Today's Stories

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 6-8, 2009

Black Girl From Tannery Flats

Saint Thelma's Book

By ISHMAEL REED

When I called my mother from New York in 1966, excited because Doubleday had signed to publish my first novel, her response was that she was going to write a book,too. "Everybody else is doing it," she added. Since she was burdened by a load of family responsibilities,I didn't take her seriously. After my younger brothers and sister left home,my mother's responsibilities lessened.  

My grandmother and grandmother's brother, for whom she had cared for for many years, died, and my mother and stepfather sold their home and entered a senior citizens'apartment. In 1993, my stepfather died and, shortly afterwards, his mother, an Alzheimer's patient, also died. My mother had been her caretaker for seventeen years.  

After the death of the last person for whom she had taken upon herself to provide caretaker services,my mother settled in an apartment in a building owned by my youngest brother. It was here in 1998 that she began her book Black Girl From Tannery Flats, filling composition books with notes written in an elegant penmanship that is no longer required of school students. I also encouraged her to make audiotapes because her true story telling talent was more oral than literary. Folklorist Cecil Brown (author of Stagolee Shot Billy, and Richard Pryor's best film, Which Way Is Up), who provided a blurb for the book, said that it was a style of black story telling that was disappearing with my mother's generation. She was born in 1917. These notebooks and tapes were edited by author Carla Blank, my partner, who spent many hours transferring them to the page.  

The memoir covers my mother's life from her birth in Chattanooga, Tennessee, until the 1990s. Her mother, a caterer, who was very much in demand, worked in homes of the rich on Lookout and Signal mountains in Chattanooga. Sometimes, she would assist her mother at her working places. She remembers the generosity of these employees and one, Mrs. Clifford Grote, apparently took an interest in me. She nicknamed me G. W., since I was born on George Washington's birth date. Some still call me that. I remember the Grote home as a huge estate whose main house included an elevator. I also remember all of us gathered around Mrs. Grote's bed where she lay dying of cancer.  

While my grandmother worked, my mother spent most of her time with her grandmother, Mary Coleman, whose mother, Lucy Hardiman, was among the last generation to be born a slave. Lucy Hardiman was apparently whipped a lot because my mother records that her grandmother Mary Coleman cried when she mentioned the welts on her mother's back. Mary operated a diner in Chattanooga that catered to white foundry workers.  She insisted that they address her as Mrs. Coleman.  

Thelma V. Reed's story is also that of a teenager whose father was murdered and whose mother suffered from Schizophrenia and who was raped and bore the rapist's child. A single mother who left Tennessee for Buffalo, New York, as part of a 1940s migration in a time when single mothers were the objects of scorn and ostracism, but her story is not unusual for black women in the south, seen as available by white men, and often oppressed by black men and white women.  

It's the story of two young people, Thelma V. Reed and Bennie S.  Reed, who rose from poverty to the middle class in a era when it was still possible to move upward. When labor unions were strong, housing inexpensive and the American Dream for the first time within the grasp of large numbers of citizens,Her book is important to me also because it explains some questions that I had about my family's history. I'd taped my mother and her late cousin Geraldine Pope, about a "mean" Irish American ancestor, but according to my grandmother, whom I'd interviewed when she was in her eighties, there were Irish American men on her side of the family as well as on her husband,Mack Hopkin's side.  

My mother's father, who was largely absent from the household, was murdered by a Greek restaurant owner, according to the family's oral history, after he had knocked on the wrong door. I obtained a copy of the death certificate which includes the comment "stabbed by some man," written by hand. I have been unable to obtain a copy of the inquest that was conducted nor decipher the signature of the doctor who signed the death certificate, nor the name of his assailant. Black life was so cheap in those days that the researcher I hired to uncover this family mystery was unable to find any newspaper account of Mack Hopkins or Hopsin's murder.  

His sister, Rita, was murdered by some white men who were resentful of Martin Luther King. They ran her down. In the Anniston, Alabama, courtroom they claimed that they thought they'd hit a telephone poll.  They were acquitted by an all white jury which explains why many African Americans are allergic to all white juries, bloodhounds and the Confederate flag. Thousands of black American families have an unsolved murder or murders in their history, murders that affect their descendants.  

The murder of my grandfather contributed not only to the poverty of his spouse and his child, my mother, but meant that his descendants would inherit less assets. Richard Wright tells of an uncle who was murdered because he was prosperous. Without this businessman's income, members of the Wright family sank into poverty.  

My mother recounts her visit to Chattanooga's Erlanger hospital where her father, his clothes soaked with blood,lay, neglected, on a cot in the hall. I was born at Erlanger. The doctor had told the nurses "Let that nigger die. "

My mother being a Christian, has forgiven his murderer. I suspect that her longevity can be attributed to her qualities of compassion and the ability to set aside grudges and her inexhaustible optimism and faith. Her's is the African Jesus; one who isn't remote but present in everyday life, always at hand, a savior as well as a friend. For her, ancestors communicate through dreams. Her book also illuminated my understanding of one of those aspects of family history that puzzled me.  

I always wondered why my mother and grandmother maintained close ties with their white employers even after relocating to the North. I was a product of the 1960s and viewed these people as their oppressors.  

Black Girl From Tannery Flats cleared up this question. During the crises experienced by my mother and grandmothers, their "white folks" were there to lend a hand. My mother's boyfriend,a dashing handsome lad, always complained about the white women at The Reed House, a Chattanooga hotel, making sexual overtures to him. One day he was caught with one of them. It was one of her employees,Herbert Spencer, who enabled him to escape .  

The other family that employed my grandmother and from time to time my mother were the Grotes. They assisted our family when my grandmother was committed to an institution for two years. Another employer insisted that a bus company compensate my mother for injuries she sustained during a bus riot that erupted when whites demanded that blacks yield their seats at the rear of an overcrowded Knoxville bus and the blacks stubbornly refused to move.  "You'd do it for me," she told the executives of the bus company. They paid.  

Though Rosa Parks gets credit for busting the racial codes in southern transportation, ordinary black folks resisted Jim Crow every day. Sometimes violently but most of the time non-violently. Civil War diaries show that W. E. B. DuBois is correct when he writes that one of the major reason why the South was defeated was a "general strike" and work slowdown on the part of the African prisoners victims of the largest prison transfers in history. (Regardless of tough love entrepreneurs and intellectual messengers of corporate think tank and a media that's in the corporate tank, blacks continue to be victims.  Part of the right wing's tough love glossary is a term used by psychologists. "Victimization. " Wouldn't be the first time that blacks were put on the couch. Free blacks and runaways were considered crazy.  After all, why would anybody want to give up such a sweet deal. Black male authors have been dismissed as crazy for over a hundred years.  Richard Wright who was being investigated by French, U. S. and British Intelligence agencies was dismissed as "paranoid. " Even James Baldwin, elegant as a jewel, a person whose manners were impeccable, was dismissed as "antagonistic" by "60 Minutes," in an interview that was never used. )

Another example of cooperation between some white women and black women in the South, a solidarity that black, Hispanic and Native-American feminists claim is missing in today's white middle class led feminist movement, occurred when my mother, a single mother in the 1930s, sought housing. Mrs. Grote persuaded the authorities to bend the rules,enabling her to obtain public housing for her, my grandmother and me. Before the Civil Rights revolution, some blacks, like my mother, were able to survive, not only as a result of their pluck, and cunning, but because they had some benevolent white folks on their side.  

One would hope that books such as my mother's would inspire others of our elders to provide a different witness to history than that offered by our educational institutions. A history written by men who blame the slave trade on "African chieftains," exclusively. Purveyors of feel-good lies that diminish the contributions of African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanics and white ethnics to American civilization. How many students know about the working class white southerners who lived in regions that refused to go along with the Secession,and that in at least one southern state there occurred a secession within the secession. How many know that before demagogues arose, warning of "negro domination," blacks and whites voted together or that populist Tom Watson was able to summon two thousand white farmers to prevent the lynching of a black populist.  

My mother said that when the first copy of her book arrived she commenced to do a holiness dance of celebration. She received calls from all over the country including those from former schoolmates and childhood friends. She made the cover of the local Buffalo newspaper, "The Buffalo Challenger. "One woman says that she carries my mother's book wherever she goes. People are calling her asking her to recommend Bible verses that might help them through particular crises occurring in their lives. And, following her most recent book party held in Buffalo's Deaconess Center where she has an apartment, which I attended in October. People have arrived at her home and phoned her asking for her blessings. I have suggested that she hire an assistant and a 900 number and charge them. She says that this would be unchristian.  

Previously, she was honored by The Every Other Thursday Book Club, one of many such clubs that has sprung up across the country as black consumers are beginning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on book purchases. A black writer can sell more books at venues like Margaret Troupe's Manhattan Salon than at chain bookstores.  

Carla, Tennessee and I flew to Buffalo for the first book party. I had prepared a speech for the gathering, but the hostess told me to make it short because they didn't have time for me to read it; they wanted to hear from their honored guest.  

My mother discussed her book before a rapt audience of black women. Afterwards, she delivered messages to some of the women.  Messages from their dead relatives. Nobody saw anything unusual about this and I don't doubt that my mother,like many African,and Native Americans might be in contact with another dimension, in this day when Astro Physicists speak of String Theory and wormholes.  

Respect for such gifted people is widespread among people of the South. In fact, my mother, now 91 (she began her book at 74 and finished at 84)is working on a new book. She said that a few years ago the deceased who had been visiting her since childhood had stopped coming. They'd been replaced by spirits bringing prophecies. She said that one of the spirts said cryptically that Israel is going to be okay. In the old days, she would have been considered a prophet. I told her that with her gifts, if she lived in Africa she could have a villa and a Mercedes. She said, "that would be unchristian."

Another version of an essay that appeared in Ishmael Reed's most recent book of essays, Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies.  

Ishmael Reed is the editor of the online magazine, Konch.  

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