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"THE USE OF CHEMICAL WARFARE IS AUTHORIZED" America's secret war plans: "The military purpose is to overthrow the present existing Federal Government of Mexico." Floyd Rudmin uncovers the sick dreams of America's generals. Alito says, Constitution okays Bush to set up prison camps here and torture US citizens. Dems praise his "even demeanor" and shirk the filibuster. Cockburn and St Clair on the Alito hearings and the Democrats' collapse. ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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February 8, 2006 Stan Cox
February 7, 2006 Edward Lucie-Smith Robert Fisk Paul Craig Roberts Neve Gordon Joshua Frank Peter Montague Jackie Corr Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
February 6, 2006 Christopher
Brauchli Robert Fisk John Chuckman Jenna Orkin Paul Craig
Roberts
February 4 / 5, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Mike Ferner James Petras Alan Maass Fred Gardner Ralph Nader Bill Glahn Saul Landau Laura Carlsen James Brooks Mike Roselle John Holt Sarah Ferguson William S.
Lind Niranjan Ramakrishnan Seth Sandronsky Derrick O'Keefe Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Elisa Salasin St. Clair / Vest Stew Albert Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
February 3, 2006 Toufic Haddad Heather Gray Tim Wise Conn Hallinan Eva Golinger Daniel Ellsberg Dave Zirin Robert Bryce Website of
the Day
February 2, 2006 Winslow T.
Wheeler Stan Cox Rachard Itani Mike Whitney Amira Hass Norman Solomon Michael Simmons Christopher
Reed Website of the Day
February 1, 2006 Sharon Smith Jason Leopold Cindy Sheehan Joseph Grosso Earl Ofari Hutchinson Steven Higgs Robert Robideau R. Siddharth Jim Retherford Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
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January 31, 2006 Jeffrey St.
Clair Clancy Chassay Dave Lindorff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Oren Ben-Dor Winslow Wheeler John Ryan Mike Marqusee Ron Jacobs Andrew Cockburn Website of
the Day
January 30, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Winslow Wheeler Niranjan Ramakrishnan Marcus Dam John Bomar Ben Beachy Gideon Levy Michael Carmichael Missy Comley
Beattie Norman Solomon Brian Concannon,
Jr. Michael Ratner Website of
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January 28 / 29, 2006 Alexander Cockburn
Ralph Nader Col. Dan Smith Paul Craig Roberts Tammara Rosenleaf Ron Jacobs Harry Browne Fred Gardner Christopher
Reed Bernard Chazelle Daniel Wolff Tom Kerr Asad Abu Khalil Chris Murphy Dr. Susan Block Kathy Deacon St. Clair /
Walker / Palmer / Shields Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
Suren Pillay Lawrence R.
Velvel J.L. Chestnut,
Jr Uri Avnery Gary Leupp Samar Assad Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
January 26, 2006 Robert Robideau Paul Craig
Roberts Gilad Atzmon Jason Leopold Joshua Frank Dave Lindorff Susan Lee Missy Comley Beattie Michael Carmichael Michael Neumann Website of
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January 25, 2006 Saul Landau James Petras Lawrence R.
Velvel Vijay Prashad Kevin Zeese Alison Weir Bruce K. Gagnon Joan Roelofs Website of
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January 24, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Jorge Mariscal Winslow T.
Wheeler John Walsh Youmans / Muaddi Roger Burbach Fr. Gerard
Jean-Juste Noam Chomsky Website of
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Uri Avnery Susan Pynchon William Loren
Katz Christopher Brauchli Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Norman Solomon Jackie Corr Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
January 21/22, 2006 Tim Shorrock Ralph Nader Peter Feng Brian Cloughley Michael Donnelly Tom Kerr Dave Lindorff Daniel Wolff Fred Gardner Jason Leopold Matthew Koehler John Bomar Ron Jacobs Becky Akers Joanne Mariner St. Clair / Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Brian J. Foley Richard Gott Joshua Frank Pierre Tristam Bernstein /
Allegretto Elizabeth Schulte Website of
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January 19, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Bill Simpich Kevin Alexander
Gray Sam Husseini Sam Smith Monica Benderman Winslow T.
Wheeler Website of the Day
January 18, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Norman Solomon Jonathan M.
Feldman Michael Carmichael Paul D'Amato Cynthia McKinney Norman Finkelstein Website of the Day
January 17, 2006 M. Shahid Alam John Ross Tariq Ali Michael Donnelly Amira Hass Doug Giebel Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Mike Stark Werther
John Walsh Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Roger Burbach Norman Solomon Robert Jensen Sam Husseini Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
January 14 / 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn JoAnn Wypijewski James Petras Ron Jacobs Brian Cloughley Marianne McDonald Bruce Tyler Wick Fred Gardner Flavia Alaya Gary Leupp Dr. Susan Block Nicole Colson Jeffrey Kolakowski Missy Comley
Beattie Charles Thomson St. Clair /
Walker / Vest Poets' Basement Website of
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January 13, 2006 Ralph Nader Leonard Weinglass Amira Hass Chris Kutalik
/ Jennifer Biddle Lawrence R. Velvel Dave Lindorff Mike Whitney David Price
January 12, 2006 Jennifer Van
Bergen Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith Lawrence R.
Velvel Ralph Nader / Robert Weissman Jackie Corr Jared Bernstein Russell D.
Hoffman Aubrey Streit Clancy Sigal Website of the Day
January 11, 2006 Kevin Zeese Ray McGovern Allan Maass
/ Joe Allen Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Annie Murphy Allan Lichtman Ramzy Baroud Joshua Frank Kathleen and
Bill Christison Website of
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January 10, 2006 Uri Avnery Saul Landau Noam Chomsky Brian J. Foley Lenni Brenner Ronan Sheehan Paul Craig
Roberts
January 9, 2006 Behzad Yaghmaian George Bisharat Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Christopher Brauchli Aharon Shabtai Andrew Cockburn
January 7 / 8, 2006 Lawrence Velvel James Petras J.L. Chestnut Mike Ely Andrew Wilson Lila Rajiva William Cook Ramor Ryan Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff Peter Montague Ron Jacobs Neve Gordon Fred Gardner Josh Mahon Dr. Susan Block Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
January 6, 2006 José
Pertierra Joe Allen Winslow T. Wheeler John Bomar Jason Leopold Norman Solomon Robert Pollin
January 5, 2006 Scott Boehm Zoltan Grossman Heather Gray Haninah Levine Pierre Tristam Remi Kanazi Gilad Atzmon Kathleen and
Bill Christison
January 4, 2006 Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Huibin Amee
Chew Pat Williams Linda Milazzo Nick Dearden James Petras Website of
the Day
January 3, 2006 James Ridgeway Laith al-Saud Dick J. Reavis Joshua Frank Rochelle Gause Missy Comley
Beattie Paul de Rooij
January 2, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Clancy Sigal Cindy Sheehan Alexander Cockburn
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February 8, 2006 Soundtrack to a RiotThe Once and Future Sly StoneBy RON JACOBS Nonetheless, Sly Stone and his vision of rock music was revolutionary. An interracial mix of musicians and friends who learned their musicianship in the job, Sly and the Family Stone brought the infectious rhythms of Tax and the easy and very singable bops of bubblegum pop together with a psychedelic energy from the San Francisco Bay Area into a phenomenon that reached teenyboppers, hardcore freaks, brothers and sisters in the Panthers, the middle class housewife, and the GI in Vietnam together in a celebration of rock and soul music (to borrow a phrase from Country Joe and the Fish's song of the same name). It was a postrevolutionary culture that the brothers and sisters of multiple skin tones up on the stage with Sly were living. The top 40 hit "Everyday People" was nothing more (and nothing less) than a three-minute call for tolerance across the spectrum. "Different folks for different folks"--that's all. Simple enough, but how to do it? The first time I heard the song "Stand!" was another of those revelatory moments that rock provides. Like the first time I heard "All Along the Watchtower," "Come Together,"or "Gimme Shelter," that hearing made me think of the world in a different way. Other folks have other songs, but everyone who listens to music has at least one piece that opened their minds. It could be Stravinsky's Petruschka, Beethoven's Ninth, The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows," or any other tune in the world that just changed the way you thought. For me, the list is hundreds of measures long, but I'll leave this column's list at the four I mention above. Anyhow, it was on the radio that I first heard the song "Stand!" Top Forty radio, in fact. WPGC out of Washington, DC. My brother and I shared a room and the radio dial went between WPGC and WHFS. The latter station went "underground" after 4 PM every day back then (this was a few years before FM radio developed the so-called AOR format), playing entire albums and broadcasting news about the antiwar movement and the counterculture. I first heard cuts from Bob Dylan bootlegs on that station. Anyhow, back to WPGC. I heard that opening roll on the snare drum and then the words "Stand/In the end you'll still be you/One that's done all the things you set out to do." The horns and that funky guitar lick brought me right into the song. The lyrics implored me and everyone else listening to "Stand/For the things you know are right." After all, there was a giant about to fall. Furthermore, it didn't matter if you won because the very fact of standing up for what you believed would set you free. All of that in a pop song! That's why Sly was so good. And he kept getting better. The album Stand! addressed the nature of language and racial prejudice in its song "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" and had Sly taking us all higher. Unfortunately, as the man begin getting high a bit too much, it began to effect his touring. There were shows when Sly either showed up late or not at all, causing his reputation to falter. However, the group's performance at Woodstock remains one of legend and for those who actually saw it, it was one of the best of the festival. That summer also saw the band's single "Hot Fun In the Summertime" climb the charts. This tune remains one of the best songs to celebrate summer every written. In 1969, the band released one of the masterpieces of funk, Thank You Falletinme B Mice Elf(Again)--a rhythmic and lyrical pleasure to hear that expressed the confusion of Sly's life and that of the world we were all living in: "Lookin' at the devil, grinnin' at his gun ... We begin to wrestle I was on the top ." Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam was getting uglier and more pointless and the war in the US between the system and the people in the ghettos was just getting worse. Richard Nixon was on top and the paranoia of those outside the power structure was intensifying. By 1971, the Black Panthers were in disarray, with many of its leaders in jail or exile and the rest of the party debating the date of the revolution. The dark shadows of heroin and cocaine were spreading even further throughout the Black community and into the youth counterculture. Police were being granted more powers every day while the federal government violated the constitution without qualm. J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon's Justice Department looked the other way while CIA warlords in Vietnam and Laos smuggled smack into the ghettos of the US. GIs coming back from the war were coming back with big time habits and a nightmares that only heroin could calm. Into this dark hour came Sly and the Family Stone's album There's A Riot Going On. The cover was the Stars and Bars of the US flag and the message was bleak. Taking its title almost assuredly from the Limber and Stroller song "Riot in Cell Block #9," the album chronicles the downfall of the hippie dream of love and peace in the song "Luv n' Haight" and the destruction of a better future. Despite the hopeful strains of "Family Affair" and "You Caught Me Smilin' Again," this album is the story of the street scene in the Haight, the Village and every other hippie ghetto in between. It's the story of despair and exploitation; death drugs taken and death drugs sold; from the psychedelic hopes of Sgt. Pepper to the demonic power chords of Steppenwolf's "The Pusherman." It's the end of that aspect of the American dream enunciated so well by Martin Luther King, Jr: "when the sons of former slaves and former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood;" and Sly himself: " I am no better and neither are you We are the same whatever we do." Dr. King stood on a stage filled with people white and black that day, just as Sly stood on a stage filled with people white and black every time he performed with the Family Stone. In the same manner, their audiences were multi-hued. The album ends with a sad acknowledgment that that dream for justice in the land of slavery may have met its premature end. Sly is the brother that always hoped for an interracial America where justice ruled the land and people lived as one. His music had always expressed a hope that crossed skin tones. His funky rock and roll had birthed itself in the freedom rides and the counterculture of the San Francisco Bay Area. But, like the streets of that city, things turned sour. There's A Riot Going On tells that story. =When I heard via a Washington Post (1/27/06) article that Sly and his band might regroup for the 2006 Grammy Awards I have to admit that my emotions bordered on ecstatic. Not since Bob Dylan's performance there in 1998 (the show where the fellow forever known as Soy Bomb showed up) had I even considered watching this self-congratulatory exercise in awarding what is oftentimes merely money-making mediocrity. I mean, I'm a guy who last watched the Academy Awards when Hearts and Minds won best documentary. What might the band play? What song could possibly speak to the commercial nation of 2006 TV land, even if there was a hip hop artist or two in the mix of nominations? Thank you Falletinme be on TV? In a medium where everything becomes just another pose designed to sell a product, would Sly be able to make a point? Or would he even make it on to the screen? After all, the man has had his struggles over the past three decades. And this is the age of five-second delay, after all. Considering this, it didn't matter what he played, I guess, just that he would show up an play was enough. The Stones started the week selling their product during the Super Bowl half-time show and, despite the blatant censorship of two of their songs (thanks to that five-second delay) and the fact that they truly are nothing more than a product anymore--albeit one of the best products on the rock music shelf--they did turn in a damn good performance. What might a Sly and the Family Stone performance portend? Of course, all of this speculation assumed that the man and his band really were going to appear. The only mention on the TV schedule was of some kind of all-star tribute to the group--nothing about an actual appearance. I guess there's nothing left for me to do but turn on the television and see what goes down. Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                  |
