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Hysteria, Exploitation and Witch Hunting In the Age of Internet Sex
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Today's Stories April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn April 27, 2007 Eva Liddell Phyllis Bennis Mike Whitney Michael F.
Brown Jordan Flaherty Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Jacob Mundy Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Roger Morris Henry Siegman Alevtina Rea Paris Nikolas Kozloff Alan Farago Matthew S. Miller Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith David Price Diana Johnstone Brendan Cooney Sonja Karkar Brian Concannon Lee Gaillard Leah Fishbein Dave Lindorff Neal Galloway Website of the Day
April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed Lila Rajiva Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Website of the Day
April 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Robert Fantina Sam Husseini Corporate Crime Reporter Elizabeth Lalasz Harvey Wasserman Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Fred Gardner Kristoffer Larsson Barbara Rose
Johnston Manuel Garcia, Jr. John Scagliotti Marjorie Cohn Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Ron Jacobs Evelyn Pringle BANCO Paul Richards Dan Bacher Ben Terrall Sherwood Ross Remi Kanazi Aseem Shrivastava Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Diane Farsetta Tom Clifford Amira Hass Nicole Colson Sonja Karkar Heather Gray Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Agustin Velloso Matthew Koehler Website of
the Day
April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay
/ Patrick Cockburn Larry C. Johnson Norman Solomon Saul Williams Sunsara Taylor Harvey Wasserman Christopher
Brauchli Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva Landau / Hassen Charles Fisher
/ Diane Christian Kevin Prosen China Hand Peter Rost,
MD Justin Akers Chacón Jerry Kroth Sherwood Ross Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alice Cherbonnier Website of
the Year?
April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont
/ Paul Craig
Roberts Frida Berrigan Alison Weir John Walsh Jason Hribal Evelyn Pringle Ben Terrall Stan Cox Soren Ambrose Website of the Day
April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Carl G. Estabrook Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Eamon McCann Lee Sustar Mike Whitney Don Fitz Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jorge Mariscal Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Marsh Dr. Trudy Bond Joe Bageant Fidel Castro Alfredo Molano Alan Farago Michael Neumann Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Gail Dines Linda Ford Missy Beattie Dan La Botz Giuliana Sgrena Laura Carlsen Abu Spinoza Elizabeth Schulte Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Stephen Soldz George Ciccarriello-Maher Laith al-Saud Dave Zirin John Ross Ramzy Baroud Harvey Wasserman Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Dols, Fukumori,
Judd and Tillett-Saks Website of the Day
April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
the Day
R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
April 10, 2007 James G. Abourezk Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Joshua Frank Lee Sustar Joseph Grosso Nirmal Ghosh Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Paul Rockwell Mario Joseph
and Fred Wilhelms Website of
the Day
April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Uri Avnery Nicole Colson Gideon Levy Corporate Crime Reporter Evelyn Pringle Hill Kemp Martha Rosenberg Keith Rosenthal Jane Stillwater Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Sara Roy Arno J. Mayer Jeffrey St.
Clair Vicente Navarro Fidel Castro Fred Gardner Ralph Nader David N. Rahni Arthur Neslen Pratyush Chandra Missy Beattie Marc Levy Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Gloria La Riva Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Felice Pace Walter Brasch David Swanson Sylvia Syracuse
Patrick Cockburn Tom Barry Richard W. Behan Nicola Nasser Bernadine Dohrn Laray Polk Helen Redmond
April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith Joshua Frank Margaret Kimberly Sharon Smith Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Martin Luther
King,Jr. Bill Quigley Dave Zirin Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD Website of the Day
April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Marjorie Cohn Brian M. Downing Corporate Crime
Reporter Carol Norris Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Scott Bontz Thomas Dolby Website of
the Day
Gary Leupp Uri Avnery James Petras Norman Solomon Robert Fisk Stanley Heller Sherwood Ross Monica Benderman Stephen Fleischman Anne McElroy
Dachel Website of the Day
Cockburn /
St. Clair Fred Gardner Greg Moses Gary Leupp Robert Fisk Roger Morris Conn Hallinan Kristin J.
Anderson Jason Hribal John Ross Christopher Brauchli David Underhill Elizabeth Schulte Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Sonja Karkar Daniel Wolff David Vest Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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"Mission
Accomplished" Weekend Edition Kickin' Out the Jams with John SinclairReturn of the Guitar ArmyBy RON JACOBS It's hard for some of us who were around to remember and even more difficult for those who weren't to believe, but youth culture was once considered to be a revolutionary phenomenon . Of course, we didn't call it youth culture (that was a media catch phrase), but looking back, that's what it was. Indeed, that's part of the reason why it didn't last like we wanted it to. We couldn't figure out how to maintain it once we got older. So, capitalism took over and turned the whole thing into a commodity. Some groups and individuals that were politically inclined understood the revolutionary nature of a culture that opposed imperial war and racism and, more importantly, that challenged these phenomenon with their bodies and minds in the streets. Their attempts to organize this varied from the somewhat fumbling attempts of the Weatherman to the humor inflected approach of the Yippies. Then there were the White Panthers. The brainchild of John and Leni Sinclair and a dozen or so other residents of Ann Arbor, the White Panthers were a counterculture revolutionary kernel that understood that in order to change the system one needed to not only change the economics and distribution of power, one also had to change the culture. John Sinclair ended up in prison not long after the White Panthers were formed. he was sentenced to ten years for giving two joints of marijuana to a woman who was a undercover narcotics officer. The White Panthers (and their successor the Rainbow People's Party) worked in alliance with the Yippies and the Weather Underground and represented the aspirations of thousands of youth across North America during their brief existence. They put on rock concerts and festivals, managed the rock group MC5, operated food cooperatives and a newspaper, and yet their greatest lasting achievement is probably the book penned by John Sinclair himself--Guitar Army. A collection of writings on rock and roll, youth culture of the 1960s and 1970s, the formation of the White Panthers and a myriad of other rants and reviews, Guitar Army is being re-released by Feral House Publishing of Los Angeles. This book is a freakin' manifesto of the times. Naturally, some of it is dated in terms of context and the language overblown at times, but the discussions of the potential of culture to change people's thinking and the corporate world's understanding of that still ring true. Any modern rock or hiphop artist who really believes in the power of music to change the world should read this book. And, even more importantly, they should heed this book! So should those who listen and dance. John Sinclair, who nowadays
spends his time in Amsterdam and on the road with his band, The
Blues Scholars, is a true believer in the power of rock and roll
to change the world. Although the times have certainly changed
since the first time such a thing seemed a political possibility
in the western world, the fact remains that rock music changes
lives every day. Think of the first time you heard the Rolling
Stones' Beggars' Banquet disc. Or maybe it was "Hurricane"
by Bob Dylan. Or maybe something even older by Mr. Dylan. The difference between these personal epiphanies and the program of cultural revolution that the White Panthers, and millions of others fought for thirty--forty years ago is that they made it into a political program with the goal of revolution the end. In the cultural realm of rock and roll this meant disconnecting the channels of distribution from the system of capital and the minds of the audience away from those of passive consumers. It meant connecting the record corporations to their holdings in the war machine and challenging them. It meant hooking up with the Black Panther Party and working in the white community for the liberation of blacks and other oppressed people in the United States. It meant taking it all into the streets and using the music as a means to change the way one thinks and the way the world works. It meant that while the music and the culture that it created was important, there had to be radical economic and political change, too. The answer to this assault on the powers that were was jail time for the organizers, big record contracts for the bands, police attacks on the concerts and communities where the counterculture gathered, and Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew--two establishment guys who really, really didn't get it. Guitar Army reads like a history book in this context. It begins with the dawning of the rock and roll age--Elvis and the rest--and takes the reader from the beat culture to the hippies and the political freek culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cops busting concerts and peoples apartments. Riots in the streets over the war in Vietnam and solidarity with the Black liberation movement. John Sinclair thrown in prison for ten years for two joints of reefer and John and Yoko joining with the MC5 and others to free the man from what was clearly a political verdict. And the MC5 kickin' out the jams, motherfucker. This book was published right around the historical moment that the political new left and the counterculture reached a critical mass in the minds of many youth and in the streets of the western world--especially the United States. Sinclair addresses the commodification of the counterculture by hip and not-so-hip capitalists, yet his words should resonate when he claims herein that the music still is the most important thing because no matter what, the people making the music still control the means of production. A website connected to Audioslave/Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and Serj Tankian of System of a Down called Axis of Justice has listed Guitar Army on its recommended reading list since the site went online several years ago. One hopes that the book's increased availability due to its republication will make these ideas that some consider naive and dated new again. Just in case the reader might be wondering what the book's message might sound like, the publishers have tucked a CD of rock music, poetry and rants in the book's back cover. Check out "The Motor City's Burning" by the MC5. It's not only time to free the music from the corporate machine, it's time to free the world from the war machine. Those of us in the belly of the beast have a role in this struggle. A rock and roll soundtrack always helps. 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 collection on music, art
and sex, Serpents
in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up,
is forthcoming from Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
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