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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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Now!
Menacingly. That's how the rock band
played Saturday night. Warnings, war, and apocalypse. Two riders
did approach. The wind began to howl. Electric guitars sliced
the night. The singer's voice made their sword double-edged.
The songs of heartbreak and the workingman's plight sung by
the singer before seemed almost lighthearted in comparison.
Okie From Muskogee was sung tongue-in-cheek although some in
the audience still took the lyrics at the 1969 best.
Yep. Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard
pulled into town Saturday night. The guy playing sax in the
street out front of the civic center put it this way: These
guys are giants and their tag-teaming y'all. Enjoy the show.
Then he blew a nice version of "Somewhere over the Rainbow."
I found a couple to buy the extra tickets I ended up with and
went inside. There was a good mix of people. Young, old, a
couple fellows with confederate flags on their t-shirts (it is
the South, not that that makes much difference), a few guys in
overalls, lots of young men and women with the requisite cellphone
hung on their belt or in their hand, a few African-Americans,
and mostly women and men in the middle of their lifespans.
At exactly 8:00, the Strangers
took the stage, sans Merle Haggard. One of the musicians said
hello and the band kicked into some warm up music. After the
second song--Waylon Jennings' "I've Always Been Crazy (But
It Kept Me From Going Insane)," he left the lead mike and
took his place among the rest of the band. From the side of
the stage, a grizzled man strode out, all in black with a cowboy
hat. Merle Haggard, my friends. His set included some gems
like "Mama Tried" and "Silver Wings." For
those unfamiliar with Haggard's repertoire, the first is a classic
country blues sung by a fellow who "turned 21 in prison/doin'
life without parole." He's not seeking to blame anyone
for his misfortune, thought because, after all, mama "tried
to raise him better" but he ignored them all. That's a
strain one hears in Haggard's tunes. Essentially libertarian,
he rarely places blame for personal misfortune on others. Even
when Haggard sings and writes about his life growing up in migrant
labor camps, it's a tale of family woe.
When he longs for a past America,
he is longing for the freedoms that men had back then, not for
its wars or social, sexual and racial prejudices. That's why
he has spoken out against the Bush government and its wars and
repression. As for that song "Okie From Muskogee,"
it's just a joke to Merle these days, despite the fact that
some folks on both sides of that Sixties divide still fail to
see the irony of singing it in 2006.
Musically, the Strangers were
tighter than a piece of sundried rawhide. Although my violin-playing
friend sitting next to me kept saying how Haggard could have
done with five or six players instead of the nine he had onstage,
the fact that he had horns and a saxophone player when his arrangement
called for one did complete the sound. The fiddle player played
with a classical control and a fiddler's abandon. The pedal
steel player used sparing licks and subtle dynamics, while the
keyboard player plinked out honkytonk runs straight out of that
bar band I used to see in suburban Washington, DC back in the
1970s. Indeed, I felt as if I were transported to that dive
whose primary habitués were washed out beehive blondes
and retired truckdrivers. As if to make my vision complete,
Merle and the Strangers ended the show with a hoedown on "If
You Got the Money Honey, I Got the Time," turning the arena
floor into a giant dance floor.
Darkness at the break of noon.
Menacing anger. Snarls of refusal. Electric guitar riffs tearing
through my skull and into my chest. Dylan began his set with
"Maggie's Farm." Maggie's Farm where the National
Guard stands around your door. And everybody wants you to be
just like them. Standing at his keyboard, Dylan sneered his
way through the song, holding on to the hard rock style that
seems to fit this song the best. Raw and emotional rejection
of the way things have become. That's the essence of this song.
Ripping off the veneer of complacency and challenging himself
and the audience to go beyond just being bored. It's not a question
of whether or not one can afford not to work on Maggie's Farm
no more. It's a question of whether one can.
The set wasn't all anger.
Love songs were sung and celebrations of summer days. Yet the
most powerful tunes this evening were the ones that called this
world of war , torture, lies and greed into question. The songs
came one after the other, giving the audience little time to
breathe. When the first notes of "Blind Willie McTell"
came through the air, Dylan the bluesman took the stage. It's
not that he was channeling Charley Patton or the aforementioned
McTell as much as he was channeling the lives of those for whom
the blues were made. The downtrodden. The huddled masses.
The poor immigrant. Those who toil in a land where "power
and greed and corruptible seed/seem to be all that there is."
Maybe there really is some truth to that arrow on the doorpost
telling us this land is condemned.
That's what that darkness at
the break of noon is all about. I've heard Dylan perform this
song several times, but I've never heard it like I did this time.
From the moment those first words left his mouth, there was
a sense that someone was calling in from the Mojave desert.
Dylan the prophet was here for a song's worth of time. The band
played this tune as if it were stuck on a railroad crossing on
Highway 61 with trains hurtling toward their vehicle from both
sides. Angry at their situation and resigned to its denouement.
And theirs. The menace is in in the daily hypocrisies of life
and the lies of the President of the United States as he tries
to start the next world war.
War that benefits the target
of his song "Masters of War." One gets the idea that
Dylan would like to retire this song but those masters just won't
let him. There is no way to sing this song without anger. Indeed,
it's probably Dylan's angriest song. It's certainly the only
one that offers its targets no possibility of redemption. The
only answer to what these people have done to their planet and
the people who pay the price of their deeds is death. Dylan's
performance of this song in Asheville made it clear that his
opinion on this matter has not changed. I know that I would
stand on the graves of Rumsfeld and Cheney to make sure that
they are dead. Too many think that life is but a joke. Dylan
makes it clear that it's not to be trifled with. The last time
I saw Dylan was in New York a few weeks after the tragedies of
9-11. His band was slightly different and his tone was, too.
Resignation and even some uncertainty. This time there was
little of that.
Neither Haggard or Dylan are
without their contradictions. That's the nature of their shared
humanity. It's how they laugh at those contradictions that provides
some of the appeal they have to their audience. When Merle
sings "I think I'll just sit here and drink," it's
more than a man crying in his beer. It's also a man that understands
that life provides us with alternatives to heartbreak and woe,
as well. When Dylan laughs at his misfortune in affairs of the
heart, singing "You just pick anyone, An' pretend that you
never have met," he's laughing at the charade that love
can sometimes be. Indeed, the songs of both men can help us
laugh at the charade that life itself sometimes is. If not that,
their music lightens the load.
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