Today's Stories

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

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

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

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

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

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

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

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

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

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

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

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

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

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

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

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

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

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

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

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

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

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

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

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

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

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

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

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

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

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

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

January 27, 2009

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

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

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

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

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

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

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

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

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

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

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

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

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

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

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

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

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

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

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

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

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

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

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

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

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

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

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

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

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

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

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

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

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 6-8, 2009

The Musical Patriot

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen

By DAVID YEARSLEY

A darkened stadium massed with tens of thousands of fanatics in precise formation, marching in place to patriotic music of the homeland. Powerful searchlights sending their columns up into the inifinity of the night sky in a display seen for miles around and in striking shots from an overhead Zeppelin to be used for propaganda. Nuremberg 1937 and the Nazi Party Congress?
 
No, it’s Tampa 2009 and the Superbowl halftime show.

Both in the high-energy event itself and even more strikingly in stills, the iconography of the Bruce Springsteen’s grand Superbowl entertainment owed its inspiration to Albert Speer’s Cathedral of Light with its 150 vertical beams rising up from the Nuremberg Zeppelin fields into the Bavarian heavens.  The designers of the Superbowl strayed from the static effect of Speer’s installation, by waggling the stately shafts of light as if they were unable to resist the infectiousness of the Boss’s full-throttle music.  This lascivious quavering demonstrated why the Nazis distrusted the beat of degenerate music from America—jazz and its miscegenated descendents. The menacing majesty of Speer’s original architectural concept would have been weakened if the beams had taken to shaking their booties to a jungle beat.

With one eye on the past and the other on the future, the Superbowl strove to outdo Nazi precedent with the massive effusions of fireworks that punctuated the show at the climax of songs, then finally and orgasmically after Springsteen and co’s twelve minutes were up and the mock referee ran on stage to throw a penalty flag and bring the show to a close. That was when all hell broke loose in a mighty fusillade. With the Nazi imagery clearly in one’s head, the rockets’ red glare was pure Eastern Front. Thus the halftime show combined two aspects of Speer’s dark creativity: the architect and the director of munitions. The fascist design in repose leapt into action with terrible dynamic energy: the Cathedral of Light shattered by a re-enactment of the Blitz.

But when those streaking bolts of fire were frozen by photography for more considered contemplation, Speer’s presence loomed as brightly as the searchlights and flares. Masters of mass spectacle, the Nazi would have admired how the Superbowl exploited the primordial power of light and dark, stasis and movement.

No less incisive a commentator on American culture than the late George Carlin laid bare with comic precision the military metaphors that give meaning to football: the Steelers’ final drive, “marching down the field,” was the last of many examples of this discourse in Sunday’s game. As I recall, the Blitz is one such metaphor Carlin never mentioned, though it’s perhaps the most terrifying of the lot.

What must the international television audience, especially those watching the Superbowl who have experienced real American bombs falling, thought about this theatrical representation of military might and national unity?
 
Also unsettling was the way these searchlights and fireworks cast a retrospective glare on Springsteen’s most recent national, indeed international, appearance only a couple of weeks ago in front of the Lincoln Memorial to kick-off Obama’s inauguration welcome week with the “We Are One” Concert—the very title yet one more sinister slogan of blind allegiance to America.  On that Sunday the Boss stood on the steps of the monument in front of a robed choir in columnar formation singing the post-9/11 anthem “The Rising.” A version of that same choir, also in church garments, appeared briefly in the Superbowl show on football’s most sacred Sunday. Yet again, the Nazis come to mind in the way they attempted to divert the power of organized Christian religion for the purposes of fascist adoration and ritual. I’m not forecasting a Putsch, but I get doubly nervous when I see church choirs singing in front of nationalist sites.

At Springsteen’s Lincoln Memorial performance all was bright and gleaming. The patriotic ballad “The Rising” moving from the darkness of terrorist attack to the redemption of the “sky of fullness, sky of blessed of life”, traces a predictably trajectory from dark to light.  The backdrop of the monument’s white marble presented an absolute contrast to the dark pit of the Tampa stadium at halftime. But during Superbowl I again saw the gleaming Apollonian facade of the columned monument even more starkly for what it is: too square, too white, too hulking in its proportion. And when one envisions the colossal Lincoln statue and remembers how frighteningly stiff, godlike, scary it is, one might also be forgiven for thinking of the Nazi sculptor Arno Breker’s Aryan nudes. Thankfully Abe is not naked.  In a word the Lincoln Memorial, too, is architecture Speer himself could have created.  That Speer clearly admired and wanted to surpass the grand axes and monumental classical buildings of Washington DC in his architectural plans to transform Berlin into Germania, the capital of the Thousand Year Reich, only helps to confirm these associations.

Some might even claim that the virility of such nudes is to be heard in the rough urgency of Springsteen’s voice.  The manly was on display at the Superbowl, the modern Grecian games of the macho, even more so on the stage than on the field. Springsteen, having ditched his guitar, grabbed the microphone ,then lay back on the stage with the glinting microphone stand rising above him in impressive display. The subsequent knee-skid into the camera that brought Springsteen’s crotch into the living room’s of millions only confirmed the importance of the money shot when heroes are on the national stage. Expose a female nipple and you’ve got national outrage. Give us a breadbasket blackout and you’ve tears of national elation. (The 30-second “glitch” and thus brightening up the fourth quarter for the benefit of Comcast cable subscribers in Arizona offered the appropriate coda to the halftime strutting.)

Springsteen promised good clean rock ‘n roll fun, though purity is an elastic comcast.  But mass spectacle is by definition ideological, the Superbowl the highest holiday of American cultural life. The nostalgic hits Springsteen delivered at halftime tugged persistently at American heartstrings even as the rock n’ rollers shook their creaking hips: the euphoria of the show was built on unalloyed sentimentality. The Boss’s decision to include the title track from his new album was canny product placement, but it also continues in the vein of patriotic vein of “The Rising.” How could such an occasion as Superbowl Sunday pass without yet another variant mantra of Obamian hope uniting the nation in song: “I’m working on a dream / And our love will make it real someday.”

Springsteen is not only a supporter of Obama but also a friend.  If you go to his website, which is also his Facebook account, you’ll see most prominently among his friends a photo of the President.  In contrast to the amorphous group of FOBs (Friends of Bill) in Clintontime, the new FOBs (Friends of Barack) can be quantified with the powerful Facebook software. I’m guessing that Internet President is literally a Friend to millions.

Much was made about Springsteen’s finally relenting, or better condescending, to do the halftime show after several previous invitations had rebuffed. It was reported that the artist saw such a venue as beneath him and his E Street Band. The claim was that only after major acts like the Prince, Rolling Stones, Bonjovi, and U2 others have appeared at the Superbowl did Springsteen decide the context was worthy of him.

Springsteen’s Lincoln Memorial and Superbowl performances are the musical arch through which the Obama years have made their triumphal entry.
      
That Springsteen and the E Streeters, like Perlman and his inaugural quartet, were faking it along with a pre-recorded tape is so predictable that it doesn’t deserve mention.  Again time constraints and insurmountable logistics provided the justification. That all must go down exactly as planned in mass public spectacle is something the Nazis understood better than anyone.

David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu   

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