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April 15, 2002
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 15, 2002
Hymns
How I Got Over
Last Week
By Dave Marsh
Amy Ray sings "Become You," the title
track of the Indigo
Girls' new album, while fingering a 500 year old wound.
"I heard you sing a rebel song, sing it loud and all alone,"
she begins. "...I see you walking in the glare down the
county road we share. Our southern blood, my heresy, damn that
ol' confederacy."
When Ray sings that verse, I see my friend
and CounterPunch
contributor Kevin Gray on the statehouse lawn in South
Carolina, with a Confederate flag in one hand, a Nazi flag in
the other, both in flames. She couldn't come closer to that spirit
if she'd lit the match. "The center holds, so they say."
"It never held too well for me," responds her Indigo
partner, Emily Sellers, her voice muted as a conscience. Then
Ray summons her nerve and explains: "The center held the
bonded slave for the sake of industry. The center held the bloody
hand of the executioner man."
When Ray sings that line, I see the face
of my brother Byron Parker, executed by the state of Georgia
last December. And I see the faces of the SNCC Freedom Singers,
who always, it seemed, looked up for the light while their voices
blended.
At the end Ray makes a declaration, "It
took a long time to become the thing I am to you. And you won't
tear it apart without a fight, without a heart," and then
for the last line, no anger, no exultation, no freedom, just
pain: "It took a long time to become you, become you."
When Ray sings that, I see my father's
face. Yet "Become You" isn't a song about being trapped
so much as it's a song about freedom. It can't be a freedom song
in the great tradition of "We Shall Overcome." You
need a movement for that. But it's a brilliant attempt to testify
about what the civil rights movement left undone. It is, as Craig
Werner, author of the great Change
Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America, recognized
as soon as he heard it, the great record about the South that
Tom Petty and Michael Stipe have groped to make for years, and
it's that not only because it's so beautiful but because it hits
the issue head on.
Just as I discovered "Become You,"
the news came that Dorothy Love Coates, leader of the Gospel
Harmonettes, had died in Birmingham, Alabama, the hometown she
never left except for extended journeys on the gospel highway.
Dot's brilliant songs--"That's
Enough," "The Separation Line," "No Hiding
Place," "The Hymn" and above all, "Strange
Man," her rendition of Jesus as fully human miracle--portray
a religion that carries you through all life's tribulations and
promises a salvation identical with justice. In short, they define
the social gospel. It'll take more than "Become You"
to replace them, but it's a great start.
Dot sings her songs in a uniquely powerful
voice, using a preacher's cadence that makes all the old stories
come alive and brings new ones into focus. Just before we learned
that she'd passed, Daniel Wolff, author of The
Memphis Blues Again, and I were talking about "The
Hymn," from the VeeJay album below, where Dot sermonizes
on topics including the assassination of JFK and the bombing
murders of four little girls in 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham. She has no answers except "In God's own time
and in God's own way he's gonna make everything all right."
But then she turns to a song, a very very old one. "It's
getting late, late in the evening," she sings, in a voice
meant as a reminder. At the end, she sings still another tune.
"I got my cross on my shoulder, Lord, comin' on home, comin'
on home."
I don't know how many roads home there
may be. Dot's has unquestionably led her where she wanted to
be. Amy Ray's very different route has just taken a leap. Both
of them have blessed us by letting us share their route. They
leave me feeling that to honor them we need to ask ourselves
one question, albeit the fiercest of all: "Are you coming
along?"
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office):
1. The
Soul of the Gospel Harmonettes / Peace in the Valley,
Dorothy Love Coates and the Gospel Harmonettes (VeeJay/Collectables)
2. The
Best of Dorothy Love Coates and the Original Gospel Harmonettes
(Specialty/Fantasy)
3. Become
You, Indigo Girls (Epic)
4. The
Gospel Sound (Columbia, includes "Strange Man")
5. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin
6. By
the Hand of the Father, Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music
Group advance)
7. Truth,
The Jeff Beck Group (Epic)
8. The
Best of Both Worlds, R. Kelly & Jay-Z (Jive/Roc-A-Fella/Def
Jam)
9. Stop Breakin' Down, Baby Boy Warren
(Official)
10. Global,
Carl Cox (FFRR/Warner)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
April 9, 2002
April 2, 2002
March 25, 2002
March 18,
2002
March 11,
2002
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