Rec Room: David Xia: The Smartest Guys in the Room

When you’re hungry for tales of hubris, greed, and corporate drama…

Robert Reich: Who’s Killing Financial Reform?

Congress isn’t doing a thing about Wall Street because it’s in the pocket of Wall Street.

Rec Room: Jake Whitney: “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”

Penned in 1964 with the ‘50s political climate in mind, Hofstadter’s influential essay has an uncanny relevance today.

Norman Solomon: Don’t Call It a “Defense” Budget

For the United States, an epitaph on the horizon says: “We had to destroy our country in order to defend it.”

Rec Room: Francis Reynolds: “Writers, Plain and Simple”

Gender imbalances in publications and prize lists make it no easier for female authors to be recognized for their work and to make a living as writers.

John Sevigny: Twilight of the West

Anselm Kiefer’s grim 1980s painting resonates with the West’s past, present, and possible future.

Rec Room: Erica Wright: The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine

Mark Yakich’s poems are like state fairs—they offer amusement but also moments that will stop you cold.

Robert Reich: Our Incredible Shrinking Democracy

It seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make them in back rooms.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: Interactive Spaces

Have we lost a sense of each other in buildings?

Tom Engelhardt: Seven Days in January: How the Pentagon Counts Coups in Washington

American life is being sacrificed to the very infrastructure meant to provide this country’s citizens with “safety.” That’s what seven days in January really means.

Rec Room: Kristen Brunelli: A 1920s Valentine’s Eve

This Valentine’s season, immerse yourself in the swingin’ ‘20s.

Ann Marlowe: Art and Peace

Had the Islamic lands gone through the equivalent of the revolution in painting embodied in Manet, Monet and others, some or perhaps most of the cultures living under Islam might have shifted toward perspectivism.

Rec Room: Katherine Dykstra: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

The writers’ wise observations make this collection worthwhile.

Robert Reich: Obama Needs To Teach the Public How To Get Out Of the Mess We’re In

We need a second stimulus directed at states and locales. I wish our educator-in-chief would say that loud and clear, explain why, and then do it.

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: Harpo Speaks! and My Wicked Wicked Ways

Neither book requires its readers to be a fan of the star—and that’s why they are great reads.

Anand Gopal: Obama’s Secret Prisons

Night raids, hidden detention centers, the “Black Jail,” and the dogs of war in Afghanistan.

Rec Room: Joel Whitney: Antenna

Video: Sonic Youth’s Antenna.

Adele Barker: Jaffna Rebuilds: After the Tsunami in Sri Lanka

After the war and after the tsunami, Jaffna, Sri Lanka is ready for peace.

Rec Room: David Xia: Random Family

Adrian LeBlanc takes us into a world where the most relevant forms of currency other than cold, hard cash are heroin and bodies.

Luc Sante: Hooliganism and Literature

David Carluccio produced the sort of thing that sits unsold in bookstores for years, and then suddenly is changing hands for four figures, and eventually cannot be obtained at all unless some major collector dies.

Rec Room: Elizabeth Onusko: The American Painter Emma Dial

This novel stares at the most frustrating experience an artist can have and renders it honestly.

Robert Reich: Obama’s Tiny Jobs Ideas for Main Street, A Big Spending Freeze for Wall Street

Like Clinton’s, Obama’s package of middle class benefits is small potatoes. They’re worthwhile but they pale relative to the size and scale of the challenge America’s middle class is now facing.

Rec Room: Austin Allen: How Fiction Works

If you like good criticism, deprive yourself no more and read this book.

Rec Room: Adaeze Elechi: Efuru

Though the Western world has seriously damaged Africa, I have its education to thank for my freedom as a woman.

Rec Room: Francis Reynolds: Alan Lomax in Haiti

These recordings of Haiti are more than just music—they are documents from a long-gone era.

Carole Joffe: Health Reform, Violence, and Blanket Warmers: The Status of Abortion on Roe v. Wade Day

Nearly 40 years after Roe v. Wade, the struggle for abortion rights continues.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: Public Urban Architecture

If you haven’t yet, take a stroll through the High Line.

Rebecca Solnit: Covering Haiti: When the Media Is the Disaster

The media in disaster bifurcates. Some step out of their usual “objective” roles to respond with kindness and practical aid. Others bring out the arsenal of clichés and pernicious myths and begin to assault the survivors all over again.

Rec Room: Alex Halperin: State by State

States are weird political entities and it's hard to know more than a few well. Thumbing around this book is a great way to see the country.

Work for Guernica: Advertising Sales Associate

We are looking for an experienced advertising sales associate to sell ads to run on Guernica’s website and in our twice-monthly newsletter.

Rec Room: Erica Wright: Poetry’s Welcoming Faces

There are amazing writers who can make converts of even the most staunch opponents of verse.

Robert Reich: Bad Job Numbers and the Secret Second Stimulus

As the 2012 election approaches, Democrats have to do something to show voters they’re focused on jobs. A victory on health care won’t cut it.

Rec Room: Michael Archer: The Disappointment Artist

Some of the smartest and most entertaining takes on culture.

Ira Chernus: Martin Luther King’s Legacy and Israel’s Future: Stepping Beyond Fear

Pushing past the self-serving misinterpretations of King’s words.

Rec Room: Kristen Brunelli: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Life and adventure through the eyes of an autistic hero.

Robert Reich: Why Obama Must Take On Wall Street

What happened to all the tough talk from Congress and the White House early last year? Why is the financial reform agenda so small, and so late?

Joel Whitney: Noam Chomsky: The Point Stands—Nick Cohen is a Maniac Who Never Cites Sources

In asking Chomsky what I thought was a provocative challenge question, I’m afraid I gave Cohen too much credit.

Dilip Hiro: Regime Change in Tehran? Don’t Bet on It…Yet

What today’s Iranian opposition movement can learn from the 1979 Revolution.

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: The Magical Key

I wandered around, and thumbed through the remaindered bestsellers and out-of-date guidebooks, when I came across The Magical Key. This particular edition had the illustrations by Maurice Sendak and its afterword was by W.H. Auden. What was this book?

Ada Limón: Listen

When you live with a veteran, the language of war becomes a natural thing.

Rec Room: Katherine Dykstra: Tim Burton

For the lovers of dark magic, Tim Burton’s strange and unusual world awaits you at MoMA...

Robert Reich: The Last Big Question: Will Health Care Reform Be Paid For By The Rich or the Middle Class?

It’s bonus time on Wall Street again. But the middle class is taking a beating.

Rec Room: David Xia: In the Graveyard of Empires

How was pantyhose a strategic tool in combat operations? And why did Pakistan’s president try to get the Japanese prime minister to star the leader of the Taliban in a Honda motorcycle ad campaign? In the Graveyard of Empires has the answers.

David Chura: Sexual Abuse in Juvenile Detention Centers

The numbers are disturbing. During 2008 through 2009, 12 percent or 3,220 of the kids locked up in state or privately run juvenile detention centers reported that they had been sexually victimized by another kid or by facility staff.

Rec Room: Elizabeth Onusko: Kandinsky

Can’t make it to the Guggenheim before the Kandinsky retrospective closes? There are other ways to experience the extraordinary artist...

Orville Schell: The Melting of America: The Story of a Can’t-Do Nation

A comprehensive list of what works and what doesn’t in America.

Rec Room: Michal Zamir: Recipe for a Perfect Day

On a sunny winter’s day, live like Mrs. Dalloway.

On Attempted Bombings, Airline Security, and Privacy

Frederick S. Lane: Is it in our best long-term interests to yield more and more control over our private information to the government in the equally futile pursuit of perfect security?

Robert Reich: What’s Ahead for the Economy and Politics in 2010

If it looks like jobs aren’t coming back, that we may be stuck with a high level of joblessness for years, voters will take out even more of their anxieties on Democrats next November.

Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse: An American World of War: What to Watch for in 2010

For Americans, 2010 could be the year of the assassin.

Tom Engelhardt: In Nightmares Begin Responsibilities: Why War Will Take No Holiday in 2010

As for peacemaking or de-escalation next year, fuggedaboutit…2010: pure loss.

Norman Solomon: Flares in the Political Dark

Mobilization of progressive movements to pressurize Obama in the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill has always been essential. It hasn’t happened. Instead, among Democratic loyalists, reflexive support for the latest line from the administration has made it easier for Obama to move rightward.

John Sevigny: On Francisco Goya

That Goya was a better painter than the earlier, more popular Peter Paul Rubens, or a more intelligent artist than Diego Velazquez, Michelangelo or Rembrandt hardly seems worth mentioning. That he created the Black Paintings, and The Dog, the most thoroughly modern piece in the group, in utter solitude, is food for thought in this age of Artistic Prostitution.

Robert Reich: Slouching Toward Health Care Reform

In all likelihood, the White House and the Dems eventually will get a bill they can call "reform," but they will not be able to say with straight faces that the reform is a significant improvement over the terrible system we already have.

William Powers: Snowflakes in Copenhagen

His Excellency Dasho Nado Rinchen of Bhutan outlined his country’s official national development focus: instead of the purely economic gross national product (GNP), he said, they track and pursue gross national happiness (GNH), a more holistic goal.

Rec Room: Alex Halperin: Hard Eight

Watch it for a peak at one of the most emotionally bombastic directors before he completely found his footing, or just for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s fantastic cameo.

Rec Room: Erica Wright: Let the Right One In

This film is a haunting consideration of what vampirism might look like without the dietary alternatives of Tru Blood or deer meat.

William Powers: In the Thick of It

It goes without saying that Obama and the other leaders who arrive in Copenhagen this week will have their fingers pressed upon the pulse of domestic political opinion. So in a very real sense, what happens here is up to you.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: Invictus

Invictus is a stunning representation of South Africa in the 1990s, and, for the first time, I feel the need to understand the game of rugby.

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: Steve Erickson

His plots take wild turns, and in some ways, reading him is like careering down an alley in a cab driven by a drunk.

Rec Room: Adaeze Elechi: The Woman Who Walked into Doors

It’s a beautiful thing when a writer can disappear entirely as his/her characters leap completely to life. Bravo, Roddy Doyle!

Robert Reich: How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care

From the start, opponents of the public option have wanted to portray it as big government preying upon the market, and private insurers as the embodiment of the market. But it's just the reverse.

Norman Solomon: Mr. President, War Is Not Peace

In Afghanistan, after 30 years under the murderous twin shadows of poverty and war, the only lifeline is peace. From President Obama, we hear that peace is the ultimate goal. But "peace" is a fixture on a strategic horizon that keeps moving as the military keeps marching.

Rec Room: Austin Allen: Paul Simon: Lyrics 1964-2008

This book of lyrics warns not to treat Simon as Bob Dylan’s Garfunkel.

Rec Room: Joel Whitney: Andrew Sullivan

Sullivan stuns, satisfies, and raises some important questions.

Robert Reich: The President's Jobs Initiative Doesn't Measure Up

No president in modern times walks a tightrope as exquisitely as this one. His balance is a thing of beauty. But when it comes to this economy right now -- an economy fundamentally out of balance -- we need a federal government that moves boldly and swiftly to counter-balance the huge recessionary forces still at large.

Rec Room: Elizabeth Onusko: Contemporary Holiday Music

There is hope yet for the genre.

Carole Joffe: Personal Tragedies and Public Cruelties: Speaking Out Against the Stupak-Pitts Amendment

The Stupak-Pitts amendment, if it becomes incorporated into an eventual health reform measure, would have the effect of further eroding insurance coverage of abortion, ultimately affecting those even with private insurance.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

This story of a community preparing to lose ownership of their land is a testament to Chambon’s talent and ability to create a new world.

Bill McKibben: The Physics of Copenhagen: Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization

The best human analog to the role physics is playing here may be fascism in the middle of the last century. There was no appeasing it, no making a normal political issue out of it. You had to decide to go all in, to transform the industrial base of the country to fight it, to put other things on hold, to demand sacrifice.

Rec Room: Francis Reynolds: Field Notes on Democracy

Arundhati Roy asks us to rethink the goals of occupation, the rule of the markets, where we get our news, and, perhaps most originally, innocence.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Not So Pretty in Pink: The Uproar Over New Breast Cancer Screening Guidelines

What we really need is a new women's health movement, one that's sharp and skeptical enough to ask all the hard questions. What we don't need, no matter how pretty and pink, is a ladies' auxiliary to the cancer-industrial complex.

Rec Room: Alex Halperin: The Art of Eating

Fisher is less concerned with the provenance of food than the pleasures derived from it, and her prose is a joy.

Rec Room: Erica Wright: Cara B

Proceed with caution, but do proceed to Jorge Drexler’s infectious album.

Norman Solomon: The Hollow Politics of Escalation

At the core of enabling politics is inner space that's hollow enough to reliably cave under pressure. Typically, Democrats with antiwar inclinations weaken and collapse at push-comes-to-shove moments on Capitol Hill. The habitual pattern involves loyalty toward -- and fear of -- "the leadership."

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: The Adventures of Augie March

“Since graduating school, no book has impressed me as much as Augie March.”

Robert Reich: The Housing Crisis and Wall Street Shame

Shame? If we've learned anything over the last year, it's that Wall Street has none.

Rec Room: Joel Whitney: The Idea of Justice

Sen’s work can be applied to so many debates going on around us, which he wisely leaves to us.

Rebecca Solnit: Learning How to Count to 350: Remembering People Power in Seattle in 1999 and Berlin in 1989

If communism failed 20 years ago, then capitalism staggered 10 years ago in Seattle, and fell to its knees a year ago when our "wall" on Wall Street collapsed. One large question remains as we face a climate-changing world: If capitalism and communism both failed, what's the alternative?

Rec Room: David Doody: Falconer

He fell and beat his head on the floor, trying to achieve the reasonableness of pain. Pain would give him peace. When he realized that he could not reach pain this way, he began the enormous struggle to hang himself. He tried fifteen or a million times before he was able to get his hand on his belt buckle…

Rec Room: Elizabeth Onusko: The Selected Levis

The Selected Levis feels complete in a way that most selecteds don’t.

Robert Reich: Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

The public option proposed by Harry Reid is a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word "public."

Rec Room: Erica Wright: La Femme Nikita

This TV series is done like a good spy drama: no flashy special effects, just film noir twists.

Robert Reich: The Great Disconnect Between Stocks and Jobs

The Fed and the Teasury have, in effect, placed a huge bet on a recovery driven by asset prices. That's a bad bet. The great disconnect between the stock market and jobs is pushing stock prices way out of line with the real economy. This isn't sustainable.

Rec Room: Alex Halperin: Common Ground

A masterful look at ordinary people overtaken by historic events.

Norman Solomon: Biggest State Party to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan

Many of the California Democratic Party leaders who voted to approve the out-of-Afghanistan resolution on Nov. 15 have come to see the touted reasons for the U.S. war effort as specious, the mission as Sisyphean and the consequences as profoundly unacceptable.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: A Collaboration with Nature

Land artist Goldsworthy achieves geometrical perfection from nature’s imperfect materials.

Kristen French: Nabokov, Resurrected

Written at the very end of Nabokov's life, The Original of Laura was interred, in notecard form, in a Swiss vault after Nabokov's death in 1977. Despite his instructions that his wife Vera burn it, she disobeyed. When she died, the decision fell to Nabokov's son Dmitri, who resolved last year to have it published.

Rec Room: Francis Reynolds: Of Walking in Ice

In the winter of 1974, Werner Herzog learned that his good friend had fallen ill in Paris, so he grabbed a jacket, compass, and duffel bag and began walking the 500 miles from Munich to Paris…

Work for Guernica

Interns, assistants and ad sales rep needed...

Listen: Interview with November's Guest Fiction Editor

The Reporter's Notebook interviews Guernica's Guest Fiction Editor Amitava Kumar about the Asian American Literary Festival happening tomorrow, November 14.

Rec Room: Adaeze Elechi: Good Hair

If you ever wonder why a black woman might flinch when you try to touch her hair, Good Hair can help you better understand.

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: Emil Cioran

Read him for the same reason you might drink whiskey neat: to brace you and awaken your senses.

Norman Solomon: The War Stampede

Disputes are raging within the Obama administration over how to continue the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. A new leak tells us that Washington's ambassador in Kabul, former four-star general Karl Eikenberry, has cautioned against adding more troops while President Hamid Karzai keeps disappointing American policymakers. This is the extent of the current debate within the warfare state.

Robert Karp: Who Owns the Land?

Although often privately owned, farm land must be treated as a commons.

Rec Room: Elizabeth Onusko: Art Forms in Nature

“I don’t so much read the book as stare at its pages—the illustrations are spellbinding.”

David Chura: Life Terms for Minors are 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment'

The American people need to realize that the "super-predators" they've been taught to fear are first and foremost children, and the United States Supreme Court needs to see to it that no more children are denied the right to change and are protected against the "cruel and unusual punishment" of a slow death in prison.

Rec Room: David Doody: What is the What

It’s hard to believe that so much can happen to one person and he can live to tell about it.

Je Banach: What It Means to be Hungry

How Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" Makes a Case for Much More Than Vegetarianism.

Robin Yassin-Kassab: Our Shared Godstuff

The fact that God uses human myths to talk to humans need not perturb the religious. "wa tilka al-amthal nadribuha lil-nas la'alahum yatafakiroon," says the Qur'an. "We rehearse these parables to people in order that they may think." From a religious perspective, the rehearsal of myths in sacred text is proof of God's understanding of human minds. And where do the myths arise from anyway? From unforgotten events, and from us, from our shared Godstuff.

Rec Room: Austin Allen: Voices & Visions

For the true poetry lover, it does not get any better than this.

Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare: Where Will They Get the Troops?: Preparing Undeployables for the Afghan Front

As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in.

Norman Solomon: The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid

People who scrape together enough money to buy health insurance will discover that they're riding in the back of the nation's healthcare bus. The most "affordable" policies will be the ones with the highest deductibles and the worst coverage.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: Shaun of the Dead

Not a fan of the hair-raisers? Opt for something a bit more ridiculous.

Robert Reich: How Obama Can Convince Congress to Enact a Larger Stimulus, and Why He Must

If job numbers aren't moving in the right direction by the mid-terms elections Blue Dog Dems will be more politically endangered then than if they vote for a larger stimulus now.

Rec Room: Francis Reynolds: Breece D'J Pancake

Pancake’s measured language evokes so many emotions with so few words.

Barbara Ehrenreich: The Swine Flu Vaccine Screw-up: Optimism as a Public Health Problem

Vaccines can be tricky and less than maximally profitable to manufacture. They go out of style with every microbial mutation, and usually it's the government, rather than cunning direct-to-consumer commercials, that determines who gets them. So it should have been no surprise that Big Pharma approached the H1N1 problem ploddingly.

Rec Room: Alex Halperin: The Magicians

Grossman is exceptionally skilled at blending the tropes of fantasy with the conventions of slacker culture.

Robert Reich: Health Care Reform is Critically Important, But Getting Americans Back to Work is More So

Obama's focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused.

Rec Room: Erica Wright: The Awakening

“I blame James Fenimore Cooper for rampant literary disinterest in the United States.”

Roy DeCarava (December 9, 1919 - October 27, 2009)

Photographer Roy DeCarava dies at 89.

Rec Room: Adaeze Elechi: Passing

Terrible things happen in Passing, but it’s a fascinating look into human relationships and the whole complicated business of race and identity.

Event: The Guernica at 5! Benefit

Be the first to buy your ticket to the Guernica Benefit on October 28 in Brooklyn and win a chance to see Andrew Bird live in Philadelphia.

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

Laura van den Berg’s writing is spare and elliptical. Large topics are broached, but quietly and the stories stay with you.

Q & A With Matthea Harvey

As Tin House Books makes its foray into children's book publishing with The Little General and The Giant Snowflake, Associate Editor Tony Perez sits down with the book's author, Kingsley Tufts winner and National Book Critics Circle Award nominee Matthea Harvey.

Rec Room: Katherine Dykstra: Push

Hard to read, but well worth the pain.

Michael T. Klare: Welcome to 2025

American preeminence is disappearing fifteen years early.

Rec Room: Austin Allen: The Little Disturbances of Man

Who wouldn’t rather read Paley’s “An Interest in Life” than Faulkner’s dour “A Rose for Emily”?

Robert Reich: Too Big to Fail: Why The Big Banks Should Be Broken Up, But Why The White House and Congress Don't Want To

Like a giant, gawking adolescent who's just discovered he can crash the Lexus convertible his rich dad gave him and the next morning have a new one waiting in his driveway courtesy of a dad who can't say no, the big banks will drive even faster now, taking even bigger risks.

Rec Room: Alex Smith: The Triplets of Belleville

Finally, it’s cool to watch cartoons again.

Norman Solomon: Uncle Sam in Afghanistan: Good Help Is Hard to Find

The Obama administration and congressional leaders -- with Sen. John Kerry playing a starring role in recent days -- are making a determined effort to legitimize the Afghan government as a prelude to further U.S. escalation of the war.

Rec Room: Francis Reynolds: 1989

Pop becomes history becomes pop.

Jo Comerford: Cashing in the War Dividend

Let's sing the praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast in sight tells us that it's our future.

Rec Room: Alex Halperin: Duplicity

Can corporate espionage really be this much fun?

Rec Room: Michael Archer: Elvis Perkins in Dearland

“123 Goodbye” is poetry that inspires poetry.

Robert Reich: Why Obama Has to do What Letterman Did: Refuse to Pay Hush Money

If Obama doesn't weigh in forcefully and say "no" to the hush money for Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA, America's middle class will get walloped. And if the walloping starts before 2012, Sarah Palin or some other right wing-nut populist will wallop Obama.

John Sevigny: On Roy DeCarava

Roy DeCarava: chronicler of his own Harlem; eye-poet of the hardscrabble streets where he was born; master at printing subtle variations between black, pitch black, and pitch blacker.

Rec Room: Adaeze Elechi: Nigeria 70

Put on your dancing shoes and hop into this green-white-green time machine.

Robert Reich: More Desperation from the Right

The right-wing blogosphere seem interested in a talk I gave in September, 2007 to students in a political science class here at Berkeley, in which I played the role of a presidential candidate so politically incorrect and tone-deaf as to pummel every sacred cow in sight. In their desperation they have proven the whole point of my lecture.

Rec Room: Meakin Armstrong:The Skeptic’s Dictionary

Designed to point out the many logic flaws in American daily life, this book is a weapon. It will teach you how to think.

Rec Room: Elizabeth Onusko: Taller Children

Taller Children is so enjoyable because it avoids monotony—rather than linger in a single emotional zone, it continuously alternates between effervescence and melancholy.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Are Women Getting Sadder? Or Are We All Just Getting a Lot More Gullible?

Barbara Ehrenreich dismantles a recent study about the supposed declining happiness of American women and the flurry of response around it blaming feminism for the blues.

Robert Reich: The Audacity of Greed

How private health insurers just blew their cover.

Staff Pick: Austin Allen

Italo Calvino’s experimental novel If on a winter’s night a traveler aims to amuse and arouse.

The Nobel Prize and President Obama's Legitimacy Problem on the Left

Note to the president: you should have dealt with our feelings about the guy who had the job before you.

Staff Pick: Joel Whitney

Remembering Mercedes Sosa.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

Tsai Ming-Liang uses the isolation of the cinema experience to beautiful and unsettling ends.

Tom Engelhardt: War of the Worlds: London, 1898; Kabul, 2009

President Obama, Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal, and special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke should put aside their focus on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism and focus instead on H.G. Wells's 111 year-old novel, The War of the Worlds -- and on the thought that we might actually be the Martians of the twenty-first century

Robert Reich: Why Obama Should Not Have Received the Peace Prize -- Yet

Had the world not suffered eight years of George W. Bush, Obama would not be receiving the Prize. He's prizeworthy and praiseworthy only by comparison.

Robert Reich: So Much Happening in Washington and So Little To Show for It, So Far

In each of these areas -- healthcare, financial regulation, environment, and jobs -- the "better" is really not that much better. Forget perfect; anything that offered real reform would suffice for now. But in every case, what should be the centerpieces of reform are being left out.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

In the face of success, indie and prog rockers act out through their music.

Staff Pick: Alex Smith

Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo will draw you into a world of mysticism, faith, suspicion and excellent storytelling.

Robert Reich: Specifically, What Should Be Done For Jobs?

With the debt ceiling approaching and the gravitational pull of the 2010 elections increasing, the White House can't go back to Congress with a formal bill to enlarge the stimulus package. Here are four simple steps that would help small businesses, public schools, childrens' health, and average working people.

Staff Pick: Alex Halperin

Welcome back, Baffler!

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

A fairy tale which fits in your pocket.

J. Malcolm Garcia: Afghanistan Today, Where the Taliban is 'The Opposition'

With the war in Afghanistan occupying the news, Congress, and President Obama, J. Malcolm Garcia offers this dispatch from Kabul.

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

On the gradual extinction of print journals.

Norman Solomon: Starting Another Year of War in Afghanistan

While certainty is lacking, steely resolve is evident. An unspoken mantra remains in effect: When in doubt, keep killing. The knotty question is: Exactly who and how?

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

Think of this recommendation as a dubious meal which has turned out to be so surprisingly delicious that I feel it would be quite unfair for you not to enjoy it with me.

Staff Pick: Joel Whitney

Eighty years of Sartoris: what Faulkner and García Márquez have in common.

John Feffer: Afghanistan: NATO's Graveyard? Is the Transatlantic Alliance Doomed?

Damned if it does and damned if it doesn't, NATO will limp along much as the British and Soviet empires did after their misadventures in Central Asia. These were, after all, dead empires walking. NATO may be in this category as well. It just doesn't know it yet.

J.C. Hallman: The Disciplined Soul

Seamus Heaney reminds us that a writer's life means "the disciplining of a habit of expression until it becomes fundamental to the whole conduct of a life." The Story About the Story is full of such-disciplined souls.

Staff Pick: Austin Allen

If Oscar Wilde wrote stories in which characters got devoured by wild animals, the result would look a lot like the works of Saki.

Robert Reich: The Public Option Lives On

Despite resistance to it, the public option lives on. It's still in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension bill. It still headlines the House bills, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she's still committed to it. The latest Times/CBS poll shows 65 percent of the public in favor of it.

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

Usher in autumn with a spell-binding classical composition.

Arundhati Roy: What Have We Done to Democracy?

Of Nearsighted Progress, Feral Howls, Consensus, Chaos, and a New Cold War in Kashmir.

Image of the week

Netanyahu and Abbas shake hands at the UN on Tuesday.

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

An author’s solitary retreat is interrupted by a sinister mystery.

Watch: Collaborative Animation by Blu and David Ellis

A collaboration between artists David Ellis and Blu has produced one of the coolest things I've seen lately on the internet.

J.C. Hallman: 'KAFKA? I LOVE KAFKA. HE'S VERY - KAFKAESQUE.'

The battle over permissions can be a tough one.

Cherien Dabis talks Amreeka, anti-Arab racism and the USA

The debut filmmaker talks about her film Amreeka with Laura Flanders on GriTtv.

Watch: Will Ferrell Calls for the Protection of Health Insurance Executives

Will Ferrell and some other caring celebrities have, thankfully, spoken up for those who may not otherwise be heard.

Robert Reich: Why the Dow is Hitting 10,000 Even When Consumers Can't Buy And Business Cries 'Socialism'

The Dow is up because of the very thing so many executives are complaining about, which is government's expansion. The problem is, our newly expanded government isn't doing much for average working Americans.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

This hectic novel of a mind unhinged is both hilarious and horrifying, like Gogol’s madman let loose in a violent and corrupt Central America.

J.C. Hallman: Heal The Lung

The essays collected in The Story About the Story assault the institution of literary criticism.

David Bollier: Ending the Free Market Hoax

House reclaims student loan program from profligate banks.

Thomas N. DeWolf: Jimmy Carter, Joe Wilson, and Racism in America

Not everyone who opposes Obama's policies is a racist, but there is racism at play here as former President Carter suggested. Of course there is. It is deeply rooted.

Robert Reich: Why Olympia Snowe Should Vote Against the Baucus Plan

I don't know about you, but I'm hoping the Senator from Maine votes no next week. If she does, America has a fighting chance of getting real healthcare reform.

Tom Engelhardt: War Is Peace

The way this country has grown used to its now seemingly unending wars and the immense, intense preparations for more of the same begs the question, Is America hooked on war?

Dennis Pacheco: Marijuana Arrests For Year 2008: 847,864

What would happen if we took all that money being flushed away for law enforcement, court costs, and the cost of imprisoning hundreds and thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans, and spent it on, I don't know, just about anything else?

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

Unleash your inner comic book geek and escape to the action-packed world of Zot!

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

The King is deeply and wonderfully disturbing...

Tom Engelhardt: The Washington Influence Machine

Any administration arriving in Washington wanting to do anything these days walks into a blizzard of money from special interests, not to speak of the fact that the wind at its back, the campaign wind that got it there, was already blowing strong with similar contributions.

J.C. Hallman: Driving The Stake

My squabbles with literary critics had to that point been only border skirmishes where a siege, a campaign, a war, was needed. I needed to drive a stake into the dead beating heart of the Beast, and leave him rotting in his coffin.

Dennis Pacheco: How Wall Street Won the War on Main Street

Despite the Government's largesse and populist outrage none of the understood reforms to Wall Street happened.

Robert Reich: The Continuing Disaster of Wall Street, One Year Later

Will the President succeed on financial reform? I wish I could be optimistic. His milktoast list of proposed reforms is inadequate to the task, even if adopted, and Wall Street's major banks have been made more dangerous by their sure knowledge that they are too big to fail.

Staff Pick: Katherine Dykstra

Hope Edelman’s The Possibility of Everything, a journey through her early days of being a wife and mother, is both hilarious and resonant.

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

O’Hara’s seismographic recordings of motion on paper are at once sculptural and poetic.

Watch: Guernica Contributor Norman Solomon on C-SPAN

Guernica contributor Norman Solomon recently appeared on C-SPAN to discuss his recent fact-finding trip to Afghanistan and escalation of the war.

Robert Reich: The Final Sprint for Health Care Has Now Begun, and Where the White House is Placing Its Bets

The more you can make your voices heard, the more likely it is that the race will be won by the public rather than the private interests.

Tom Engelhardt: Rebecca Solnit, 9/11's Living Monuments

Based on her new book, A Paradise Built in Hell, in which she offers a radically different vision of how people react to disasters -- they don't panic, they don't scream, they don't look helplessly to governments for aid, they begin to organize themselves -- Solnit offers us September 11th, 2001 through fresh eyes in a new moment in our history.

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

If you can’t make it to her reading on Monday, you should probably get your hands on Adrienne Rich’s masterpiece, Diving Into The Wreck.

David Doody: The Same Old Thing

The right's rhetoric today is the same as it ever was.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech skips the usual fluff and gets to the heart of the matter.

Robert Reich: The Snowe Job, and Why a 'Trigger' for a Public Option is Nonsense

If the idea is to have a public option waiting in the wings in case private insurers blow it, why wait for it at all? If it gets lower costs and wider coverage, it should be included right from the start.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

One of Argentina’s best writers tells an unsettling ghost story set in an unfinished apartment building.

Norman Solomon: Men with Guns, in Kabul and Washington

All over Kabul, men are tensely holding AK-47s; some are pointing machineguns from flatbed trucks. But the really big guns, of course, are being wielded from Washington, where administrative war-making thrives on abstraction. Day to day, it can be easy to order the destruction of what and who remain unseen.

Tom Engelhardt: Afghanistan by the Numbers: Measuring a War Gone to Hell

Imagine for a moment what might have happened if Americans had decided to sink the same sort of money we have put into war efforts in Afghanistan -- $228 billion and rising fast -- the same "civilian surges," the same planning, thought, and effort (but not the same staggering ineffectiveness) into reclaiming New Orleans or Detroit, or into planning an American future here at home.

Staff Pick: Michael Archer

What comedy should ensue when the Queen of England (previously a non-reader) visits a mobile library and (gasp!) borrows a book?

Staff Pick: David Doody

These books’ fearless lack of periods will get your pulse racing!

John Sevigny: Ansel Adams Strikes Out

Ansel Adam's goal was no less than to save the American landscape through photographs -- no small endeavor -- and his efforts eclipsed those of 1,000 Al Gores. When he ventured outside of his comfort zone, though, into deeper political waters to document Japanese-American internment the result is closer to US Government propaganda.

Norman Solomon: A Little Girl in Kabul

If rhetoric were reality, the war in Afghanistan would be about upholding humane values. But rhetoric is not reality.

Robert Reich: What Obama Must Demand from Congress on Health Care

Obama can't rely solely on his exceptional rhetorical skills. He'll need to twist arms, cajole, force recalcitrant members to join him, threaten retribution if they don't come along, and, most importantly, he'll need to be specific.

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

Let Meakin reintroduce you to the screwball comedy!

Staff Pick: Jordan Hirsch

The Looming Tower is a must read for those who wish to understand the forces at play which culminated in 9/11.

Robert Reich: The Guns of August, and Why the Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on Health Care

What we learned in August is something we've long known but keep forgetting: The most important difference between America's Democratic left and Republican right is that the left has ideas and the right has discipline.

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

Tony d’Souza’s The Konkans is a moving, hilarious, and seductive immigrant’s tale.

Dennis Pacheco: WATCH: Howard Dean & Rep. Moran Health Care Town Hall in Reston, VA

Howard Dean spoke with Rep. James Moran (D-VA) at a health care town hall in Reston, VA, and C-Span's cameras were there to capture it.

Robert Reich: Beware Authoritative 'Inside Washington' Sources Who Say The Public Option is Dead

Forget the authoritative sources. Mobilize and organize. We can get comprehensive, meaningful health care reform if we push hard enough.

Norman Solomon: The Afghanistan Gap: Press vs. Public

This month, a lot of media stories have compared President Johnson's war in Vietnam and President Obama's war in Afghanistan. The comparisons are often valid, but a key parallel rarely gets mentioned -- the media's insistent support for the war even after most of the public has turned against it.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

Watch the music video that saved the song.

Robert Reich: Ted Kennedy

Robert Reich remembers Ted Kennedy.

Staff Pick: Swetha Regunathan

Two friends—Rochel (an Orthodox Jew) and Nasira (a Muslim)— share something in common beyond teaching at the same school in Brooklyn.

Philip C. Winslow: Evictions in Sheikh Jarrah

As a word, "Judaize" is slightly less cumbersome than "de-Palestinianize," but the intent and the effects are the same.

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

Engaging and inspiring books to help sharpen your poetic craft.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

Throughout this excellent poetry collection, four very different poets sing quietly of the world around them, raise their voices in anger at injustices, and never stop digging.

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

The art showcased in Futr Wrld is honest about one thing: no matter what happens to the planet, people will always survive by CTRL+ALT-ing their environment.

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

I understand that the Kindle has its place. But when I hear “experts” extol of the virtues of California’s recent decision to use electronic textbooks...I find myself wondering why our culture seems to value that which is novel without asking a few questions first.

John Sevigny: On Canvas, Authority Unleashed: Caravaggio's Taking of Christ

As art critic Robert Hughes wrote, "There was art before [Caravaggio], and art after him, and they were not the same."

Staff Pick: Katherine Dykstra

Colson Whitehead takes us through teen-aged Benji’s coming of age over a partially-unsupervised summer at Sag Harbor in 1985.

Robert Reich: How Tough is Our President?

The widening gap between admiration for Obama and cynicism about his policies also reinforces passivity in Obama's base, which makes it even harder to advance a specific agenda.

Kath Weston: The Homeless Readers of Tokyo

For those who cannot imagine living without books, the search for something to read can rank right up there with the search for medicine, housing, and food.

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

Set in Sri Lanka, A Disobedient Girl is heart-wrenching and jubilant.

Robert Reich: The Public Option's Last Stand, and the Public's

Without a public, Medicare-like option, health care reform is a bandaid for a system in critical condition.

Staff Pick: Jordan Hirsch

Author Robert Wright attempts to depolarize the religion debate.

Robert Reich: Obama's Second Biggest Test

Reforming Wall Street, and why early indications aren't hopeful.

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

This album of fingerstyle guitar compositions is genuine and youthful, and you can hear that Giacomo Fiore has poured himself into each pluck of each string.

Robert Reich: Sarah Palin's Death Panels

In her short time on the public stage, we've come to expect this sort of thing from Governor Palin. But listen to other Republicans these days -- and if you can bear it, tune in to right-wing Hate Radio -- and you'll hear more of the same.

Tom Engelhardt: Biking Out of Iraq

On troops that don't depart, experts who never leave the scene, an Air Force that suddenly wasn't there, and a war that no longer deeds a justification.

Video: The politics of Jesus; Jeff Sharlet's The Family

Sharlet tells Jon Stewart that right-wing members of the Family, the secret order of Christian fundamentalists embedded in Washington, cite Mao, Stalin and Hitler as those who best understood the New Testament.

Norman Solomon: When the Dead Have No Say

The victims of war are hardly seen as people by the numbed sophisticates who can measure just about anything but the value of a human life.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

Spike’s new violently entertaining show combines science and wit to satisfy your deep-seated curiosity concerning one weapon’s dominance over another.

Robert Reich: How To Fight Heathcare Fearmongers and Demagogues

The President needs to get specific about what he's for and what he's against in order to take back the discussion from Republican Astroturfers.

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

Okay, so all poets are obsessed with death, but Thomas James is intimate, and that intimacy leads to insight rather than self-pity.

Freedom Now: Move of Gen. Than Shwe a Clear Violation of Burmese and International Law

Freedom Now deplores Burma's conviction and sentencing of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kye and filed a petition to UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

A beautiful portrayal of optimism in the face of poverty.

Letters: Readers (and the web) Respond to Mark Dowie’s “Food Among the Ruins ” and his vision to expand Detroit’s urban farming

In response to Mark Dowie ’s August 1 “Food Among the Ruins ”, a smattering of responses came from readers and around the web, including Treehugger, Freakonomics, and the Detroit Free Press.

Staff Pick: Swetha Regunathan

Set in 1930-40s India, there are no frills or golden endings in this understated, moving film—only the promises we all wish we could keep.

Kristen French: Mixing Mediums--Fiction on Video

Book trailers have been around for years, but for fiction, they're catching on slowly. There's a good reason for that.

Robert Reich: How the White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy

When an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry's support to a key piece of legislation, we're in big trouble. That's called extortion.

Watch: Jeff Sharlet on Bill Maher (Video)

Jeff Sharlet discusses "The Family," also known as the "Christian Mafia," and their thoughts on the chosen ones with Bill Maher.

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

Not only is this book a man’s disassembling and reassembling of himself, and his struggle to maintain sanity; it is also a glimpse into Nigeria’s days of tumultuous infancy.

Frederick S. Lane: C-Street, Privacy, and the Separation of Church and State

Whatever peccadilos and prayers occur in C Street can (and should) stay in C Street; public service does not completely destroy personal privacy. But what is in the hearts and minds of Family members when they publicly swear an oath to uphold the Constitution is not a private matter.

Robert Reich: Astroturf Along American Highways, and the Republican Plan

Vans carrying the logo "Americans for Prosperity," meant to demonize healthcare reform, are not grassroots efforts in some ideological fight. They are Astroturf--carefully-crafted and market tested--from a party that is looking for power and nothing else.

Staff Pick: Katherine Dykstra

My friend said The Hurt Locker had been called the most realistic Iraq war film made thus far. And I believe her.

Video: The healthcare ad CNN won't play

The disputed healthcare ad targets Cigna CEO's high salary.

Norman Solomon: The Incredible Shrinking Healthcare Reform

While the healthcare policy outcomes are looking grim, the supposed political imperatives are fueling the desires of Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to produce a victory that President Obama can tout as healthcare reform. The likely result is a glide path to disaster.

Jordan Hirsch: Dreaming about Iran

Can engagement with Iran and support for its democratic dissidents be more than a fantasy?

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

In City of Thieves, Lev and Kolya risk their lives for a cake and a second chance.

David W. Moore: Gallup's Anti-Health Care Bias

Pick the polls that support your position. There are plenty for whatever views you might have.

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

In The Children’s Hospital, Earth suffers an apocalyptic flood. Nothing exists anymore; no life, except for a floating children’s hospital, protected by angels...

Staff Pick: Jordan Hirsch

Prisoners depicts Goldberg’s journey from being a heady, idealistic Zionist who dropped out of Penn to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces, into a disillusioned, embittered soldier manning Israel’s infamous Ketziot prison camp during the first Palestinian uprising.

Staff Pick: David Doody

Marlon James’s John Crow’s Devil is a haunting account of Gibbeah, a remote Jamaican town in the 1950s. James is a gritty writer whose prose can have you squirming in your seat.

Staff Pick: Michael Archer

Jonas has converted to Islam and recently been sequestered. In exactly thirty-one hours, he is supposed to commit an act of terrorism in the New York City subway. Kinda gutsy, no?

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

The poems in Darcie Dennigan’s debut collection, Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse, radiate.

David Doody: So, Glenn Beck, Obama is a 'White Guy' Who 'Has a Deep-Seated Hatred for White People'?

These people -- Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly -- simply say things to make people look at them; to make people watch and listen to their shows.

Chalmers Johnson: Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire, And Ten Steps to Take to Do So

(1) We can no longer afford our postwar expansionism; (2) we are going to lose the war in Afghanistan and it will help bankrupt us; and (3) we need to end the secret shame of our empire of bases, the exploitation of subject or local populations living in proximity to them (especially women).

Staff Pick: Swetha Regunathan

From Laos to America: a family’s story of war, separation, tragedy, and reunion.

Wikileaks: The Spy Who Billed Me Twice

From Guantanamo to your doorstep: the intelligence industry's revolving cash door.

David Doody: Franken and Klobuchar Speak Out at Senate Judiciary Committee Vote

Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken "spewed fire" and "threw brimstone" in yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

A fresh look at Iran.

David Doody: Watch: Bill Maher on America's Profit Problem (Video)

Bill Maher's new rule: Not everything in America needs to make a profit.

Staff Pick: Michelle Mounts

Musings on the great American novel.

Robert Reich: The Future of Universal Health Care, as of Now

Every day that goes by without a vote in the House or Senate on universal health care makes it less likely that major reform will occur, meaning next fall we get something called "universal health insurance" that still leaves millions of Americans uninsured and doesn't substantially slow the meteoric rise of health-care costs.

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

No matter how much you badger me, I am not wading into War and Peace this summer. But novellas! Oh, novellas are like mint juleps on an August afternoon.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

The Planet Earth box set is one of the best possible uses of that hard-earned $37.99 you have lying around underneath the cushions of your couch.

John Sevigny: Twenty Years later: David Wojnarowicz' buffalo photograph

David Wojnarowicz' buffalo photograph is a work of entirely American art, made for a culture that millions of people believed was being driven over a cliff by its president.

The Cove: Flipper meets the Bourne Identity?

A new documentary exposes a little town with a knack for slaughtering dolphins.

Robert Reich: The Wall Street Rally: Watch Your Wallets

The corporate profits pushing the stock market upward are coming, most notably, from payroll cuts, not because consumers have suddenly found themselves with more money, a "push" that is not sustainable and certainly not a recovery.

Staff Pick: Joel Whitney

This Harper’s article describes how the system is so deliberately skewed to deny accountability that we began to conflate economic fantasy with reality, to the point where now we can hardly distinguish our own spin.

Norman Solomon: Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo

The kind of arguments heard during the early '60s against guaranteed healthcare for the elderly can now be heard against establishing a comprehensive single-payer system. But now, the healthcare debate is trapped between a political establishment that doesn't want a single-payer system and news media that insist on ignoring its real potential.

Reese Erlich: Iran and Leftist Confusion

When I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and bloggers who had concluded that the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the U.S. That comes as quite a shock to those risking their lives daily on the streets of major Iranian cities fighting for political, social and economic justice.

Staff Pick: David Doody

If you’re a fan of The Wire then you will want to get yourself the novels of Price and Pelecanos (who write for the show). These novels are as gritty as any episode.

David Bollier: Art, God and Copyright

Is it appropriate to copyright divinely inspired expression?

David Bromwich: America's Wars

How serial war became the American way of life.

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

At the end of the day, the characters in GraceLand desire the same things as everyone else: warm meals, a comfortable bed to sleep in, and the freedom to be who they are.

Tom Engelhardt: Borrowed Time, The World at 65

A history of my father's time and mine from the turn of the last century through three world wars (including the Cold War).

Staff Pick: Katherine Dykstra

From its playful beginning to its horrific climax and heartening denouement, the acting, the music, the dialogue in Ruined all work together to achieve a story as politically powerful as it is simple.

Robert Reich: Obamacare Is At War With Itself Over Future Costs

As opposition to universal health care shifts away from industry and toward Blue Dog and moderate Democrats who are increasingly worried about future deficits it's time for the President to begin twisting arms and knocking heads.

Wikileaks: Big Trouble in Little Paradise: the Turks and Caicos Islands takeover

WikiLeaks has released a suppressed report laying at the center of UK plans to seize direct control of the Turks & Caicos Islands, a popular Caribbean tourist destination and tax haven.

Norman Solomon: Beyond the Hype: Cronkite and the Vietnam War

Reporting that a war can't be won, after cheerleading it for years, should not be seen as the ultimate in journalistic quality and courage. That critique says a war is bad only because it's not winnable, which does nothing to challenge the prerogatives of military expansion.

Staff Pick: Jordan Hirsch

Leebaert makes the case in To Dare and to Conquer that special operations and the qualities that define them—ingenuity, speed, and audacity—have not only decided battles, but have swung the history of civilizations.

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

Available again, is Robert Mitchum’s performance in The Friends of Eddie Coyle as an aging gunrunner forced by circumstances to snitch on his criminal “friends. ”

Ann Jones: Everything That Happens in Afghanistan Is Based on Lies or Illusions

Fixer is a film that captures some edgy and fearful truths and is the best documentary I've seen on Afghanistan.

Tom Engelhardt: On Escalation

In an ongoing assessment of the devolving situation in Afghanistan the Obama Administration will undoubtedly resort to troop escalation. Too bad no one's escalating the diplomacy.

Friend Pick: Hasdai Westbrook

I highly recommend that you go out and nab a copy of American Parent whether you’re a parent, want to be one or would run a mile in the opposite direction at the sight of a stork.

Frederick S. Lane: Bachmann's Anti-Census Fear-Mongering is Nothing New

As Judge Sonya Sotomayor noted in her response to questioning by Senator Al Franken, the U.S. Constitution is a mixture of broad principles and specific commands. The latter puts Rep. Michelle Bachmann on dubious legal ground in regards to her decision to only answer certain Census questions in 2010.

WikiLeaks: Nuclear Accident in Iran May Lay Behind Mystery Resignation

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh has resigned under mysterious circumstances, which may have to do with a serious nuclear accident.

Staff Pick: Michelle Mounts

I find myself challenged by the messy explosion that happens when I press cyborgism and Buddhism together. Who is to say what enlightenment actually looks like in the twenty-first century?

Robert Reich: Goldman and JPMorgan -- The Two Winners When The Rest of America is Losing

We've ended up with two giants that now have most of the casino to themselves, are playing with poker chips backed by taxpayers, and have a big say in what the rules of the game are to be. Where are the antitrusters when we need them?

David Doody: Why Attaching the Hate Crimes Prevention Act to the Defense Bill Makes Sense

The defense and security of our country should not be limited to just some of the citizens of the country, but should instead be extended to everyone.

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

When Doug Burr’s Thing About Trouble came on two winters ago, I had that immediate connection certain songs engender.

David Doody: An Experiment in Web Serialization

The Forecast 42 Project: One man's experiment to get away from the usual submission process.

Robert Reich: The House: Tax the Wealthy to Keep Everyone Healthy

To say out loud, as the House has just done with the universal health care bill, that those in our society who can most readily afford it should pay for the health insurance of those who cannot is, well, audacious. There's also another word for it: fair.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

Elias Khoury: “Beirut’s past is not of stability, but of violent change. Everything is open, uncertain. In my fiction [Yalo], you’re not sure if things really happened, only that they’re narrated. What’s important is the story, not the history.”

Robert Reich: Goldman's Back, and Why We Should Be Worried

Now that Goldman Sachs has posted record earnings as revenue from trading and stock underwriting reached all-time highs, less than a year after the firm took $10 billion from taxpayers, you can expect them to revert to their old ways in politics if their old ways in the market backfire again.

David Bollier: Even Dead Celebrities Sell

Ad Nauseam chronicles the manipulative pathologies of advertising culture.

Staff Pick: Swetha Regunathan

To watch Contempt now (whether for the first time or the tenth time) in the fallout of savage capitalism is to reconsider its beautifully drawn dilemma: how can art survive the onslaught of industry?

Robert Reich: The Health Care Clock, and Why Obama Has to Act Quickly

Universal health care is so complicated -- touching on so much of the economy, stepping on the toes of so many vested interests -- that to allow the bills to languish past recess risks the entire goal. Speed is essential.

Philip C. Winslow: Angola's Forgotten War, Squandered Peace

Angola's decades-long terror often was called "the worst war in the world." The description never seemed overstated. Today, though it is the seventh leading supplier of oil to the U.S., instability still plagues the country.

Staff Pick: Michael Archer

Inflating a Dog’s inventive tale is touching and, in spots, hilarious, and Peter and his mother’s journey and quest for fame call to mind Don Quixote.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

You notice, as you pass your local art house theater, that Food, Inc. is playing alongside a Jacques Rivette picture, whose name you recognize from a French New Wave class you took in college. You find the prospect of reading subtitles for four hours an unbearable anathema, so you buy a thirteen-dollar ticket to Food, Inc., which is just about to start...

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

The Neverending Story will make you remember the reality of fantasy when you begin to ask yourself some of the questions posed to Atreyu and Bastian Balthazar Bux.

Staff Pick: Joel Whitney

On the life and mysterious death of a legendary wildlife filmmaker in Africa.

Norman Solomon: Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan

"Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad -- nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper.

Guernica writer E.C. Osondu wins the 'African Booker'

E.C. Osondu's story in Guernica, Waiting, won the so-called African Booker—the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

Matt & Kim’s Grand will put you in a good mood even if you don’t want to be in one.

Staff Pick: Katherine Dykstra

In this film, the director uses her father, First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus, as a lens through which to explore four freedom of speech cases tried over the course of American history.

Tom Engelhardt: Will What We Don't Know (or Care to Know) Hurt Us?: Mourning Michael Jackson, Ignoring the Afghan Dead

Michael Jackson's death has little to do with us, but the death of so many Afghan people are, or should be, our responsibility, part of an endless war the American people have either supported or not stopped from continuing. And yet one is a screaming global headline; the others go unnoticed.

John Sevigny: Photography Must Die

The 21st Century photographer can learn more studying the collected work of Claude Monet, Francisco Goya, Jackson Pollock, or Anselm Kiefer than by aping the photographic vocabulary force fed to us.

Staff Pick: David Doody

Sometimes there’s nothing better than nonfiction in a poet’s hands.

Scores killed in China protest (Audio & Video)

A reported 140 people were killed and more than 800 were injured in a violent clash in China. One BBC reporter in Shanghai says this was “one of the most serious clashes between the authorities and demonstrators in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989.”

Staff Pick: Jordan Hirsch

When we discuss subjects like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and issues involving questions of Jewish identity, we often devote attention to the intricacies and neglect to address a far more obvious, yet challenging question: Who is a Jew?

Staff Pick: Meakin Armstrong

Padgett Powell’s Edisto, which takes place within sight of a beach, isn’t a difficult read—it’s propulsive and written with a light hand—but it's also rife with all those harder topics that make the book worthwhile.

Staff Pick: Swetha Regunathan

Edited by Jeffrey Eugenides, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead is a quiet, yet powerful collection of great love stories, from Chekhov to Munro. These are stories which search for and lose love.

Staff Pick: Francis Reynolds

Tawada’s novel doesn’t hesitate to explore complex issues of identity and representation in an image-saturated world, but what has stayed with me the most is how her prose beautifully embodies her young character’s fragile and preoccupied state of mind.

VIDEO: Glenn Beck wants many Americans to be killed in a terrorist attack (or his guest does)

Is Beck's guest's call for a terrorist attack from Osama bin Laden at all like shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater?

Staff Pick: Erica Wright

Hardwick defies genre in this lyric memoir/novel, championing the sentence above all else. NYRB Classics did us all a favor when they resurrected Sleepless Nights from the out-of-print graveyard in 2001.

Norman Solomon: Abstract Quality Journalism for War

No amount of newsprint or airtime can do more than scratch the human surface of war, especially when the media lenses are ground with ideology, nationalism, and economic convenience.

Dahr Jamail: Refusing to Comply: The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military

As the war in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on, some people in the US military find their voices, dissent, and resist.

Staff Pick: Kyle McAuley

What’s so thrilling about Cloud Atlas is how complete it feels not in spite but because of this narrative fragmentation. Instead of collapsing under the weight of its own invention, Cloud Atlas breathes and thrives like a collection of living voices.

Staff Pick: Michelle Mounts

This wicked little volume reminds me of Poe’s The Tell-tale Heart and Gogol’s Diary of a Madman... Your discomfort as a reader is author John Hawkes’s triumph.

Staff Pick: Michael Archer

What makes The Bubble worth watching is the way it exposes the complex lives and realities of Palestinians and Israelis and makes us pose questions about our own humanity.

Dilip Hiro: The Clash of Islam and Democracy in Iran

Until the June 12th election, post-Shah Iran seemed to indicate that Islam and democracy could work in harmony. The upheaval has demonstrated that when strains between the two develop, democracy gets short shrift.

Staff Pick: Adaeze Elechi

I recommend Asa’s self-titled debut album because there are some things that are too stunning not to be shared.

Staff Pick: David Doody

There’s a lot of talk these days about vampires. Vampire movies, vampire books, vampire sex symbols. Well, you can keep your vampires. I’ll take werewolves over those bloodsuckers any day, thank you very much. And while we’re at it, I’ll take my story about werewolves written in verse, please.

Staff Picks: Meakin Armstrong

If you thought the excerpt Sarverville Remains was good, you should probably try The New Valley.

Roya Hakakian on Neda

Every revolution needs icons and symbols -- an image that embodies a sense of universality of blight and at the same time innocence.

Staff Pick: Katherine Dykstra

The short stories in Nothing Right all revolve around midwestern women in complicated relationships, both familial and romantic.

Staff Pick: Joel Whitney

Synecdoche New York is a brilliant film that is sad, strange, illuminating, funny, epic, and totally original.

Norman Solomon: Full-Spectrum Idiocy: GOP and Chavez on Iran

When approaching Iran, the Republican Party line and the Hugo Chavez line are running in opposite directions -- but parallel. The leadership of GOP reaction and the leadership of Bolivarian revolution have bought into the convenient delusion that long-suffering Iranian people require assistance from the U.S. government to resist the regime in Tehran.

Ex-detainees allege US, Afghan abuse (video)

According to the BBC, as the Obama administration takes action to shut down Guantanamo, a detention facility in Bagram (a US military base in Afghanistan) expands. Ex-detainees talk to the BBC about their time at Bagram.

Staff Pick: Swetha Regunathan

Nothing comes easy in O’Neill’s complex novel—neither dreams nor lengthy jaunts through a New York populated by “others.”

Robert Reich: Why the Critics of a Public Option for Health Care Are Wrong

Without a public option, the other parties that comprise America's non-system of health care -- private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers -- have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.

Greg Grandin: Touring Empire's Ruins, From Detroit to the Amazon

To truly grasp how far America has fallen from the heights of its industrial grandeur -- and to understand how that grandeur led to stupendous acts of folly -- you should tour a set of ruins far from the Midwest rustbelt; they lie, in fact, deep (and nearly forgotten) in, of all places, the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Staff Pick: Jordan Hirsch

As the crisis in Iran has unfolded, one book has received numerous mentions across the blogosphere: Amir Taheri’s The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution.

Joel Whitney: All About Iran

A recap of some of the more in-depth, recent cultural coverage of Iran, and some other reasons Americans might be so fascinated by this story--besides our self-evident altruism.

Abortion debate on 'Daily Show' (video)

Republican political commentator Mike Huckabee returns to The Daily Show to debate abortion.

Staff Pick: Elizabeth Onusko

When poet Paul Guest, who was paralyzed in an accident as a child, writes of his condition in My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, he is simultaneously blunt, frenzied, grief-stricken, and humorous.

David Doody: Media Matters: 'Some conservative media figures defend Obama's response to events in Iran' (Video)

Media Matters for America has compiled a list of conservative commentators who have different opinions than some Republicans on President Obama's response to the events taking place in Iran.

Zoya Phan: Thailand Forcing Karen Refugees Back to Burma

Up to 6,000 Karen have fled a new military offensive by the Burmese Army and its allies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. Most have fled to Thailand. Now that there is less fighting in some places, Thai authorities apparently want the refugees to return to Burma.

Watch: Waltz with Bashir Movie Trailer (Video)

Watch the trailer for Waltz with Bashir, a graphic novel and animated documentary film by Ari Folman, that was featured on Guernica's blog in January.

Robert Reich: Memo to the President: What You Must Do To Save Universal Health Care

There are many things the President must do to make universal health care a reality, including putting all other agenda items on hold and actually fighting back against those who have chosen to take up this fight against him.

Does Iranian citizen journalism report or distort?

Maybe the US's credibility in places like Iran is cause enough for caution. A video plus some Guernica interviews about Iran.

Robert Reich: Does the Obama Plan for Reforming Wall Street Measure Up?

The White House's so-called reform does very little in the way of actual reform and will allow Wall Street to return to business as usual, which will, sooner than later, result in a repeat of the great meltdown of 2007 and 2008.

Norman Solomon: Obama and Anti-War Democrats

This is a crucial time for anti-war activists and other progressive advocates to get more serious about congressional politics. It's not enough to lobby for or against specific bills -- and it's not enough to just get involved at election time. Officeholders must learn that there will be campaign consequences.

Charles Greene: Viva Bloomsday or Why Ulysses is the Greatest Novel Ever

As another Bloomsday has come, I feel that now is as good a time as any to make my case for why James Joyce's Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written. That's right, I did say greatest ever.

Zoya Phan: My People Still on the Run in Eastern Burma

6000 Karen have been forced to flee their homes as the Burmese Army continues targeting civilians.

Wikileaks: World Health Organization Study Suppressed by the U.S.

In March 1995, the WHO and United Nations Interregional Institute of Crime Investigation announced the publication of the results of a global study on cocaine, which were suppressed due to the intervention of the representative of the United States.

Robert Reich: The Healthcare War is Now Official

The next weeks will show what Obama is made of -- whether he's willing and able to take on the most formidable lobbying coalition he has faced so far on an issue that will define his presidency.

Michael T. Klare: It's Official -- The Era of Cheap Oil Is Over, Energy Department Changes Tune on Peak Oil

For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close.

Joel Whitney: New York Times as Quixote

Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones found a new use for the New York Times and for newspapers: butt of our jokes.

Robert Reich: The Great Debt Scare: Why Has It Returned?

Why are the ostensibly liberal Center for American Progress and New York Times participating in the Debt Scare right now when the economy is still mired in the worst depression since the Great one, meaning the government has to create larger deficits if the economy is to get going again?

Editors: Royal Dutch Shell Settles in Ken Saro-Wiwa Case

Royal Dutch Shell has reached a settlement of $15.5 million in a case brought against the oil company by the relatives of anti-oil campaigners in Nigeria who were killed in 1995.

Norman Solomon: Words and War

Millions of words and factual data pour out of the Pentagon every day. Human truth is another matter, and there's plenty more media invisibility and erasure ahead for Afghan people as the Pentagon ramps up its war effort in their country.

Robert Reich: How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do

We must let our representatives and senators know we want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do.

Carole Joffe: The Legacy of George Tiller

While the response to George Tiller's death demands outrage, another response to this killing must be to demand that the mainstream medical community acknowledge the reality that there will always be some women who need abortions later on in pregnancy.

David Doody: NEED, the Humanitarian Magazine: 'Screw the Man, Save the World'

NEED magazine, a humanitarian magazine based in Minneapolis, searches for an answer to declining advertising revenue.

Michael Archer: Can't Get Arrested

In an interview for Guernica Magazine, published June 1, I asked Wuer Kaixi where he planned to be yesterday, the twentieth anniversary of the Tianamen Square massacre. Kaixi, who became known to world when cameras captured him scolding Chinese Premier Li Peng while wearing a hospital gown, was one of the most prominent student leaders of the uprising.

Tom Engelhardt: Missing Word, Missing World: Graduating the Rest of Us, '09

Some words, like "empire," have gone MIA in our American world, and words denied mean analyses not offered, things not grasped, surprise not registered, strangeness not taken in, all of which means that terrible mistakes are repeated and wounding ways of acting in the world never seriously reconsidered.

Robert Reich: The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers

As new technologies and more efficient machines continue to make many manufacturing jobs obsolete, why is the Obama Administration bailing out GM?

David W. Orr: Learning to Live With Climate Change Will Not Be Enough

A leading environmentalist explains why drastically reducing carbon dioxide emissions now will be easier, cheaper, and more ethical than dealing with runaway climate destabilization later.

John Sevigny: On John Divola's Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert

Few recent photographs speak as directly or eloquently about the relationship between civilization and nature as a relatively unknown black-and-white image from American photographer John Divola's series, "Dogs chasing my car in the desert."

David Bollier: Throwing Good Money After Bad

Obama may be a masterful politician with the common touch, but where is the respect for ordinary citizens when his administration lets Wall Street rescue itself at our expense?

William Astore: Selling Education, Manufacturing Technocrats, Torturing Souls: The Tyranny of Being Practical

Based on a decidedly non-bohemian life -- 20 years' service in the military and 10 years teaching at the college level -- I'm convinced that American education, even in the worst of times, even recognizing the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, is far too utilitarian, vocational, and narrow.

Robert Reich: Sotomayor and the Republicans

Will the Republicans see going negative on Sotomayor as their only chance at slowing Obamomentum, or do they simply lack the wisdom to opt for a more sensible strategy?

Fred Pearce: Consumption Dwarfs Population As Main Environmental Threat

It's overconsumption, not population growth, that is the fundamental problem: By almost any measure, a small portion of the world's people -- those in the affluent, developed world -- use up most of the Earth's resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions.

Robert Reich: The Only Sure Way to Fund Universal Health Care

The only way President Obama can make universal health care a reality will be to change the position he took during the presidential campaign.

Robert Reich: A Modest Plan For Paying College Costs

As he gets ready to head to a commencement at the University of California Berkeley Robert Reich offers a plan to pay back college tuition, linking repayment to a fixed percent of subsequent wages for a limited number of years, enabling all graduates to follow their dreams into whatever work they want.

Norman Solomon: The March of Folly, Continued

"The March of Folly," a book published 25 years ago explains, as well as anything written since, President Obama's policy towards Afghanistan--one based, as was the case in Vietnam, more on military strength than on political diplomacy or humanitarian efforts.

Noam Chomsky: Why We Can't See the Trees or the Forest: The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia

America has a long history of torture, dating back, in fact, to our earliest days as an "infant empire" as George Washington called it. Any surprise brought on by the torture memos released by the White House fails to recognize--or refuses to remember--this key factor of American history.

Mia Farrow: Darfuri Voices Heard

Today, on the steps of one of our nations greatest buildings, in the company of some of our most powerful and respected leaders, Darfuri voices were heard.

Philip C. Winslow: Cluster Weapons: On the Way Out

A movement to ban cluster weapons is gathering pace. It's possible that this time around the U.S., which has not used cluster munitions since 2003 in Iraq, will join, helping make the weapons and their explosive sub-munitions a military artifact.

Watch: Chevron's Amazon Crude mess on 60 Minutes

When Texaco left Ecuador in 1992, it left one huge environmental mess. The result has been a suit by tens of thousands of Ecuadorians against Chevron, which bought Texaco, for $27 billion. This is the biggest environmental lawsuit in history.

Robert Reich: The Health Care Cave-In

"Don't make the perfect the enemy of the better" is a favorite slogan in Washington because compromise is necessary to get anything done. But the way things are going with health care, a better admonition would be: "Don't give away the store."

Jared Genser and Meghan Barron: The Trial of Aung San Suu Kyi

How will the world react to the injustice?

Link Roundup

A poetry project goes on summer vacation, Obama changes his mind on military commissions, a Columbia Professor says there is no genocide in Darfur, and more.

Watch: Rumsfeld confronted as war criminal for humanitarian deaths

Is this a fair use of freedom of speech? Or just obnoxious? Is Donald a war criminal?

Robert Reich: The Truth Behind the Social Security and Medicare Alarm Bells

Don't be confused by these alarms from the Social Security and Medicare trustees. Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one, but the problem is not really Medicare; it's quickly rising health-care costs and a system that is inefficient and wasteful.

WATCH: The tortured humor debate on Jon Stewart

Stewart demonstrates the hypocrisy of right-wing torture apologias, criticizing Wanda Sykes

Norman Solomon: A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Marcy Winograd's race to unseat Jane Harman in California's 36th District in 2010 reflects -- and is likely to help nurture -- a growing maturity among progressives around the country who are tired of merely complaining about centrist Democrats in Congress.

Nick Turse: A Woman at the Edge: Tough Times, Domestic Violence, and Economic Abuse

As part of the "Tough Times" series he has been doing on America in meltdown mode for TomDispatch.com, Nick Turse ventured into the world of domestic abuse recently and discovered what tough times can really mean for some women.

Best of the Web 2009

Guernica Fiction featured in Dzanc Books Best of the Web 2009.

Robert Reich: What Will Happen to Banks that Fail the Stress Test, When You and I Own Wall Street

The outcome of the "stress tests" will be that the banks needing extra capital will get it from the Treasury. The Treasury will simply swap debt for equity - turning what the banks owe the government into shares of stock in the banks. The question becomes, what type of shareholders should the public become?

Norman Solomon: We Need a Green New Deal

Seventy-five years after the start of the New Deal, and nearly 40 years after the first Earth Day, the need for basic change on behalf of social justice and ecology is clear.

Dilip Hiro: Defying the Economic Odds

In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a new world order is emerging -- with its center gravitating towards China. As the world melts down, China grows.

Standing Before History: Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa at PEN

On May 2, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, Guernica co-presented an event honoring Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer and environmental activist hanged by a Nigerian military court for trumped up charges.

David Bollier: Who Should Own Antiquities?

The clash of justifications for property rights in ancient works of art.

Standing Before History: Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa

Guernica is proud to cosponsor this night of remembrance at PEN World Voices Festival on Saturday, May 2 with Ken Wiwa, Richard North Patterson, readings by Steve Connell and Sekou, and moderated by Okey Ndibe.

Robert Reich: The Auto Bailout Is Going Off the Road

There is no reason taxpayers should pay billions more to GM when they are laying off workers. The purpose of any auto bailout is to help American auto workers keep their jobs, not save an auto industry that's a tiny fragment of what it was before.

Francis Reynolds: An Interview with W. J. T. Mitchell (Part 2)

The University of Chicago professor and leading image theorist on stereotypes, the presidential campaign, and the legacy of the "war on terror."

Francis Reynolds: An Interview with W. J. T. Mitchell

The University of Chicago professor and leading image theorist on stereotypes, the presidential campaign, and the legacy of the "war on terror."

Philip C. Winslow: Cultural Cross-Currents in the West Bank

Attempts at apolitical cultural events have been thwarted by deep-rooted and distinctly anti-modern undercurrents in the town of Jenin.

Robert Reich: How Obama Can Succeed in the Next Hundred Days and Beyond

So far Obama has found a workable balance, requiring increasingly fancy footwork, and some rebalancing will be needed. The central question for the next 100 days is how deftly he finds new footing.

Tom Engelhardt: Killing Civilians

How safe do you actually want to be?

Norman Solomon: Obama: Beyond Savior or Trickster

Rejecting Obama iconography and demonology is necessary for a healthy progressive movement. We won't get far by trying to leapfrog the actual political conditions of the country. Our task is to change them.

Robert Reich: Where Government Spending Should be Trimmed -- And Why It's Necessary to Fast-Track Universal Health Care

Republicans seem hell bent on becoming a tiny, whacky minority. Obama should stop trying to court them and fast-track health care.

Jan Hively: Sharing the Work, Spreading the Wealth

How the economic stimulus plan could open the way for a commons-based society.

Letter to the Editors: A Response to Joel Peckham's essay 'Guided by Voices'

Zionism was not simply a response to worldwide anti-Semitism. The earliest Zionists were caught up in the colonialist and nationalist ideology of their day.

David Bollier: Dozens of Roads Going Private

U.S. PIRG report documents the sell-off of public highways and construction of private toll roads.

Robert Reich: We Need More Stimulus, Not More Bailout

Tim Geithner believes that the economy will be rescued when banks lend again, but most people are already carrying too much debt and don't want to borrow more money. As he prepares to return to Congress for what will be, if he even gets it, the last money Congress will give the administration, he needs to focus on stimulus rather than bailout.

Roane Carey: Don't Flash the Yellow Light

Mixed messages from Washington could lead to catastrophe in Iran.

Robert Reich: Why We're Not at the Beginning of the End, and Probably Not Even At the End of the Beginning

President Obama has begun urging Americans to refinance their homes so they can save money and start spending again, and the nation's biggest banks are claiming their operations are profitable this year. But, this is only because of the flood of money the Fed put into the economy, not because we've reached the beginning of the end.

Philip C. Winslow: War Crimes on Trial in Sierra Leone

A journalist and foreign correspondent reflects on his time spent in Sierra Leone as, this week, three of that country's war criminals were sentenced to long prison terms for multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Norman Solomon: Getting a Death Grip on Memory

A recent New York Times article told of research being done on the possibility of erasing certain memories. While the research scientists are just scratching the surface in this field, American media outlets have been at it for a long time.

Tom Engelhardt: Terminator Planet: Launching the Drone Wars

As you sit in that movie theater in May watching the latest installment in the Terminator series, actual unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), pilotless surveillance and assassination drones armed with Hellfire missiles, will be patrolling our expanding global battlefields, hunting down human beings.

Readers respond to Aiding is Abetting: An interview with Dambisa Moyo

Democracy has almost always preceded the creation of a large middle class.

Choruss: A Correction

We the editors regret any implication, in our blog that ran last Wednesday, that Choruss hoped to break or circumvent the law.

Robert Reich: Why You Should Work for a Hedge Fund

The hedge fund managers who raked in billions last year wouldn't have done nearly as well had taxpayers not bailed out Wall Street to begin with. Now, these are exactly the sort of investors Tim Geithner is trying to lure in to buy troubled assets from banks, with an extraordinary offer financed by you and me and other taxpayers.

Norman Solomon: Democrats and War Escalation

Obama's insistence on increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan will fracture his base inside the Democratic Party. If he insists on leading a party of war, there will be those within the party who organize to transform it into the party for peace.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Letters: A Response to Guernica's Interview With Dambisa Moyo

At Guernica we love hearing what you, the reader, think about the essays, interviews, stories, and poetry we publish. Here, Frank Williams, of Industries of Africa, responds to our recent interview with African author and economist Dambisa Moyo.

Robert Reich: It's a Depression

This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression. And the only way out is government spending on a very large scale. We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street, and the future capacities of our workfo

John Sevigny: Pierre Toutain-Dorbec's 'Confronting the Past - The Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge Regime'

“Straight” portraiture is one of humanity’s oldest art forms, with the first known example made 27,000 years ago on a cave wall in France. But in spite of its long history, portraiture is one of the most difficult art forms to “get right.” The photographs of Pierre Toutain-Dorbec, like the paintings centuries before by Diego de Velazquez, do just that.

The 4th Annual Asian American Writers' Workshop/Cave Canem Celebration

Guernica is proud to be collaborating with the Asian American Writers' Workshop to bring you this night of readings from Sapphire, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Jessica Hagedorn, and more.

Tom Engelhardt: The Great Afghan Bailout

It's time to change names, switch analogies.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Jake Whitney: Dambisa Moyo and whether Western aid helps or hurts Africa

Is it time to re-think Western aid to Africa?

Norman Solomon: These Colors Won’t Run... Afghanistan

Last week, some members of Congress sent President Obama a letter that urged him to “reconsider” his order deploying 17,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. The list of signers was tragically short.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Tom Engelhardt: Economic Dirty Bomb Goes Off in New York

With a whimper, not a bang…the old neighborhood empties.

David Bollier: What the AIG Bonus Scandal Has Illuminated

The shock is not the greed, inequity and political complicity, but seeing it so starkly.

Garry Leech: Troubling New Military Strategy in Afghanistan

With the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan struggling on the battlefield against a resilient insurgency and opium poppy cultivation on the rise it has been suggested that the United States should import the counterinsurgency and counternarcotics model currently being employed in Colombia to Afghanistan. This stance fails to recognize gross violations of human rights, a massive refugee crisis and record levels of opium poppy cultivation, which have occurred as a result of Plan Colombia.

Robert Reich: In the Wake of AIG: Obama's First Priority

Before it can clean up Wall Street or do much of anything else, the Administration has to clean up the way it's been trying to clean up Wall Street.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Robert Dreyfuss: Killing a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys

Is the Israel lobby in Washington an all-powerful force? Or is it, perhaps, running scared?

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Philip C. Winslow: Benjamin Netanyahu and the Settlements

Many Palestinians and Israelis sense a gloomy déjà vu while Benjamin Netanyahu is prime minister of a rightist, nationalist Israeli government.

Robert Reich: Is Obamanomics Conservative or Revolutionary?

Looking at the small picture Obamanomics can seem conservative. However, when you look at how it reverses the economic philosophy that has dominated America for over 25 years, it becomes something quite different.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Wikileaks: Murder in Nairobi

Two Wikileaks-related senior human rights activists have been assassinated.

Nick Turse: Breaking the Banks

The struggle to feed America's nouveau needy.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

March Content Launched: The Plagues

Guernica's March issue is just a click away. Mark Dowie, the Indian 9/11 meets the Indian Katrina, Islamic art, with an update, and more.

David Doody: Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai

Alejandro Zambra’s novella Bonsai is a book that seems to come about almost accidentally through its telling.

Tom Engelhardt: The Imperial Unconscious

Afghan faces, predators, reapers, terrorist stars, Roman conquerors, imperial graveyards, and other oddities of the truncated American century.

Wikileaks: Pentagon Pulls Strategic Communications Machine Offline

Wikileaks has cracked the encryption to a key document relating to the war in Afghanistan. The document, titled "NATO in Afghanistan: Master Narrative", details the "story" NATO representatives are to give to, and to avoid giving to, journalists.

David Doody: Sad News

Poet and essayist Bill Holm dies at 65.

Thom Blaylock: An Idea for Immediate Stimulus

Dynamic debit cards not rebate checks or tax cuts the answer to quick capital injection into the economy.

Wikileaks: UN Indicts Kenyan Police for Hundreds of Extra-Judicial Killings

Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur has recommended the sacking of Kenya's Attorney General and the Police Commissioner over hundreds of extra-judicial killings.

Susan Campbell: Sorry, We're Not Done Yet

It's a little too soon for a Post-Feminist World.

Norman Solomon: Freeing Up Resources...for More War

In his first speech to Congress, the new president threw down a 90-month-old gauntlet, reaffirming the notion that committing to war halfway around the world will make Americans safer.

Robert Reich: Obama's Goal: Halving the Budget Deficit by 2012. Really?

Does Obama's goal to cut the budget deficit in half by 2012 make sense in regards to the economic challenge we face now?

Ada Limón: The Story of Bag

A narrative for hard times.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from Guernica's anonymous newshound.

Robert Reich: The New Deal and the New New Deal

Countering conservative claptrap.

John Sevigny: Miguel Rio Branco: violence and light

Trained as a painter, photographer Rio Branco renders subject and color inseparable.

Tom Engelhardt: Burning Questions

What does economic "recovery" mean on an extreme weather planet?

Robert Reich: Geithner's 'Stress Test' for Banks, and a Stress Test for America

Instead of rewarding executives of insolvent banks that would otherwise fail, we should be helping insolvent families for whom failure spells disaster.

Wikileaks: Latest Afghan Death Data

A confidential NATO report issued last month reveals that civilian deaths from the war in Afghanistan have increased by 46% over the past year.

Philip C. Winslow: Weapons of War in Gaza: Israel and International Law

Although investigations into the hyper-violent 22-day war should be done, Israel, along with all states and non-state belligerents, must go further and review the weapons they use and how they use them.

Guernica PotPourri

A round-up of news from the week.

Dahr Jamail: Iraq's 'Teflon Don'

The new Fallujah up close and still in ruins.

David Bollier: Kudos to Wikileaks for Prying the Information Loose!

Web collective makes public thousands of Congressional Research Service reports.

Robert Reich: What Geithner Needs to Do

The tab may be close to $2 trillion. But what, exactly is the plan? We still don't know.

Wikileaks: Change You Can Download

Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress.

Tom Engelhardt: The Empire v. The Graveyard

Whistling past the Afghan graveyard, where empires go to die.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from other places to get your news.

Norman Solomon: Why Are We Still at War?

We have seen and heard it proved again and again that, as retired Army general William Odom put it in 2002, "Terrorism is not an enemy...It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war." And still, as we speak, the deployment orders for more troops to Afghanistan are going through the channels.

Robert Reich: The Real Fight Starts After the Stimulus is Enacted

Those who support the stimulus as a desperate measure to arrest the downward plunge in the business cycle might be called cyclists. Others, including me, see the stimulus as the first step toward addressing deep structural flaws in the economy. We are the structuralists.

Guernica PotPourri

A smattering of news from other places to get your news.

John Sevigny: Slavery in the Sunshine State

Since 1997 -- though the very word evokes faded images of Frederick Douglas, the Underground Railroad, and overloaded ships arriving from Africa -- slavery has been making headlines and drawing sharp rebukes from farm worker advocate groups and others in Florida.

Paul Rogat Loeb: Saving the world, one furnace at a time

How one purchase can make a difference instead of encouraging the same consumption for consumption’s sake that has helped create our current problems.

Jimmy Carter: Hamas Can Be Trusted

The former president says that Hamas has honored its agreements with him and that during the ceasefire there were no major rocket attacks, until Israel attacked Gaza.

Norman Solomon: 44 Years Later, LBJ’s Ghost Hovers Over the 44th President

Last week -- and 44 years ago -- there were many reasons to celebrate the inauguration of a president after the defeat of a right-wing Republican opponent. But in the midst of numerous delightful fragrances in the air, a bad political odor is apt to be almost ineffable.

Tom Engelhardt: Waltz with Bashir

As a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, Ari Folman took part in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and was on duty in Beirut during the notorious massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Tom Engelhardt brings us an excerpt from his new graphic novel, Waltz with Bashir.

Robert Reich: An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin

In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements.

Robert Reich: How America Embraced Lemon Socialism

If anyone has a good argument for why the shareholders of the losing sectors of the economy should not be cleaned out first, and their creditors and executives and directors second -- before taxpayers get stuck with the astonishingly-large bill -- let's hear it.

Tony Karon: Change Gaza Can Believe In

Tearing up Washington's Middle East playbook: the unexpected opportunities the Gazan disaster opens for a new American policy in the Middle East in the Obama era.

John Sevigny: Texas thugs

In one last act of disregard for the law, George W. Bush commuted the prison sentences of two Border Patrol agents, and in so doing disrespected the federal jurors who convicted them.

Dustin Luke Nelson: 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record

An early draft of the recent White House release of "100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record" has recently been uncovered.

Norman Solomon: The Return of Triangulation

While it’s too early to gauge specific policies of the Obama presidency, certain aspects are reminiscent of Bill Clinton's presidency. Progressives need to do more than vent their disappointment. They need to be involved.

John Sevigny: Port of Patras Refugee Camp

With his exhibition, Greek photographer George Poutachidis shows us refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, driven out of their native countries awaiting a chance to get to Europe, a continent run by governments who do not want them.

Robert Reich: Criteria for TARP II

What should be done with the next $350 billion of taxpayer bailout money?

David Doody: On Dealing With the C.I.A.

Why does everyone wear kid gloves when dealing with the C.I.A.?

Luc Sante: Détournement

Searching does not always lead to finding.

Ann Jones: The Afghan Scam

The untold story of why the U.S. is bound to fail in Afghanistan.

Katie Halper: Chip Saltsman and George Allen: Separated at birth?

Could RNC chair candidate Chip Saltsman be a 'chip' off the old block of former Georgia Senator George Allen?

Katie Halper: The Week in News

The GOP's Humor Deficit.

Robert Reich: The Stimulus

How to create jobs without them all going to skilled professionals and white male construction workers.

Marilyn Krysl: Turning the Tide in Sri Lanka

The appointment of Tamils to certain cabinet posts would send a much-needed message of equality.

Tom Engelhardt: Body Count Nation

The Ponzi scheme presidency and Bush's legacy of destruction.

Robert Reich: Thoughts on the End of a Hell of a Year

This Mini-Depression is causing a lot of pain, to be sure, but it will be over in a year or three. Yet what kind of economy will we have on the other side? Will we have a more just society?

Khadija Sharife: Genetic Colonialism

From Mendel to Machiavelli.

Norman Solomon: A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Even if you set aside the magnitude of Israel’s violations of the Geneva conventions and the long terrible history of its methodical collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, consider the vastly disproportionate carnage in the conflict.

Katie Halper: Christians, send your Jewish friends 'thank you for Christmas' greeting cards

I would like to give birth to a new holiday tradition. Forget the Happy Hanukkah cards. How about a thank you note?

Katle Halper: Joe Biden Explains Rick Warren Choice

Joe Biden is never at a loss for words. Clearly this former stutterer is making up for lost time.

Tom Engelhardt: The Time of the Book

On reading in an Age of Depression.

Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen: Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2008

Now in their seventeenth year, the P.U.-litzer Prizes recognize some of the nation’s stinkiest media performances.

Guernica Editors: Announcing the 2008 Pushcart Prize Nominees

Presenting six exciting selections of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Ira Chernus: The First Hundred Days or the Last Hundred Days?

What the president-elect should be reading.

Katie Halper: Republican Idol

The Search for America's New Top Right Wing Renaissance Man (Vote Now!)

Norman Solomon: The Silent Winter of Escalation

Is Afghanistan the same as Vietnam? Of course, competent geographers would say no. But the United States is the United States.

John Sevigny: Mexico's Perfect Dictatorship

Bodies pile up, jobs vanish, and Mexico’s “perfect dictatorship” positions itself for a comeback.

Erica Wright: The Tempter or the Tempted

If adolescent craze Twilight is pushing an abstinence agenda, what's wrong with that?

Robert Reich: The Great Crash of 2008

The only way to revive Main Street is to get America back on the course of rising median incomes.

Steve Fraser: Beyond the Bailout State

Roosevelt's Brain Trust vs Obama's Brainiacs.

Katie Halper: Bush Will Be Remembered for His Rule of Law, Sense of Justice, and Clemency (for Turkeys)

Bush is often portrayed as (and is, actually,) the governor who executed more people than any other governor in modern history. Because, like the Lord, the Bush giveth and he taketh away.

Norman Solomon: The Ideology of No Ideology

No amount of flowery rhetoric or claims of transcendent non-ideology should deter tough scrutiny.

Robert Reich: How Obama is Already Taking Charge

How does Obama manage to fill the leadership vacuum created by a lame-duck president and a Treasury chief who has all but punted on coming up with any workable solution to the economic crisis?

Norman Solomon: A Media Parable for 'the Center'

It’s been 16 years since a Democrat moved into the White House. Now, the fog of memory and the spin of media are teaming up to explain that Barack Obama must hew to “the center” if he knows what’s good for his presidency.

Marya Hornbacher: Seeing War Through Borrowed Eyes

When Megan Rye's brother returned from his tour in Iraq with over two thousand photographs marked by his uncanny skill and observation, she began painting them. The result is a nearly photorealistic series of images so quietly powerful the viewer tends to tumble into them headfirst.

John Sevigny: Just Passing Through

While in the U.S. the immigration issue has been buried under more "urgent" news, in Mexico U.S-bound Central American immigrants are facing a more dangerous trek than ever.

Jake Whitney: Is The Awful Legacy of Lee Atwater Finally Dead?

While John McCain descended to some sickening lows in the 2008 presidential race, his dysfunctional campaign was merely the retarded grandchild—and if we're lucky, the last of the bloodline—of the godfather of Republican mudslinging, Lee Atwater.

Tom Engelhardt: Don't Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart

If Obama accepts a War on Terror framework, as he already seems to have, he may soon find himself locked into all sorts of unpalatable situations, as once happened to another Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who opted to escalate an inherited war when what he most wanted to do was focus on domestic policy.

Robert Reich: The Real Difference Between Bankruptcy and Bailout

The Treasury seems to have lost sight of its real client. It's client is not the creditors, shareholders, or executives of any of these firms. Its sole client is the American people.

Katie Halper: Gulf War Syndrome 2.0 (For Veterans Day)

US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are being exposed to toxic chemicals that pose serious health risks.

David Bollier: Designing the Obama Presidency

Will he build an open-source republic or a walled-garden of control?

Robert Reich: The Mini Depression and the Maximum-Strength Remedy

Fiscal hawks and conservative supply siders notwithstanding, a major stimulus is in order. Government is the spender of last resort, and the nation is coming close to its last resort.

Rebecca Solnit: The Jubilant Birth of the Obama Era

We must be realistic about an Obama presidency in order to avoid disappointment.

Norman Solomon: A Mandate for Spreading the Wealth

Barack Obama won the presidency after clearly saying that he wants to spread the wealth. Let’s make him do it.

Patricia Briggs: Documenting the Political Divide: The Photos of Ann Marsden

From her vantage point as a credentialed press photographer, Ann Marsden's camera cuts in close to the principle political players just as the familiar media images shown on television and printed in newspapers do; yet her photographs offer unfamiliar views of the candidates.

Katie Halper: Women and Gays for John McCain

Voting against your interests. (Video)

Dustin L. Nelson: Translating the Polls into Electoral Votes

With only hours left until the 2008 presidential election what do all the polls mean in terms of electoral votes?

David Doody: Stories of Change

While I hear many things that should assuage my fears about Tuesday, I am still nervous.

Andrew J. Bacevich: Expanding War, Contracting Meaning

The next President and the Global War on Terror.

Swetha Regunathan : City of Otherly Love

Reflections on canvassing in Northeast Philly.

Norman Solomon: Needed for This Election: A Great Rejection

People’s votes are entirely their own, to do with as they see fit. But the right to do something is distinct from the wisdom of doing it.

Norman Solomon: In the Battle for a Progressive Congress

Moving a progressive agenda on Capitol Hill will require more than defeating Republicans. It will require electing strong progressives.

Tom Engelhardt: F is for Failure, The Bush Doctrine in Ruins

While we hear a lot about Bush's job-approval ratings and the media focus on Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the record of his Global War on Terror has yet to be fully assessed.

Election Integrity: A sampling of ongoing reports on widespread voter suppression

Volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy’s Election Protection Wiki continue to collect reports of ongoing voter suppression. It's not pretty.

Robert Reich: What Actually Needs to be Done About the Meltdown

Banks are hording money to improve true balance sheets because of the off-balance sheet vehicles created over the past several years. Until Wall Street actually lends directly to Main Street the problems will continue.

David Doody: Michele Bachmann 'Represents' Minnesota on Hardball

Admitting that the United States is imperfect is not the same as being "Anti-American."

Joel Whitney: Former Diebold Election Official Blows the Whistle

Chris Hood, formerly of Diebold Voting Systems (makers of electronic voting machines), describes in a video interview the many problems of modern voting

Joel Whitney: Following a Lie

From the New York Sun to Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation, to the Washington Times, the lie about Obama that the right-wing media just won't put to rest.

Robert Reich: Post-Meltdown Mythologies: Americans Have Been Living Beyond Their Means

The "living beyond our means" argument, with its thinly-veiled suggestion of moral terpitude, is technically correct, but it does not take into account that since 2000 median family income has been dropping.

Tom Engelhardt: Living in the Ruins. My Depression -- or Ours?

When speaking of Depression these days most news stories are focused on the economy and not people.

Norman Solomon: Requiem for the Bailout Storyline

The $700 billion bailout of Wall Street is another example of trickle-down policy and while some were calling for a trickle-up approach, the news media stampeded Congress into approving the bailout.

Robert Reich: Deficit Shackles

Will January, 2009 repeat January 1993?

Rick Ayers: Is There an American Eligible For the Nobel Prize?

The comments this week of Horace Engdahl suggesting that an American is unlikely to win the Nobel Prize in Literature have provoked great patriotic upswellings in the U.S., but there's something to what he said.

Chalmers Johnson: Voting the Fate of the Nation

Will economic meltdown, race, or regional loyalty be the trump card in Election 2008?

Norman Solomon: Projecting an Obama Victory

The McCain/Palin ticket will almost certainly benefit from the latest round of mud-slinging and racism, but they also stand to profit from overconfidence in voters in Obama's ability to win.

Robert Reich: Early Boomers and the Economic Mess

The economic meltdown is hurting everyone. But if you’re an early baby boomer over the age of 55, you may be in particularly big trouble.

Steve Fraser: The Specter of Wall Street

Wall Street's comeback as the place Americans love to hate.

David Bollier: When Free Market Fantasies Collapse

The Wall Street meltdown requires us to recognize markets as social creations -- and to reinvent our politics accordingly.

Robert Reich: The Stalled Deal

As partisan finger-pointing takes place over the Bailout of All Bailouts being voted down, Robert Reich offers his prediction for what bill will be enacted.

David Doody: Obama and the Art of Argument

In conceding that John McCain was correct on some issues in the first presidential debate, Barack Obama showed he takes those issues seriously enough to see them from all sides.

Luc Sante: Summer in the City

A story of death and infrastructure: When a car topples a building cops and neighbors alike do what they can to avoid thinking about what could be next.

Jay Walljasper: It's Time to Reconsider Government Ownership of Companies

As we bail out Wall Street, America can learn an economic lesson from Germany’s most successful beer.

Norman Solomon: Finally, the Story of the Whistleblower Who Tried to Prevent the Iraq War

To understand in personal, political and historic terms -- what Katharine Gun did, how the British and American governments responded, and what the U.S. news media did and did not report -- is to gain a clear-eyed picture of a military-industrial-media complex that plunged ahead with the invasion of Iraq shortly after her brave action of conscience.

William J. Astore: Hey, Government! How About Calling on Us?

The New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, called unemployed Americans to the civic colors in enormous numbers in truly tough times and helped do something we need again today: the rebuilding of crumbling American infrastructure.

Robert Reich: Why Paulson and Bernanke are only Partly Correct, and Why Main Street Needs More Direct Help

Many of the average taxpayers being asked to take on Wall Street’s bad loans are the same people whose incomes are dropping. If Congress only pays attention to Wall Street, Wall Street's bad debts will continue to rise.

Norman Solomon: Too Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter

The tale of two countries. Unfortunately they are both America.

Parker Chehak: A Filibuster Proof Congress

Solely focusing on the presidential election can be dangerous. It was a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, after all, that allowed for The New Deal.

Chip Ward: The Evolution of John McCain

Why John McCain picked Sarah Palin, Carbon Queen.

Luc Sante: That's When Your Heartaches Begin

What if a record could change the world? Would anyone be willing to listen to it?

Robert Reich: What Wall Street Should Be Required to Do, to Get A Blank Check From Taxpayers

The public is asking: Why should Wall Street get bailed out by me when I’m getting screwed?

David Bollier: Publishers Take Aim at Open Access

Members of Congress join the publishing industry in trying to lock up taxpayer-funded medical research.

Robert Reich: The Coming Bailout of All Bailouts Bill: A Better Alternative

Robert Reich continues the discussion of the bailouts of all bailouts, arguing that for any big financial institution that wants to clear its books the process should resemble chapter 11 under bankruptcy.

Robert Reich: The Bailout of All Bailouts is a Bad Idea

Talk yesterday about the Bailouts of All Bailouts eased market fears and generated a giant rally on the Street, but how realistic is it?

Steve Fraser: The End of a Gilded Age

Wall Street and Washington: How the rules of the game have changed.

John Sevigny: Blood and Shame in Morelia, Michoacan

Eight people were killed and more than 100 injured Monday night when a pair of fragmentation grenades exploded during a crowded, Independence Day celebration in Morelia, capital of Michoacan state.

David Bollier: Paying for Wall Street’s Speculative Greed

What 'We the People' really means: Having lost the political fights for strong banking regulation, we face a lose-lose scenario -- massive bailouts or economic collapse.

Robert Reich: Why Wall Street is Melting Down, and What to Do About It

The fundamental problem on Wall Street isn't lack of capital. It's lack of trust. Bailouts and subsidies won't rebuild trust.

Dustin L. Nelson: On David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

Remembering David Foster Wallace.

Bev Harris : Pick Quick, the Line's Growing

A new "time out" feature that kicks voters off of voting machines after 150 seconds of inactivity, record voter participation, and estimates of voter list density based on 2004 information rather than 2008, all add up to difficulty at the polls.

Tom Engelhardt: Slaughter, Lies, and Video in Afghanistan

The Value of One, the Value of None: An anatomy of collateral damage in the Bush Era.

Norman Solomon: Dubious Praise for ‘The Daily Show’

Absent from the fawning corporate media coverage of "The Daily Show" is evident self-awareness that the elaborate praise is a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing.

David Bollier: Who Owns the Public View?

The billboard industry is pushing for new laws to prevent trees on public land from blocking billboards.

David Doody: A Missed Opportunity

Rappers at the Take Back Labor Day Concert didn't do enough to speak to the young people in the crowd.

Michael Schwartz: Who Lost Iraq?

Is the Maliki Government jumping off the American Ship of State?

Chehak Rock

Guernica's former art and photography editor's big show opens in NYC.

Robert Reich: Fannie and Freddie, as Predicted

Because of the implicit government guarantee, Fannie and Freddie could take on even more risks and make even more money. Until now.

David Doody: Some Things I Learned From the Speeches

The politicizing of issues that, apparently, should be too human for politics.

Frederick S. Lane: A Decent Decision, But Fleeting?

The current Supreme Court may not quite be the Court that the Religious Right would like deciding a case having to do with decency issues, but it may be close enough.

Norman Solomon: Beyond the Conventions

The differences between Democrats and Republicans are even greater than the convention speeches are apt to indicate, and the effect of another Republican president cannot be downplayed.

Coldsnap Legal Collective: MEDIA RELEASE

Over 300 protesters, bystanders, media, and medics arrested at RNC. Two minors convicted of contempt, sentenced to 30 days in adult jail.

Michael T. Klare: Putin's Ruthless Gambit

The Bush Administration falters in a geopolitical chess match.

Frederick Lane: Press Release

Palin Pick for VP Makes McCain Panderer-in-Chief.

Robert Reich: McCain, Palin, and the Important Difference Between Boldness and Riskiness

As Barack Obama lays out a bold plan for reforming the economy and redirecting foreign policy, John McCain offers plans and decisions that are anything but bold.

Dustin L. Nelson: I am Robin Gunningham

What is the benefit of unmasking a great artist?

Edith Mirante: The Ruby Ape: A Deadly Storm and a Lethal Regime. Part 2

The lack of relief to Burma and the rescue fantasy the Burmese people have endured for years.

Edith Mirante: The Ruby Ape: A Deadly Storm and a Lethal Regime. Part 1

Revisiting Nargis: How Burma's regime and its connections to the rest of the world compound the country's problems.

David Bollier: Who Owns “The Last Best Place”?

Montana beats back the privatization of a beloved phrase.

Chalmers Johnson: The Past Destroyed: Five Years Later

A new introduction to Chalmers Johnson's 2005 piece on the destruction of Iraq's heritage, 'Smash of Civilizations.'

An Ode to Labor Day

Robert Reich reminisces on his first "job" and the meaning of Labor Day.

Crossing Borders, Expanding Equality, and Seeking Justice

As same-sex couples and their wedding parties cross borders and affirm marriages, Massachusetts and California will be exporting equality.

John McCain's Disingenuous Years

Some people still believe things about John McCain that stopped being true years ago. (My follow-up to Robert Reich's blog post yesterday on Guernica.)

McCain, Obama, and the Inherent Advantage of Caring More About Ends Than Means

Those who are willing to do anything to achieve their ends will always have a tactical advantage over those who regard the means as ends in themselves.

Progressives and Obama: The Clash of Narratives

Being a critical supporter of a candidate is neither a betrayal of the candidate nor a betrayal of principles.

Is Fair Use Regaining Its Mojo?

“Girl Talk” courageously samples music without asking permission.

Is Perpetual War Our Future?: Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era

Part two of Andrew Bacevich's series on "the American military crisis."

Rebecca Morgan Frank in Best New Poets 2008

Guernica prides itself on a unique embrace of art and politics. I would be lying if I said finding that balance in poetry is easy.

The New York Sun's Obama Frame-Up

Two months ago, I wrote about The New York Sun's inaccurate attempt to draw ties between Senator Barack Obama and Islamic extremism in Kenya. The chief problem with The Sun's reporting was that while the ties may have been there, the Islamic extremism was definitely not.

Sleight of Mind

Novelists are magicians, too.

The Fed and Authoritarian Capitalism

The Fed acting without congressional authority isn’t Chinese-type authoritarian capitalism, of course, but nor is it, strictly speaking, what we’ve come to expect from a democracy.

Illusions of Victory: How the United States Did Not Reinvent War… But Thought It Did

Between what President Bush called upon America's soldiers to do and what they were capable of doing loomed a huge gap that defines the military crisis besetting the United States today.

Would Thomas Jefferson Refuse to Recycle?

It’s time to recover the meaning of the word “independence.”

Shroud

Luc Sante offers a story of a man's attempt to meander through the Midwest, leading to an unexpected place and time.

Redefining the Pill: Bush Administration Calls Contraception 'Abortion'

An administration that has done everything in its power to oppose abortion goes after the main thing that can prevent unwanted pregnancies and proposes policy that virtually assures there will be more abortions.

Steinbeck, Hemon and Our Progressive Zeitgeist

Jennifer Nix tells us how literature changes the world.

Never Again, Again

The Olympics are nearly upon us, and China continues to ignore the people of Darfur. Perhaps they can offer assistance if and when the genocide ends.

Follow This Dime: Why Misgovernment Was No Accident in George W. Bush's Washington

A how-to history of the conservative era -- specifically how to destroy a government, leave Americans in the lurch, and enrich yourselves all at the same time.

Democratic Platform Option: 'Guaranteed Health Care for All'

H.R. 676 -- the single-payer bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers that now has 90 co-sponsors in the House -- would guarantee publicly funded, privately delivered health care for everyone in the United States.

Aspartame: One teabag, one spoonful of neurotoxins and a splash of milk

Is the illusion of sugar, coupled with the perception of being able to "have your cake and eat it, too," actually worth what else can come with that illusion?

The Military-Industrial Complex: It's Much Later Than You Think

The privatization of the military and intelligence communities has, to great consequence, become more and more common since the Reagan administration.

The Heart of the Economic Mess

The only lasting remedy for the current economic downturn is to improve Americans' standard of living by widening the circle of prosperity.

What's Wrong with Gay (or Straight) Parents Raising Gay Kids?

If legitimate research found that 100 percent of children raised by same-sex couples developed same-sex attractions, it just wouldn't matter

John McCain Gets It Wrong...Again

After a couple of geographic mix-ups John McCain recently misspoke on the subject about which he claims to be an expert.

A Short Primer on McCainomics Versus Obamanomics: Top-Down or Bottom-Up

In a global economy the propositions of top-down economics are highly questionable. The tenets of bottom-up economics will result in greater prosperity in America.

Having the 'Best Military' Is Not Always a Good Thing: Reclaiming Our Citizen-Soldier Heritage

As we seal ourselves away from war's horrors, we're correspondingly finding it easier to speak of "warfighters" and to boast of having the world's best military.

Enclosing the Offshore Commons

Once again, Bush is using fear and deception to dismiss facts and steamroll the opposition.

The Perils of Parables

With the Obama campaign trying to make inroads in the evangelical community it is easy to see the perils of mixing politics and religion and why we should be moving away from identity politics as the guiding principle of our campaigns.

Guernica and Guantanamo in New York City, Mia Farrow in Darfur, and New Poetry and Fiction

If you find yourself in NYC this week, Guernica, Public Affairs, and Amnesty International invite you to join us this Friday, July 18, at 6 PM, at the Old Town Bar (45 E. 18th Street) for a celebration of Mahvish Khan's My Guantanamo Diaries.

The End of the Great Moderation, the Bailouts of Freddie & Fannie and Wall Street, and the Tattered Safety Net for Everyone Else

The "Great Moderation" led the nation to think we didn't need much by way of social insurance. We are now seeing why we need those safety nets.

The Mohammad Cartoons Then and Now: Defending Satire

Even if we were offended by the New Yorker cover, we all must speak up for the right to offend. Discussions of "taste" or "respect" are insidious code words for censorship.

The Wedding Crashers

A Short Till-Death-Do-Us-Part History of Bush's Wars

The 'Flash Mob' Gambit

Are South Koreans demonstrating a new model of citizen action?

Fannie, Freddie, and the Pending Taxpayer Bailout

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are too big to fail, which means Bear Stearns squared. The taxpayers will get stuck with the tab again.

Obama and the Progressive Base

The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place.

Colombia Hostage Rescue Cause for Joy and Sadness

The liberation of the hostages has conveniently shifted media focus away from yet another political scandal in which the administration of Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe finds itself mired.

The Iraqi Oil Ministry's New Fave Five

All the Oil News That's Fit to Print (Attn: The New York Times).

McCain's Budget Whopper

How exactly does John McCain propose to balance the budget by the end of his first term? By telling Americans that supply-side economics works even though they know it doesn't.

Notorious Alabama Politician Keynotes White Supremacist Conference

Since 1998 26 public officials, nearly all republicans, have spoken to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group denounced by then-head of the GOP, Jim Nicholson, because of its racist views.

Why Dissent?

Why do justices feel compelled to dissent, especially at great length?

Brazil: The Progress Myth

The great and mighty Amazon is slowly being brought to its knees in the name of progress.

The Wage Gap is being Fueled by the Gas Gap

How the price of gas fuels the widening of the wage gap in America.

The Good News in Iraq (Don't Count on It)

Given the situation of Iraq more than five years after the invasion, to speak of the urge to surge and its results as "success" or as "good news" is essentially obscene.

Unleash Fiscal Policy Now, or More Severe Recession Ahead

Now that it is clear that the Fed can't and won't stimulate the economy, fiscal policy is the sole remaining vehicle.

Tapping into the Power to Share

Health Commons aspires to build a new ecosystem for research.

Living on the Ice Shelf: Humanity's Meltdown

Welcome to the Anthropocene, an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force -- and get used to it.

What Were They Thinking? United States v. Williams and Free Speech

The latest decision in a disturbing line of Congressional actions and Supreme Court decisions that cloak encroachments on the First Amendment in the pious garb of protecting children.

Poetry for Pride Month

Stephen Burt on the tradition of gay poetry.

Generic Drugs, an Endangered Commons*

Big drug companies are using their clout to stifle and delay generic competition. We pay billions of dollars more.

No Blood for... er... um...

The Oil Majors Take a Little Sip of the Ol' Patrimony.

'No' to Further Offshore Drilling

Why making more federal land and offshore rights available for drilling makes no sense.

Health Care and Ghosts of War

The insurance and hospital industries at the center of health care in the United States are profiting from priorities that condemn many people to death, while corporate enterprises continue to make a killing from U.S. military expenditures.

The Greatest Story Never Told: Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News

The U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq are basically modern American ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush administration, meant to long outlast it. They are also crucial facts on the ground, when it comes to George W. Bush's Iraq policy, and yet they have been largely missing from the American landscape.

Strange Bedfellows: Lesbian Moms and Anti-Gay Legal Groups

The reasons behind a right-wing, anti-gay legal group helping out a lesbian mother.

Beware People's Intentions

What are the real motives behind big companies' philanthropic campaigns?

Deadly 'Diplomacy'

As George W. Bush lays more flagstones along the path to war on Iran, mainline U.S. news media is, as it was leading up to the war on Iraq, incomplete.

Why is Gas at $4 a Gallon?

The perfect storm attributing to oil's price rise.

'E' for Expeditionary: One Man's Online Journey through Bush's Alphabet Soup

A frequent contributor to Guernica, Tom Engelhardt, offers his description of his own online "expeditionary" journey through George W. Bush's world -- a little up-to-the-minute alternative history of these mad years when Bush the Younger ruled.

Losing Latin America: What Will the Obama Doctrine Be Like?

In another moment of crisis and ebbing power what will a U.S. administration work out next in a Latin America that has pulled away from its domination?

Turf

Guestblogger Luc Sante on the time when graffiti truly became an artform in New York.

Obama and the Kenya Deception

The New York Sun falls for bogus campaign hype... in Kenya.

When a Little Dissent Is Too Much

The price one journalist paid for telling the truth.

A Personal Reflection on Why Obama Should Not Choose HRC as his VP

Robert Reich on the Vice President question.

Obama, Clinton and Anger to Burn

Now that the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is over what will be the result of the anger that contest produced?

The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court

An excerpt from The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court, wherein the ultimate goal of the Christian Right is starkly revealed: the forcible baptism of the United States as a "Christian Nation."

How much is that Bushman in the window?

In Botswana human rights come after diamonds.

McCain (Mis)Speaks

How the Senator Won the War of Words in Iraq (again and again and again…)

Why McCain's 'Cap-and-Trade' Won't Work Nearly as Well as Obama's

The important part of a cap-and-trade system is how the permits are allocated.

Wikileakes Release: John McCain US Presidential Election Clinton Astroturfing Strategy

McCain team claims Clinton strategy memo a frame-up.

River of Resistance: How the American Imperial Dream Foundered in Iraq

After years of Iraqis paying a terrible price it is past time for the rest of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance.

Economic Inequality is Squeezing the Middle Class

The decline of the professional middle class is due to something far more pervasive than just individuals harboring too high expectations and poor money management skills.

The Real Source of Gladiator Politics

Will the level of presidential campaign discourse actually be raised this time around? Do the American people even want it to be?

Shifting Climates on the Roof of the World

The Way Forward for Tibet.

Kiss American Security Goodbye: 15 Numbers That Add Up to an Age of Insecurity

Since the events of September 11, 2001 the course of action of the Bush administration, as well as its inability to foresee and deal with crises facing this country, have led to a situation far from secure.

The Petrification of John McCain

How a once flexible and even maverick politician lost all resistance to the threats of evangelical indifference in November.

A Housing Bill That's Better Than Nothing

The housing bill currently in Congress would lead to, at best, a fraction of the refinancings needed, which is better than nothing. But President Bush may not even want to go that far.

Civilizing Brazil's Native Indians

In Brazil, in the name of civilization, indigenous people are mistreated and displaced from land that the law says is not theirs.

The World at 350: A Last Chance for Civilization

The importance of the number 350 in a post-Kyoto world.

Obama’s Clarifying Win: The Fly on the Wall Is the Wall

Norman Solomon on Tuesday's results.

The Last War and the Next One: Descending into Madness in Iraq -- and Beyond

The last war won't end, but in the Pentagon they're already arguing about the next one.

La Fille

The Metropolitan Opera completes its second season of simulcast operas.

Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Levy issue joint demands on their governments at a Guernica lunch

Over fillet of sole at the Carlyle Hotel, Guernica's Crisis Darfur participants decide to make demands on Presidents Bush and Sarkozy to facilitate the protection force that Sudan's government has avoided facing

Happy Birthday, Justice Stevens

Do the Democratic presidential candidates put enough emphasis on the make-up of the Supreme Court?

What to Do About the Oil Crisis

The answer to the oil crisis is not in the Alaskan tundra or a tax holiday on gas. The answer is in a strong dollar and alternative sources of energy.

The Hidden Curse of Thomas Paine

Wikileaks investigative editor on the fourth estate.

Guernica to host two events at PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

Events to focus on the crisis in Darfur, with Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Levy (Tuesday, April 29), and writing across borders (Friday, May 2).

Selling the President's General: The Petraeus Story

As the Bush Administration waged a war of propaganda on the U.S. media and U.S. citizens, General David Petraeus became the "face" of the administration, with adoring media members fawning over him during his ascension.

Party Like It’s 1932: The Obama Option

The similarities between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama: History could repeat itself.

Charlton Heston and the Separation of Church and State

How the Religious Right's decades-long efforts to reshape the federal judiciary may finally begin to bear fruit.

Leaving Cheyenne Mountain: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Loathe the Bomb

Though the U.S. won the Cold War, we never stopped looking at the rest of the world suspiciously.

Wading Through the Mainstream

Mainstream media likes its buzz words and catch phrases. Luckily there are those out there pointing out the absurdity of only relying on these limited words and phrases.

Obama, Bitterness, Meet the Press, and the Old Politics

As the U.S. heads into the worst economic crisis in a half century or more doesn't it make sense that some people might be bitter?

Catch 2,200: 9 Propositions on the U.S. Air War for Terror

In its Global War on Terror the Bush administration increasingly relies on air power to "take out" the enemy, with little attention given to the civilians taken out as well, or to the consequences this type of strike has on the U.S.

The Economic Costs of the Endless War

The war in Iraq is affecting the U.S. economy, just maybe not in the way you think.

Single Women and the US Women’s Movement: Insights from India

Why the Women's Movements of India and the U.S. are so different when it comes to single women.

Wikileaks releases U.S. intelligence summary on Iranian infiltration, Al-Sadr, Mahdi army, et al

While the U.S. obsessed about Iran a top Iraqi police general provided Al Sadr's Mahdi Army with U.S. weapons and intelligence.

'Desperate Conditions'

A new report on Burma Refugees in Malaysia.

On Being Numerous: National Poetry Month 2008

Converting poetry skeptics, one month at a time.

Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire

Howard Zinn on U.S. imperialism past and present.

Weaponizing the Pentagon's Cyborg Insects: A Futuristic Nightmare That Just Might Come True

The Pentagon-sponsored project that sounds like a nightmare scenario straight out of the wilder realms of science fiction.

NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?

NPR is supposed to be willing to go where commercial networks fear to tread, but is the public actually getting this from its public radio?

Wikileaks Press Release: Secret military memo exposes unbelievable prison conditions in Fallujah

Wikileaks releases a classified military memo written last month by the commander of U.S forces in western Iraq, Maj. Gen. John Kelly, exposing horrific conditions in Iraq's Fallujah jail.

The Battle of Baghdad: Iraq's Most Fearsome Militia, the U.S. military, on the Offensive

In early April, General David Petraeus will report to President Bush and the Democratic Congress on the state of post-surge Iraq. The version he gives in Washington, however, will exclude many details about the reality in Baghdad.

Moral Hazard Redux

There's a double standard in America when it comes to economic risk-taking: When the risk fails the little guys get tough love, while the big guys get forgiveness.

Whistleblower Site Releases Censored Videos About Protests in Tibet

Wikileaks has released 35 censored videos relating to the protests in Tibet and has called on bloggers around the world to help drive the footage through the so called 'Great Firewall of China.'

Unsung Heroes and Alternate Voices: Some of The Best of Five Years of Iraq War Coverage

Among the often inadequate and sometimes embarrassing coverage of the war in Iraq, there have been shining moments of journalistic excellence. The following is a modest list of those who have accomplished such excellence.

Legal Insider Trading in Three Easy Steps, Brought to You by JP Morgan and the SEC

Wikileaks exposes JP Morgan's confidential insider trading program.

The Psychological Trauma of War

National Public Radio correspondent Margot Adler examines soldiers returning to the U.S. from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD and how the rest of us can connect with them when they do.

Warfare and Healthcare

Drastic cuts in the Pentagon budget would provide more than sufficient funds for universal health care.

The Bad News at the Pump: The $100-plus Barrel of Oil and What It Means

Will the recent spike in the price of crude oil prove distinctive in the annals of world history or will it be forgotten as energy prices drop, as they did in April 1980 after a record set during another moment of chaos in the Middle East?

The American Recession and the World's Emerging Economies

The world's developing nations are no longer nearly as dependent as they used to be on consumers in the United States and other rich nations to keep them going by buying their exports. What will this de-coupling mean for the United States?

A Winning Argument: Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp's 'War Made Easy'

The documentary adaptation of Guernica contributor Norman Solomon's War Made Easy opens its New York City theatrical premiere on March 14.

War is Hell, But What the Hell Does it Cost?: One Week at War in Iraq and Afghanistan for $3.5 Billion

Just how much do the Bush wars--Iraq, Afghanistan, GWOT--cost and where exactly is that money going?

Will HRC Spoil the Party?

Will Hillary Clinton's fight for the Democratic presidential nomination reduce the possibility of the eventual nominee entering the White House in January of 2009?

Hillary's Stockholm Syndrome

Clinton may still favor some Democratic policies, but her tactics are veering further and further into Rove-Republican territory.

The War Election

By condemning the Iraq war as merely unwinnable instead of inherently wrong, the more restrained foes of the war helped to prolong the occupation that has inflicted so much carnage.

The Most Wanted List: International Terrorism

In light of the recent assassination of Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hizbollah, Noam Chomsky examines the definition of "the world" as used by the political class in Washington versus the rest of the world.

2008 and 1968

Looking back at the events of 1968 that splintered the Democratic Party and marked the beginning of the ascension of a new Republican majority, Robert Reich argues that, with the pendulum now swinging back to the left, the democrats will need someone who, like John F. and Robert Kennedy, is a realist who understands the importance of idealism in the service of realism.

Visiting the Torture Museum: Barbarism Then and Now

A war meant to be on terror has adopted the worst traditions of terror from pre-Enlightenment days, and its staunchest supporters have redefined the word "torture" in such a way that its perpetrators can, by their definition, honestly say America does not torture.

The Relevance of Nooses and Lynching in the Age of Obama

As Barack Obama's presidential campaign blurs the line of race in politics and places in the American psyche the very real possibility of the U.S. electing its first black president, it may be tempting to think that issues of race are behind us. Here, Sherrilyn A. Ifill reminds us that the economic, educational and political divide between whites and blacks is still alive and well, and cannot be overlooked even among the most positive of developments.

'Wikileaks.org' taken off line in many areas after fire, court injunction

Wikileaks.org, a website dedicated to leaking documents that are "anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable," recently came up against some obstacles: a United States censorship injunction, hacker-attacks, and fire. In the face of it all, though, the website says it will keep on publishing.

The Lost Kristol Tapes: What the New York Times Bought

Just how close to an administration can someone be and not know what is going on, or rather, claim to not know what is going on and not be held accountable for it? Jonathan Schwarz examines the "horrifying ignorance and bold-faced deceit" of William Kristol to answer the question.

David Brooks is Wrong: America Can Afford What Needs to be Done

On the heels of George W. Bush's fiscal-political strategy of irresponsible supply-side tax cuts and military buildups, some question the ability of a Democratic president to follow through on campaign promises without breaking the bank. Here, Robert Reich offers three places a Democratic president could find the money.

'Reality Is Totally Different': Iraqis on 'Success' and 'Progress' in Their Country

Independent journalist and author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq Dahr Jamail gives accounts of life in Iraq from Iraqis that are, to say the least, inconsistent with claims from the Bush Administration.

The Politics of an Economic Nightmare

Robert Reich on what needs to be done about the worsening economy, and why none of the presidential candidates will admit it.

In Honor of My Mother and the Power of Love

One of Guernica's most important contributors, Norman Solomon, on the life and important work of his mother, Mariam A. Solomon, who died on January 20.

Going Bankrupt: Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic

As global stock markets threaten to tank and the U.S. economy seems increasingly balanced on a dime (and a ton of debt), renowned author of The Blowback Trilogy, Chalmers Johnson, offers a magisterial piece on the potential for American imperial bankruptcy -- why it might happen and what it would mean.

Big, bad and busted: Wikileaks vs. Northern Rock

The transparency group Wikileaks bravely resists a gag order pertaining to the financial collapse of the UK's Northern Rock bank, a victim of the US subprime scandal which sent stocks into a tailspin this week.

Leak: Blackwater, tear gas and other 'non-lethal' chemical weapons in Iraq

The New York Times is reporting on chemical weapons use in Iraq. But Wikileaks reported far graver accusations last year. A recap...

An Open Letter to Senator John Edwards: The Constitution Prohibits Secret Vote Counting!

Mark Adams looked into South Carolina’s use of its electronic voting machines, and discovered that it’s PROHIBITED by South Carolina’s Constitution.

Revolution of the Snails: Encounters with the Zapatistas

The Zapatista revolution turns 14.

Democrats Should Stop Squabbling Over Healthcare Mandates

Robert Reich on why Democrats need to focus on the similarities of their universal health care plans.

Perfecting the Death Penalty

In 2007 more than 60 percent of the executions carried out in the U.S. occurred in Texas, and officials there have claimed that no innocent person has ever been put to death in the Lone Star State. As the rest of the country changes its views on this issue, what keeps Texas so steadfast in its own?

The $100 Barrel of Oil vs. the Global War on Terror: The Bush Legacy (Take Two)

Last week, Tom Engelhardt offered his initial take, a year early, on the Bush legacy, "Journey to the Dark Side." Here he gives us take two in which he reflects on the lasting effects of the Global War on Terror.

Thanks for 2007, onto 2008

Guernica looks back on a year of awards, growth, and acclaim, with thanks to our readers.

Edwards Reconsidered

Norman Solomon reevaluates John Edwards in light of comments made by Dennis Kucinich about Barack Obama.

Journey to the Dark Side: The Bush Legacy (Take One)

When it came to news of Bush administration torture, kidnapping, and offshore imprisonment practices, 2007 ended in a deluge, not a trickle. Here, Tom Engelhardt offers a recap of the startling number of stories (many hardly noticed) on those subjects that appeared in December alone, as well as an initial attempt to get to the heart of the Bush legacy, one year early.

2007 News for Guernica Poets

An incomplete but still impressive list of 2007 publications and awards received by Guernica poetry advisers, contributors, guest editors, and interviewees.

Channeling Suze Orman

Norman Solomon distills CNBC's Suze Orman's message: If you're rich you're a winner; if you're not you're a loser.

'Mission Accomplished': O'Reilly Declares Victory in the War on Christmas

If Bill O'Reilly has, as he's claimed, won the "war on Christmas," it's time for him to call his troops home.

Drowning in Mortgage Debt: The Way Out?

Where should aid be directed to save homeowners at risk of drowning in mortgage debt?

Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2007

And the winner is...

The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck

Norman Solomon goes on Glenn Beck's TV show and talks corporate ownership of and advertising in media. He brings the discussion close to Mr. Beck's home, much to the chagrin of the host.

Gitmo Propaganda 2: A Wikileaks News Release

People stationed at Guantanamo Bay may be changing information on the web to shine a more positive light on the U.S. detention facility.

TomDispatch: The Secret Library of Hope: 12 Books to Stiffen Your Resolve

It is easy to feel discouraged these days. But that statement can be made of any "these days" in history. Still, throughout history, people have retained hope, making remarkable changes as a result. Here, Rebecca Solnit, offers some of those stories in her "secret library of hope."

Paying For It

Trickle-down economics don't work, and still, Democratic presidential candidates are wedded to them. Robert Reich offers what he says should be the Democratic version of tough love.

The USA's Human Rights Daze

As Human Rights Day (December 10) came and went with little coverage in the U.S. media, Norman Solomon points out that while "human rights" issues, when covered, are done so as faraway injustice and cruelty, the U.S. fails on many of those issues domestically.

Piano Wire Pupeteers: The Constitution, Media & Dennis Kucinich

In a speech given last week at San Francisco State University Sean Penn addressed the issue of electability among the Democratic presidential candidates, and what should make a them electable.

The Perfect Storm of Campaign 2008: War, Depression, and Turning-Point Elections

In February of this year, writing about the history of turning-point elections at Tomdispatch.com, Steve Fraser, author of an acclaimed history of Wall Street, Every Man a Speculator, asked a question, but didn't answer it: In the wake of the 2006 Democratic take-over of House and Senate, would campaign 2008 turn out to be a rare presidential election of historic proportions? Now, he offers that answer loud and clear.

Jewish Book Month recommended reading: Adrienne Rich

As Jewish Book Month comes to a close, poet-critic Stephen Burt recommends reading one of our nation's most celebrated poets.

The Proliferation Game: How the World Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb

Having followed the trail of A. Q. Khan, the "father" of the "Pakistani" bomb, for the last four years, Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins use rare early letters Khan wrote to a friend and associate to make a simple but extremely powerful and original point, which they put this way: "Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- as many as 120 weapons -- is no more Pakistani than your television set is Japanese. Or is that American? It was a concept developed in one country and, for the most part, built in another. Its creation was an example of globalization before the term was even coined." From TomDispatch.

The Media and Labor

Norman Solomon offers two essays on the media's coverage of the workforce, and just how often that coverage misses the mark.

TomDispatch: Who's the Enemy? In Iraq, It's Getting Harder to Find Any Bad Guys

The last three months have brought a dramatic decline in violence in Iraq with both U.S. and Iraqi death totals falling drastically. Under this improved situation, argues Robert Dreyfuss, an opportunity finally exists for a deal to be struck between the Sunni and Shia communities. However, having lost all its credibility over the past years, the U.S. is not in a position to broker the deal.

Advice to a Young Builder in Tough Times: Imperial Opportunities Abound

Couched as "advice" to a young builder in tough times domestically, Tom Engelhardt offers a tour of the facts-on-the-ground when it comes to the American garrisoning of the planet -- from the seldom described billion-dollar mega-bases the Bush administration has built in Iraq to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (about to be enlarged by a third) to bases ranging from Italy and Qatar to the horn of Africa.

Looking again at Aung San Suu Kyi

What a picture can tell us about the world's most stubborn democracy advocate

Chevron's David O'Reilly and the Power of Human Energy

The CEO of Chevron defends his company's right to profit off Burma's bloodbaths

The generals' shareholders

A new film on Burma demolishes the triangulations, rationalizations and hypocrisies of governments, corporate crooks and liars around the globe. It's also a fine love story.

Sharks Have Everything to Do with Poetry

What poetry can tell us about really living.

The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal

The recent media coverage given to Blackwater misses the mark by calling for a "better war" in Iraq when there should be no war in Iraq. Guest blogger Norman Solomon argues that "Finding better poster boys who can be touted as humanitarians rather than mercenaries won't change the basic roles of gun-toting Americans in a country that they have no right to occupy."

TomDispatch: The Coming Collision in Sudan, 'With the Lost Boys in Southern Sudan' (Part 2)

The second part of Independent journalist David Morse's report on his journey into Sudan.

TomDispatch: With the Lost Boys in Southern Sudan, 'Starting from Zero' (Part 1)

Independent journalist David Morse takes a dramatic journey into the southern reaches of Sudan, which, in the not too distant future, may be the point of origin for the next disastrous oil war on this planet.

Asian Artists, Authors Sign Open Letter Supporting People of Burma

We support the ongoing struggle of the people of Burma for basic human rights, and we admire their expressions of compassion for all humanity. As fellow humans, we stand with them.

U.N. Actions on Burma Must Be Scrutinized

We are very saddened and disappointed that the U.N. continues to stay silent on the corruption that exists between its officials and Burma's ruling regime.

Political 'Science' Truth and Consequences

Disdain for "science" is cause for political concern. Yet few Americans and no major political forces are "antiscience" across the board. The ongoing prerogative is to pick and choose.

Freedom as Theft: Honoring American Liberators

"Order 17": How a single document catches the essence of the sort of "freedom" the Bush administration brings to the planet, a freedom not seen since the heyday of European and Japanese colonialism.

I never thought I'd say it, but George Bush speaks for me

When he spoke about Burma today at the UN, for the first time I can remember (and if only very briefly) I felt proud of this administration.

The Ballad of Chris McCandless, 15 Years On

It was fifteen years ago this month when the body of Christopher Johnson McCandless, a 24-year-old honors student from a well-to-do Virginia family, was discovered by moose hunters in an abandoned bus deep in the Alaskan wilderness. In the years...

When Rasmussen Was King

Individual and group. Man and machine. Body and spirit. Strategy and instinct. Effort and luck. Etiquette and pluck. And pain. Exquisite pain. Sure, this year’s Tour de France was marred by shame and sanctimony. But really, so what? It’s still the best, most dramatic competition there is and dammit, I was missing it before it was even over.

TomDispatch: Is a Jewish Glasnost Coming to America? Despite a Backlash, Many Jews Are Questioning Israel

Tony Karon, senior editor at TIME Magazine, discusses how he first arrived at the comparison of Israeli behavior on the occupied West Bank to apartheid South Africa and then plunges into the changing attitudes of American Jews and the critical opening of the present moment.

Thomas Friedman: Hooked on War

Though Thomas Friedman's patience with the war in Iraq may be running out, he can't seem to bring himself to renounce the war that he helped to launch and then blessed as the incarnation of virtue, which falls in line with his history of enthusiasm for war.

Seven Years in Hell: On Body Counts, Dead Zones, and an Empire of Stupidity

On August 22nd the President addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention, giving what is already known as his "Vietnam speech." That day, George W. Bush took the full-frontal plunge into the still-flowing current of the Big Muddy, fervently embracing Vietnam analogy-land and offering the first official presidential body count of the Iraq War.

Bourne to run (and run and run, and swim a little, and then run some more)

In 2004, "Bloody Sunday" director Paul Greengrass seemed an unlikely choice to helm the second and third films in the Bourne series. Three years and two sequels later, I take a look at his impact on the genre.

An Anecdote about Liam Rector (1949-2007)

Liam Rector's efforts to revitalize poetry were two-fold: both writing and encouraging great verse. Not every artist wants to work on the apparatus of his art—the less glamorous side of sitting on committees, founding programs, judging contests—but Liam seemed comfortable...

Backspin for War: The Convenience of Denial

The man who ran CNN news during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary’s evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His denial says a lot about how “liberal media” outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military conformity.

Escalation by the Numbers: What "Progress" in Iraq Really Means

Someday, we will undoubtedly discover that, in the term "surge" -- as in the President's "surge" plan (or "new way forward") announced to the nation in January -- was the urge to avoid the language (and experience) of the Vietnam era.

8888 in Burma

If you're cynical about politics, you need look no further than Aung San Suu Kyi for inspiration.

A FOX Guarding the Hen House?

Aussie Rules Media

Open Letter to President Omar al Bashir of Sudan

For one year, Suleiman Jamous has been confined to a hospital in Kadugli, South Kordofan. He is suffering from an abdominal complaint and needs urgent medical attention. Without this attention his condition is deteriorating.

Don't You D.A.R.E. Disagree

Unless you're 18 or older.

The Lord Is Right to Hurt Me

A faithful flock pulls the wool over its eyes.

Planet Pentagon: How the Pentagon Came to Own the Earth, Seas, and Skies

For years, the U.S. military has been gobbling up large swaths of the planet and huge amounts of just about everything on (or in) it. So, with the latest Pentagon Iraq plans in mind, take a quick spin with TomDispatch's Nick Turse around this Pentagon planet of ours.

A Bloody Media Mirror

Many of America’s most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.

Too Closed for Comfort

In a "dark corner of the American experiment," when one door opens, another closes.

Not an Obituary for Nazik al-Malaika

Every news outlet that I can think to check has published an obituary for Iraqi poet Nazik al-Malaika. While her significance in the Arab literary world is concrete, her poetry is little known in the United States. In fact, very...

Enough to Make You Cry

When a Literary Giant Doesn't Know His Grass from his Elbow

On Dangerous Ground

Of night terrors and racism

'Wide Awake': I Go To Sleep

A documentary about insomnia: part film essay, part cure.

I Know It When I See It

Bullsh-t that is - the main ingredient in "obscenity" crackdowns.

O'Really?

Bill O'Reilly's Invisible Hand Job

America's Favorite Poems, Or Why Tractors Are Sexy

Reading at the kitchen table feels like homework, which is why I dislike the collected works of anyone who lived past thirty-five. If I can’t curl up with it, I don’t want it. Therefore I’m delighted that Robert Pinsky’s Favorite...

Deadly Illusions, Rest in Peace

No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won’t end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.

Why Does Misogynist, Violent, Greed-Promoting Music Have to Sound So Good?

If I could stop listening, I would. Nah, I wouldn’t.

Breathing in the Greenhouse Gases

Are you tired, yet, of the omnipotence of greenhouse gases? You can't swing a dead polar bear without hitting a story in a newspaper or magazine about how GHG (the street name for this uncontrolled substance) is causing natural or...

A Letter from the Streets of Paris--The Anti-Sarko demos

Greetings from Paris where Sarkozy has just won the national election. I watched the returns come in (standing by the door) at a soccer hooligan bar and when Sarkozy's victory was announced, the all-white, all-male crowd burst into applause and shouts.

You Go Grrrl...

Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism is on bookshelves now.

Five Catholic Supreme Court Justices. Should We Be Scared?

Catholics have their day — well, probably quite a few days — on the Supreme Court. Freak out! Eh hem, I mean, should we be freaking out?

Bush's Texas Chainsaw Massacre …Or The Clock Ticks for Thee (in Baghdad and Washington)

It had taken much thought and planning that wartime May Day four years ago when George W. Bush co-piloted an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Ashbery Turns Eighty, Still Rocks

When I first made the discovery that living poets existed, John Ashbery was the reigning rock star. My well-meaning mentors hurried me away from his work and put W. S. Merwin in my hands. Pound for pound, it was a...

The Supreme Court: Making misogyny official

A big muchos gracias to the Supreme Court for upholding the Federal Abortion Ban last week—at least now women know where we stand in this country. We don’t.

The Atlanta Idiocracy

The Journal-Constitution kills its book reviews section

Bowing Down to Our Own Violence

Under orders from the top, American soldiers routinely continue to inflict, or serve as a catalyst for, violence far more extensive than the shooting sprees that turned a placid Virginia campus into a slaughterhouse.

Dear Diary, I Didn't Finish a Book Today

“...and as for Auden in his bar on 39th Street or whichever New York street he was on, brooding on ‘the low, dishonest decade’ &mdash decades can’t be low or dishonest, it’s a crap historian’s or journalist’s phrase, OK between blinks but falling apart the moment you bring a spot of attention to it, ask a few questions — how does he rate himself in terms of lowness and dishonesty, as he sits in his bar on 39th Street, that’s a question, a real poet’s question... ” — Simon Gray

Don of the Dead

A Few Belated Thoughts on Imus

Just Looking

A benevolent fashion photographer and a quiet film about Carthusian monks have got me thinking about reverence.

Incest breeds mutants: the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, close up

A thinly disguised handout to the industry forbids the government from negotiating prices—which means drug companies can charge whatever the hell they want...

WaPo: Wage gap is 'a bargain'

Did you know that making less money than men is a good thing? Oh, you like paying the bills and feeding your kids? Well don't fret, Carrie Lukas is here to set you straight!

What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?

Could the U.S.'s secret plans to invade Iran start World War III? Noam Chomsky puts the Iran crisis in context.

Black Like That Guy Over There

The hoo-ha over the question of Barack Obama's blackness has quieted as the country inwardly deliberates. We'll hear more soon enough. In the meantime, I'm really confused.

The Accidental Environmentalists

It appears the Supreme Court is also drinking the Kool-aide with yesterday's landmark decision Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. In short, the Supreme Court decimated the primary legal argument supporting Dick & Company's strategy for refusing to stem the tide...

While McCain Walks in McNamara’s Footsteps

The antiwar movement shouldn’t pander to jingo-narcissism. If we argue that the war is bad because of what it is doing to Americans, what happens when the Pentagon finds ways to cut American losses?

Jesus Is Just All Weight with Me

Can Kids Say No to Drug Wars?

Waiting for the World to Change

The War in Iraq begins year FIVE-while you (and John Mayer) wait

How the U.S. can elicit a draw in Iraq

Washington's commitment to Maliki's government undermines U.S. diplomatic and military leverage with almost every relevant party in the country and the region, argues James Fearon in Foreign Affairs.

Seymour Hersh Mystery: A journalist writing bloody murder... and no one notices

Iran-Contra schemers met 2 years ago to discuss "lessons learned" from the 80s scandal. It would have worked far better, they decided, if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop. That's how they're doing it this time in Iraq.

Digitally Disenfranchised

Will whiz-bang internet campaigning leave the digitally disadvantaged behind?

Resisting Everything But Temptation

No sex please, we're American.

Polar Bears on Thin Ice

The environmental movement arguably started with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, serialized in the New Yorker in June 1962. By the time she died in 1964 from breast cancer, Ms. Carson shook up the American public, not to...

Putting Impeachment Back On the Table

Calls for impeachment have come from unlikely corners this week, including the Republican camp itself. Should Democrats get this issue back on the table?

Hostages to Policy: What We Know About Waste and War in Iraq

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives, almost two million have fled to other countries, and possibly millions more have been displaced in ethnic-cleansing campaigns. An estimated 4.5 million Iraqi children are malnourished; children are dying of preventable diseases. The Iraqi economy is in ruins; its oil industry functioning at levels below Saddam's day -- and there is no end in sight for any of this.

The moving target

Is the Bush administration falsely blaming Iran for its impotence in Iraq?

Oh No He Did Not!

Prince Charles disses the Clan McDonalds.

The Times v The Nation: Questioning Iran's role in Iraq--and White House credibility

Judith Miller's co-author on her now discredited "aluminum tubes" article is at it again--this time helping the Bushies make the case to invade Iran.

A Debate on Global Warming that is Anything but Goofy

Tony is no longer playing fetch. He clearly left the reservation (or at least the ranch) on the issue of global warming. It was bad enough that the British government published that holier-than-though-pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later report last November. Then he sent Sir...

The Man: He's so much cooler than you

Boston’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force/Lite Bright Terrorism debacle had its day. It’s now been replaced by this and by yesterday’s (God help us) “late-breaking news” that Britney has gone back into rehab. I suspect that Cartoon Network was trying to...

The Skinny

Banishing underweight models becomes the latest fashion craze.

Myth-Busting: Feminism created sluttiness

Sex-related anti-feminism generally falls in two categories: the argument that feminists are anti-sex (and by proxy anti-porn and anti-male) or, more recently, the idea that feminists are responsible for all the girls gone wild.

Sweet Land of Liberty - Some Restrictions Apply

The Nanny State tries to set curbs on crosswalking.

Playing the Fiddle while the Ice Melts

Global warming rallies and unites scientists, diplomats, politicians, economists and lawyers from almost every country around the world. Except the United States. We spent six long years running in the opposite direction. Why? It is almost too embarrassing to admit...

(World) War Fever

I thought I’d use my small allotment of space here to complain about my mother. That is, after all, what a blog is for: the personal attack accompanied by a peek into someone’s crazed thought-process. But stay with me on...

Are You There God? No, Really. I'm Asking.

Atheism gets mean.

Marching with the Beltway - Hollywood - NYC Popular Front

This past Saturday, (as the lingo goes) I “marched” in the D.C. protest against the Bush regime’s “surge.” Now, a D.C. march is a different from one in New York. In D.C., you listen to speeches on the Mall (Jane...

Viagra Gets the Shaft

An AIDS advocacy org claims Viagra is marketed to spread VD rather than cure ED.

The Pentagon vs. Press Freedom

We often hear that the Pentagon exists to defend our freedoms. But the Pentagon is moving against press freedom.

A Roe Resolution: Trust Women

Today--on the 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade--I have a request. Instead of writing about the legislation, the rhetoric, or the politics surrounding reproductive rights and justice, let's keep it simple. Let's just trust women.

The War and the Words for the War (Or...The Surging Escalation)

Even Bush came to realize that he needed a new plan. Reluctantly, he consulted with military leaders and various experts. He went to Camp David to search his heart. He spoke with his advisers. He probably nibbled (carefully) on a...

The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse

Some Democrats in Congress want to hand the president his head and some don't. But, as a practical matter, the distinction is moot. He's in the thrall of what you might call a repetition compulsion disorder that manifests as digging in his heels.

Myth-Busting: Feminism is a romance-killer

Right up there with man-hating and bra-burning is the idea that feminists want to destroy romance.

Gerald Ford: War and the Place for Civility

Had Gerald Ford not existed, he would have to have been created by Capra. Imagine the story: an obscure congressional representative respected for his civility (but not his intelligence), is made Vice President. The promotion, however, is intended as a...

Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006

Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer.

Thanks for 06!

On the horizon: Ha Jin: the interview, India's (non-Bollywood) filmmakers, hyper-rapid urban renewal in China, Frederic Tuten/guest fiction editor, and the Guernica chap book (insert clever name here)...

Media Sham for Iraq War -- It’s Happening Again

During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war. It’s happening again.

The Office on Violence Against Women gets a new (scary) director

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is a tremendous feminist success story. So you can imagine my disappointment when I found out the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) (where VAWA lives) is going to be run by yet another wacky Bush appointee.

The New Media Offensive for the Iraq War

The American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

That other war we're losing

A teenage narc wunderkind , federal aid for drug dealers, and the poppy fields of Helmand province.

Democrats and strippers win big

Seattle bounces stealth puritanism from the champagne room

Girl politicians have cooties

Tuesday’s election results were a huge win for women…so why the sour grapes?

November Surprise

Rummy Resigns!

Santorum Defeats Santorum

Vile theocon Rick Santorum is gone.

A referendum in Iraq: to stay or not to stay?

How about a referendum to decide the big question on Iraq: should we stay (the course), change strategy, or just leave?

Conservatives: Knocking Up Teen Girls One Law at a Time

Conservatives and anti-choicers sure must love pregnant teen girls. Because it seems that they're trying to create more of them at every turn.

W equals Wronger than ever

One is tempted to ask why the president and his retinue seem so hellbent on getting it wrong.

Nuclear Power

Despite what the nuclear industry says, plutonium and uranium won't decrease the need for Middle East oil.

Meditations on the Current Furor

The combatants in this latest pre-election uproar represent perhaps the most diverse sampling of political heavyweights in history. And yet, glaring disparities continue, even if stories of day-to-day inequality and injustice get buried behind the political sniping.

George Saunders is a genius

Geniuses don't just take the money and run. Certified genius George Saunders in Guernica past and future.

Blogging the Clinton Global Initiative

I'm at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting this week, hobnobbing with world leaders. Okay so I'm in the press room with the rest of the journalist riffraff. But there's free food--beat that!

The Real Rudy Giuliani

Since September 11th, 2001, what has remained unchallenged is the leadership of NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As commemorations die down and Rudy's presidential hopes light up, the American Prospect rethinks the Rudy myth.

Reiner Leist @ the Strand

Events: Photographer Reiner Leist speaking at the Strand Bookstore in New York on Monday, 11 September.

Why Do Conservatives Hate Vaginas?

Conservatives can't seem to make up their mind when it comes to feminism--is it dangerous or dead? Apparently it's both.

'Bad' News for Energy-Dependent America

A cult has sprouted up around the following gripe. To feed our domestic oil addiction, say many, the U.S. is in bed with the Saudis. This cult of dependency has been infectious. Here's the bad news: It isn't true.

Guy gone wild

Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis takes misogyny to a new level. And we let him.

The Logic of Terror

Straight from the charter of Hamas to the lips of Mel Gibson.

The Crisis in Lebanon: A Q&A With Larry Cox of Amnesty International

"Violations of humanitarian law mean kids sleeping, trying to escape from the horrors of war, being blown up. It means rockets coming down on communities that have not taken up arms on anybody. You know, schoolchildren, just regular people."

Is the FDA finally coming around on emergency contraception?

Women have been waiting (and waiting) for the FDA to approve over-the-counter status for emergency contraception (EC), commonly referred to as the “morning after pill.” Could Bush’s nominee to head the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, be the guy to finally approve the drug?

Applauding While Lebanon Burns, By Norman Solomon

Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on July 25 that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government.

More Weird News from Burma

The Burmese are suffering under such dire inflation, some are selling their hair.

The education of Lt. Watada

First Lieutenant Ehren K. Watada's brigade left for Iraq without him. But his decision not to serve, for which he faces court-martial, wasn't made overnight.

Today: Politics Way Out on the Fringe

On Wednesday our House of Representatives, the shorter of our two great legislative pillars, decided that they do indeed have the power to exclude certain federally mandated or regulated practices from the federal court system. Wow! Didn't know they could do that. And if that wasn't enough for you, dear reader, take a wild guess as to what they chose to block from the courts . . .

Rape as a weapon of war

The recent rape and murder charges against a discharged Army private have sparked an inquest, an apology from the Bush administration, and plenty of media coverage. On the surface, it seems like this incident is being taken seriously. Not so much.

Cancer, schmancer

Cervical cancer kills 200,000 women worldwide every year. So why are religious conservatives trying to keep girls from a potentially lifesaving vaccine?

War on Terror Goes Domestic

Last week the FBI arrested seven men in Miami for wanting to be terrorists. The men, who had no bombs, nor guns, nor plans, were mostly loitering around a windowless warehouse where one of them lived.

Bush says he supports contraception. Kinda.

Bush has (finally) come out to say that he supports contraception. But the rhetoric doesn't match the reality.

Cheney Calls Press 'Tattletales' Over Bank-gate Disclosure

If the press would just continue to report on celebrities and entertainment, none of us would be in this mess: VP. 'If you want to know what's news, ask us and we'll tell you,' Cheney continued.

A Blank Spot Where a Person Could Be

With the 2006 New York State elections, we could be seeing the end of draconian drug laws and mandatory sentencing. With 1 out of every 136 Americans in prison, what could be more welcome a change?

This Is Bravery

15-year-old Ava Lowry from Alabama has received death threats for her anti-war blog Peace Takes Courage. She has been interviewed on CNN and the Alan Colmes show, and featured in The New York Times.

Imprisoned Burmese Democracy Leader Turns 61

She's been under house arrest for 10 of the past 17 years. Her crime? The pursuit of freedom. For these reasons, she has been compared to Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Today is Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday. After a bout with illness, she remains cut off from the world.

Election 2004: Mark Crispin Miller Takes Aim at Salon and Democrats in Denial

Mark Crispin Miller--who's amassed a disturbing amount of evidence on the theft of the 2004 presidential election--fires back at Salon. Though their writer Manjoo misuses his evidence, he writes, Salon won't post his letter. Apparently at Salon, an argument can be made only once, and if someone misquotes you you can't redress.

Guernica June

A preview of what's to come later this week, this month and in months ahead: Billy Collins interview and poem, Franco Ferrucci fiction, Bolivian ecology 101, the Biafra conflict, the Chad/Sudan oil pipeline...

Was the 2004 election stolen? No, says Farhad Manjoo in Salon

More perspectives on Rolling Stone's recent bombshell article by Robert Kennedy on the alleged theft of the 2004 presidential election.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

A new article by Robert Kennedy in Rolling Stone examines this earth-shatteringly important question you may have heard some well-timed little mumblings about here and there. Empathically, yes: the 2004 election was stolen! Let the media blackout resume.

In Burma, arrested over a poem

Burmese were arrested this spring for writing poems, wearing the wrong clothes, taking pictures and having been elected to higher office--16 years before

It Depends on the Definition of Clear

Tom Bevan attacks Jesse Jackson's apparent incoherence on impeachment. Is it demonizing the left or a constitutional duty? It's both--and more. What's so hard about that?

New content for May

What we're offering our readers now & in weeks to come: Conyers and Collins, Svoboda and Bly, impeachment, global warming and i-poetry... a cornucopia indeed.

It's 10pm--have you read a poem today?

Before May ends, stop by Guernica's Poetry section! We've posted two new translations by Robert Bly who was gracious enough to let us publish them. Cecco Angiolieri's sonnet and Tomas Tranströmer's three haiku allow us to revisit formal poems through...

Governor Brian Schweitzer in New York

Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana appeared at an event in Manhattan last week and detailed his vision for a better environmental and energy policy and a return to responsible government

Reactions to USA Today Report on Domestic Spying

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the panel, sounded incredulous about the latest report and railed against what he called a lack of congressional oversight. He argued that the media was doing the job of Congress. ''Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al Qaeda?''

Future Fiction

While W. and his spin meisters will most certainly produce more fiction than us this month (why would this one be any different?), we’re going to give them a run for their dirty money.

Taking the President to Court

As the U.S. government flounders between democracy and tyranny, there is a growing synergy among impeachment and censure advocates.

Hey, Geniuses Behind the Iraq Invasion, How About a Plan?

Here in New York there is guffawing and sighing if the subway takes a little longer to come. Imagine your house getting hit by a cluster bomb, your uncle getting blinded by the explosion, your sister or brother being killed and buried under the rubble.

Guernica Gives a Shout Out

Guernica is proud to congratulate poet Sandy Tseng, who recently won the The Nation's Discovery Award. In June of last year, "The Bypass" (one of ten poems in Sandy's winning manuscript) was originally published in these pages.

Rumi: Out Beyond Ideas of Wrong-Doing and Right

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

Rallies Planned for Darfur as Deadline for Peace Approaches

As rallies for Darfur are planned for Washington and other cities, have a look at Guernica's Darfur/Sudan coverage.

From the archives: Costa Rican President Oscar Arias

In a region increasingly defined by anti-U.S. progressives, President Oscar Arias tells why Costa Rica--erstwhile member of the "Coalition of the Willing" (without an army of its own)--is at odds with U.S. foreign policy.

Guernica on Built Green TV

Guernica to Appear on Built Green TV (Channel 34 in Manhattan) this Friday at 7:30

Guernica Congratulates Kristof on his 2006 Pulitzer for Commentary

When Guernica interviewed Nick Kristof of the NY Times last June, he talked a bit about an early love of journalism, his first Pulitzer (for covering Tiananmen Square), about treading the line between journalism and activism, and how we all have to do more to end the genocide in Darfur.

Mardi Gras 2006 / Gentilly: Party at Ground Zero

I have been to New Orleans many times, but I had never been down for Mardi Gras. This year I went down to take the emotional temperature of the city, six months after the devastation of hurricane Katrina. I found, amid the piles of renovation rubble and vast stretches of empty homes, that this city which is so unique and so rich in culture and tradition has not lost its sense of self, and that the people who make New Orleans what it is have no intention of giving up.

Mardi Gras 2006 / Fat Tuesday at the Zulu Club and Treme

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, six months after hurricane Katrina, and I find that the people of the city are asserting their spirit in the midst of their reconstruction efforts.

Mardi Gras 2006 /Ash Wednesday

This year's Mardi Gras was like a city-wide barbecue, an open-air party in what is essentially a disaster zone that is also everyone's home. Now, the party is over, and since I hadn't been able to before, I take a ride out to see the hardest-hit areas of the city.

Spring Preview

Recently, at our weekly Guernica staff meeting we sat around the conference room table, ate Dinosaur Barbecue, and worked on our all-important mission statement, one of the principle legal requirements for our move to non-profit status...

Thanks for Oh Five

When we at Guernica made our wish lists earlier this year, we found our staff had been driving toward some pretty lofty and--considering our newness and small staff--seemingly unattainable goals...

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