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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY Former top CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful it is. Read how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier, exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. 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 June 10 / 11,
2006 Robert Fisk June 9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Eric Ruder Evelyn Pringle Mickey Z. Michael J. Smith Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
June 8, 2006 Chris Floyd Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs William S. Lind Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Lloyd Williams Bill Christison Website of the Day
June 7, 2006 Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor John Walsh David MacMichael Mickey Z. Evelyn Pringle Myles Palmer Laura Ribeiro Website of the Day
June 6, 2006 Diane Christian Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Norman Solomon Darmont / Genovali Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Subcomandante Marcos Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
June 5, 2006 Bruce Jackson Chris Floyd Michael Neumann Heather Gray William Hughes David Swanson Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
June 3 / 4, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Rosemary Radford Ruether Harry Clark Jeffrey St. Clair Ron Ridenour Ron Jacobs Fred Gardner Peter Montague John Walsh Greg Moses Sean Donahue Mike Whitney Dave Patten Ali Khan Robert Dotson,
MD Hammond Guthrie St. Clair / D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Day
June 2, 2006 Kathy Kelly Alan Maass Mickey Z. Dave Lindorff Chris Kutalik Sunsara Taylor Sam Husseini Mike Ferner Website of the
Day
June 1, 2006 Brian Cloughley David Peterson Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Paul Rockwell Clifton Ross Kevin Zeese Website of the
Day
May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
Day
May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
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Weekend
Edition Them a Loot, Them a Shoot, Them a WailDesmond Dekker and the Music of the ShantytownsBy KIRSTIN ROBERTS Desmond Dekker, the first international star of Jamaican ska and rocksteady music, died of a heart attack in late May at the age of 64. Before Bob Marley made reggae music into a world phenomenon in the 1970s, poor Jamaican musicians like Dekker rocked British, Caribbean and U.S. dancehalls with hits like "Israelites" (1968) and "007 (Shantytown)" (1967). Jamaican ska music, the predecessor of rocksteady and reggae, was born in the impoverished shantytowns of Kingston in the late 1950s. Because most shantytown residents were too poor to afford radios in their homes and albums cost the equivalent of one month's rent, DJs with portable sound systems strapped to bicycles would provide mobile dance parties, playing the latest hits from the U.S. By the early '60s indigenous Jamaican recording studios were pressing their own albums for the sound systems to play, and modern Jamaican music was born. Influenced by rock, soul and Caribbean music like Calypso, early ska music was all about the dance rhythm and was produced almost exclusively for the disco/DJ market. Potent political lyrics and spiritual references would develop later, with the rocksteady (slower) beats in the last half of the '60s and reggae of the '70s. Shantytown musicians were paid as little as $10 a recording for songs that became huge. Prior to his recording career, Dekker was a welder in Kingston where he worked for a time with Bob Marley. In fact, Dekker introduced Marley to his first producer, the famous Leslie Kong of Beverley Records. While Dekker's earliest ska hits offer only a glimpse of his huge talent, the 1967 release of "007 (Shantytown)" established Dekker as a powerful musical voice of the Kingston slums. "Them a loot/Them a shoot/Them a wail/At Shantytown/The rude boy deh 'poh probation/Then rude boy a bomb up the town." The rude boy culture that Dekker and other rocksteady musicians made visible to the world was a product of the mass unemployment and poverty of the slums. As would later be depicted in rap music of the U.S.'s urban ghettos, gangs and the criminal life were the only options open to many of Kingston's youth. The brilliant film The Harder They Come (1973), whose soundtrack features Dekker and other reggae and ska greats, portrays the rude boy ethos: Go out fighting, because life in the shantytowns ain't worth living. The Jamaican shantytowns, like Trenchtown made famous by Marley, were government housing projects built in the 1950s to house the tens of thousands of rural Jamaicans fleeing poverty in the countryside and looking for work in the city. These projects--built on the sites of garbage dumps and squatter camps in West Kingston--had no sewage system and were so overcrowded that makeshift houses of cardboard and scrap metal soon outnumbered the government-built concrete-block structures. The shantytowns became areas of extreme police corruption and violence, as gangs battled for control of the ganja trade. They were also scenes of resistance to government corruption and poverty, following in a long tradition of uprisings by slaves and poor Blacks in Jamaica. Dekker's breakthrough hit "Israelites," which climbed to number one on the British charts and number nine in the U.S. in 1969, spoke to this tradition of desperation and resistance. "Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir, so that every mouth can be fed. /Poor me, the Israelite." As Dekker explained in a 1999 interview with Laurence Cane Honeysett, "Well, it's really about how hard things were for a lot of people in Jamaica. Downtrodden, like the Israelites that Moses led to the Promised Land. And I was really saying that no matter how bad things are there is always a calm after a storm, so don't give up on things." Jamaica won political independence from Britain in 1962 and hopes of Jamaica's shanty dwellers for a better life soared. This era of political upheaval was the backdrop to the music of Dekker, Marley and numerous other Jamaican musicians. By the late 1960s, Dekker had relocated to Britain. His music and other rocksteady hits, played first by Jamaicans living in the diaspora, were embraced by the white working-class mod scene in Britain. As punk music diverged into racist and antiracist wings, ska, rocksteady and reggae were embraced and incorporated by left-wing bands like the Clash and the Specials. Jamaican music's influence also touched urban centers of the U.S., with Jamaican toasting having a direct impact on the development of rap. While Dekker may never have gained the fame or the fortune of Bob Marley, his musical influence on some of the greatest musical movements of the last 30 years shouldn't be underestimated. He continued to be a popular live performer throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S. I was lucky enough to attend his summer 2005 concert in Chicago, and despite stifling temperatures, Dekker kept the sold-out crowd stomping and singing throughout his hour and half long set of ska and rocksteady classics. For those interested in learning more about the music of Desmond Dekker, check out his remastered greatest hits collections from Trojan Records. Don't miss the film The Harder They Come and Jimmy Cliff's accompanying soundtrack. For anyone who wants to learn more about Jamaica's shantytowns and the impact of neoliberal policies, check out the documentary Life and Debt. Kirsten Roberts writes for the Socialist
Worker.
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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. |