed Conference: Good for Farmers?
Eric Walberg
EuroPeace, the Sounds of Silence
James Ridgeway
Bring That "Boy" Down
Website of the Day
Baucus' Bogus Bill
September 15, 2009
Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall
Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The Story of My Shoe
Marshall Auerback
Government Spending is the Solution--Not the Problem
Afshin Rattansi
The Deal That Led to the Srebrenica Massacre: Former UN Spokeswoman Fingers Holbrooke and the Clinton Administration
Jonathan Cook
How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers
Gareth Porter:
Niger Redux?
IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Nuke Docs Were Forged
Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs More Catcalls
Winslow T. Wheeler
Obama and Pentagon Pork
Franklin Spinney
Bin Laden's Latest Message and the Nuttiness of the War on Terror
Karen Korenoski /
Michael Yates
Up in Wood Smoke: Boulder's Dirty Little Secret
David Macaray
Government Cheese
Susie Day
President Mao-bama's Little Red Primer
Website of the Day
The Cotton Pickin' Truth: the Persistance of Slavery in Mississippi
September 14, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit
M. G. Piety
The Danes Do It (Health Care) Better
Shamus Cooke
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier
Bouthaina Shaaban
Three Faces and a Homeland
Alvaro Huerta
In Defense of the Undocumented: Immigrants and Health Care
John Ross
Mexico Loses Its History
Harvey Wasserman
The Supreme Court and Corporate Money
Adam Federman
The Plight of the Bumblebee
Stephen Fleischman
The Federal Twist
Robert Jensen
Can Journalism Schools be Relevant in a World on the Brink?
Website of the Day
The Origin of Sex Offender Registries
September 11-13, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric
JoAnn Wypijewski
Trumka Takes Over AFL-CIO
Carl Ginsburg
The Patient as Profit Center
Leonard Peltier
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
Franklin Lamb
Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel
Benjamin Dangl
Throwing Bullets at Failed Policies
Mike Whitney
How to Fight Deflation
John Berger
In Search of Antonello
Saul Landau
Watergate and Modern Scandals
Russell Mokhiber
Disgraceful Democrats
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Pryor's Judgment
Felice Pace
NPR's
Linda Gradstein Has Done It Again on Gaza
Jordan Flaherty
The Battle Over Discriminatory Housing Laws in New Orleans
Ron Jacobs
It's Time to be Impolite About Afghanistan
David Macaray
The Utility of Boycotts
David Correia
Welcome to the Business-Friendly Carpenter's Union
Robert Bryce
Wind Turbines and Bird Kills
Christopher Brauchli
Defenders of the Classroom
Paul Krassner
Aha! A Few Words About the 9/11 Truth Movement
Charles R. Larson
Deracination
Kim Nicolini
"Extract:"
An Exercise in Economic Realism
David Yearsley
Tall Buildings: the Sound and the Silence
Lorenzo Wolff
In Defense of the One Hit Wonder
Poets' Basement
McEnteer and Corseri
Website of the Weekend
Pizarchik: the Wrong Choice
September 10, 2009
Joshua Frank
Inside Hanford's B Reactor: a Tour of the World's Most Toxic Nuclear Site
Dean Baker
Bernanke's Bad Money
Brian M. Downing
The State of U.S. National Security
Franklin C. Spinney
Portrait of an Afghan Firefight: Up Close and Personal
Andy Worthington
No Escape From Guantánamo
Chase Madar
Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights
Farzana Versey
A Tale of Two Slums
Ronnie Cummins
Whole Foods, Fair Trade and Organics
Binoy Kampmark
Health Care, Obama and the System
Timothy Lebrón
The Conservative Case for Health Care Reform
Charles R. Larson
A Solution to the Health Care Dilemma
Website of the Day
The Debtor's Revolt Begins!
September 9, 2009
Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan
Melissa Checker
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses
Nadia Hijab
Settling for ... Settlements?
Robert Weissman
The Stakes at the Supreme Court
Jonathan Cook
Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike
Russell Mokhiber
Pollan, Mackey, Whole Foods and Single Payer
James Ridgeway
The Dotty Factor: Will Demented Geezers Wreck the Economy?
Richard W. Behan
Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan
James McEnteer
The Photo and the Secretary: How to Appall Robert Gates
Martha Rosenberg
Hatchery Horrors
Website of the Day
Belmondo Verité
September 8, 2009
Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education
Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations
John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd
Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War
Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution
Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech
Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?
Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington
Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan
Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation
Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?
Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor
September 7, 2009
Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform
Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen
David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card
Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation
Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews
Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles
Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday
Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million
Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation
C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech
Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go
September 4-6, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel
Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital
Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?
George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting
Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry
Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami
Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission
Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran
Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam
Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA
David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia
Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7:
What the Police Won't Apologize For
Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections
Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?
Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater
Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts
Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy
John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost
Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story
Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book
David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants
Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig
Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready
Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck
September 3, 2009
Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison
Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban
Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five:
Indictment À La Carte
Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons
Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation
Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security
Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?
Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians
Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia
September 2, 2009
John Ross
Mexico's Plagues
Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!
Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?
Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found
Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan
Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money
Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"
Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message
Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security
Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?
Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery
September 1, 2009
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek
Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?
Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy
Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?
Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille
Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This
Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief
Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back
Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews
August 31, 2009
Pam Martens
Madoff and the SEC's Revolving Door
Anthony DiMaggio
What Obama Isn't Telling You About Afghanistan
Bouthaina Shaaban
Israeli Bodysnatchers
Ray McGovern
The Press and Torture: Covering for Cheney?
Joseph Shansky
Scenes of Resistance in Honduras
Greg Moses
The Dying Dillos of Austin
Brian McKenna
Pig Sacrifice and Swine Flu Panic
David Macaray
The Tender Trap
Brenda Norrell
Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon
Paul Craig Roberts
The Environment Loses a Champion
Beth Sherouse
Why I'm Going to the Big Gay March in Washington
Website of the Day
The Failure of the Left Antiwar Movement
August 28-30, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Teddy Kennedy the Hollow Champion
Joshua Frank /
Jeffrey St. Clair
From the Ledge to the Edge:
How Tre Arrow Became America's Most Wanted Environmental "Terrorist"
Steve Early
Kennedy's Sins Against Labor
Michael Hudson
Learning About Financialization the Hard Way
Carl Ginsburg
Bernanke in Obamatime
Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again
Dave Marsh
Trapped Again: Michael Jackson's Crossover Dream
Mike Whitney
Band-Aids for the Recession
Dave Lindorff
Obama's War
José Pertierra
A Decision in the Posada Case
Joe Bageant
Obama's Fake Fight for Reform
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Spies Without Espionage
Lee Sustar
On Strike for Health Care Justice
David Ker Thomson
Life in the 'Shed
David Rosen
The Silent Slaughter: Sex Wars and Nation-Building in Iraq
Alison Weir
Israeli Organ Harvesting
Ron Jacobs
Will There be Free Speech in Pittsburgh?
David Swanson
Bush Tortured
Udi Aloni
An Appeal to Israeli Filmmakers
Charles R. Larson
Children During Wartime
Kim Nicolini
District 9:
Science Fiction of the Now
David Yearsley
The Wagner Cult in Seattle
Lorenzo Wolff
Riding the Rails with King Curtis
Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Marc Beaudin
Website of the Weekend
The Hidden History of Katrina
August 27, 2009
Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five
Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers
Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel
Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe
Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap
Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option
Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent
Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers
David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)
Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries
August 26, 2009
Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons
Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout
Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke
Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women
Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First
Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane
Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans
Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque
Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy
Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools
Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy
John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland
Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line
August 25, 2009
Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History
Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed
Martine Bulard
China's Wild West
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity
Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?
August 24, 2009
Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse
Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel
John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas
Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?
Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer
August 21-23, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo
Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election
Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater
Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President
Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick
M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism
Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf
Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead
No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon
Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another
Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die
David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island
Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers
Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!
August 20, 2009
Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy
Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years
Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies
Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn
Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics
August 19, 2009
David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President
Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs
Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There
Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns
John Ross
Three Amigos Summit
Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants
August 18, 2009
Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?
Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer
Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy
Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?
Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies
Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009
August 17, 2009
Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?
Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo
Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave
Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney
P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds
Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism
August 14-16, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford
Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx
Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?
Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work
Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville
Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty
Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity
Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution
Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope
John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield
Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration
David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again
Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!
Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful
David Macaray
Prison Games
Greg Moses
Down in South Texas:
the Geometries of Bob Dylan
Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101
David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost:
Kind of Blue at Fifty
Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print
Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser
Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency
August 13, 2009
Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You
Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook
Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity
Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say
Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods
Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama
Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban
Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare
David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference
Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles
Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids
August 12, 2009
Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink
Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?
Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland
Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis
Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery
Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd:
the Future of Florida Bay
James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds
Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting
David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper
August 11, 2009
Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes
Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?
Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison
Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork
Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism
Uri Avnery
A Moral Person
Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture
Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst
Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer
Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?
Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War
August 10, 2009
David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation
Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition
Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida
Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection
Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption
Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders
Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference
Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid
Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly
George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria
Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap
August 7 - 9, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke
Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold
Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross
Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare
Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America
Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis
John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?
Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power
John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?
Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes
Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"
Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them
Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"
Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends
Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth
David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?
Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad
Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars
Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered
Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis
David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic
Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut
Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character
Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri
Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal
August 6, 2009
Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer
Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy
William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes
Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"
Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"
Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out
Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking
Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima
August 5, 2009
Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class
Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan
William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present
Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban
Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All
Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade
Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East
Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System
Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves
Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance
Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth
August 4, 2009
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game
Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot
Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?
Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups
Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform
Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?
Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California
Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad
Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed
Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"
Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?
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Weekened Edition
September 18-20, 2009
Artist's Statement
Flags for Hiroshima
By ELIN O'HARA SLAVICK
Note: elin o'Hara slavick's Flags for Hiroshima is on exhibit at the Cosign Project in St. Louis from September 5 through October 30, 2009. What follows is her artist's statement for the project.
On August 6, 1945, the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb fueled by enriched uranium on the city of Hiroshima. 70,000 people died instantly. Another 70,000 died by the end of 1945 as a result of exposure to radiation and other related injuries. The history of the atomic age is intertwined with that of photography. The discovery of the radioactive energy possessed by natural uranium was via a photograph that launched the nuclear age. In 1896 Henri Becquerel placed uranium on a photographic plate, intending to expose it to the sun. However, because it was a cloudy day, he put the experiment in a drawer. The next day he decided to develop the plate anyway. To his amazement he saw the outline of the uranium on the plate that had never been exposed to light. He correctly concluded that the uranium was spontaneously emitting a new kind of penetrating radiation and published a paper, ‘On visible radiation emitted by phosphorescent bodies.’
Following in the steps of Henri Becquerel, I worked in close collaboration with the staff of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum for 3 months during the summer of 2008. I commenced a pilot project on the use of autoradiography (capturing on x-ray film radioactive emissions from objects), cyanotypes (natural sun exposures on cotton paper impregnated with cyanide salts), frottages (rubbings) and subsequent contact prints from the frottages, and traditional photography to document places and objects that survived the atomic bombing. I made hundreds of exposures while in Hiroshima, digital and analog, color and black and white, images of survival and images of destruction. There is a large series of dandelion heads about to disappear into the wind, a small gesture in the midst of a profound event. This gesture hails back to the many flowers that blossomed shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped. As John Hersey writes in his unforgettable book Hiroshima, “The bomb had not only left the underground organs of plants intact; it had stimulated them. Everywhere were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew.” The blooming of flowers offered a false and fleeting hope to the victims and survivors of the A-bomb. And like this sign of regeneration, a dandelion vanishes, perhaps with a child’s breath of a wish, but usually it disappears without notice – small, wispy, fragile balls, tiny-stemmed stars, blooming, blossomed, temporary.
Flags for Hiroshima is made up of three flags, each one holding an image of a Hiroshima dandelion. Each flag displays a city's name on the back: Hiroshima, Baghdad and St. Louis. Exhibiting these flags at Cosign Gallery in St. Louis, I wish to connect these faraway places to the local, as well as the past to the present (and possibly the future) and to help people make those connections. The atomic bomb would never have been dropped and the war in Iraq would never have happened without the complicity of the American people. I hope no bombs are ever dropped on St. Louis. To that end, we must recognize our role, as American tax-paying citizens, in global destruction and the importance of U.S. foreign policy in the dismal state of our world. There is always another war.
Flags for Hiroshima is an attempt to reshape how we think about war and the aftermath. Trying to record the gruesome effects of war and to expose the indiscriminate cruelty of aerial bombardment have been major concerns of mine as a visual artist for the past 10 years. Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century, (Catherine Lutz, Beacon Press, 2001), includes over 30 of my photographs of the Fort Bragg military base in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography (Charta Books, Milan, Italy, 2007) a monograph of a series of drawings of places the U.S. has bombed is my first book.
Like Homefront and Bomb After Bomb, Flags for Hiroshima attempts to engage in ethical seeing by addressing the irreconcilable paradox of making visible the most barbaric as witness, artist, and viewer. As a hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) said in Hiroshima, “There are now over 30,000 nuclear weapons in this world. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not past events. They are about today's situation.”
elin o’Hara slavick is a Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she teaches studio art, theory and practice. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in poetry, photography and art history from Sarah Lawrence College. Slavick has exhibited her work in Hong Kong, Canada, France, Italy, Scotland, England, Cuba, the Netherlands and across the United States. She is the author of Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography, (Charta, 2007), with a foreword by Howard Zinn.
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