|
July 29, 2002
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
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 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
|
July
29, 2002
The Censors
Go Global
From Havel to Ashcroft, Baja to Reno
by Dave Marsh
The Czech Republic just passed a law giving anyone
"promoting drugs" up to five years in prison. So much
for the Velvet Revolution. Pathetically ineffectual President
Vaclav Havel, a leader of the Velvet Revolution, is currently
hospitalized. But when two dozen Czech artists turned themselves
to the Prague cops on July 2, ratting themselves out by handing
over "incriminating" CDs, Havel was on the street.
He offered no support to the critics of this regime.
The Czech law says that anyone who encourages
or, supports "the abuse of habit-forming substances other
than alcohol through the press, film, radio, television, publicly
accessible computer networks, or or in any other comparatively
effective way" gets one to five in the slammer. Come to
think of it, Havel, dying of lung cancer as the result of very
public use of the addictive substance tobacco, probably should
turn himself in. He could write his next book on the back of
the 6,000 signature petitions handed to him on July 1 by Art
Against Censorship, a group that staged a Prague concert against
the new law.
Czech cops took the demonstration seriously
enough to investigate lyrics like Hudha Praha's "Everybody
smoking marijuana." Yet not only has Havel been silent,
so has the international media (even though Hudha Praha, for
instance, records for Sony), with the exception of an article
buried in the back pages of Billboard. If a communist regime
had done such a thing...ah, but in Havel's new Czech Republic,
a journalist was threatened with five years in prison for advocating
socialist revolution, so there's no need to worry about that.
Here in the States, we worry about relatively
slight incursions on the First Amendment--and we should. No
farther away than Mexico, the stuff of John Ashcroft's repressive
dreams happens regularly. On July 18, Baja California radio
stations promised in writing to air no more narcocorridos,
corridos (polka-beat ballads) about the dope trade which outsell
almost any other popular music in northern Mexico and, among
Chicanos, in parts of the U.S. Southwest, too. (For a gripping
explanation of all this, I recommend Elijah Wald's book, Narcocorrido
and its CD soundtrack, Corridos Y Narcocorridos [Fonovisa, Mex.])
A radio industry representative in Baja said his clients wanted
to help "in eliminating themes that go against good, moral
customs and apologize for violence." He didn't say whether
the stations would oppose the governments of Mexico and the
United States which create the violence, support and benefit
from the drug trade, and behave immorally every single day,
often in collusion with each other.
Baja's censorship presents a NAFTA dilemma.
U.S. stations operate under no such restrictions. But as Wald
stresses, few Mexicans use the drugs the narcocorridos discuss.
Drugs are an export product and the importers are all Yankees,
as are the users.
In easier times, the Yanqui government's
hypocrisy on drugs and censorship made me laugh and cringe.
Now, smiling is out of the question. U.S. troops will invade
Colombia-although the news takes a backseat to Palestine and
Pakistan, it's still just a question of when. The pretext will
be the drug trade. The true target will be advocates of socialist
revolution.
Meantime, in Miami, hiphoppers Busta
Rhymes, Ja Rules and Ashanti played a benefit for Janet Reno
campaign for Florida governor. I guess they don't know that
Reno made it plain both as Dade County (Miami) DA and as U.S.
attorney general that she advocated ruthless suppression of
poor people who get caught making their living selling drugs,
and of the poor (but not rich) people who use them.
To quote a song Tipper likes, it's a
small world after all.
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. The Complete John Lee Hooker, Vol.
4: Detroit 1950-51 (Body & Soul, Fr.) - The most important
blues reissue series in memory. Beautiful sound, annotation
that seems to get better (Neil Slaven starts out this time with
the fact that, in the third year of his recording career, Hooker
had already made 164 sides!). He never sounded better than he
does here-at his peak, he's a nastier Muddy Waters.
2. The
Rising, Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
3. Love
That Louie: The Louie Louie Files (Ace UK)--Includes
a dozen important Louies, rarities like Jack Ely's "Louie
Louie '66," source material ("One for My Baby,"
"El Loco Cha Cha"), and sequels ("Have Love Will
Travel"). Arguably the greatest rock'n'roll anthology of
all time. Or, I guess, the worst.
4. Africa
Raps (Trikont)--Hip-hop jes grew to cover the entire
planet. When it got ALL the way back to everybody's original
home, it grew beautiful, important, relevant, all-encompassing
again. (www.trikont.de)
5. Watermelon,
Chicken and Gritz, Nappy Roots (Atlantic)
6. The Dark, Guy Clark (Sugar Hill)
7. "Sway"
and "Moonlight Mile," Alvin Youngblood Hart
from Songs of the Rolling Stones, All Blues'd Up (Compendia
This Ain't No Tribute series)
8. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont)
9. Adult
World, Wayne Kramer (MuscleTone)
10. 18,
Moby (V2)
11. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
12. Living
in a New World, Willie King and the Liberators (Rooster Blues)-"Talk
about terror," sings the West Alabama activist-bluesman,
"I been terrorized all my life." The freest, most
compelling music King has made.
13. Que
Pasa?: The Best of the Fania All-Stars (Columbia/Legacy)
14. Millionaire,
Kevin Welch (Dead Reckoning)
15. Keep
on Burning, Bob Frank (Bowstring)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Today's Features
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|