William Greider writes that industrial society is on a collision course with nature and that the devastation of New Orleans is a metaphor for the fate that awaits us all; Paul Krassner reports from Las Vegas on the first annual Comedy Festival; and Anne Winters's The Displaced of Capital wins the 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
Ari Kelman : Faced with the challenge of rebuilding, New Orleans seems stuck in the mud--not just mired in the muck caking the city but also trapped by centuries of policy mistakes, especially the fantasy that it can be separated from its surroundings.
Susan Straight
:
African-Americans were at the center of hurricane destruction and suffered the hardest and the longest--stranded first in their segregated neighborhoods and now stuck in motels or cars, waiting for their FEMA checks.
Billy Sothern : If a society is measured by the treatment of its prisoners, we are in deeper trouble in New Orleans than we realize. The biggest prison crisis since Attica is now unfolding in the devastated city, with inmates jammed into inadequate facilities, often abused and unrepresented by attorneys or advocates.
William Greider
:
Industrial society is on a collision course with nature. The devastation of New Orleans is a metaphor for what can happen next to us all. Will America decide to reshape the future in positive terms, or sit back and wait for the inevitable destruction to occur?
Paul Krassner : Lenny Bruce was a lone voice at a time when irreverent comedy could land him in jail on obscenity charges. But the spirit of Lenny Bruce hovered over the first annual Comedy Festival in Los Vegas, where the nation's top comics used laughs to bring down the establishment.
: The Iraq debate will be a central issue of the 2006 Congressional elections, and there is reason to believe antiwar candidates will prevail. The first step in that process is to encourage support for such candidates.
: If New Orleans is to reclaim its greatness, the scope of the solution must match the scope of the problem. The city could become the nation's classroom by re-engineering levees, responsibly building neighborhoods and schools and repairing the environment, but time is running out.
George McGovern : Eugene McCarthy was a pure original, a great and good man, whose fundamental historical achievement was to be the standard-bearer for a moral and philosophical campaign against the Vietnam War.
Ari Berman
:
As Justice Department investigators follow the cash flow from lobbyist Jack Abramoff's influence-peddling scandal, the evidence mounts against Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney. Who's next?
Scott Sherman
:
Reading Patrick Fitzgerald's sixty-page indictment of publishing magnate Conrad Black and his associates, one gets the feeling that the next stop for this high-living power-broker will be a prison cell.
Katrina vanden Heuvel & Sam Graham-Felsen
:
Among the sweetest victories of 2005: Social Security reform has been blocked, pressure to withdraw from Iraq is growing and progressive activists are making progress on local, state and national issues.
Eyal Press : The GOP is an object of popular loathing, yet prospects seem dim for ousting it from power. Three new books explain why: Off Center explores the GOP's genius for subverting the mechanisms of accountability, and Death by a Thousand Cuts and Stand Up Fight Back examine how the Republican machine dominates issues from tax cuts to energy conservation. Plus, the Clinton biography The Survivor looks at the man who once made liberals feel like winners, yet whose legacy holds them back.
Claire Messud
:
John Banville's latest novel, The Sea, winner of the Man Booker Prize, is a painstaking narrative of memory, grief and many losses, remarkable for what it richly conveys about what it is to be alive, while continuously experiencing loss.
Austin Kelley : Two new books on indolence, How To Be Idle and Bonjour Laziness, issue low-energy cries for political apathy, a shorter work week and the fine art of slacking off.
Robert Pinsky : Anne Winters's The Displaced of Capital, winner of the 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, is a reflective, documentary and visionary volume of poetry inspired by the city of New York.
Calvin Trillin
:
This just in: The Pentagon offers yet another lesson in democracy. Just don't look for any bylines.
Eric Alterman : The 9/11 Commission's startling follow-up report that savages the Bush Administration's inadequate efforts to protect the country from terrorism was met by the media with a collective yawn. And so we remain vulnerable, amazed and, if sensate, terrified.
Robert Scheer : The best outcome for US policy is the hope that Shiite and Sunni fanatics can check each other long enough for the United States to beat a credible retreat and call it a victory, albeit a pyrrhic one.
Abigail R. Esman : 2006 marks Rembrandt's 400th birthday, and an array of exhibitions, from the sublime to the silly, will open in Amsterdam, Washington and beyond. As the aesthetic hype escalates, can great art withstand great commerce? Can consummate genius triumph over cute?
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich : As the House of Representatives voted to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich decried the back-door methods and contemplated the impact on the indigenous Gwich'in people.
Elizabeth de la Vega : How realistic is it to stop the Bush Administration from pursuing its war agenda? Former prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega offers some hard-core advice about how to challenge the status quo.
Rebecca Solnit : In the gloom of post-election 2004 few people, if any, could have anticipated the wild surprises of 2005. Focusing on three unforeseen developments of the past year, a meditation on how life has changed in unexpected ways.
Cover by Gene Case & Stephen Kling/Avenging Angels
RSS