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Today's
Stories
April 11, 2008
Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid
Colombia Advocacy
Sharon Smith
Let
Them Eat Ethanol!
Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem
Alan Farago
Eating South Florida
April 10, 2008
Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet
for the Tibetans!
Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery
in the Fields
David Macaray
Labor
Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake
Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr
Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth
Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life
Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs
Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos
April 9, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Fading American Economy
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Congressional
Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings
C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera
Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins
Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!
Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox
Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis
Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop
Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy
Website of the Day
Conservative
Nanny State
April 8, 2008
Mike Whitney
Should
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?
Nikolas Kozloff
Bush
Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal
Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas
Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft
John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS
Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing
John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts
Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates
Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?
Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty
Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later
April 7, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Irish Black Thing
Harry Browne
Irish
Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported
Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine
Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy
Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free
Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role
Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests
Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War
April 5 / 6,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Did
the Elites Want MLK Dead?
Ramzy Baroud
There
are No Checkpoints in Heaven
Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts
David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down
Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show
Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot
Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig
John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students
in Ecuador Bombing
Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values
David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad
Missy Beattie
McCan't
Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe
Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers
Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press
Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie
Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Diamand
and St. Clair
Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop
April 4, 2008
Dave Lindorff
The
Night I Heard King Had Been Shot
Greg Moses
Missing
King
Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine
Alison Weir
Funding
Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel
David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War
Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream
Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?
Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte
Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines
Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran
Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn
Website of
the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression
Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained:
The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia
Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America
Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy
David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood
Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
Website of
the Day
The
True Face of Da Vinci?
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
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
|
Apri1
11, 2008
An Interview with
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist Junot Diaz
Revenge
of the Ghetto Nerd
By WAJAHAT ALI
The Ghetto nerd came to America at age
6 with his impoverished Dominican family, like so many others
before them, yearning to taste the "American Dream."
The Ghetto nerd suffered the brutal jabs and blows of the "American
reality" as his family suffered one epic tragedy after another.
The Ghetto nerd immersed himself in literature, inhaling popular
culture like air, snorting fantasy and science fiction like cerebral
cocaine, and drowning himself in the wondrous, exaggerated worlds
of comic books. The Ghetto nerd hustled, like so many hustlers,
by working an assortment of odd jobs to pay college tuition and
later earn an MFA graduate degree from Cornell. In 1996, the
Ghetto nerd published his first work, a collection of short stories
Drown,
to ecstatic acclaim heralding him as the one of the great, young
fiction writers of the new century by The New Yorker.
After a 12-year hiatus, the Ghetto Nerd returns as the winner
of 2008's Pulitzer for Best Fiction Novel, The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, an exciting and fresh work
that literally explodes with ideas, simultaneously destroying
cherished yet simplistic myths of "The American Dream,"
while creating a unique vision of observing the tragic, hopeful,
forgotten, yet all too common, multicultural and multigenerational
experience of an "American" family.
A month before winning the
Pulitzer, I sat with Junot Diaz, the Ghetto Nerd himself, for
a revealing and candid discussion about the devastating "curse"
and emotional scars of a tyrannical dictatorship in this
case that of Dominican Republic's horrific General Trujillo
on an immigrant, American family; the mainstream "whitewashing"
of "brown" experiences; the power of popular culture
and comics books to express one's personal narrative; the arrogance
of "Whiteness"; and the emergence of a multicultural
voice reflecting an ethnic, "All American" America
ALI: The novel begins with
a quote by Derek Walcott: "I have Dutch, nigger, and English
in me, and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation." Is this
statement a microcosm of the multicultural identity of a modern
and past America? Has America and American literature always
been this way you think?
DIAZ: Part of me was thinking
more in a sense that that there is no national definition; in
other words, all national definitions have to contend with the
specificity of the individual. That's what I find in some ways
to be so intriguing. The identities that we cleave to or create
for ourselves are often simplifying myths more than anything
else. I guess part of it is that, clearly, there's no greater
or perhaps more alluring simplifying myth than the myth of America
with the capital "A." Which says it is a sort of un-nuanced
"good." But, there's another line to that opening quote
which is the same way a national definition has to struggle to
incorporate the individual, it's also possible for an individual
to become a national identity.
If you think about the book,
the book argues that a freakish individual, in the case of the
Dominican Republican dictator Trujillo, a very specific individual,
became a national character. I think the quote is not just a
note of celebration, but it also sounds as a warning "fetish-ising"
the individual, which is exactly what the cult of Trujillo did
it "fetishised" one individual.
ALI: Let's talk about the
fuku, the curse,
or as one of the characters later refers to it as "the fuck
you" "the Curse and Doom of the New World,"
a plague, a curse, an endless foreboding tragedy that links a
family from the mother country to the new country. Can you briefly
explain it?
DIAZ: There's another argument
in the book for what the fuku is. Folkloric-ly in the
Dominican Republic, there's this belief that there's this huge
quantity of bad luck that has been generated in or around of
what we call the conquest of the New World. The project of the
New World, which created this sort of bad luck radiation, that
went across the planet. And that so much of the evil and the
problems we have in what we call the "contemporary world"
were produced and sort of exacerbated by this malevolent, historical
radiation. Some folk are actually quite adept at manipulating
this bad luck energy, and other folks don't even believe it exists.
It was an interesting way, at a narrative level, to think about
the power of history, and the longevity of consequences.
ALI: The novel, like the
language, the cultural references, the ethnicities and histories
of the character, reminded me of a collage a volatile and
combustible mash up a mix tape of real, unreal, past, present,
hilarity, and tragedy and so forth. As immigrants or progeny
of immigrants, can we divorce our past and our roots in America?
Should the young generations say, as they often do, "That
was them, that's not me. I'm not Dominican, I'm American!"
You and the fuku
seem to suggest otherwise, no?
DIAZ: This gets back to our
initial conversation about the myth we tell ourselves. I think
there is nothing more damning than a myth that denies all antecedents
 that basically says that "that
was then and I'm sort of new creature." Then again, there's
nothing more damning than a myth which denies that there are
a new set of experiences and a new set of challenges that young
people have to face. I would say my book would make an argument
for a personal vision of an individual's relationship to history.
We are simultaneously autonomous
as history but equally enslaved by it. It's these two quite opposite
states that make it so difficult to have conversations about
this. You know, when you're like hanging out at the mall and
you're just trying to buy a pair of earplugs for your iPod, it's
real hard to make an argument for a larger, historical movement.
But that very activity if viewed from a different perspective
and from a much longer range, certainly makes you realize how
much of a product of history you are. And I do think if the book
was arguing anything is that most of us are like Oscar [The morbidly
overweight, tragically geeky, alienated protagonist of The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao] and his family in that
we don't believe that history has any hold on us, and yet it's
quite clear we are the children of history.
ALI: Let's talk comics shall
we.
DIAZ: Let's do it.
ALI: There is another opening
quotation to the novel, a Fantastic Four comic reference: "Of
what importance are brief, nameless livesto Galactus, the eater
of worlds." Throughout the novel, you invoke celestial figures,
near Gods of the comic and fantasy universe with omniscient awareness
and limitless capacity for tyranny. There's Darksied and his
all-enveloping Omega Beams, The
Watchmen's near deity Dr. Manhattan, Fantastic Four's Galactus.
The oppressive nature of Frank Millar's despotic The Dark Knight Returns, Tolkein's
Mordor and so forth. So, how does the comic narrative relate
to the concept of tyranny and oppression as experienced by Oscar,
his family, and immigrants?
DIAZ: I think part of what's
happening is that I'm using prepackaged metaphors to communicate.
I think it's difficult for your average, contemporary reader
to really grasp what a Trujillo meant, because there's no analogous
experience for most people. They wouldn't know what it would
mean to be on an island or culture where one individual would
have such supreme power. But, when you evoke sort of science
fiction, comic book genre, then Trujillo is sort of like Sauron
[The tyrannical antagonist from Tolkein's Lord of the Rings
Trilogy.]. Suddenly, there's this already prepackaged metaphor
that allows people to somewhat understand the extremity of the
figure you are talking about.
I think the genres are very
interested in tyrannies and control and power and the consequences
of all these things in ways traditional literature isn't. You
can go and randomly pick up and read a comic book and that comic
would have more to do with dictatorship and the loss of human
freedoms than your standard novel on the bookshelf. In one way
it was sort of deploying these preoccupations of power, dictatorships,
comic book genres to clarify and to explain the world I was trying
to bring to life, i.e. the Dominican Republic. Simultaneously,
I was also trying to make these metaphors in some ways was a
"browning" of these incredibly "White" metaphors.
My sort of talking about a third world Sauron and an immigrant
Fantastic Four, it sort of emphasizes, at least I thought it
brought into stark relief how much our popular narrative, like
comic books and science fiction, rely on thinly veiled troupes
of racialized and cultured "others."
ALI: Like the X-men for
example.
DIAZ: Yeah, I mean X-men doesn't
exist without the deeper preoccupation of race and otherness
in the Americas. The same thing as the contact with the alien
species, the first contact narrative in science fiction, it's
just in some ways a newly updated version of the Columbus exchange,
or the Europeans encountering the New World.
ALI: Let's talk about Whiteness.
DIAZ: Sure, what about it?
ALI: How do you respond
to critics, mostly White, who think your themes, plot and dialogue
is only for ethnic audiences and might be difficult to cross
over with "mainstream audiences". I say this because
rarely to never does "Whiteness" ask "ethnic"
people whether or not mainstream culture is accessible to "us."
Furthermore, there's this "whitewashing" of brown literature
the movie versions of Allende's House of The Spirits starring Meryl Streep and all White actresses.
This book seems to be kind of flipping off these old guard, Euro
centric police people who say the Western Canon must all be White
and English.
DIAZ: I think it's so interesting
what you're saying. One of the things about White supremacy is
that it is never satisfied with what it has gained. What fascinates
me is, for example, take the narrative of A Beautiful Mind,
the book about that Princeton professor, yeah? Talk about a rarified
world, talk about an extremely White world in which this character
was living in and moving in. But, when it came time to make the
Hollywood picture, that world still was not "White enough."
I mean he was married to a woman from Costa Rica. And, they were
like, "You know what? Screw that! We're going to make that
character White!"
This happens again, and again,
and again. What's fascinating to me is that it's as if when Whiteness
gets a chance to rewrite the story it will even re-write a predominantly
White story even Whiter! The perfect example is Ursula
Leguin's Earth Sea Trilogy, a story where all the characters
were all kind of brown. And Hollywood came out and said, "Hmmph,
it's not enough that it was written by a White person, we have
to make it Whiter than White."
I think as a writer of color,
as an artist of color, especially one who identifies himself
or herself as such, and thinks there is nothing limiting or ghetto-izing
of calling oneself a writer of color, simply stating that doesn't
absolve me from universality, in fact I think it brings me closer
to it. The universal is found in the specific. Writers of color,
we often have to wrestle with an enormous amount of ridiculousness.
I'm often asked as a writer how do I think my race, culture,
ethnicity influenced my writing, and none of my White peers get
asked that. I think my Dominican-ness has less impact on my writing
than White privilege has on, say, Rick Moody or Jonathan Francis.
White privilege is an enormous
bonus to White writers, yet they are never asked to interrogate
it. It's sort of a standard thing. It's like the subway stops
in New York. This is the literary equivalent of the subway stops,
where Black and Latino men are always being stopped and frisked,
and White men are not. I think this is just the literary subway
frisk, and till we get a better world, the only thing we can
do is to point it out and constantly when given a chance to turn
the tables. I always love driving White writers crazy
by asking them, "So, how do you think your Whiteness influenced
your writing or your success?"
ALI: How do they respond?
DIAZ: Well, you know, they
always respond the same way. They're astonished! Because,
they never have to be asked that.
ALI: They never have to
defend it, criticize it, or confront it actually.
DIAZ: That's the whole thing
about power. In that, power is invisible to itself.
ALI: I want to flip that.
You have two descriptions in your book. Let me read them: "Jack
Pujols' the schools handsomest - (Whitest)- boy." Then you
have this one, "That's the kind of culture I belong to:
people took their child's black complexion as an ill omen."
That last quote can transcend ethnic boundaries, that's me speaking
as a South Asian and Muslim. Now, we see Obama, Hillary, and
the whole conflict of Latino/ Black voting divide. Why the blinders
for colored folk? Why the need to define oneself by oppressing
another separating the darker part of ourselves figuratively
and literally? "See, we're not Black, we're not the 'other,'
please accept us White man!" Even though to "Whiteness,"
we're all the same.
DIAZ: I think the issue is
incredibly complicated. I think that there's a lot that's
going on. It's not easy for individuals or communities to deal
with sort of the "White supremacist" racialization
of the world. Making accommodations with it, trying to find a
place sort of jostling for privilege while trying to avoid the
kind of pitfalls of victimization, I mean all these things twist
people into ontological pretzels: our attempts to define ourselves
in some healthy, meaningful way while simultaneously resisting.
The very communities that talk about Obama or how you hear "Latinos
don't support Obama." I go, "Hmmn? I wonder if they're
looking at it in a nuanced way." Because my friends do [support
Obama], but I haven't heard of any of their parents running out
to support him. I think these things are really complicated,
but what is really important and really useful is that the horrifying
maple of White supremacy that all cultures are sort of dancing
around - I think that drives a lot of us crazy and causes a lot
of us to define ourselves in ways that are not productive.
ALI: In "Love and Consequences,"
a critically acclaimed but fraudulent memoir published recently,
Margaret B. Jones lied about her life as a half-white, half-Native
American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster
child among gang-bangers, and running drugs for the Bloods. Talk
to me about this: White writers faking "Ghetto lifestyles"
and writing about stuff they don't know, and the mainstream publishers
who love to publish them and make money off it. As one who has
come from a "ghetto" and knows that world, how does
that make you feel, and how can you stop the exploitation?
DIAZ: I mean you can't. Look,
the media, reading audiences, publishers, editors, agents and
writers are all complicit in trying to sell what I would call
"narratives of consolation." There is nothing more
consoling to people than this little narrative [In a slow, condescending
voice] "The ghetto is tough and full of evil, bad gangsters,
and good kids are fucked up by this experience. But, every now
and then, a very good kid passes through this experience and
emerges at the end a whole and healed person."
That's such a ridiculous
narrative at every level. It allows us to simultaneously
experience the titillation of the underclass "other,"
while reliving us of the fact that like 90% of the people who
live as the underclass stay as the underclass. When you
read a book by a survivor, either as a fiction or memoir, it
immediately brings survivor bias. You know this person is going
to make it. So, even if you spend 200-300 pages in a made up,
fictional ghetto hell, you know there is light at the end of
the tunnel. And it doesn't work that way. The world is not a
redemptive, Oprah Winfrey narrative. The world is too complicated.
I think that in some ways these are sort of that fake memoirs,
where everybody wants to truck in sort of these simplified myths
of our country. Whether they are the racial myths, or urban myths,
or even those myths that "In the end, even if things are
really tough but if you're just good and stick to your values,
you'll make it. Where America is a country where you can pull
yourself up."
All these things combine in
the reasons why these memoirs are extremely popular. I think
there's a lot going on there. I think it's really fucking sad,
man. I mean it's really, really sad. No matter how many of us
write this complicated vision of America that is no longer just
simply "Boyz in the Hood" - in the end America really
just wants their "Boyz in the Hood." They want their
really simple, fucking shit.
I think there's a lot of money
to be made. There's a lot of money to be made selling Americans
drugs. Whether it's the real kind of drugs destroying communities,
or it's the much more subtle and insidious drug of "bogus
narratives of comfort." There's always going to be money
in that. There's always going to be people who will be willing
to fucking sell their soul to turn their buck on it.
ALI: Let's talk about self-loathing
and the need for assimilation. Oscar never fits in - both with
his own community and due to his Ghetto Nerd tendencies and intellectualism,
which flies in the face of machismo culture. And he never fits
in with mainstream, because, well, he's not White. How is this
reflective of not only your experience as an American writer
but also part of the larger immigrant, Dominican experience?
DIAZ: These are not parables.
I don't think there's an equal sign where Oscar being fat equals
a Dominican sort of writer. I think there are credible ironies
in that even in communities that are ostracized by a larger,
mainstream community there are people within these very communities
who are ostracized for what seems to be completely arbitrary
reasons. In Oscar's case, he's really nerdy and that's enough
to get him blacklisted from the world of Dominican-ness. I think
part of what I was interested in as a writer was sort of exploring
the internal tyranny of a community.
I mean, I think you can write
about how bad White people are till the cows come home, but to
me that is nowhere near as interesting as the ways that people
who are tyrannized from the outside who are even more insanely
tyrannical when they go home and close their doors. I think that's
why Oscar is such an interesting character for me. In some ways,
he really, really, really wants to fit in. Yet, there's nothing
he can do to convince anybody to let him join their club. It's
fascinating. What happens to a person when nobody lets
you fit in?
ALI: The TV shows Heroes took the idea of your new
novel, which in part is about the supernatural destruction of
New York City, which they in part took from Alan Moore's graphic
novel The Watchmen.
So, are you still gonna' do it: the psychic terrorist kills NYC
plot?
DIAZ: We'll see. I want to,
but it has to work on its own terms. The thought of a superpower
individual destroying a city is so old and has been so long in
the back of our minds, that I'm not surprised it hasn't been
done ten, twenty or thirty times. But, hopefully, if I can do
this, I'll bring something new to it, which is something you
always hope for.
ALI: Is it going to take
10 years again this time?
DIAZ: (Laughs) No answer.
Don't even know.
Wajahat Ali is Pakistani Muslim American who is
neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is a playwright, essayist,
humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, "The Domestic
Crusaders," (www.domesticcrusaders.com)
is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post
9-11 America. His blog is at http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/.
He can be reached at wajahatmali@gmail.com
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