Today's Stories

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

August 3, 2009

Pam Martens
Millions of Americans Pushed Into No-Law System by Colluding Banks

Anthony DiMaggio
Media Backlash: Obama and the Settlements

Udi Aloni
And Who Shall I Say is Calling? A Plea to Leonard Cohen

Mike Roselle
See the Mountains of WestVirginia ... Before They're Blown Up!

Dr. Susan Block
Beat It! Sex, Death and Michael Jackson

Roy Bourgeois / Margaret Knapke
School of Coups

Joe Bageant
A Yard Sale in Chernobyl

Dina Jadallah
Hiding the State

Dave Lindorff
Of Blue Dogs and Jellyfish

Martha Rosenberg
Grand Closings in Evanston: How the Recession is Hitting Illinois

Website of the Day
Why We Can't "Afford" Health Care

July 31 - August 2, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

Gabriel Kolko
Searching For Enemies

John Prados
The Intelligence Oversight Mess

Joe Bageant
The Bastards Never Die

Tim Wise
Rationalizing Racial Oppression

Carl Ginsburg
Frist First: Follow the Money (and Find the Plump Heart of "Health Care")

Michael Fox
The Honduran Coup as Overture

John Lindsay-Poland
Revamping Plan Colombia

Michael Winship
Pay-to-Play: Washington's Sport of Kings

Rev. William Alberts
White Men Can Jump ... to Conclusions

Andy Worthington
Judge Orders Release of Tortured Gitmo Prisoner

Steve Breyman
Counting the Unemployed

Cyrus Bina
Racism, Class and Profiling

Missy Beattie
Promises Ignored

Ron Jacobs
Into the Vapid: Consuming the Cultural Product

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Party of Concessions: Democrats Never Learn

Lucia Alvarez
Fall of the House of Kirchner? Return of the Right in Argentina

Dave Lindorff
David Brooks' White Guy Nightmare

Lawrence R. Velvel
Madoff: What Should be Done Now?

Omar Barghouti /
Sid Shniad
United for Freedom and Universal Justice

James L. Secor
The Name of the Game is Wipe-Out

Belén Fernández
Zelaya in Nicaragua: Has Another Constitution Been Violated?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frank Lloyd Wright in Hollywood: the Ennis House as Imperial Ruin

David Yearsley
Beauty in Dark Places: Berlin's Olympic Stadium

Brian J. Foley
Pre-Eating: a Threat to Restaurants Everywhere

Alan Cabal
Onward, Into the Fog: Thomas Pynchon's
"Inherent Vice"

Kim Nicolini
The Way War Feels

Lorenzo Wolff
The Way It Felt the First Time: the Jump Rope Magic of the Shangri-Las

Poets' Basement
Four Poems From the Chinese

Website of the Weekend
Obama's Ex-Doc Knocks ObamaCare

July 30, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

Gareth Porter
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

Greg Grandin
Honduran Coup Over?

Diane Farsetta
Pentagon Pundits Get a Pass

Stephen Soldz
The King Case, the APA and the Missing Ethics Investigation

Alan Farago
Learning How to Survive in a Depression From "Weeds"

David Macaray
Cops and Labor Unions

Mike Howells /
Jay Arena
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

Christopher Brauchli
Oatmeal Envy

Website of the Day
Changing the SOFA

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

Weekend Edition
August 7 - 9, 2009

An Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

A Muslim American Hero

By WAJAHAT ALI

One rarely imagines the quintessential image of an American hero having a Muslim, Arabic name. The Syrian American protagonist of Dave Eggers’ elegant and powerful new book Zeitoun bravely endures the harrowing tragedy of an apocalyptic, post Katrina New Orleans with dignity and resolve. In this inspiring true story, Abdulrahman Zeitoun emerges a Good Samaritan who voluntarily stays behind in the wake of America's largest natural disaster to selflessly help his neighbors.

Despite his heroic efforts, his own government falsely suspects Zeitoun and his friends as thieves after witnessing them on one of Zeitoun’s rental properties. FEMA subsequently arrests the men with force, accuses them of being “Taliban” and “Al Qaeda,” and brutally detains them for weeks in a hellish, makeshift prison resembling Guantanomo Bay.

In this exclusive interview, Dave Eggers discusses the Zeitoun family’s amazing journey as their faith in the American dream and each other sustains them with hope and strength in an era of paranoia, fear and madness representing the nadir of Bush’s America.

ALI: Here you are, Dave Eggers, a respected author and publisher who is not Muslim, Syrian or Arab American, but all of a sudden you spend three years of your life tackling the story of the Zeitoun family. How and why did you become involved in this fantastic story about a Muslim American family that endures tragedy and discrimination with hope and resilience?

EGGERS: It started back in 2005, when we put a book together called Voices From The Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath. Wehave a series called Voice of Witness, where we use oral history to explore human rights crises. The second book in the series was about Katrina and the people neglected before and after the storm.

One of the stories in the book was about the Zeitoun family. I immediately took an interest because of my interest in wrongful incarceration, because I had edited a book called Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated — the first book in the Voice of Witness series.  Also, the fact Mr. Zeitoun was called “Taliban” and “Al Qaeda” and put in an outdoor prison; it seemed so extreme, surreal, and improbable but it was also so emblematic of that time – the darkest years of the Bush administration. The most absurd violations of human rights and dignity and due process were all possible.

I got infuriated hearing about this and what had happened to him. I was in New Orleans  later in 2005 and met with the Zeitoun family and we sat down, had lunch and almost immediately we went into his life growing up in Syria.

He told me about his [deceased] brother Muhammad, who was a very famous Syrian swimmer. There were so many aspects of his history that were fascinating right away that it sort of piqued the interest of the journalist and novelist in me.

Slowly, we approached the idea of making his story, and the story of the Zeitoun family as a whole, into a book. In late 2006, we decided to undertake it.

ALI: We read about Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a U.S. Citizen, paddling in a canoe, trying to help an essentially abandoned and dying population barely surviving in a flooded American city. And despite this, his own United States government falsely accuses him, labels him a terrorist, and incarcerates him. The story seems to reveal the joys, hopes and dreams of a multicultural America but also shows the fault lines and fissures. What does this say about modern day America? Or was this Bush’s America and not a reflection of current times?

EGGERS: I think it was both. A lot of what you saw after Katrina, the media coverage, shows a lot about deep-seated prejudices.  It was tragic in a way that so much of the misinformation about what was happening in Katrina came from the [then] elected leaders of the city: Eddie Compass [Former Chief of Police, New Orleans Police Department], Eddie Jordan, the DA, Mayor Nagin, they all were putting out this misinformation and talking about the rape of babies and very little was borne out by any truth.

And the media and the American public as a whole was all too ready to accept that the largely black population of the city had devolved to what Eddie Compass said was an “almost animalistic state.” And now we’re in the middle of this controversy with the arrest of Henry Louis Gates in Boston.  You need these lessons and you need these stories actually to tell you what maybe the statistics don’t tell you, which is that we have quite a way to go.

But in addition to the prejudices against the African American population of New Orleans and the neglect by the Republican administration of those folks who don’t vote for them, at the same time, there was this other unlikely intersection with the “War on Terror.”

In 2003, FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] was folded into The Department of Homeland Security, which made the goals and focus of that agency skewed. It took on too much of an anti-terrorism focus and it crippled the agency to a large extent.  It was hard to get their attention to anything that wasn’t terror-related.

You add in all these factors: the misinformation, the paranoia, media misrepresentation, and the overall political climate fostered by the Bush Administration and you put all that information in the minds of the soldiers and cops who are trying to do their jobs in the city. And you end up with some unfortunate results.

Soldiers and cops were OK with arresting people even though there was no due process, no Miranda rights, no judges working or anything like that. And at the same time, the National Guard, with some soldiers who just came back from Iraq and Afghanistan, were all too willing to believe that there were terrorists operating in New Orleans in a flooded city a few days after a hurricane.

Again, I thought this could have only happened in 2005. Although I think a lot of these prejudices are far from being done with. I think a unique intersection of all these different forces was a perfect storm to allow something like this to happen to the Zeitouns.

ALI: Abdulrahman and the Zeitoun family seem like very devout, practicing Muslims, whose faith inspires them to do much good.  Yet, it is also their Muslim last name and features that cause the father, Abdulrahman, to be called “Taliban” and “Al Qaeda,” and then later falsely incarcerated. Do you believe stories like this lay a bridge of understanding so people like Abdulrahman’s arresting officers slowly but surely realize that even the Zeitouns are citizens of America – despite being brown, Muslim or having Arabic last names? Do you think storytelling is the powerful medium to convey this message?

EGGERS: I think stories are the way we do it. I don’t think these things usually come out as well in reading a short story in a newspaper, or seeing a mug shot, or reading a statistic. In the first 70 or so pages of the book - before the storm, before we the first feel the winds of Katrina - I was seeking to just tell a story about an all-American family that happens to be a Muslim. I wanted to sort of “de-exoticize” the idea of the Muslim-American family – to allow readers to learn about Kathy’s conversion [to Islam] and see the functioning of a family that is exactly like their own. So, a Christian reader can say, “Pretty much everything about that family is exactly like mine except I go to church and they go to a mosque.”

This was a secondary goal.  To show the reader that they were going to read a harrowing story, but also show [a Muslim family] for those who don’t know Muslims or have Muslim neighbors or do feel there’s something very different about a Muslim family from their own - or those who do have some very big misconceptions.

For example, Kathy’s friends – [after her conversion to Islam] - initially thought, “Oh, you’re Muslim? You must worship Muhammad!” You know, these are the weird misperceptions about the religion itself.

I think storytelling has the power to sort of walk you through it, and put yourself in the shoes of another person. If it takes ten to twelve hours to read a book, then you have a depth of experience and understanding that you wouldn’t get from short bits on TV or sound bites and such. I think it’s kind of startling that even though after 9-11 there has been this constant examination of Islam in the American media – “Who are Muslims? What do they want?” – and yet I think there is still an incredible amount of ignorance and misunderstanding.

Reading the Qur’an itself was so illuminating. I was able to find a wonderful translation by Laleh Bakhtiar, and it opened me up to the beauty of the faith in a way that no interpretation of the text had before. And of course in the book you find, very clearly, Islam’s dedication to social justice, to peace, and to the commitment to the less fortunate.

ALI: Despite the tragedy and the injustice of it all, which leaves the reader infuriated and flabbergasted that such behavior can occur in America, the family ultimately emerges very hopeful. The book ends on a very optimistic note. You and the Zeitoun family have started the Zeitoun Foundation, a non-profit group created to help the victims of Katrina and citizens of Louisiana.  Take me through it – if I contribute money how will it directly help Louisiana?

EGGERS:  Over the years, I was always talking to the Zeitouns about making a list of non-profits that they like and that I like. They chose Islamic Relief for example and also have a strong desire in helping children made orphans by war, and the Muslim-American Society, which promotes understanding between faiths.

At the same time, we felt most of the money should stay in New Orleans, where there is so much more work to be done. We found some great charities like Rebuilding Together, which is trying to put people back in their homes in New Orleans, especially the elderly. This is close to the Zeitouns’ heart because this is about building and construction, which is what they’ve been doing as a business for years.

From the proceeds of What is the What, we were able to build what’s so far a 14-buildings educational facility in Southern Sudan. In this case, in New Orleans, there are so many non-profits already doing great work that the goals can be simpler, such as granting funds to those groups already at work in the area.

I know this is something the family is very excited about. Something tangible and materially beneficial can come out of this. The really good news is we just got word we will be able to ship the first 7 checks next week. So, I love the immediacy of it, too.

Wajahat Ali is a writer, journalist, blogger and attorney. His work, “The Domestic Crusaders,” is a landmark play about Muslim Americans premiering on 9-11-09 in New York. He blogs at Goatmilk. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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