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May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
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
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
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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May
27, 2002
Why I Voted for Nader
Ticketmaster's
Stranglehold over Music & Politics
by Dave Marsh
Ticketmaster now charges "convenience"
fees up to 60 percent on concert tickets: They get $9 on the
$15 tickets to John Mayer's shows, for instance.
There's nothing Mayer can do to evade
this "convenience," unless he'd like to play way joints
tiny or hard to find or otherwise inconvenient.
'Til recently, there has been a way around
Ticketmaster's "convenience." An artist holds a percentage
of tickets for its fan club. Most artists hold 10 percent, but
Dave Matthews, probably the biggest concert draw in North America,
holds about half the tickets to his shows. Ticketmaster's various
"conveniences" do not apply to such sales. Some--not
many--artists add their own surcharges, but those are always
far less than Ticketmaster would apply.
Ticketmaster doesn't like the practicing
of not offering concert-goers its conveniences. A couple weeks
ago, venues and concert promoters around the country received
letters from Ticketmaster, which controls sales at virtually
all of them. The letter claimed that artist holds for fan clubs
violate Ticketmaster contracts. A week or so later, Ticketmaster
sent another letter, modifying the earlier one. According to
this latest missive, artists can hold back no more than eight
per cent of their tickets, and they can only sell them to fan
clubs of which Ticketmaster approves--there has to be an annual
fee of at least $15, for instance.
There is nothing you, me, Pearl Jam or
Dave Matthews can do to change the situation. Under the Clinton-Gore
administration, even after a Congressional hearing at which
Pearl Jam and others (including me) testified to the effects
of Ticketmaster's stranglehold, the Justice Department ruled--against
the advice of most of its Antitrust division staff--that Ticketmaster
shouldn't be sanctioned as a monopoly. (The fact that Ticketmaster
employed Mickey Kantor, the Clinton "trade representative,"
may have helped the company.) It is hardly likely that the Bush
gang is going to be more consumer friendly.
Fans cannot turn to alternative ticket
providers. Ticketmaster drove them all out of business. Artists
cannot turn to alternative venues and promoters because as part
of its fanatic "free market" philosophy, the Bush-Clinton-Bush
administration decided not to enforce those. The result is
one company, Clear Channel, controlling virtually all American
venues and promoters. Fans can't count on using the publicly-owned
airwaves to express their discontent with being inconvenienced
because Clear Channel also owns virtually all the radio stations.
We could call our Congressmen and demand a law against it, but
that law wouldn't be enforced because:
a) it wouldn't pass because Ticketmaster
would outspend us on lobbying,
b) our congressmen believe in unregulated
free-market capitalism, and
c) our government doesn't enforce such
laws (see beginning of paragraph).
Incidentally, guess who owns Ticketmaster?
Barry Diller's U.S.A. Networks. Which were just sold to Vivendi.
Which just happens to own Universal, the record company that
controls 40 percent of the U.S. market and belongs to what
the Federal Trade Commission calls a major label "cartel."
For the past 20 years, we have stood
by while free market fanatics and cowed liberals beat their
chests over the wisdom of the market, the genius of privatization,
the global triumph of capitalism. This is the result.
So enjoy this summer's shows--if you
can afford them. I am sure that Ronald Perelman or some other
billionaire privateer will be shaking his fat ass in the front
rows. You should smile broadly as you watch that person pretend
to enjoy the show. What they're really enjoying is the convenience
you've provided by swallowing the bogus rhetoric of the capitalists.
"Corrupted by wealth & power,
your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've
got a set of Republican waiters on one side & a set of Democratic
waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters
brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in
the same Wall Street kitchen."---Huey Long
DeskScan
(What's playing at my desk):
1. "Cold Woman Blues" / "99
Blues" / "Outside Woman Blues," Blind Joe Reynolds
(from a CD burned by a friend featuring newly discovered tracks--plus
the well-known "Outside"--by a country bluesman so
great a friend commented, "He sounds like Robert Johnson's
lost brother." (Very
very scratchy 78 sources-try for your own sample)
2. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
3. Mundo, Ruben Blades (Columbia advance)
4. You're
Gonna Need That Pure Religion, Rev. Pearly Brown (Arhoolie)
(Among the half-dozen greatest blues evangelists, ranking with
Blind Willie Johnson-audibly his model--, Arizona Dranes, Gary
Davis and hardly anyone else.)
5. By
the Hand of the Father, Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music
Group)
6. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont)
7. Gravity,
Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music Group)
8. Down
the Road, Van Morrison (Universal)
9. The Very Best of the Winans, The Winans (Rhino)
10. Talk
About It, Nicole C. Mullen (Word/Epic)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
May 20, 2002
May 14, 2002
May 6, 2002
April 30, 2002
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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