[Newspoetry] nooz sources

[gillespie william k]

Hey folks, those of U in C-U may have read this in the Octopus already,
but I thought it was relevant enough to repost on Newspoetry. It's an
article about one man's alternative news sources, including ours truly.

William

		WHAT TO READ, by Carl Estabrook

With this column I begin a fifth year of writing about society and
politics for the Champaign-Urbana weekly, THE OCTOPUS.  I'm occasionally
asked what to read in general on these matters.  The question is
difficult, not because there's so little information on vital topics but
because there's so much.

We live in a relatively free society, where information is available if
one wants to look for it, so it was necessary for dominant social groups
in the US in the 20th century to develop forms of intellectual control
that didn't (usually) depend on throwing dissidents into jail or closing
publications.  Instead, throughout the century, beginning explicitly with
the Wilson Administration's propaganda commission in World War I, the
government and economic elites worked strenuously not so much to suppress
information as to convince people how to think about it -- to establish
what Noam Chomsky calls "the limits of allowable debate."  We have for
example hundreds of "independent" newspapers in the country -- all saying
the same thing. Therefore as Chomsky says, "either you repeat the same
conventional doctrines everybody else is spouting, or else you say
something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."  (Hence the
name of this column and the associated radio program.)

This topic and many others are discussed in Chomsky's writings over almost
forty years.  A recent book is a good place to start: PROPAGANDA AND THE
PUBLIC MIND (South End Press, 2001), a series of interviews with Chomsky
by David Barsamian that cover topics from our assault on Colombia through
growing world inequality to the increasing anti-corporate movement; a list
of "Some Resources for Further Information" is appended.

On what is perhaps the most explosive political problem in the world, our
murderous client state in the Middle East, Chomsky has recently published
an updated edition of his indispensable FATEFUL TRIANGLE: THE UNITED
STATES, ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS (South End Press, 1999).  And much of
his writing is on the net, notably at the Chomsky Archive
<www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm>.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair publish the best political
newsletter in the country, "CounterPunch" <www.counterpunch.org>; their
book WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS covers much ignored American
history and politics since the Second World War.  In economics, the best
newsletter is Doug Henwood's "Left Business Observer"
<www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBOhome.html>; his book WALL STREET: HOW IT WORKS
AND FOR WHOM is difficult but worth it.  Sam Smith's "Progressive Review"
from Washington <prorev.com> is quirky and inclusive.  Leftish columnists
can be found at the "Common Dreams News Center" <www.commondreams.org>,
and the right-wing "libertarian" site "Antiwar.com" includes important
information and wide-ranging columnists.

Important journals include Z MAGAZINE, with its extensive web-site; the
weekly NATION, although it frequently declines into conventional
Democratic party nonsense; and the NEW LEFT REVIEW from London, recently
refounded under the direction of its quondam editor, Perry Anderson, whose
books on politics and intellectual history are without peer; also, the old
independent-Left MONTHLY REVIEW is once again showing signs of life.
Foreigners often note how insular US news is: THE GUARDIAN (UK) and LE
MONDE (France) are good antidotes.

Howard Zinn's A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is well-known and
may one day become a television series, after the urging of the actor Matt
Damon, a family friend.  Meanwhile, it's appearing in an updated edition,
and in a separate 20th-century selection.  Zinn (who's also a playwright)
is editing a series of books based on his themes: the first, by Ray
Raphael, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, is just out.

Other important historical accounts come from Gabriel Kolko (CENTURY OF
WAR: POLITICS, CONFLICTS, AND SOCIETY SINCE 1914 and ANATOMY OF A WAR:
VIETNAM, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE MODERN HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE) and from
the former Thatcherite cabinet minister, Clive Ponting (A GREEN HISTORY OF
THE WORLD: THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE COLLAPSE OF GREAT CIVILIZATIONS and THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY: A WORLD HISTORY).

Of course the poets always get there first.  A good poet, W. H. Auden, may
have been wrong when he said, "Poetry makes nothing happen."  The CIA
certainly doesn't agree, as Frances Stonor Saunders points out in her
recent book, THE CULTURAL COLD WAR: THE CIA AND THE WORLD OF ARTS AND
LETTERS, which uncovers the CIA's long-standing and well-financed
manipulation of culture (promoting, e.g., Abstract Expressionism because
of its lack of political content).  I think today the LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS has the best general cultural coverage, and the web-site "Arts and
Letters Daily" <www.aldaily.com> is a good guide; the newsletter "Rock and
Rap Confidential" considers the politics of popular music.  And enjoy the
locally-produced Newspoetry site <www.newspoetry.com>.

Finally, Chomsky says we learn more of human nature from 19th-century
novels than from all of modern science.  Go read "The Death Of Ivan
Ilych."

				* * *

	"News from Neptune" is heard Saturdays 10-11am on WEFT, 90.1 FM.

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