Journalism

ERIC HOBSBAWM, who died October 1 at age 95, was one of the world’s greatest historians, and also a Marxist. He was not just an academic — he was also a lifelong Communist with a capital “C,” a full-fledged member of the Party since his teenage years.. . .
. . . continued at the LA Review of Books HERE.

Jon Wiener: How does Dylan sound to you on Tempest?

Greil Marcus: He sounds like himself. He sounds sly, as he’s always sounded. He sounds as if there’s a twinkle in his eye; as if there’s a joke he’s letting you in on, maybe halfway, and you’ll have to find your way to the end of the joke yourself.  That’s pretty much been his mode all along.
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

David Rakoff, who died August 9 at age 47, was funny and smart about many things, including politics in America. “George W. Bush made me want to become an American,” he said in our radio interview in November, 2005. . . .

. . .  continued at TheNation.com HERE.

The head of the UCLA hospital, Dr. David Feinberg, and twenty-one other academics are going unpunished despite their role in perpetrating a healthcare fraud that has resulted in the largest fine ever paid by a pharmaceutical company in US history. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

Gore Vidal was a citizen of the republic and a critic of the empire.  “We are the United States of Amnesia,” he wrote in The Nation in 2004. “We learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
More at TheNation.com,HERE.

The news has been full of speculation about why Mitt Romney won’t release his tax returns before 2010. People say maybe it’s because he paid zero taxes one year, or maybe he made a truly stupendous amount of money one year, or maybe they show he stayed at Bain Capital longer than he’s said.

I have a different theory: Romney won’t release his tax returns because they show he’s actually a Muslim born in Kenya. . . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Some of the first investors in Mitt Romney’s firm Bain Capital, according to a report on the Los Angeles Times, were Salvadoran families living in Miami with members accused by the US government of funding death squads in the brutal civil war in El Salvador. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Dear Mr. Romney, I was hoping you could tell me how to get more free stuff from the government, and I see that you took up that question after your speech to the NAACP last week. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

From “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” to “A dream is a wish your heart makes”: Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney are together at last in an unprecedented Disney exhibit at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.
I had one question: why?
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.

Not long after the meltdown at Fukushima, workers at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, north of San Diego, discovered radioactive steam leaking into the air. Hundreds of steam tubes had been banging together and vibrating, until one of them sprung a leak, investigators said. And the tubes had been installed less than two years ago. . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.