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April 30, 2002
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
April 29, 2002
Larry Hales
At the Church of the Nativity
Michael
Colby
The
Times Does Brockovich
Ralph Nader with Cleavage?
CounterPunch Wire
Bank Robs Publisher,
Vows to Repeat
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 30, 2002
The FBI
and the Music Industry
Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
by Dave Marsh
The RIAA showed up on Capitol Hill the other day
to demand more tax dollars to protect music.
A great idea.
Musicians can't make ends meet by working
live gigs. Record money trickles in even to the select few who
have hits. Almost nobody, including many who have record deals
with major labels, has health insurance or a decent pension plan.
Indeed, according to a multibillion dollar RICO suit creeping
through the federal court system, the record companies have colluded
with one major trade union, AFTRA, to defraud singers of any
hope of a decent pension.
Music education in America isn't even
haphazard; it approaches nonexistence.
Tax dollars could and should cure all
this. American musicians, like all other Americans, deserve Social
Security pensions that provide a genuine living (which could
easily be achieved by removing the cap that limits rich people's
contributions).
Our musicians, like everybody else, deserve
nationalized health care, like the inhabitants of every other
rich nation on Earth.
Reassembling our education system demands
massive reinvestment that can probably only come from federal
tax monies. Music education would be a centerpiece of that restoration-and
we could do it right this time, honoring all traditions rather
than using the most elitist European ones to cudgel kids out
of pride in their own.
Somehow, none of this came up in RIAA
chieftain Hilary Rosen's testimony before a House Appropriations
subcommittee. All she wanted to talk about was more money for
CHIP.
Chip isn't a hot new band. It's the Computer
Hacking and Intellectual Property unit of the Justice Department,
which means the F.B.I.
Like other F.B.I. units designed to protect
intellectual property, its priorities are set by private industry-the
record labels are the small fry amongst a group that includes
the Motion Picture Assn of America (MPAA), which represents the
movie cartel and the software giants.
Last year, the F.B.I. and the feds seized
2.8 million CD-Rs, up from 1.6 million in 2000. Arrest and indictments
are up 113 per cent, with guilty please and convictions up 203
per cent and "sight seizures"-that's where the record
labels and their pet cops show up at a record store (an independent
store, natch) and seize everything they don't think is making
enough money for the cartel, whether it's illegal or not-are
up 170 per cent.
Of course, by the RIAA's terms, we commit
piracy every time we share files on the Internet. That's what
the RIAA wants a bigger CHIP to deal with.
In reality, the RIAA pirated almost all
the 400 million CDs sold in America last year, since the people
who made the music didn't get paid for them. But that logic would
be lost on the subcommittee, since so few artists make huge campaign
contributions and provide tickets to hot shows to the legislators.
This amounts to taxing us to make music
more expensive.
If there has been an upsurge in piracy
(the RIAA's only rivals in unreliable statistics are the owners
of major league baseball) the main blame goes to exorbitant album
prices and the elimination of cheaper alternatives like singles.
But the RIAA never takes any blame.
ZDNet's quote from Rosen's testimony
is ominous: "Piracy is not a private offense. It hurts everyone
by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music.
It should not, therefore, be viewed as a crime only against [the
industry]...but against each of us."
The most reasonable construction of this
statement is that file exchanging is not just a violation of
the law but a crime deserving significant punishment. It's another
step on the road to sending people to jail for sharing music.
When they've locked up all the music
fans, who will the RIAA blame their slumping sales upon?
The artists, probably.
DeskScan
(What's playing at my desk):
1. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin
2. Become
You, Indigo Girls (Epic)
3. The
Complete 1964 Recordings, John Lee Hooker (RPM UK)
4. Sidetracks,
Steve Earle (E Squared)
5. Delayed
But Not Denied, The Bonner Brothers (Malaco)
6. The
Righteous Ones, Toshi Reagon (Razor & Tie)
7. Arise
Black Man, Peter Tosh (Trojan)
8. This
World Just Won't Leave You Alone, Star Room Boys (Slewfoot)
9. The
Soul and the Edge: The Best of Johnny Paycheck (Epic
Legacy)
10. A
Magical Gathering: The Clannad Anthology (Rhino)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
April 22, 2002
April 15, 2002
April 9, 2002
April 2, 2002
March 25, 2002
March 18,
2002
March 11,
2002
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