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MY LAI VET SAYS: HERE IT COMES AGAIN IN IRAQ Tony Swindell recalls "Butcher's Brigade" in '69; says "gooks" have now become "ragheads", every adult male is an "insurgent" ... atrocities against Iraqi civilians are soon going to explode in America's face; US Government's courtroom jihads against terror stumble. Alexander Cockburn on Lodi case where Feds paid $250,000 to man who "saw" world's three top terrorists at mosque. As neocons and Israel lobby howl for US to bomb Teheran, an Iranian outlines simple path to peace. 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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Today's Stories April 22/23, 2006 Jeffrey
St. Clair
April 21, 2006 Jonathan
Cook Lawrence
R. Velvel Evelyn
Pringle Christopher
Brauchli Pratyush
Chandra Michael
George Smith Missy
Comley Beattie Sarah
Hines Website
of the Day
April 20, 2006 Chris
Kutalik Gary
Leupp Joshua
Frank Diane
Christian William
S. Lind Ramzy
Baroud Justin
E.H. Smith
April 19, 2006 P.
Sainath Norman
Solomon Anthony
Papa Mike
Ferner Stanley
Heller Rifundazione Christopher
Reed Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day April 18, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Eric
Wingerter Juan
Santos Greg
Weiher Sam
Bahour Behzad
Yaghmaian Website
of the Day
April 17, 2006 Kevin Zeese Uri Avnery Norman Solomon John Ross Laila al-Haddad Jeffrey Blankfort Website of the Day
April 15 / 16, 2006 Jeffrey
St. Clair Ralph
Nader Thaddeus
Hoffmeister Kevin
Prosen / Dave Zirin Thomas
P. Healy Kristoffer
Larsson Fred
Gardner Edwin
Krales Brian
Cloughley John
Holt Seth
Sandronsky Rafael
Renteria Michael
Ortiz Hill William
A. Cook Gideon
Levy Andrew
Wimmer Madis
Senner Michael
Kuehl Mark
Scaramella Nate
Mezmer Jesse
Walker Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
April 14, 2006 Col.
Dan Smith Saul
Landau Stan
Cox Kevin
Zeese Brian
McKinlay Howard
Meyers Ishmael
Reed Website
of the Day
April 13, 2006 CounterPunch
News Service Norman
Solomon Stanley
Heller Jeff
Birkenstein Evelyn
J. Pringle Michael
Donnelly Kamran
Matin Website
of the Day
April 12, 2006 Vijay
Prashad Alan
Maass Dave
Lindorff Ron
Jacobs Ramzy
Baroud Randall
Dodd Missy
Comley Beattie P. Sainath Website
of the Day
April 11, 2006 Al
Krebs Lawrence
R. Velvel Sonia
Nettinin Willliam
S. Lind Robert
Ovetz Pratyush
Chandra Grant
F. Smith Laray
Polk Francis
Boyle José
Pertierra Website
of the Day
April 10, 2006 Ralph
Nader Heather
Gray Uri
Avnery Joshua
Frank Seth
Sandronsky Michael
Leonardi Evelyn
Pringle Tom
Kerr Lucinda
Marshall Website
of the Day April 7 -9, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Jeffrey
St. Clair Patrick
Cockburn David
Vest Dave
Lindorff Gary
Leupp Elaine
Cassel Saul
Landau James
Ridgeway Ron
Jacobs John
Walsh Ramzy
Baroud Christopher
Brauchli Todd
Chretien Jonathan
Scott John
Bomar Michele
Brand Ronan
Sheehan Mickey
Z. Don
Monkerud Michael
Dickinson Website
of the Weekend
April 6, 2006 John
Ross Dave
Lindorff Don
Monkerud Robert
McDonald Boris
Kagarlitsky Remi
Kanazi Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Robert
Fisk
April 5, 2006 Dick
J. Reavis Mark
Brenner Brian
Cloughley Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski Matt
Vidal Juan
Santos Alan
Maass JoAnn
Wypijewski Website
of the Day
April 4, 2006 Jackson
Thoreau Gary
Corseri Dave
Lindorff Paul
Craig Roberts Norman
Solomon Michael
Carmichael Winslow
T. Wheeler Ingmar
Lee Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
April 3, 2006 Saul
Landau Richard
Thieme Timothy
B. Tyson Omar
Barghouti Iwasaki
Atsuko Julian
Edney Roger
Morris
April 1 / 2, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Dave
Zirin David
Underhill Earl
Ofari Hutchinson Dave
Lindorff P.
Sainath Fred
Gardner Clancy
Chassay Heather
Gray Greg
Moses John
Chuckman Ron
Jacobs Jeffrey
St. Clair Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
March 31, 2006 Gary
Leupp Patrick
Cockburn Saree
Makdisi Ron
Jacobs Mark
Engler Curtis
F.J. Doebbler Laith
al-Saud Website
of the Day
March 30, 2006 Uri
Avnery Sen.
Russell Feingold Winslow
T. Wheeler Dave
Lindorff Juan
Santos Frida
Berrigan Joshua
Frank Vonnie
Edwards Neve
Gordon Website
of the Day
March 29, 2006 CounterPunch
News Service Patrick
Cockburn John
Ross Omar
Barghouti William
S. Lind Missy
Comley Beattie Earl
Ofari Hutchinson Website
of the Day
March 28, 2006 Sharon
Smith Paul
Craig Roberts Tariq
Ali Manuel
Garcia, Jr. Ramzy
Baroud Evelyn
Pringle Seth
Sandronsky Patrick
Cockburn
March 27, 2006 Patrick
Cockburn Joshua
Frank Ron
Jacobs Jeff
Lays Davey
D. Robert
Billyard Jim
Rigby Lisa
Viscidi Nick
Dearden Gideon
Levy Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn Patrick
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Christopher
Reed Jeff
Ballinger Joseph
Massad Brian
Cloughley Chris
Floyd Elaine
Cassel Dave
Zirin John
Chuckman Sharon
Smith Christopher
Fons Chris
Kromm John
Bomar Ron
Jacobs Maymanah
Farhat St.
Clair / Walker / Vest Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
March 24, 2006 Cockburn
/ Sengupta / Duff P.
Sainath Todd
Chretien Marty
Omoto Michael
Carmichael Peter
Phillips Gabriel
Kolko Website
of the Day
March 23, 2006 Charles
V. Peña Joe
DeRaymond Robert
Fisk Jonathan
Cook Tom
Engelhardt Joshua
Frank Norman
Solomon Robert
Fitch / Joe Allen Patrick
Cockburn CounterPunch
News Service Website
of the Day
March 22, 2006 David
MacMichael Juan
Santos Paul
Craig Roberts Patrick
Cockburn Ramzy
Baroud Jason
Leopold Dennis
Perrin William
Blum Jeffrey
St. Clair Website
of the Day
March 21, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Winslow
Wheeler Tom
Engelhardt Arnold
Oliver Earl
Ofari Hutchinson Mike
Whitney William
A. Cook Sophia
A. McLennen
March 20, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Dave
Lindorff Ralph
Nader Diane
Christian Jeff
Halper Harry
Browne Norman
Solomon Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
March 18 / 19, 2006 Cockburn
/ St. Clair Werther Chris
Kromm Patrick
Cockburn Elaine
Cassel S.
Brian Willson Fred
Gardner Brian
Cloughley Laura
Carlsen Eamon
Martin Julie
Hilden Alison
Weir Jeffrey
St. Clair Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
March 17, 2006 Eduardo
Galeano Greg
Moses Richard
Falk / David Krieger Cindy
and Craig Corrie Amira
Hass Mike
Marqusee James
Petas and Robin Eastman-Abaya Website
of the Day
March 16, 2006 Norman
Solomon Tom
Philpott Heather
Gray Amira
Hass Missy
Comley Beattie Sen.
Russell Feingold Lucinda
Marshall Andrew
Bosworth Clancy
Sigal Website
of the Day
Subscribe Online
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Weekend
Edition First Impressions of "We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions"Springsteen Polishes His Roots By CATHERINE ANN CULLEN
Harry: Back before Bruce Springsteen had recorded an album, Pete Seeger was a domestic god in our New Jersey home. A stack of well-worn LPs was spun and spun again on an old black box phonograph, and on them Seeger sang songs that bridged adult and childhood worlds. (To this day my family's favourite, politically charged version of 'This Land is Your Land' is by Seeger on an album he made with the cast of Sesame Street.) My dad was himself a left-wing activist of some repute, and spoke lovingly of Seeger and some personal contact they'd had when, as I recall, Seeger was campaigning to clean up the Hudson River and Dad was a radical priest on the Upper West Side. Then came Bruce, and a new hi-fi, to provide the soundtrack for my life from adolescence onward, and (eventually) to bridge the generation gap back up to my mother after my father died. The only personal contact I've ever had with Springsteen was a fans-meet-rock-star-outside-hotel episode in Dublin, 1988, that left my brother and I so irrationally disappointed and angry that we went on a day-long drinking binge to purge it. Nonetheless, his songs have been present at every twist and turn, joy and sorrow in my life, including those involving the left-wing activism they rarely seemed to reference. When, near the end of this lovely new album, I heard his voice softly massaging 'We Shall Overcome', did the congruence and incongruity bring a tear to my sentimental Irish-Sicilian-Neapolitan eye? Forget about it. I blubbered uncontrollably. Catherine: Although I grew up in Ireland, I
reached my milestones to a soundtrack of Pete Seeger and anyone
else who ever plucked a tune at the Newport Folk Festival. Sometimes
it was my dad singing the songs to his own guitar, sometimes
it was a disc of black vinyl on the crackly record-player which
had three settings, for 33s, 45s and 78s. Our extended family
was full of singers and musicians, and when we got together for
a wedding or a funeral, the party-pieces were protest songs and
ballads. Songs like 'We Shall Overcome' Harry: In fairness, Bruce is not exactly a stranger to the world of agit-folk. He was a part-time guitar-strumming folkie before his first album; in 1979 he played 'No Nukes'; in 1980-81 he sent arena-rock audiences scurrying for the toilets when he talked from the stage about Woody Guthrie (he'd just read Joe Klein's biography) and played a funereal solo-acoustic version of 'This Land'; two great, mostly acoustic albums, Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, are folk-ish in their heartbreaking observations of poverty and alienation in Reagan and Clinton's America, though they are bereft of folky sing-along pleasures; he's turned up on Guthrie and Seeger tribute compilations; a 1992 song, 'The Big Muddy', transforms the central image of Seeger's Vietnam allegory ('Waist Deep in the Big Muddy') into a series of vignettes about personal corruptibility; much of his recent work, especially Devils & Dust, is inflected with folk as well as gospel and blues influences. And then of course there's his political campaigning Still, when the DVD of Devils & Dust cast this millionaire Jersey rock-star as a down-home roots musician, wandering alone through an empty house with rings and guitar strings flashing in the shadowy light, I couldn't resist a sneer here in CounterPunch. This time around, for the Seeger Sessions, Springsteen has filled a house with musicians of undeniable 'authenticity' and filled a CD with traditional, sing-along folk and gospel songs. And he has used as his touchstone Pete Seeger, a prep-school and Harvard lad who didn't let his elite (albeit left-elite) upbringing get in the way of his identification with the language and concerns of oppressed people--and whose integrity survived his brush with the pop-charts (as a member of the Weavers) in the early 1950s. Nice call, Bruce. Anyway, Pete Seeger has had a good year. He emerged as an unlikely hero of Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary, No Direction Home. ('Unlikely' because rock-oriented Dylanography has tended to take a dimmer view.) Dave Marsh dedicates his superb liner notes for the new Springsteen album (5,000-plus words of song-by-song social history) to another hero of that programme, the recently deceased folk 'sage' Harold Leventhal. Dylan claims implausibly in No Direction Home that in the early Sixties he didn't know Seeger was a communist, indeed he didn't even know what a communist was. At this stage Bruce Springsteen can't possibly lay claim to any such naivety, so it's a genuinely, and gratuitously, bold move for him to identify himself so clearly with an icon of the American left, especially when so many of his fans would rather compare him with Bob Seger than Pete Seeger. In light of this choice, one can only wonder if Springsteen's shilling for John Kerry was just a new incarnation of the Popular Front? In interviews and his own album notes Bruce steers clear of talking politics: "turn it up, put on your dancin' and singin' shoes, and have fun". Starting the album with the hoe-down of 'Old Dan Tucker' and ending it with the apparent childish nonsense of 'Froggie Went a-Courtin' seems designed to show us this is all good clean trivia. Catherine: You can't have a folk album without a fool, or should I say a Fool. Enter Old Dan Tucker, "yer too later to git yer supper", a man who "combs his hair with a wagon wheel" in the same way that one anti-hero of Irish folksong combs his with the leg of a chair which he then "takes to bed as a teddy-bear". It's a sort of a come-all-ye, with smatterings of dance songs: "First to the right and then to the left/ Then to the girl that he loves best." But maybe 'Old Dan Tucker' has something more to say to Americans in these sad old days: "Supper's gone, Dinner's cooking/ Old Dan Tucker just stands there looking." Is it just possible that in this album peppered with statement songs, there's a reference here to Someone who 'just stood there looking', with his vacuous grin, when a little intellectual activity was called for? Harry: To my mind, last year's 'Devils & Dust', drawing on blues and gospel imagery in a first-person account of soldiering in Iraq, was a noble but failed attempt at an anti-war song. Whatever he's actually writing these days, it seems that for the moment Springsteen's constantly renewed quest to combine the personal with the prophetic (a quest completed with almost unbelievable success on his post-9/11 record, The Rising) is best pursued through these old ballads and spirituals. Because, of course, We Shall Overcome is deeply political and concerned with present-day events, especially the war in Iraq and the enduring racial oppression exposed by Hurricane Katrina. The Irish ballad 'Mrs McGrath'
features a denunciation of foreign wars and a conversation between
a mother and her amputee son that could take place in Walter
Reed Hospital. 'Oh, Mary Don't You Weep', besides taking Bruce
over his MMM (Minimum Mentions of 'Mary') threshold, features
a great military machine coming a-cropper in the Middle East:
"Pharoah's army got drown-ded". And Katrina's 'drown-ded',
and survivors, are present in the next few songs: 'Erie Canal'
is recast as a New Orleans funeral march; 'Jacob's Ladder' is
a powerful black spiritual of ascent and triumph through endurance;
'My Oklahoma Home' is about a Dust Bowl refugee but carries echoes
of the Gulf Coast--also, its echoes of Springsteen's own work,
especially 'The River' and 'The Promised Land', are positively
eerie. Harry: Among the other songs, there's 'Jesse James': Bruce has a kid called Jesse, and it's good to remind listeners that the popular-music celebration of outlawry didn't start with gangstas; plus the song features the most perfect, irresistible lyric of praise for a good man: "He'd a hand and a heart and a brain." (Still, I prefer the crazed vitality of the Pogues' version, left off Marsh's list of other covers.) ` Catherine: When I hear the opening bars of 'Jesse James', I always find it hard not to sing the version of Woody Guthrie's song, 'Jesus Christ', recorded by my Uncle Gerry of the Voice Squad. But Jesse is a fine subject for a ballad too, and not the first outlaw to make it into the songbooks--Robin Hood gets whole chapters to himself in ballad histories. I learnt to finger-pick this on a guitar about 20 years ago, and my fingers are still smokin'. 'Jesse' and 'John Henry' (which also featured in my flat-picking primer) are to me two of the trinity of quintessential American folk-hero songs, along with 'Casey Jones'. One of the ballad books I have suggests that John Henry features in Jamaican hammer songs older than any found in the US. But that's another story. Harry: John Henry's tragic steel-driving race with a steam drill has never sounded more like a metaphor for the position of the musician in an era of corporate culture. Springsteen also personalises 'Eyes on the Prize': the civil-rights anthem becomes, in part, a ballad of Bruce's emerging commitment, as his voice emerges from solitude into a ringing gospel chorus, with a crucial lyrical choice of the singular first-person pronoun--"The only thing I did was wrong/ Stayin' in the wilderness too long", then, swellingly, "The only thing we did was right/ Was the day we started to fight." We Shall Overcome sounds great. Bruce improved the Devils & Dust material when he performed it acoustically on tour, and the acoustic band here is wonderful. The internet E Street nostalgists may not like it, and they have a powerful Rising tour to back up their preferences, but to my mind 21st-century Springsteen is at his best without a rock band. If I've got a quibble, it's with Springsteen's voice--an instrument I've been defending against all complaints for three decades. Occasionally on records, and more often in concert, we've heard the great vocal range he has developed over the years. On this album he pretty much growls like, well, like Bruce Springsteen. It sounds like he's taking his task of singing these songs very seriously indeed. Good. In most cases it works fine. But there's a great warmth and humour that usually lurks in Seeger's singing, and indeed in that of Woody Guthrie, which helps to leaven the pain of the material. As anyone who has heard his between-song patter knows delightfully, Bruce is not short of warmth and humour, but mostly he fails to locate it in his singing voice. Catherine: Among certain folksingers and their fans there's a strong anti-embellishment movement, and I have to count myself among them. It's the song that's important, right?--this song that has come down through generations of fireside, kitchen-sink or open air singers--and it's nothing short of presumptuous for some jumped-up primo uomo or prima donna to start adding little trills here or there or showing off their high notes there. Look, we know we're fuddy-duddy and hopelessly contradictory in our views, because without different personalities imposing themselves on the songs, we wouldn't have all those intriguing versions. Anyway, it seems to me that Bruce may be coming from a similar place when he sings these songs, and it's a place that's more than a little uneasy for someone who has made singing his songs his way a lifetime's work. So sometimes he sounds just a bit stiff or lacking in punch, but what he's really doing is trying to let the songs take over. That's my theory. As for Froggy, Bruce is going right back to one of the oldest ballads we know to end his selection. The first mention of the song is in The Complaint of Scotland in 1549, and a ballad called 'A Moste Strange Wedding of the fFrogge and the Mouse' was lodged with the Company of Stationers in London (then the copyright registry) in 1580. There are possibly thousands of versions, most of them featuring more bloodthirsty endings than Bruce has featured here. The classic English one has the chorus, "Heigh, ho, said Anthony Rowleigh", and ends with the rat and mouse expiring at the paws of a family of cats. The frog escapes homeward, but as he crosses a bridge he too meets his end, down the throat of a lily-white duck. On our CD shelves we have two Irish versions, one of which has no frog at all, for only "Uncle Rat went out to ride". The other has a rousing Irish chorus of "Follow ta right ta leary-o, Tatin tareea taranday". Both have the guests bringing musical instruments rather than food or drink for the party--"the first came in was a bumble bee, with his fiddle upon his knee." In 'Uncle Rat', the party comes a cropper when a tabby cat arrives and breaks the mouse's back. In the other version, a wasp gets up to sing and stings the fiddle-player, and that's just the start of the mayhem. Luckily Bruce's version has the snake merely chasing the guests into the lake, whence they presumably will emerge only dampened. His final verse, one beloved of folksongs everywhere, tells you that "if you want any more you can sing it yourself". How else do you end an album of songs like these? 'We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions' is in the shops on Tuesday, April 25th, and contains a few 'bonus tracks' not yet heard by the authors of this article. Catherine Ann Cullen is an amateur collector of songs, a professional writer of children's books, including The Magical, Mystical, Marvelous Coat, and poetry, and a freelance radio producer. Harry Browne lectures at Dublin Institute of Technology
and writes for Village magazine. They live together in Dublin,
Ireland, and so can both be reached via harry.browne@gmail.com.
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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. |