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#11
Thoughtful
"Relentlessly Partisan"
Issue

01.25.1999

from back cover illustration
by Eric Drooker

Features

• Shame of the Cities:
  Gentrification in the New Urban America
  

• Che Guevera Goes to Business School
  

• Guerrillas in Our Midst
  

• Pirate Radio vs. Corporate Piracy:
  Who Owns the Airwaves?
  

• Men & the Art of Mothering:
  An interview with co-parenting theorist Isaac Balbus
  

• Hot Clowns:
  "Some women like lawyers. Some women like doctors. Judy liked clowns."
  

• WorldWatch [Direct Action Media Network]:
  Endgame in East Timor, Zapatista Rebellion Continues, Activists in India Target Monsanto
  

• The Early Years: William "Clambone" Jefferson
  "Pee Wee, when he wasn't out knifing prostitutes, played an accomplished accordion, usually when blind drunk..."
  

Book Reviews

• Pacifism as Pathology:
  Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America
  [Ward Churchill]
  

• Washington on $10 Million a Day:
  How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation
  [Ken Silverstein]
  

• The Pleasure Principle:
  Sex, Backlash & the Struggle for Gay Freedom
  [Michael Bronski]
  

• Black on White:
  Black Writers on What It Means to be White
  [David Roediger]
  

• Meanwhile, in Other News:
  A Graphic Look at Politics in the Empire of Money, Sex and Scandal
  [Matt Wuerker]
  

• Surrealist Women:
  An International Anthology
  [Penelope Rosemont]
  

• Penguin Soup for the Soul
  [Tom Tomorrow]
  

Music Reviews

• Tom Ze, Fabrication Defect [+background]

• Curtis Mayfield, Back to the World / Love
  

• Linton Kwesi Johnson, Independant Intavenshun: The Island Anthology
  

• Stereolab, Aluminum Tunes
  (Switched On Vol. 3)
  

• Tortoise, TNT
  

• Unwound, Challenge for a Civilized Society
  

• Dirty Three, Ocean Songs
  

• Blackstar,
  Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Blackstar
  

• !Tchkung!, Incite: A Soundtrack for Post World Insurrection

Zines and Periodicals

• Annals of Improbable Research,
  The Journal of Record for Inflated Research and Personalities
  

• Good Bye!: The Journal of Contemporary Obituaries
  

• Maxine: A Literate Companion for Churlish Girls and Rakish Women
  

• Q.U.E.E.R.: Quasi Unionized Ecdysiasts Emit Radium
  

• P.R. Watch: Public Interest Reporting on the Public Affairs Industry

Film Reviews

• Pink Flamingos:
  The Seminal Trash Classic Gets a Facelift

#10
Special
"Unnervingly Meaty"
Issue

10.15.1998

Features

• The Economy of Cannibalism:
  Interview with the authors of Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?
  

• The Poetics of Commerce:
  Martín Espada on Nike's Poetry Slam
  

• I Love to Burn the Flag
  "Sometimes the stars would ignite first, sometime the stripes. Sometimes, the whole thing would go up in a blazy of Old Glory..."
  

• Pandora's Genetic Box:
  An interview with environmental activist Ronnie Cummins
  

• Racializing Crime:
  Tim Wise on the color of pathology in America
  

• Five Blind Giants:
  Money, Power & the Corporate Hall of Shame
  

• The Zapruder Film: Director's Cut

• Smoke Signals in Context:
  Ward Churchill on Native Americans and the movie industry

• Faster, Poetry! Slam! Slam!
  Benjamin Ortiz on the National Poetry Slam and its discontents

• Funkadelic: The Afro-Alien Diaspora

Book Reviews

• Dark Alliance:
  The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
  [Gary Webb]
  

• Whiteout:
  the CIA, Drugs, and the Press
  [Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair]
  

• Drug Crazy:
  How We Got Into This Mess & How We Can Get Out
  [Mike Gray]
  

• Slaughterhouse:
  The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry
  [Gail Eisnitz]
  

• Tonatiuh's People:
  A Novel of the Mexican Cataclysm
  

Music Reviews

• Olu Dara,
  In the World: From Natchez to New York
  

• Hypermarket, Famous Profiles in Retail
  

• Os Mutantes, "A" e o "Z"
  

• Etta James, Life, Love & The Blues

Zines and Periodicals

• Duplex Planet #150
  

• Guinea Pig Zero #5: The Journal for Human Research Subjects
  

• Farm Pulp #34: The Juxtaposing Zine for the Tired of Standing
  

• Journal of Unconventional History Vol. 9, #3

#9
Irreverent
"Menacingly Poetic"
Issue

08.15.1998

Features

• Blood Money : Mexico & the Poverty of Globalization

• Invisible Sister
  An interview with Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia.

• Holocaust Mutual Funds
  "It has come to the attention of our commission that the two-thousand dollars you have invested in various mutual funds were, at one time, used to help finance the Holocaust..."
  

• Two Weeks on St. John's Wort and I'm Still a Bitch
  

• Circle of Resistance
  American Book Award-winning author, poet, and former bar bouncer, monkey caretaker, latrine digger and tenants rights lawyer Martín Espada discusses what a working class poetry looks like.
  

• The Starving Planet Guide to Guatemala
  "Your high school friends will tell you that this is a scam, but you will not listen..."
  

• Deep Into the Surface:
  An exhibition of photography by Barbara Traub
  

• WorldWatch:
  John Ross: Mexico, the Once & Future Indonesia, Noam Chomsky: The "Problem of Indonesia" & Its Place Within the U.S. System, Protestors Destroy Genetically Engineered Wheat, Telephone Workers Strike in Puerto Rico, Border Bosses Go All Out to Stop Strike at Han Young
  

• Simplify Your Life...With Disney!

• Coffee
  How much labor, paper, fuel and time goes into that cuppa joe?
  

• Drop That Carrot, You're Coming With Us
  Anti-vegetarian court actions in Gary, Indiana?

• God's Total Quality Management Questionnaire
  Did your God arrive in good working order? Which model God did you acquire?
  

Book Reviews

• Cloudsplitter:
  A look at the work of Russell Banks
  

• Mema's House, Mexico City:
  On Transvestites, Queens & Machos
  [Annick Prieur]
  

Poetry

• Cowboy Roka
  [Benjamin Ortiz]
  

• Imagine the Angels of Bread
  [Martín Espada]

• City of Coughing and Dead Radiators
  [Martín Espada]

• The Policeman's Ball
  [Martín Espada]

#8
Significant
"Impressively Colored"
Issue

05.15.1998

Features

• Little White Lies
  An interview with anti-racist activist Tim Wise

• My Day as a Dom
  "I'd heard women could make a lot more money for hitting men just a little harder--with implements..."
  

• Uncle Sam's Indonesian Killers
  An interview with journalist Allan Nairn about the extent of U.S. involvement (and complicity) in the regime of Indonesia president Suharto.
  

• Globalization--Third Wave:
  The Rise of the Information Economy
  

• My Summer Romance
  "It was as perfect as I had imagined it. Perfect in every aspect, except one..."
  

Book Reviews

• The Annexation of Mexico:
  From the Aztecs to the IMF
  [John Ross]
  

• The Celling of America:
  An Inside Look at the US Prison Industry
  [Daniel Burton-Rose]

• Thy Will Be Done:
  The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil
  [Gerard Colby & Charlotte Dennett]
  

Marginalia

• Stupid Zine Tricks
  We'll show you ours if you show us yours

#6
Opinionated
"Get Whitey"
Issue

08.15.1997

Features

• Toward a Political Economy of Information
  Who needs the highway that is under construction?
  

• Understanding and Confronting the Terror State
  The inglorious history and contentious future of the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia
  

• Controlling Money
  Make it yourself: community currency
  

• Notes From Overground:
  Potshots at the overground media
  

• White Silence, White Solidarity
  Toward a break with whiteness & white privilege
  

• Hydro-Cooled Super-Saline Tumescence
  New mega-liposuction technique now available
  

• Eleven Inherent Rules of Corporate Behavior
  Profit, growth, competition, aggression, amorality, heirarchy, dehumanization, exploitation, and opposition to nature. Go New World (dis)Order.
  

• Black Liberation Radio
  Napolean Williams & the campaign to shut down micropower community radio in Decatur, Illinois
  

• Browser Wars:
  Microsoft. Netscape. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Choose.
  

• Jugglers Local 151 Strike Deemed "Sad"
  A general juggling strike was called today by rank-and-file members of the Intentional Idiots of the World (IIW) in Skokie, Illinois
  

#5
Provocative
"My Other Bludgeon
is a Nike"
Issue

05.15.1997

Features

• Decipher the Revolutionary Communist Party Propaganda Contest
  Figure out what the hell Bob Avakian & the RCP are trying to say & win mysterious trinkets
  

• Nike Come Home, All is Forgiven:
  The Prison-Industrial Complex marches on
  

• Black Liberation Radio Raided
  

• Micropower Broadcasting:
  Why now & how. A beginner's guide
  

• Over Your Shoulder
  A dissident's guide to monkeywrenching Big Brother

• How Free is the Free Market?
  Noam Chomsky on why the "free market" is really socialism for the rich
  

• Dare to Keep Drug Dogs Off Drugs
  

• Immune System Toxins
  25% of the children in the U.S. now lives with a chronic conditionm due largely to the prevalance of immunotoxins such as PCBs, cadmium and mercury.
  

• Project Censored's 1996 Top Ten Censored Stories:
  Nuclear proliferation in space, Shell Oil's activities in Africa, perks for the wealthy hidden in minimum wage bill, the P.R. industry's secret war on activists, blind eye to white collar crime at the Justice Department, bank mergers increase risk of failure, corporate America's enthusiastic entry into the poverty business, Big Brother goes high-tech, U.S. troops exposed to uranium during Gulf War, facing global food scarcity.
  

Book Reviews

• The Glory of Capitalism:
  Clay Butler's Sidewalk Bubblegum collection
  

Music Reviews

• Sleater Kinney , Dig Me Out

• Sleater Kinney,
  May 8th Show at the Lounge Ax in Chicago
  

Zine Reviews

• Fragments #1 :
  The Disintegration Issue
  

• The Idler :
  Literature for Loafers
  

• Farm Pulp #30:
  The juxtaposing zine for the tired of standing

#4
Polemical
"Thoroughly Earthy"
Issue

02.15.1997

Features

• Queers & the Freedom to Choose
  

• The Watershed Politics of Ralph Nader & Winona LaDuke:
  The first national environmental politics campaign

• Cheap Memes & the Virtual Press
  

• The Face of a New Revolution:
  They're the Promise Keepers, the face of a new Christian revolution in America, a visage that is overwhelmingly male, white and conservatively middle class
  

• Consuming Ourselves
  Waking up from the American Dream
  

• Cracking the Drug War Myth
  The CIA, the media & the crack epidemic

• An Indigenous View of North America
  Winona LaDuke on rethinking geography. "On a worldwide scale, there are 5000 nations of indigenous people, 500,000,000 indigenous people in the world. 5000 nations..."
  

Book Reviews

• Not For Rent:
  Conversations with creative activists in the U.K.
  

• Take the Rich off Welfare:
  The U.S. hands over $448 billion a year to corporations and wealth individuals. Why?
  [Mark Zepezauer & Arthur Naiman]
  

Music Reviews

• Sleater Kinney, Self-Titled & Call the Doctor

• Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco,
  The Past Didn't Go Anywhere
  

Zine Reviews

• My Evil Twin Sister #2:
  Hometown Interstate-5
  

• Radical Pizza:
  Food for Thought
  

• Bust #8 :
  "I wanted my Bust review to be in keeping with the whole 'collective' thing, so I invited two excellent wimmin over to my house for a Bust review/dinner...I scrawled four detailed pages of notes...Then we got stoned. I never found the notes. This is our review..."
  

#1
Scattershot
"Atrociously Designed"
Issue

01.01.1996

LiP #1 hit the streets on January 1st, 1996 and was distributed by hand to about a dozen independent bookstores and coffee shops around Chicago. Printed entirely on "liberated" paper and laser printers, stapled together by hand, and written in an over-the-top style guaranteed to alienate all but the most dogged, all 100 copies of the debut issue sold out. You can safely blame this encouraging response for all of the subsequent LiP we've foisted off onto an unsuspecting world.

Though there was little in this issue which merits reprinting on the site, the intellectual seeds of LiP's focus were already apparent. Serious stories urging U.S. citizen support for the Zapatista's struggle in Chiapas, analysis of rape themes in entertainment, a reprinted piece by Israel Shahak and Noam Chomsky on right wing fundamentalism, the last words of Nigerian Ogoni activist and Nobel Prize-winning author Ken Saro Wiwa and a look at the effects of NAFTA two years after its passage were accompanied by—ahem—less straightforward and perhaps more entertaining fare about everything from lesbian puppet shows in Argentina to a far-out piece about CIA mind control techniques.

At its beginning, LiP was a zine in the purest sense—self-published, distributed by hand, and had all the trappings of many zines: low production values, little or no editing to speak of, a willingness to express unpopular or marginalized opinions and analysis, and as much attitude as could be mustered. The back cover featured a full page drawing of an emaciated man clenching jailbars and screaming.

Another way to describe it would be to say that it was purely a vehicle for self-expression, and that considerations of quality and thoroughness did not intrude on the process. This do-it-yourself approach, exemplified and encouraged by the diverse and sizeable zine world, was instrumental in the early development of publisher Brian Brasel. Besides being entirely laid out in CorelDraw, with each page being pasted up and printed out as a single graphics file (anyone who's done desktop publishing will surely groan at the inefficiency of this), it was crudely stapled together, causing several readers to comment that reading LiP had actually given them bloody fingers.

The zine community was supportive: LiP received positive reviews from Factsheet Five, Zine World, and the Alternative Press Review, to name just a few.

As LiP evolved into a proper magazine—as proper as a sporadically self-published magazine that rarely paid contributors can be—many things were added or, conversely, fell by the wayside. Editorial and production quality increased on a steady trajectory, and by issue #11, a solid core group of volunteer editors ensured that everything in LiP had been edited, copyedited, proofed and vetted. Stories were commissioned and editors were involved at each stage of the process, making sure the story fit our vision and sensibilities.

Now, even staples have gone by the wayside. LiP resurfaced as an online project in 2001, and has had much success. LiP articles have been selected no less than four times on the Utne Web Watch, and have appeared on the virtual pages of MediaChannel.org, PopPolitics.com, ZNet.org, and numerous unauthorized sites which shall remain unnamed. In early 2002, LiP was nominated for a South by Southwest People's Choice Award in the "Content E-Zine" category.

What's remained consistent, however, throughout LiP's now 5-year lifespan has been the championing of values laid out in our mission statement, which first appeared in issue #4.