Today's Stories

May 29-31, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Reeling Republicans

May 28, 2009

Joan Roelofs
The Philanthropies and the Economic Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts
Torture and the American Conscience

Ralph Nader
Corporate Frankensteins

Mouin Rabbani
The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East

Joe Bageant
Plain Truths From Appalachia: a Redneck View of Obamarama

James McEnteer
America Held Hostage

Dedrick Muhammad
Obama and the Harsh Racial Reality

Richard Morse
On Speaking Out in Haiti

David Macaray
Have We Turned Into Sheep?

Harvey Wasserman
The 8 Green Steps to Solartopia

Website of the Day
Col. Peters: Just Kill the Gitmo Detainees

May 27, 2009

Joanne Mariner
Military Commissions, Round Three

Paul Craig Roberts
Doublespeak on North Korea

Walden Bello
Can China Save the World From Depression?

Dave Lindorff
Recidivism and Guantánamo

Brian M. Downing
Along the Durand Line

Carlos Villarreal
Separate But Equal Just Fine in California?

Nadia Hijab
Israel's Next Move: Armageddon Now?

Adam Federman
The PCBs of the Hudson River

Laray Polk
RadWaste and Texas' Future

Isabella Kenfield
The Fall of a Brazilian Financier

David Michael Green
Overcoming the Poverty of Ambition

Website of the Day
The Case Against Shell

May 26, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Fearful Pride: North Korea's Second Nuclear Test

Mike Whitney
The Next Leg Down: When Deflation Becomes Entrenched

Sharon Smith
Obama and Abortion Rights: What We Learned at Notre Dame

Marjorie Cohn
The Gitmo Appeasment Plan: Obama Buckles on the Constitution

Dean Baker
Waterboard the Fed

Deepankar Basu
Was the Indian Election a Debacle for the Left? If So, Why?

Fred Gardner
The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans for Sale

Josh Ruebner
Rethinking the Costs of Peace

Brian Cloughley
The Man Who Murdered Count Foulke Bernadotte

Website of the Day
The Montana Town That Wants to Become the New Gitmo

May 25, 2009

Diane Christian
Looking at Torture

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Kenneth Hartman
The Trouble With Prison

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

Fred Gardner
"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops": the Punishment of Sgt. Northcutt

Cindy Sheehan
Day of the Dead

Sen. Russell Feingold
Prolonged Detention and the Rule of Law: a Letter to Barack Obama

Sibel Edmonds
Two Sides of the Same Coin: From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps

Franklin Lamb
Der Spiegel Tries Again

Dave Lindorff
Memorial Day in the Land of the Weak and Wussy

Daniel Wolff
Learning to Read in the Pacific Northwest

Website of the Day
Decoration Day

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

Weekend Edition
May 29-31, 2009

Dosed, Not Spiked: an Interview with Grace Slick

"If I Wasn't Grace Slick, I'd Be Dead"

By PHYLLIS POLLACK

IWhen I told Grace Slick that Paul Kantner, her former band mate and father of her daughter, China, is getting ready to go out on tour with a group billed as The Jefferson Starship, and that tickets are currently on sale at venues across the country, who knew? Well, apparently, not Grace. Her reaction? “That’s illegal. I could sue him.” So much for my errantly having thought, "It's No Secret." My thoughts suddenly flash to the Red Queen saying, "Off with his head!" Grace mentions her lawyer again. I am still not expecting a Trial By Fire. I have no question that whatever decision she makes, Grace will come out just fine, whether she does anything or not about it. As she told me, "Leave them with an image that is good. Get out while you’re ahead." Despite Slick being best known for her time spent as a vocalist in the Jefferson Airplane and The Jefferson Starship, and her unfortunately all too few solo releases, it has been years since she has performed. In the meantime, Slick has stayed intensely busy, devoting herself to various projects, most notably, her artwork.  Songs like "White Rabbit" and "Volunteers" will long remain enduring classics that helped define a generation, long after the impending matter at hand of the upcoming tour is settled. With so much else going on in her life these days, the big question is now, So How Do You Feel, Grace? What is it like, This Other Side Of Life? Here, the voice that launched a thousand trips talks about her art and her life, as well as a few other subjects on her mind. When talking to Grace, her strikingly beautiful eyes still have that fiery intensity, and when she looks at you, she has a focus that makes you believe for an instant that she could convince you to fall back into that deep hole, and spend time in that place where Cheshire Cats talk, and White Rabbits carry a fans and a pair of gloves.

When you painted your portrait of Jimi Hendrix titled “Kiss The Sky,” were you reflecting on him, or thinking about him?

A little bit, but I didn’t know him that well. I only just sort of met him briefly. I didn’t know Hendrix that well. So when people say, “When you get old, is there anything you regret not doing?” Because I’ve always told young kids, “Go for it. Do everything. Try not to kill yourself, but do as much as you possibly can.” Because it’s really a drag to sit around when you’re old, and think, “Ah, gee, I never went to France.” Go to France. Life is very short, you’ve got to pack it all in there. I wanted the kid, the job, the whole thing, so that’s what I did. The things I wish I did do that I did not do, were screw Jimi Hendrix, and ride a horse. Horseback riding seems really neat to me, never did that. And I never hung out with, well, you’re much younger, but my age group, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton, and Peter O’Toole, they were all a bunch of raconteurs. They were very good storytellers, and they were drunks. Now, I’m a drunk, so when I was in my twenties, I didn’t realize I could have my people call their people (laughs). You know, that kind of thing? I didn’t realize they’d probably think it was fun. And I regret not being able to hang out with them. But there aren’t too many regrets, because I did pretty much what I wanted to do. So now, as an old person, I don’t have these huge regrets. Mine are fairly minor. They have to do with drinking and screwing, so that’s not all that important (laughs).

Nah, Grace, I’d say you’ve done quite well for yourself.

I did say what I thought about politics, I did go where I wanted to go, see the countries I wanted to see, I’ve been to Spain. I’ve not been to Russia, but my parents went, and they told me the Russians are similar to us, oddly enough. One good thing about television is that you have a lot of people with money who have real good cameras, going around to all these countries. You haven’t been there? Great. Turn on The History Channel or The Discovery Channel. So we’re lucky in that way. If you lived in the 1800’s, you don’t know anything, but what someone else tells you about it. They had no pictures really.

I wanted to bring up something else about your portrait, “Kiss The Sky.” The texture of the turquoise hanging on Jimi’s neck, and the way you textured his hair was really amazing.

Yeah, sometimes I do that. If you have an Afro, I’ll make it actually lumpy.  It saves time. Now, I’m seventy years old. People ask me why I don’t paint oils. It takes too long. Cleaning brushes in linseed oil, and it takes six months to really dry, and all this. I don’t have that kind of time. I work with acrylic. It’s water based. You can clean it under water. If you spill it on yourself, you just throw it in the washing machine. It takes about two days to dry, so that’s my kind of deal. I don’t want to wait around for it. And it looks like oil, so who cares?

Photo: Jim Steinfeldt

Do you feel your paintings help preserve history, or present an alternative view to history?

Well, it might preserve some of the attitudes of my generation. So does (Stanley) Mouse and (Alton) Kelley, Andy Warhol, and Peter Max. Whether you like it or not, Keith Haring is going to represent certain attitudes of a generation. So in that sense, yeah, I guess.

Your art provides an alternative way, so to speak, of seeing “Through The Looking Glass,” looking at the Sixties.

Well, taking acid allows you to see there are many ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking, other than the one you came in with. In other words, it’s not rigid. That’s the Republican deal. One of the deals is people who have taken acid generally don’t turn into Republicans. Not always, there are always a few. One of the Chicago Seven guys came out a Wall Street guy, Jerry Rubin. He became a stockbroker, I think it was. But most people who have taken acid tend to see that you don’t have to have a rigid existence. So that’s where that helped broaden your idea of how things are. In other words, we see a certain way. I could get everybody in a room to look at this air conditioner, and it’s cream colored, and everyone would agree on that, because that’s the way we’re set up. But if you put a different chemical in there, maybe we’re not set up like that. If I take acid, that goddamn air conditioner could be blue. It changes how you see even. I mean, the only thing alcohol does, is it fucks up your vision, so you have to close one eye to see on the freeway and stuff, but it does not give you the information that we are just a bunch of chemicals operating. And those chemicals can operate all different kinds of ways. So not just the air conditioner, but the philosophy that you came in with, and that you’re aware of, and used to, the religion, the philosophy, the training you’ve had, question it. Always question it, because it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be any goddamn way you want it to be.

You become more conscious that there is another consciousness.

Many other consciousnesses. So you can run it any way you want to run it.

The colors you use on a lot of your works are really bright colors.

I think I came in with a rock and roll personality. The pictures are simple. You don’t stand back and wonder what it is.

Right.

It’s direct. It’s in your face. I like primaries, primary colors. So it’s the same thing as rock and roll. It’s simple, it’s cartoony. It’s in your face, and other people will paint other ways, which is good. Because there isn’t one way of looking at it. I like that Keith Haring does his shit one way, Jackson Pollock does his shit the other way. When he first came out, I thought, “The guy’s a guy throwing a bunch of paint on a canvas. That’s ridiculous.” But then I watched how he does it. How he stands back, and then I looked at his stuff even more, and the painting is also about balance, construction, perspective. It’s not just about, “Oh, I recognize that. That’s Jesus.” Or “I recognize that. That’s Ronald Reagan.” I can do that, but that’s not the only way of expressing yourself. Like you say, “Jackson Pollack, I want you to do Ronald Reagan.” And he’ll do this bunch of splots on paper that to him represent how Ronald Reagan exists in his artistic mind.  Now, it’s hard for most people to understand, because it looks like a whole bunch of blobs. But for him, and for other people who appreciate his art, that is a representation. It is a construction of color that appeals to them, it says something. Now most abstract art does not mean anything to me. It looks like some really interesting wallpaper or drapery for a very modern loft (laughs). But that’s just me. And I don’t say that abstract art is wrong. I’m saying that for me, I don’t like oysters. A lot of people do. I don’t think they’re bad because they don’t like oysters. They’re just different. Same with Hitler. These people are different from you. They’re not bad. You can go around and not like Jews. You don’t have to do anything about it. Then don’t hang out with Jews if you don’t like them. If you don’t like Norwegian people, don’t hang out with them. You don’t have to bomb them, you know (laughs)?

 “Volunteers Of America,” can you talk about that, the song “Volunteers?”

“Volunteers Of America” actually doesn’t mean anything. It was something Marty Balin, lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane, and Paul Kantner put together. Now Paul is very political, Marty isn’t. Marty writes love songs. That’s one of the things I liked about the group. We had several different forums. Mine was kind of sarcastic social humor. Paul is spaceman political, Marty wrote love songs, and Jack and Jorma were blues. So it’s like a smorgasbord. You get one of our records, and it’s all different shit. “Volunteers Of Americas” was a print on the side of a truck that Marty saw. He was looking out the window, and a truck went by. It said “Volunteers Of America” on it. I believe it’s something like Salvation Army. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a Salvation Army type deal. But he liked that. He ran it around his head, “Volunteers Of America. That’s interesting.” So he had the repeated line, “Volunteers Of America,” and Paul put more political shit into the lyric. So it isn’t as deep as everybody thinks it is (laughs). It’s something Marty saw on a truck (laughs).

So people then projected that meaning into it.

Yeah. But Paul gave it semi-political lyrics that have to do with the Sixties, or at that time.

I had bought your album Manhole album when it first came out.

(Grace laughs.)

I think was back in ’73.  It had a self-portrait of you on the cover, and the wording on it, “Child type odd art.” Was that a harbinger of things to come? Did you know at the time that was what your life would eventually lead up to?

No, I just started drawing when I was about three years old. I would draw an angel, and my parents would make a Christmas card out of it.  They would have copies of it made into Christmas cards. So I knew I could draw, more or less. I’ve done it off and on. But mostly I’ve do one thing at a time. I’m not very good at multi-tasking. Most people aren’t, but they think they are. The mind is really better when you’re really focused on one thing. So I would occasionally draw an album cover, or liner inserts on the inside. But Jerry Garcia used to take his paints on the road. That would make me crazy.

There are artists who do, like Ronnie (Wood). I have something that you probably also have a copy of. I have the F.B.I. file here on the Jefferson Airplane.

Right (laughs).

I had sent in this FOIA request, back in 2003.  As you know, apparently the feds were not amused by your relationship with the Yippies, or specifically Abbie (Hoffman).

Yeah.

In the file, F.B.I. headquarters domestic “intelligence” (their word, not mine) alerted the secret service, military intelligence and local law enforcement about your presence in various cities, particularly in Cleveland and Cincinnati.

We got arrested almost every time we went to Ohio (laughs).

Yeah, after the Kent State massacre. You are specifically mentioned by name in the file, which is actually quite unusual, because according to the FBI’s own policy, and the FOIA/PA laws, the privacy laws, usually living peoples’ names are redacted from the files and public view, due to the privacy laws. Of all the people in the Airplane, J. Edgar Hoover’s henchmen were more worried about you than they were about any other member of the group. The F.B.I. labels their teletypes about you as being, quote “urgent.”

(Grace laughs.)

The FBI warns warns their agents that you’re the same person as your maiden name, Grace Wing.

Yep.

They make note in your F.B.I. file that you attended Finch College from 1957 to ‘58. I should tell you that my editor’s wife, Kimberly, went to Finch in the ‘70s, and like you, she also escaped to Florida in the midst of that.

(Grace laughs upon hearing this.) Well, that F.B.I. thing, that is apparently why they stopped me from going into the White House. Because I was invited. Patricia Nixon got a list of all the alumni of Finch College, or anybody that had ever gone there. I’m not really an alumni, because I didn’t graduate. I went to Miami the next year. But she got a list of all the girls. The school was small enough where they could do that, and she invited them to a tea. I got the invitation in the mail. “Grace Wing, we cordially invite you to a tea…Tricia Nixon at the White House. And I thought, “Oh, yeah, I think Tricky Dick needs a little acid.” So I took Abbie with me, because they said you could come with your husband, or whatever. We tried to (laughs) straighten Abbie out, so he’d look kind of normal and stuff.

Good luck…

He’s got curly hair, so we tried to slick it back. He looked like a mafia hit man.

Yeah, he used to call his hair a “Jew fro.”

Yeah, he had a Jew fro, and we tried to flatten that out. That didn’t work. But we went, and we were standing in line in front of the White House, with all these women from Finch College. Security came up to me and said, “You can’t go in,” and I said, “But I’ve got an invitation.” They said, “Yes, but you’re a security risk.” They didn’t even talk to Abbie! (Grace exclaims this, sounding utterly flabbergasted.) And I’m going, “What the fuck?!” You know? So they were right. They didn’t know why, but they were right, because I had six hundred micrograms of powdered acid in my pocket. And I also had a very long little fingernail, for snorting coke. And what I was going to do, because of Finch College, I know what formal tea is. You stand at a formal tea, you don’t sit at a formal tea. There’s a very long table, with probably tea at one end, in a long silver urn, and coffee at the other, and there’s somebody who’s serving. Usually the people who are serving, oddly enough, are your friends. So I don’t know if Tricia would have done it that way, but she probably would have had White House staff do it. But I knew what the set-up was going to be. Entertainers gesture a lot, we’re flamboyant, and I could just gesture over Richard Nixon’s teacup, and drop the acid in. It (L.S.D.) is tasteless. And forty-five minutes later, he would have been wandering around being crazy.  What I didn’t know is that he was nuts anyway. He’d wander around and talk to the pictures and shit. So they would have thought, “Okay, he’s really gone over the edge now,” and they’d have had to take him to Langley, and all that kind of stuff. But the idea of it amused us anyway, even if we didn’t get in. It didn’t matter. He got himself out, because he was, you know, not right in the head.

That’s amazing, though, that they thought you were more dangerous than Abbie.

Well, on that day, they were right. Abbie wasn’t going to do it. Abbie just wanted to go in, and see the White House. Abbie just wanted to go with me, because we thought it was funny, because we were obviously not Richard Nixon people. We just thought it was amusing.

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