|
Today's
Stories
March 31, 2008
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
|
March
31, 2008
Ed Sanders' Katrina
Epic
The
American Bard in New Orleans
By MICHAEL SIMMONS
Ed Sanders' language
advances
in a direction of production
which probably isn't even guessed at
That is, it takes the earth
to make a feather fall.
-- Charles Olson, 1964
They'd privatize your assholes
if they could get away with it!
-- Ed Sanders, 2007
There is a giant in our midst and his
name is Edward Sanders.
Ed was born in 1939 in Kansas
City, Missouri. He moved to New York City in 1958 to attend NYU,
from which he holds a degree in classics. A lifelong activist
and peacenik, he was arrested in 1961 attempting to nonviolently
body block a nuclear submarine. He survived to open a bookstore/community
center/underground film studio/crash pad called the Peace Eye
Bookstore on the Lower East Side. He published his own poetry
as well as international lit-wigs Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer,
Gregory Corso and East Village luminaries like Ted Berrigan in
a zine called Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts.
In late 1964, he and brother
poet Tuli Kupferberg co-founded the
Fugs, the name borrowed from Mailer's fornicatory euphemism.
Along with drummer/comedian Ken Weaver and a rotating band of
ace axemen, the Fugs released sixteen or so albums of satirical,
left-wing, smutty, dope-addled rock and roll and mixed poetry
and rock before the Doors. The Fugs went on hiatus in
1969 until 1984 when he and Tuli resuscitated the band with a
stable and kick-ass line-up that continues to record and perform.
Ed also wrote a harrowing reportage
of the clan Manson (The
Family), novels (Tales
of Beatnik Glory, the single greatest roman a clef about
the 1960s), poems, chapbooks, liner notes, etc. He and his wife
Miriam Sanders publish and edit the Woodstock
Journal, currently online, in which they serve as the nattering
nabobs of their hometown of Woodstock, NY. No avaricious real
estate developer or profiteering polluter goes unexamined in
Woodstock thanks to the Sanders' efforts. Obeying his own urgings
to develop a school of Investigative Poetry, he's working on
a nine-volume America: A History in Verse, three
of which have been bound and pubbed and of which Volumes 1-5,
the 20th Century will soon be available on CD as well.
In his youth, Sanders had the
vision of the social movement that both cheerleaders and detractors
refer to when they conjure the 1960s. While most people may
be unaware of the bigness of Ed Sanders' work, they've not missed
his colorful feathers that have graced our landscape for decades.
"Ed Sanders invented everything," our mutual friend
John Sinclair once told me. He's a Renaissance hyphenate and
one of the first public figures of his generation to live seamlessly
within the realms of politics, art and fun. In the process of
self-reinvention, he became the first cousin to Che Guevara's
paradigmatic New Man -- albeit thoroughly American and anti-authoritarian.
To list all of Ed's prodigious accomplishments, we'd need more
space than is available to us, given the reason I write these
words: to praise the man's contemporary recordings.
In particular, his latest:
the masterful Poems For New Orleans . He read and recorded
his history of the Crescent City and Hurricane Katrina with musical
accompaniment over four months in 2007 and has released it on
Paris
Records, a label on which proprietor Michael Minzer has also
released spoken word by Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Robert Creeley
and a collab twixt Corso and Marianne Faithfull. (It's
also available from Amazon.) Ed creates a people's history
in the Zinn tradition and his own American verse histories by
tracing the story of New Orleans through the eyes of the fictitious
Lebage family, from Lemoine to his great great great great granddaughter
Grace.
The poet begins during the
Battle of New Orleans in 1815 and we meet a renegade Haitian
revolutionary named Lemoine Lebage, a free man who joins up with
Andrew Jackson's ragtag army to kick the Brits out, despite Old
Hickory's slave-trading and mass Indian-murder. Critically wounded
on the battlefield, Lemoine is nursed back to life by Marie Laveau
(performed by Monique Moss), the legendary voodoo queen. After
victory, Lemoine remains and builds a home in 1830 on "the
edge of the French Quarter."
Sanders' describes the conditions
of N.O. life in the first half of the 19th Century, including
the abundance of goods, which he notes required cheap labor to
acquire and distribute, enabling slavery. "Stuff is the
parcel of never-enough," he notes, referencing both greed
and all that's stampeded in its path, but also the productivity
that resulted from the thriving manufacturing and farming that
built America and is now gone with the search for even cheaper
labor. With New Orleans' emergence as a healthy, if woefully
unequal, basin of wealth, the citizens looked for ways to have
fun, resulting in krewes and parades and floats and balls and,
most importantly, music. These celebratory manifestations are
what tourists pay to witness.
One of Ed's many fascinating
practices is "speculative poetry." He imagines William
Blake visiting N.O. and muses that Mark Twain, who did indeed
go to Mardi Gras around 1860, meets up with the extra-sensory
Marie Laveau, who warns him of the impending bloodbath that will
be the Civil War. Time passes and we meet Lemoine's great granddaughter
Marie Lebage, who works on populist Louisiana governor Huey Long's
campaign. Ed threads greed from ancient Rome through Bush II
and notes that Long's mottos were SHARE OUR WEALTH and EVERY
MAN A KING and that he distributed free textbooks and instituted
salaries for black teachers equal to those of whites before he
was assassinated.
A most powerful poem on this
set is "Unearned Suffering," a spoken word duet with
Susan Cowsill. It's a chilling, stark paean to those "born
with anvils on their souls," the collaterally damaged of
child labor, dangerous work, and those who make "the calm
life glow for a few." The piece ends with a comparison
of Hurricane Katrina to "unearned suffering worthy of the
days of Poseidon." He then invokes the spirits of composer
Charles Ives and poet Wallace Stevens, both of whom had been
in the insurance racket (who knew?), and begs them to use their
heavenly power to intercede on behalf of the storm's swindled
victims.
No Edward Sanders work would
be wholly his without a dose of the poet's unparalleled comic
relief. Yeats wrote that "Gaiety transfigured all that
dread" and so it is with Sanders. He's the expert at finding
mirth amidst tragedy, a survival technique that helps us retain
our humanity under the worst circumstances. In Poems For
N.O., he resurrects Johnny Pissoff, a charming redneck goofball
who's appeared in Ed's oeuvre since 1968. Here, Pissoff and
pals liberate FEMA trailers in Hope, Arkansas (of all places)
and hijack them to New Orleans for the hurricane's homeless.
After a poem about the disappearance
and reappearance of wildlife during/after the deluge, comes "The
Experience," so dire that "Help! won't help."
Speaking in the voice of a survivor who's lost everything, Ed
mournfully intones:
I am the guy whose legs tremble
on the edge of the ward
I'm Gone.
Yikes.
The poet evokes civil rights
history through the deceptively simple losses of Katrina:
I miss my ironing board
and the letters you used to
send me
after we were beaten in Selma
Like Obama's recent speech,
these thoughts in connection with Katrina remind that we've come
a ways, but we have many a ways to go.
Before the flood, Lemoine's
descendant Grace Lebage (read/sung by Troi Bechet) still lived
in the home he'd built in 1830. It is washed away and while
her husband is arrested after shoplifting "a six pack of
Yoo Hoos and a loaf of nothing good" for sustenance, Grace
is raped.
Ajax who raped Cassandra
in a burning Trojan temple
came to New Orleans
It was early September
This horrid tale is followed
by "Ash Wednesday and Lent," a paean to hope and atonement.
Grace Lebage, the symbol of
post-Katrina resurrection, organizes a house raising, then speaks
the poet's words:
"I'm a survivor, better
than Bush!
I have more healing zeal than he ever could
and there's a steel keychain around my anger!
I'm pregnant! I'm an American!
I dreamed a Better Dream!
Equity! Come on, Mr. And Ms. Moneybag Sam!
Let me see some breaches in your Money Dam!
Give me a house, America"
And she issues a warning: "Call
it a down payment to ward off a Revolution!"
Ed ends with "Then Came
The Storm: A Prayer For The Victims Of Katrina," a combo
of meticulously detailed, chronological, and dramatic reportage,
meteorology, and statistics (Stat-Po, perhaps) and compelling
lyric that traces the storm's birth, onslaught, and wake. He
pays loving trib to the "Crescent Flowerwhere jazz was the
art," lists the gaping disparity between those in power
and those "beneath the pov line," describes the supreme
callousness that preceded Katrina despite warnings, and the tourist
industry
which brought in five billion
dollar-bones a year
to the anarcho-bohemian-freedomistic
Polis
where everyone tried their fastest licks
on the Carpe Diem guitar
"You recall how it was,"
Sanders reminds us and we do. Mayor Nagin's (Ed calls him "The
Nagster") refusal to authorize more than twelve buses for
evacuation, the mass of humanity trapped in the Superdome, the
bodies of humans and animals floating everywhere. The poet compares
this holocaust to "the dispersals of slavery." In
closing, he again inhabits the victims, asking:
Where's my wife? Where's my
mother?
Where's my child? Where's my daddy?
and always the question, where
is the path
that leads from the Gates of Wrath?
"No one yet has sung the
way and even atheists pray for light of day," the poet adds.
Edward Sanders' Poems For
New Orleans is one of the great American epic poems, on par
with Whitman and Ginsberg. The New York Times' about.com website
named the recording The Best Poetry CD Of 2007, saying: "Sandersutilizes
his Investigative Poetry techniques and aesthetic to give the
full backstory to the unbearable tragedy still in progress (!)
in New Orleans." Good point. The ethnic cleansing that
Ed appropriately places in historical context is unfolding in
real time. We continue to pray for light of day.
Extra special note must be
made of Co-Producer (with Minzer) and composer Mark Bingham.
His score is as masterful as the words, and as all-encompassing:
folk, ragtime, Dixieland, jazz, funk, stark percussion, you name
it. The music for "Ash Wednesday and Lent" is particularly
stunning: a bluesy, Mingusesque horn moan.
The totality of Poems For
New Orleans speaks to the depth of Ed Sanders' life, his
art, his innovation. His no-limits empathy throughout his lifetime
and in this sorriest of epochs. His insistence that we must
all speak out and act.
What happened to compassion? is the question Ed demands an answer
for. He's been on the frontlines for almost half a century and
his current work proves that he's showing no signs of compromise.
In the process of making this demand, he magically transfigures
the quest to end human suffering into art.
The album contains 15 poems
and all 52 from the Poems For N.O. cycle will also be
published in book form this coming August 19th by North
Atlantic Books. Sanders, who evidently does not sleep, also
has several other recent CDs available.
Thirsting
For Peace - A brilliant solo home recording that
features Ed playing instruments of his own invention (he's the
freaky Ben Franklin), including the microtonal Microlyre, under
sung tributes to Goethe, Ginsberg, Satie, a section of Corso's
"Bomb," and sections of his books Tales of Beatnik
Glory and Thirsting For Peace In A Raging Century.
The man has a beautiful tenor!
The
Fugs Greatest Hits 1984-2004-
Ed, Tuli, Steven Taylor, Scott Petito, and Coby Batty continue
to make sometimes comedic, sometimes poignant agit-rock. Highlights
include the anthem of indomitability "Refuse To Be Burnt
Out" and AIDS mini-opera "Dreams Of Sexual Perfection."
Sanders' Truckstop and Beer
Cans On The Moon, Ed's first two solo albums reissued,
originally on Reprise. From 1969 and 1972 respectively, these
are Sanders at his most satirical and most country. The cat
is from Missouri, after all.
Michael Simmons is an award-winning journalist and
currently filming a documentary on the Yippies. He can be reached
at guydebord@sbcglobal.net.
|
Now Available!
How the Press Led
the US into War
Buy End Times Now!
New From
CounterPunch Books
The Secret
Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy
WINNER
OF THE
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!
Click Here to Buy!
Cassidy
on Tour
Click Here for Dates & Venues
"The Case Against
Israel"
Michael
Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
Click Here to Buy!
Saul Landau's
Bush and Botox World
with a Foreword by Gore Vidal
Click Here to Order!
Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn
Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed
|
