Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
May 15 / 16, 2004
Trampin' to
Redemption
The Power of
Patti Smith
By RON JACOBS
There's a consistent thread through
every Patti Smith album. It is a theme that is even more present
in those that she has released since her first child was born.
That thread is spun from strands of hope and the belief in the
possibilities of change. It is most obvious in songs like her
anthem "People Have the Power" and the homage to the
revolutionary spirit of Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, "Gung Ho,"
but is also apparent in the songs of a more personal nature that
appear on all of these albums. Her latest album, Trampin',
continues this trend.
Her first work to be released on Columbia, Trampin' is
another collection of imagistic poems set to a music that is
sometimes reminiscent of the rhythms of the musicians of Jajouka
(first brought to modern western ears by Beat icon Brian Gysin)
and at other times evocative of a devotional moment in a Gregorian
monastery. Yet, there are many musical moments where Patti and
her band still rock as hard as her band in its Radio Ethiopia
days. Always able  to control her pitch, whether
it was at its most feverish in a song like "Break It Up"
or "Rock and Roll Nigger" from her signature album
Horses and her third work Easter, respectively,
or its most reflective as in "Paths That Cross"
from her 1988 work "Dream of Life, " Patti continues
to maintain that control-lifting her voice in chant when the
music demands it and dropping it to a whisper when the song insists.
Then, occasionally, raising it to a decibel level that the music
and its lyric require. All the while, her band remains faithful
to its muse.
To pick up that thread of hope and change, let's go back to Trampin'.
The song from this album that expresses it best might very well
be the piece titled "Gandhi." This is a long song
that begins with a dream about Martin Luther King, Jr. It is
a dream that Patti admits is a trespass, but quickly becomes
a story about the man who was one of Mr. King's inspirations:
Mahatma Gandhi. As the guitars and rhythm section rise and fall
like the breaths of a sleeping body, Patti's words recall and
reinvigorate the meaning of Gandhi's life and work. Then the
guitars really begin to sing, just as Patti calls on us all to:
Awake from your slumber
And get 'em with the numbers
Get 'em with the numbers
Long live revolution
But why? Why is there any
need to awake, you might wonder. One answer lies in another
song. A song that holds nothing back. Anger and loss. Death
and destruction. Bigotry and ignorance. That song is "Radio
Baghdad" and, yes, it's about that dirty little war. The
anger of old, when Patti used to give shows where she ripped
into the duplicity and stupidity of the rulers and their minions
and laid it out for all to see with the fearlessness of her mentor
Bob Dylan and the anger of the Weather Underground, is present
and accounted for right here in this song. It begins with an
incantation to the land of the Tigris and Euphrates and the civilization
that it birthed. The perfect number, zero, that was discovered
by its scholars, is where Patti begins. Slowly the incantation
rises, enveloping the listener's soul. The band slowly crescendos.
We invented the zero
And we mean nothing to you
Our children run through
the streets
And you sent your flames
Your shooting stars
Shock and awe
Anger drowns the devotional
sounds in a replica of that shock and awe, that horrifying bombardment.
This anger is a good thing. Revolutionary change is not possible
without anger that is justified. Nor is it possible without
hope and love. Patti reminds us of this, too, as she ends this
song about Baghdad and America's war on its people:
Suffer not
The paralysis of your neighbor
Suffer not
But extend your hand
Indeed. Such paralysis of
which she sings is often brought about through despair. The despair
born of hopelessness and fear. The fear and the feeling that
you cannot make a difference. That everything is resolved before
you have a say. Or, even worse, left unresolved forever. Fear
not, sings Patti in her song "My Blakean Year."
Embrace all that you fear
For joy will conquer all despair
In our Blakean year.
Patti Smith has always had
the ability to create joy from despair and hope from fear. One
imagines this is what brought her to rock and roll. Isn't it
the music of joy and celebration in the midst of chaos and despair?
Indeed, doesn't it take that very chaos and despair and turn
it into something you can dance to? Smith does this in the stories
and impressions that make up so much of her work and she does
it with the heroes whose stories she tells. Her homage to Ho
Chi Minh mentioned earlier is a perfect example of the latter.
Therein she reflects on Ho's meaning to the Vietnamese people
and their desires to be free of colonial and imperial powers.
In words of poetry backed by the sound of US choppers bent on
destroying their land and their vision, Ho and the Vietnamese
rose above and defeated their oppressor. The dichotomy of the
choppers ugly, ominous rhythm and the beauty of Patti's words
delivered in a soulful, uplifting chant illustrates Smith's ability
to create beauty from humanity's ugliest act-war. It is this
creative ability that allows her vision of unbounding hope and
joy to unfold in song.
There's a rap that Patti used
to begin her performance of "Rock and Roll Nigger"
with. "I haven't fucked much with the past," it begins.
"But I've fucked plenty with the future." This is
what a good deal of her early work was about. She threw her
lot in with the revolutionaries-cultural and political-and helped
birth a new world that is still struggling to survive as the
old one grabs on to whatever it can to keep itself alive. War
and corruption. Censorship and prison. Reactionary religions
and vacuous entertainment. Yet the future is still up for grabs.
Patti Smith and her band aren't just fucking with it, their
recent works are providing us with the hope and the inspiration
(tempered with a wisdom that only time can bring) we're going
to need to insure that that future is worth living.
Ron Jacobs is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is being republished by Verso.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for May 8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
|