The Roots of Liberty
Repression and Resistance in Haiti
While US activists remain focused on Washington’s disastrous occupation of Iraq, another ill-advised “regime change” the Bush administration engineered in our own hemisphere remains largely overlooked. | by Ben Terrall

Word Alchemy
Diane DiPrima on Art, Honesty, and Selling Out
"There's always this search for emotional honesty in a poem: The attempt to be present, being willing to expose the process in the writing rather than covering your tracks and making it a polished artifact." | by Joe Pachinko

Black Market Organs
Inside the Trans-Atlantic Transplant Tourist Trade
A look inside the growing trade of transplant tourism: the seller, the buyer, and the brokers exploiting both of them. | by Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Firespitter
Jayne Cortez and the Poetics of Diasporic Resistance
While many current discussions of the confluence of African American forms of musical expression and dub poetry are often limited to rap, or, more generally, to the spoken word movement, Jayne Cortez has always been someone whose musical/poetic sensibility refuses to be confined to a single national identity. | by Ron Sakolsky

A Brief History of Time
Since World War II, the mass marketing of products—and an even more ubiquitous, consumer-driven media sphere—has convinced Americans that the good life is the goods life. As a society, we have been persuaded to trade all of our gains in productivity for money and stuff, and none for more time. | by John de Graaf

I Want Herpes!
I want herpes. No, I really do. | by Jenn Sutkowski

Pimps and Hos
Selling an Illusion, Stealing a Dream
The violence, criminalization, humiliation and other problems rampant on all sides of the sex trade are part of a larger picture—of a society where men feel validated in using and abusing women; where police arrest women but not men for prostitution-related crimes; where sex workers of color earn far less and face more abuse than white sex workers. | by Kari Lydersen

Seed Control
Biotechnology, Corn & the Corporate
Threat to the Global Food Supply
Dr. Ignacio Chapela talks about the controversy surrounding his discovery of GM contamination in Mexico—and how the biotech industry has tried to suppress the results at every turn. | interview by Jeff Conant

Trespass at Will
Squatting as Direct Action, Human Right and Justified Theft
The question of squatting as theft is actually twofold: Is squatting a justifiable form of theft—or is it theft at all? Should squatting be considered a crime, or is the bigger crime denying shelter to those in need? | by Erin Wiegand

Five-Finger Discounted
The Uses and Abuses of Shoplifting
Shoplifting's normalization and trivialization as a commonplace form of delinquency shows that it poses no significant threat to capitalism. Would something truly subversive or dangerous ever become normalized in such a way? | by Justine Sharrock

Activistism
Left Anti-Intellectualism and Its Discontents
The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology and it is as deeply felt and intellectually totalizing as any of the great belief systems of yore. The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drum, who lead the "trainings" and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed. They are activistists. | by Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti

Hot Girl-on-Girl Action
The Peculiar Problem of Politics,
Pornography and the Ass-Kicking Babe
There’s something going on in the culture that makes the Ass-Kicking Babe such a hot property. I would love to argue that we’re seeing a feminist influence on the way that femaleness can now be combined with power. Unfortunately, I can’t: These contemporary babes’ überfemininity combined with competence in hand-to-hand combat may be refreshingly free of Varla’s dubious “my sexuality is out of control and can kill you” appeal, but that doesn’t mean it equals a feminist statement. | by Lisa Jervis

Working for the Man Every Night and Day
Black Conservatives and the Politics of Self-Abuse
What about racism, you may ask. What racism? To the black conservatives of the world—and to the whites who have made them media stars entirely out of proportion to their scholarly credentials—racism is just an excuse black people use to explain away their own internal shortcomings. | by Tim Wise

Drying Up
The Global Water Privatization Pandemic
In virtually every part of the world, multinational corporations are moving to buy up local water supplies. Why? Because it’s good
business and because people can (and do) die without it. | by Kari Lydersen and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine

Bring the Noise
Impacting the Sonic Commons
Q: What’s the line for you between communication and confrontation?

A: Very thin. Political art is frequently too didactic. This is why the art world despises political art. Political art for the most part sucks. We know it. We want to feel good about the little skits people do, we want to like the music our friends make, we want to support ‘em, we want our community to grow, and we want to foster DIY projects, but it frequently sucks. We have to stop making garbage and start making good political art. | interview by Daniel Burton-Rose

Power & Profit in Indian Country
A Corporation Disguised as a Nation?
Ray Halbritter, the leader of the Oneida Nation in upstate New York, is one of the richest men in the state. He owns the media company that publishes the nation's premier American Indian newspaper, Indian Country Today. To a lot of his own people, Halbritter is a self-appointed king who's destroyed the tribe's traditional matrilineal form of government in favor of a male-dominated, corporate organization. And his strong arm tactics have a lot of Oneida wondering just what kind of sovereignty they have. | by Kari Lydersen

In Defense of Performance
Performance Art, Consumer Culture & Global Politics
"My job as a performance artist may be to open up a temporary utopian/dystopian space, a "de-militarized zone" in which meaningful “radical” behavior and progressive thought are allowed to take place, even if only for the duration of the performance. In this imaginary zone, both artist and audience members are given permission to assume multiple and ever-changing positionalities and identities. In this border zone, the distance between “us” and “them,” self and other, art and life, becomes blurry and unspecific." | by Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Pulling Injustice Up From the Roots
Behind the shiny, happy images promoted by the fast-food industry, with its never-ending commercials on TV fueled by over $3 billion in marketing annually, and behind the supermarket advertising that celebrates the abundance of our harvest each Thanksgiving, there is another reality. Behind those images, the reality is that there are farm workers who contribute their sweat and blood so that enormous corporations can profit, all the while living in sub-poverty misery, without benefits, without the right to overtime or protection when they organize. | by Kari Lydersen

The Final Girl
An interview with Daphne Gottlieb
In her book, Final Girl, former slam poet, scholar and professor of feminist film critique Daphne Gottlieb takes on the ever-intriguing issues of gender, sex and death through the lens of the pop cultural phenomenon of horror movies. Some of the works in the book seem glossy and clipped, like a highly-stylized movie, others are full of imagery and wordplay that stimulate the senses and manipulate the mind. | interview by Kari Lydersen

Fighting Long Odds
Government Malfeasance Continues
in Indian Trust Case
Filed more than seven years ago by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfoot tribe, the Indian Trust case—also known as Cobell vs. Norton—is easily one of the biggest stories of government criminality in modern U.S. history. The case has turned into such a nightmare for the Department of the Interior and Treasury that the government now has more than 100 lawyers assigned to the case, more than they employed in the Microsoft antitrust litigation.

And perhaps most significantly, the government is losing. Badly. | by Brian Awehali

Medicine, Prostitution & Self-Defense
An interview with activist Ronica Mukerjee
After working with two Seattle-based anti-violence projects, Home Alive and Chaya, as well as being an initial member of the Infernal Noise Brigade, Ronica Mukerjee is currently establishing a Chinese medicine practice in New York City. LiP spoke with her recently about her current work with prostitutes, her past work for a Calcutta-based child prostitution rescue and support organization, and the philosophy behind being a self-defense instructor.

Casualties of War
Immigrants Continue to Perish
at U.S.-Mexico Border
"We're living a human tragedy here at the border," said Garcia. "Everyone knows about the Berlin Wall, but we lose more people every year at the US-Mexico border than in the entire history of the Berlin Wall, and it seems like no one knows about it. These are horrible, unnecessary deaths. People have to go through a deadly obstacle course to pick our fruit and make our clothes." | by Kari Lydersen

Writing the Marvelous
Surrealism, Revolutionary Poetics and
the Contagion of Elephants
The Surrealist movement, often misrepresented simply as a school of painting, was in fact founded by poets, and the Surrealist idea of poetry departs radically from prevailing conceptions. Founded in the chauvinistic aftermath of World War I, Surrealism put the accent on freedom, starting with the freedom of the imaginary. | by Franklin Rosemont

Defending the Unwelcome Stranger
The Truth About Immigration
In this time of renewed Nativist impulses, perhaps we would do well to revisit some of the more traditional anti-immigrant rhetoric, so as to demonstrate the fallacies that permeate the discourse and restore some sanity, not to mention accuracy, to the debate over this important issue. | by Tim Wise

Living in Terror
Undocumented Immigrants Suffer
in Post Sept-11 Era
Even though the United States prides itself on being a "melting pot," immigrants have always suffered racism and xenophobia from their neighbors, exploitation from their bosses, harassment and abuse from the police and neglect or persecution from the government. In this first article in a three part series focusing on U.S. immigration policy in the post-Sept. 11 era, Kari Lydersen explores the cross-border economic and political divide.

Widening the Parameters of Repression
The Law, Activism and "Terrorism"
"There has always been a degree of overzealous policing and surveillance of political agitators," says Toronto-based immigration and human rights lawyer Amina Sherazee. "Even before 9/11, there was an escalation against activists in general, against anti-globalization and environmental activists in particular. The intention of the state is to create a chill effect, to create an internal backlash even within movements." | interview by Justin Podur

Held in Contempt
American Indians & the Department of the Interior's $100 Billion Shell Game
In the largest-ever class action lawsuit against the federal government, American Indians are demanding an end to insult, theft and broken promises. Instead, despite contempt charges against Interior Secretary Gale Norton, among others, "The defendants are forever reorganizing themselves, moving organizational boxes around on a chart, devising new acronyms, and renaming tasks and entities in deeper and deeper bureaucratic jargon in a pathetic effort to create the phony impression of, if not progress, at least movement." | by Silja Talvi and Brian Awehali

Live By Their Tools, Die By Their Tools
The Political Limitations of Culture Jamming
By altering existing ads, organizing public-space reclamation parties and airing TV "subvertisements," culture jammers already claim to be changing the world. But, in essence, many of their activities have the same effect as traditional marketing. Are these activists really just promoting products for a fraction of the cost to their corporate beneficiaries? | by Anne Elizabeth Moore

It Takes a Nation of Detention Facilities to Hold Us Back
Moral Panic and the Disaster Mentality of Immigration Policy
"Criminal justice policy in the U.S. is about race," says Professor Michael Welch. "Most anyone who has really examined the situation has reached that conclusion." ¶ Silja Talvi interviews Welch about his new book, Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Complex, and explores how anti-immigrant sentiment - and crisis legislation - feeds off ethnic stereotyping, notions of cultural supremacy, and moral panic.

Racism, Free Markets & Libertarian Deceit
The Problem of Whiteness as Property
In a society where racism and white privilege are central organizing principles that have come to define what constitutes a "good neighborhood," a "good job," or a "good school," it is no exaggeration to say that whiteness has become a form of property itself. So, argues Tim Wise, conservatives and libertarians who argue that racism is best defeated through free markets are living in a world completely divorced from real life.

The Fight for Land in Honduras
Bitter and bloody land struggles like those of the Garifuna are raging all over Honduras, unbeknownst to most of the world. Today, they are fighting an army of would-be developers and tourism outfits, who would like to see the idyllic coast lined with five-star hotels, diving operations and the kind of "warm and colorful" Garifuna people advertised in guides circulated to business travelers at Honduras airports. | by Kari Lydersen

No Small Dreams
The Radical Evolution of MLK's Last Years
AS A LITERARY FIGURE, Martin Luther King, Jr., stands as possibly the greatest American rhetorician of the 20th century. As a citizen, his singular contributions to the legacy of American democracy helped this nation realize its political and moral aspirations to an arguably greater extent than any other figure. It's unfortunate that we have largely frozen King in his "I Have a Dream" stage while neglecting the radical evolution of his later years. | by Michael Eric Dyson

Misreading the Dream
The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. and Affirmative Action
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that someone as oft-quoted as Martin Luther King, Jr., might occasionally have his words misinterpreted, misunderstood, or taken out of context. Nowhere is the tendency to "play the King card" more apparent than in the claim by dozens of contemporary writers and theorists that King's principal goal was "color-blindness." | by Tim Wise

Women of the Promised Land
Today, the televised battles between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians have largely been framed as an ongoing battle of angry men locked in a deadly and senseless spiral of armed conflict. Lesser known—and rarely reported on—has been the remarkable extent to which Palestinian and Israeli women have worked together and organized for a peaceful end to the 35-year occupation. | by Silja Talvi

New World Disorder
How U.S. Arms Dealers and Their Cabinet-Level Cronies Profit From the War on Terror
A close look at post-9/11 military aid policy reveals that the U.S. military is using the threat of terrorism to garner support for ambitiously extending its reach around the world, and that it doesn’t mind arming unstable or anti-democratic regimes in the process. The central question is: does this makes the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love them? | by Brian Awehali

Invade Iraq
There are four reasons the Bush administration wants to invade Iraq, and none of them have anything to do with Saddam Hussein's potential military threat to United States citizens. | by Steven Wishnia

Affirmative Inaction
"The War on Drugs was too busy busting the black and brown in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, I guess, to make a stop Uptown, where the Tulane freshmen on the 8th floor of Monroe Hall were busy filling up two foot bong chambers with pot smoke, and then inhaling until our eyes rolled back in our heads..." | by Tim Wise

The Color of the Drug War
"The drug war is a proxy for racism...Most modern politicians wouldn't dream of explicitly advocating that society persecute or enslave poor people or members of minority communities. But that is exactly what is happening as a result of the 'get-tough-on-crime' drug war policies of the past few decades." | by Silja Talvi

War of Attrition
Drug Policy and the Decline of the American Empire
Americans reading one hundred years from now about the decline of the American empire and the modern "War on Drugs" - officially launched with the creation of the New York Rockefeller drug laws in the early '70s - might understandably think that the "war" was a terrible idea. | by Jordan Elgrably

Everton Blender
Dancehall Reggae Star Brings His Message to the Masses
The notion of marijuana as a drug on par with heroin, cocaine or speed is preposterous, Blender insists: "You plant the herb from a seed and it manifest. How can you call it drugs if you don't add anything to it, you don't mix anything with it, it just start from a seed and becomes a big, pretty collie bud?" | interview by Silja Talvi

Experiencing Ecstasy
People have turned to mind-altering substances since the beginning of time in search of enlightenment. But while many other drugs, from ayahuasca to nitrous oxide, produce euphoria, Ecstasy creates not just a rush but a singular kind of emotional elevation—you are launched on a hot-air balloon ride that floats over the pitfalls of typical humanity. The what ifs, the self-doubts, are knocked flat, and instead a hunger for human connection and a desire to empathize firmly take hold. No other drug produces this kind of feeling. | by Matthew Klam

Hash in the Holy Land
An interview with Israeli pot activist Boaz Wachtel,
co-founder of Israel's Ale Yarok (Green Leaf) Party. The party's agenda includes legal cannabis, gay and lesbian rights, ravers' rights, drug and alcohol treatment on demand, free university education, and an immediate end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. | interview by Steven Wishnia

Advertising Can Ruin Your Health
SCARE TACTICS ONCE COMMON IN ADVERTISING have, for the most part, disappeared. Ads now purport to make people feel good rather than anxious; the incessant chirping of pharmaceutical commercials nearly manages to make even "nausea," "headache," and "certain sexual side effects" sound upbeat. Yet a classic conflict of interest remains: Advertising sells both ills and their cures, giddily blurring the lines between medicine, nutrition, and hygiene. | by Carrie McLaren

Death, Money & Americana at the Indy 500
THE INDY 500 IS THE LARGEST single-day sports event on earth, with about a half-million people pouring in from every direction. A great deal of the "fun" of Indy is the infield scene: tailgate cookouts, beer, touch football in the mud, beer, throwing up, beer...a twin-cam fuel-injected toxic-waste-incinerating dual-carb gay-bashing culture of macho automotive supremacy. Basically, it's Woodstock designed by truckers. | by Bob Harris

Soy Valdés
VICKI BLAMED HER FAT BUTT on the Cuban government, claiming its leaders had deformed the adipose tissue in her body through an overdose of split peas and mystery meat. However, these humble staples of the island nation were not as likely the cause of Vicky’s rapidly increasing pants size since her arrival to the United States as was her penchant for double lattés during 8- to 12-hour shifts at her sedentary job as a Miami-Dade County bus driver. | by Lisette Garcia

Addicted to Oil:
Confronting America's Worst Habit
Americans burn over 125 billion gallons of gasoline a year. Moreover, emissions from burning gasoline are the leading cause of smog and global warming, and according to a recent study, put city dwellers at a higher risk for lung cancer than people who live with smokers. Here are a few hints from an ex-addict on how to kick—or at least temper—the habit. | by Ryan Singel

Not Milk
Why America's Dairy Habit is Anything But Wholesome
In one year, the average American consumes about 420 pounds of fluid milk and cream, 70 pounds of various milk-based fats and oils, 30 pounds of cheese, and 17 pounds of ice cream. But what if milk is a major contributor to breast cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and more? What if the U.S. government and the dairy industry are colluding to hide the ill effects of dairy consumption?| by Che Green

Transforming Bush
What The Promise of Endless War Has Done
for the Tongue-Tied Blueblood from Texas
Compared to any skilled orator, Bush did a largely mediocre job in the days following 9/11—his posture wooden, and his sentences monotonously uninflected, so that his words seemed to originate in some place other than his mind. But because he'd started out so uninspiring, he came across like Superman just by delivering his lines without a glitch. Thus did the president, to some extent, appear to do exceptionally well by virtue of how much his terrified beholders had "misunderestimated" him. | by Mark Crispin Miller

Women and Children First:
The Economics of Sex Trafficking
According to the most conservative estimates from the Department of Justice, over 50,000 women and children a year are trafficked into the U.S. from developing nations, and roughly 700,000 are trafficked around the world. Non-governmental organizations, for their part, put the number much higher, at up to 100,000 trafficked into the U.S. and one to two million around the world. | by Kari Lydersen

Documenting the Orgasm:
An interview with post-porn modernist
and feminist art teacher, Annie Sprinkle
"When I went into porn, I thought, oh I'll never be an art teacher...I'm hired now as an artist because I went into porn. But I don't make regular porn anymore. I make post-porn, post-porn modernism, and it's all safe sex. And it's all women. I'm making a documentary about orgasm." | by Gary Morris

On My Knees:
On Being a Monogamous Slut and a Feminist Submissive
In this provocative first-person essay, Mona West offers her take on the relationship between feminism, sexual submission and empowerment. All that said, here's what gets her off. | by Mona West

Sugar and Blood: Coke in Latin America
There is strong evidence that it supported the murders of union activists by paramilitary members at its Colombia bottling plants. At least seven union leaders at its facilities have been murdered in the last decade. And with one of its own now employed as the President of Mexico, Coke can credibly crow about its truly global reach, and make good, in a perverse kind of way, on its threat to "benefit and refresh everyone it touches." | by Kari Lydersen

Breaking the Cycle of White Dependence:
A Call for Majority Self-Sufficiency
Tim Wise turns the idea that communities of color are dependent on the white majority on its head by highlighting the ways in which the dominant society has been and continues to be dependent on the labor, ingenuity and consumer dollars of people of color. | by Tim Wise

Race Changes: On the Porousness of Racial Identity
Matt Kelley. the founder and editor of MAVIN, talks about his lifelong experience being "the itchy trigger finger" that exposes the racial prejudices of strangers who feel entitled to ask what, instead of who, he is. | by Matt Kelley

Bad Capitalist, No Martini!
WEF Protestors Confront Billionaires, Billy Clubs,
and Gold-Flecked Meatballs
A report from the first anti-globalization protest in NYC since September's violence. | by Steven Wishnia

The Refuse Also Rises:
Remembering the Mayor Who "Saved" New York
While Giuliani was highly praised for his reaction to the World Trade Center attacks, his legacy of intrusive social control, police brutality, and cultural blandness still haunts the Big Apple. | by Steven Wishnia

Paying the Rent
The ranks of working poor swelled after 9.11, when the service industries faltered. At the same time national studies show the wage-rent gap widening. Can a rise in homelessness be far behind? | by Silja J. A. Talvi

John Wayne Sucks
The Post-9.11 World of Manly Men and Girly Girls
White-collar commentators lauded the resurgence of working-class masculinity displayed by Twin Towers firefighters and rescue workers. Meanwhile, coverage placed women into their traditional wartime roles of hearthkeeper and pinup girl. Why must pundits soothe readers—and themselves—by resorting to such outdated stereotypes? | by Jessica Clark

The Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan:
Is the Time Finally Ripe for Afghan Women's Rights?
Afghan women's advocates fear that the Northern Alliance will prove as hostile to their freedom as the Taliban has been. | by D.M. Yankowski

Where are the Women?
Feminism, Consumerism, and the Spin on Afghan Women
Recent rhetoric has tried to reframe Afghan women as helpless victims and U.S. women as patriotic shoppers. Neither is true. | by Cynthia Peters

Inventing Thanksgiving
Pilgrims, dead turkeys, football and rampant day-after consumerism: the Thanksgiving holiday has never had a stable, much less respectable, identity. So what does it stand for? | by Brian M. Brasel

Wartime Rollback:
Terrorism, Reactionism, & George Bush
Operation "Enduring Freedom" has come at high economic and social cost, and the upward distribution of wealth has only accelerated since it began. Michael Parenti dissects the jingoistic craze currently gripping the United States. | by Michael Parenti

Membership Has its Disadvantages:
Whiteness & the Social Entropy of Privilege
In this far-reaching discussion, LiP chats with Tim Wise about the highly dysfunctional aspects of whiteness and privilege, and the reasons why the fight for slave reparations may benefit the descendants of both victims and oppressors. | interview by Brian Brasel

Patriotism as Pathology
"I must confess that I have never been a patriot. I have never been comfortable waving a flag, or pledging allegiance to one. Nor have I ever found myself misty-eyed at the sight of Old Glory flapping in the breeze...Long before I was consciously political, to say nothing of radical, I felt that pride in my country made little or no sense..." | by Tim Wise

A Mad, Mad Nation
Mental Illness & the Drugging of Rebellion
Awash in new syndromes and mood-altering prescriptions, America seems on the precipice of a large-scale nervous breakdown. LiP talks with Dr. Bruce Levine, the author of Commonsense Rebellion, about dissident psychiatry for a dysfunctional society. | interview by Silja J.A. Talvi

Right-Wing Opportunism & the Anti-Capitalist Gut Check
Heightened suspicion and new legislation threaten to undermine the progress of anti-globalization protesters. Will the movement respond by backing down or raising a fist even higher? The debate is on. | by Kari Lydersen

The Other Path:
On Violence, Terrorism, & Conflict Resolution
Dennis J.D. Sandole, professor of conflict resolution and international relations, talks with LiP about violence, terrorism, and the not-so-small matter of conflict resolution. | interview by Silja J.A. Talvi

Nattering Networks:
How Mass Media Fails Democracy
A free-ranging interview with Bob McChesney discussing the impact of media consolidation on the coverage of the 9.11.01 attacks and on democracy in the coming months. | interview by Jessica Clark

Terrorism: Ours and Theirs
Eqbal Ahmad, on the shifting definitions, or complete lack of definition, of the term "terrorism," and how "the terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes the terrorist of today." [excerpt from a 1998 speech]

Lunchbox Hegemony?
Kids and the Marketplace, Then and Now
Cola companies cultivate brand loyalty in youths by making deals with elementary schools. On TV, chubby babies with wings hawk toilet paper. And need we even mention the Happy Meal™? Such tactics are hardly new, but how has the last century of children's marketing evolved, and to what extent has it shaped who we are? The answer requires considerably more than knee-jerk finger pointing at the usual corporate villain. | by Dan Cook

Keep on Truckin':
Free Trade Alphabet Soup & Mexico's "Dry Canal" Project
Mexican President and former Coca Cola executive Vincente Fox is a man with a plan: to cut a corporate trade route through land currently owned by indigenous peoples and increase militarization of the region in the process. | by Kari Lydersen

Prison Policy in a Media-Driven America
"Ever wonder why a person could support a justice system that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, at a cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers each year, despite the fact that violent crime is down and two-thirds of prisoners are actually locked up for nonviolent offenses? Just consider the world that media consumers are confronted with every day." | by Arthur Stamoulis

The Race Question:
Isn't it time to give up on the four-letter word?
Scientists sequencing the human genome recently announced that they were unable to find any biological basis for race. So why then, particularly given the sordid history of racial "science," does virtually everyone insist on clinging to an anachronism? | by Silja J.A. Talvi

2600 and Co. vs. The Corporate Wet Dream
Since 1984, 2600: the Hacker Quarterly, has been the focal point of a global subculture hated, feared, and misunderstood by Microsoft, the military and the Motion Picture Association of America. Consistently staking out the cutting edge of technology-related struggles, 2600 is fighting for important rights most of the public doesn't even understand yet. | by Melissa Lane

Our Addiction to Credit:
An Interview with Credit Card Nation author Robert Manning
Have we unwittingly, perhaps complacently, become so dependent on credit cards that we no longer see our national addiction to debt for what it is? At last gasp, U.S. consumer debt had reached a staggering $6.5 trillion dollars. By comparison, the US federal deficit stands at "only" $5.8 trillion. | interview by Silja J.A. Talvi

Pixel Visions:
The Resurgence of Video Activism
On April 20th, 21st and 22nd, tens of thousands of anti-capitalist activists descended on the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. They wore the usual gas masks and goggles and brandished banners, but amid the chants of protesters in the city's narrow streets, other sounds could be heard: the beeps of hundreds of hand-held video cameras. | by Rachel Rinaldo

Poetry & the Political Imagination:
Aime Cesaire, Negritude, and the Applications of Surrealism
Aime Cesaire demolishes the old maxim that poets make terrible politicians. Known as the progenitor of Negritude (the first diasporic "black pride" movement), a major voice of Surrealism, and one of the great French poets...Césaire's life and work demonstrate that poetry can be the motor of political imagination... | by Robin D.G. Kelley

Notes on a National Disorder:
An interview with Mark Crispin Miller
S ure, it's fun to laugh at George Bush's verbal atrocities and apparent dearth of intelligence. But how did we get to the point of having this illegitimate President in the first place? What happened? LiP interviews author and media critic Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder. | interview by Brian Brasel

The Secrets of Silicon Valley
While dot-commers whine and cyber-journalists lament the New Economy meltdown, the real laborers of the computer industry—those who never entertained silver-lined dreams of stock options and artificial IPO fortunes—soldier on. A recent documentary looks at the heinous working conditions in U.S. computer factories, and the efforts of two activists fighting for workers' rights. | by Silja J.A. Talvi

Tracking the Sexual Evolution:
An interview with Paula Kamen
Young American women have taken charge of their erotic destinies, choosing from a wide range of sexual practices and partners. LiP interviews writer Paula Kamen, whose recent book, Her Way, documents the changing landscape of female pleasure and entitlement. | interview by Jessica Clark

Beyond the Politics of Irony and Lip Gloss
An interview with Katha Pollitt
LiP talks with feminist writer Katha Pollitt about her new book, Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture, the stagnation of feminism and the state of alternative media. | interview by Jessica Clark

Art Crimes:
The Ebb, Flow & Dilemma of Protest Art
On August 1, 2000, 180 state police troopers surrounded a warehouse in Philadelphia and arrested a group of activists, who spent up to 12 days in jail and many of whom are still facing felony charges. What fearsome criminal activities were these activists engaged in?
Puppet-making. | by Kari Lydersen

Preaching to the Unconverted:
An interview with "honest songwriter" Billy Bragg
British musician and down-to-earth radical Billy Bragg doesn't like to be pigeonholed as "political," preferring instead to be thought of as an "honest songwriter." In this week's featured interview, Bragg discusses the importance of reaching out, his early naïvete, and the continuing relevance of Woody Guthrie. | interview by Silja J.A. Talvi

The Disappearing WTO:
Mainstream Media Drops the Ball When it Comes to the WTO & its Discontents
What does the World Trade Organization do, exactly?
Since the Seattle protests, mainstream media consumers have had few opportunities to find out.| by Larry Shaw

Slipping the Ties That Bind:
Varietism, Compulsory Monogamy & Loving More
Monogomaniacs tell us our perfect partner, our other half, is out there, just waiting to fulfill our every desire. They tell us, in word or in deed, that there is a finite supply of love and lust in the world,and that we'd better cling to what we can get. What's wrong with this picture? | by Peter Staudenmaier

Real Economy 101:
An interview with Economic Apartheid author Chuck Collins
During a decade of much-reported economic prosperity, the bottom 20-40% of the U.S. population has seen a drop in real wages and an increase in healthcare costs. Consumer debt has skyrocketed. Whose boom is this anyway?| interview by Silja J.A. Talvi

Racism, White Liberals & the Limits of Tolerance
"Let me get this straight: if three white guys chain a black man to a truck and decapitate him by dragging him down a dirt road, that’s a hate crime; but if five white cops pump nineteen bullets into a black street vendor that’s just "bad judgment?" |by Tim Wise

The LPFM Fiasco:
Micropower Radio & the FCC's Low Power Trojan Horse
When the FCC's low-power FM licensing plan was announced, some hailed it as a victory for community radio activism, while others saw it as a clear threat. Today, the plan lies gutted, crackdowns continue, and the free radio movement is divided on where to go from here. | by Ron Sakolsky

Hepatitis C:
A Silent Epidemic Strikes U.S. Prisons
by Silja J. A. Talvi

Turning a Blind Eye
Male Guards, Female Prisoners, and Coercion Behind Bars
Annette Guzman-White, a 32-year-old minimum security prisoner incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Women (WCCW) on a second-degree burglary charge, is eager to get out of prison.

It's something that could probably be said of most of Washington's 15,000 prisoners, just slightly over 1,000 of whom are women. | by Silja J.A. Talvi

Shame of the Cities:
Gentrification in the New Urban America
They’re pushing poor people out of the city and in the process breaking up the power bases of their struggle. It’s gentrification, but you could also almost call it apartheid by both race and class."
by Kari Lydersen