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in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 15, 2003
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
Recent
Stories
September 12, 2003
Writers Bloc
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
15, 2003
Sunday Morning Coming
Down
Reflections
on Johnny Cash and One of His Biggest Fans
By MATTHEW BEHRENS
The fan base of Johnny Cash is huge. The Man in
Black's ability through his music and his message to cross so
many barriers that keep us apart is remarkable.
When I heard that Cash had passed on,
though, there was one person in particular who I first thought
of calling. But as I picked up the phone, I realized this was
a call I could not complete. The person I was hoping to speak
with was the kind of person who, in my mind, personified -- more
than anyone I knew -- a Johnny Cash fan. But, in one of those
tragic stories that so often fills the songs of country music,
my close friend and Cash fan was no longer with us: he had died
at the tender age of 32 in 1990.
When I heard Cash had passed on, I thought
of Robin, who loved Johnny Cash, honky tonks, and nonviolent
resistance. A gifted photographer, Robin's favourite subjects
were the folks who so often peopled Johnny Cash songs: the downtrodden,
the people who do the sweat work in our society and, perhaps
most importantly, the resisters who, whatever the odds, will
try, like the prisoner in one Cash cellblock song ("The
Wall"), vows to climb a wall no one's ever scaled before.
Cash's songs are not only about the folks
who get kicked around; they are also about the folks who kick
back in whatever way they can against a dehumanizing, vicious
economic system. One can think of the guy who built his dream
car over a twenty year period by sneaking car parts out of the
factory, one piece at a time. Or the family who would get together
and sing to help their troubled souls, in "Daddy Sang Bass."
Or the guy who, after 30 years of back-breaking labour on the
factory floor, will not go into retirement too quietly, for his
final act on his last day of work is to square accounts with
the jerk of a foreman who's busted his behind for years.
Robin was a dreamer who saw the world
in the black and white terms you often found in the simple, truthful
morality of a Cash tune. In the late 1980s, we worked together
on a campaign to build support for the Innu people of Nitassinan
(known to most Canadians as Labrador/Quebec), who were occupying
runways to resist NATO war training which continues to this day.
(The Innu, to our mutual delight, were also great Johnny Cash
fans).
Sitting on Robin's Parkdale porch, we
dreamily discussed plans to invite Johnny Cash to Toronto to
do a benefit concert (Willie Nelson and other country stars had
just finished a "cowboys and Indians" tour demanding
the release of Nelson Mandela and Leonard Peltier).
The plan was to invite Johnny to our
favourite spot, the old Wheat Sheaf Tavern at Bathurst and King,
for beers after the show. But in many respects, that dream died
with Robin.
Lots of folks remember Robin from a legendary
few days in jail following our arrests at the ARMX weapons fair
in Ottawa in 1989. Almost 200 of us were arrested that May morning
as Chilean, Salvadoran and apartheid arms dealers scoured the
grounds of Lansdowne Park for the weapons of war and repression.
Packed seven and eight into cells built
for one, Robin and I started a round of "How High's the
Water, Mamma? It's Six Feet High and Risin'" which quickly
evolved into a string of Cash hits that, though broken up occasionally
by rounds of "Alice's Restaurant," covered a broad
range of Cash tunes for hours on end. Brian Burch was in the
cell, as was the late Rodney Bobiwash, another too-soon departed
friend who insisted on a number of renditions of "Ira Hayes."
In 1964, Cash recorded the Peter LaFarge
song "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," the tale of a First
Nations man who was one of the Marine heroes of the epic WWII
battle at Iwo Jima, but who returned home to the racism that
never disappeared: "Ira Hayes returned a hero, celebrated
throughout the land/ He was wined and speeched and honoured,
everybody shook his hand/ But He was just a Pima Indian, no water,
no home, no chance/ At home nobody cared what Ira had done, and
when do the Indians dance?"
This was for an album called "Bitter
Tears, Ballads of the American Indian." Cash performed the
tune at the Newport folk festival among the likes of Joan Baez
and Pete Seeger, but many traditional country music DJs refused
to play the tune. In response, Cash took out a full page advertisement
in Billboard magazine (which refused to review the album). It
was an open letter in which he boldly stated, "D.J.'s, station
managers, owners etc., where are your guts?" He identified
some programmers as "gutless" for using the reason
that Ira Hayes did not fit their definition of a country song.
"'Ballad of Ira Hayes' is strong
medicine. So is Rochester, Harlem, Birmingham and Vietnam,"
Cash told them, in reference to the riots which had torn northern
cities as well as the unforgettable scenes of thousands of black
people in the south going to jail in Alabama for freedom. "I
had to fight back when I realized that so many stations are afraid
of Ira Hayes. Just one question: WHY???"
After singing most of the day and into
the evening that May day in 1989, we were shackled together for
the trip to the Ottawa Detention Centre. Robin laughed at how
we were in leg irons, handcuffs, and chains around our waists
for an act of nonviolent resistance whilst war criminals freely
roamed the streets of Ottawa. We jangled our chains as Robin
led us in a chorus of "You're in the Jailhouse Now,"
another Cash favourite.
It was something that would have drawn
a wry smile from the Man in Black, who also "got it"
when it came to the issue of prisons and prisoners. Robin and
I often chortled about those who view country music as backward.
At a time when "revolutionary" groups like Jefferson
Airplane were doing jeans commercials, Cash was going into prisons
and singing to folks who, he commented, were often in prison
because they had migrated from the south during a mass turn to
automation, when millions of old jobs were lost, and "you
have to do somethin' to eat."
Indeed, on the liner notes to "Johnny
Cash at Folsom Prison," Cash wrote: "The culture of
a thousand years is shattered with the clanging of the cell door
behind you. Life outside, behind you, immediately becomes unreal...Down
the cell block you hear a steel door open, then close. Like every
other man that hears it, your first unconscious thought reaction
is that it's someone coming to let you out, but you know it isn't.
You sit on your cold, steel mattressless bunk and watch a cockroach
crawl out from under the filthy commode, and you don't kill it.
You envy the roach as you watch it crawl out, under the cell
door."
Perhaps one of the things that made Cash
so real to people was his complete lack of artifice. There was
also no artifice in Robin. Like Cash, who was not above being
crabby on stage if he had a cold and at least was honest about
it, Robin always told the truth, even if it offended the tender
sensibilities of folks who could not stomach it.
Robin was the kind of guy you could see
in dozens of Cash songs. When I hear Cash singing about the rigors
of working class life, I think of Robin's string of sweaty jobs,
from the mines of Sudbury to the roof of a Chrysler plant in
Windsor, working on a detail whose only job was to douse the
sparks and flames that daily flared at workers dealing with molten
metal.
Cash's late 60s and early 70s songs also
spoke to the right of young people to resist war and racism.
Of course, "The Man in Black" song itself is a stirring
reminder of the need, as Martin Luther King pointed out time
and again, for gadflies and resisters who refuse to buckle to
the conformity of the times, whether that be going along with
the killer cuts of the Harris/Eves regime in Ontario or the racist
agenda which imprisons Muslims on secret evidence in Canadian
prisons:
Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes, But just so
we're reminded of the ones who are held back, Up front there
ought 'a be a Man In Black.
Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every
day, And tell the world that everything's OK, But I'll try to
carry off a little darkness on my back, 'Till things are brighter,
I'm the Man In Black.
Like the Winter Soldiers* of old -- a
symbol of those who do not abandon the struggle when things get
rough -- Cash knew that there was never a time when we could
not speak out against injustice. His wearing of black put it
in front of our faces, in much the same way persistent vigils,
protests, and other acts of resistance remind us that our work
to make a better world is not yet done.
One of Robin's favourite songs was the
Randy Travis tune, "There'll Always be a Honky Tonk Somewhere."
It's a tribute to the enduring strength of the music that comprises
the REAL (as opposed to the Shania Twain slick) country music.
And it speaks to the fact that Cash's tunes will live on for
generations to come, and the words "I hear the train a-comin'"
will continue to speak to the yearnings of so many millions of
people whom we cruelly lock behind bars.
In the meantime, wherever you are, Robin,
I hope you and Johnny can finally sit down and have that beer.
And I hope you don't find it corny if
I finish this with a quote from one of our favourite Cash numbers:
"I Still Miss Someone."
Matthew Behrens
of Country Music Fans Against the Cuts. In 1995, a few short
weeks after the mean government of Mike Harris came to power
in Ontario, Country Music Fans Against the Cuts was formed by
Behrens and Brian Burch. Recognizing the social justice tradition
that lives in much of country music, we handed out flyers with
country lyrics that were linked to the social disaster of the
Harris government outside country music concerts. We have since
formed an offshoot, Country Music Fans Against Secret Trials.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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