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Today's
Stories
January 3 / 4, 2004
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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
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for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 3 / 4, 2004
Sir
Mick
His
Satanic Majesty's Royal Knight
By RON JACOBS
I saw the Rolling Stones for the first time in
the autumn of 1970 in Frankfurt am Main. The show was incredible,
but what I remember most vividly today is the scene outside of
the place that they played-the Festhalle. As soon as concertgoers
exited the streetcar, they were met with a line of police with
dogs. The dogs were barking and yanking at their chains, which
the cops held tightly. Various hippies stood around in small
groups smoking hash and drinking wine, making drug deals, and
looking for their friends.
Others, who were more politically inclined,
distributed leaflets written in both German and English that
decried the exploitation of rock music by big time promoters.
Indeed, the price of the concert tickets was more than tickets
for any other similar event. By today's standards they were
still incredibly cheap (10--12 DM or about $3.50), but they were
at least 3 DM higher than people were used to paying. GIs, who
made up a substantial portion of every rock concert crowd in
Germany, mingled with the crowd, trying their best to forget
their day job.
As I made my way towards the series of
entrances a small skirmish broke out between the police and a
group of people who were trying to crash the gates. The next
thing I knew I was being squeezed between two cops and their
dogs and a group of people with no place to run. I stuck my
ticket into my pants pocket and tried to squeeze past the police.
Just as I found an exit I felt the bite of one of the dogs on
the bottom of my pants leg. With a burst of energy propelled
solely by fear, I yanked my foot loose and ran toward the entrance
gate. The police were busy with the gatecrashers and did not
bother to chase me. The ticket taker took my ticket, tore it,
and I made my way into the concert hall.
I was in! The revolution was on and
here was the soundtrack. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones would
be on the stage at any moment. They had left riots and rebellion
in their wake the last three or four years and Frankfurt was
no exception. I looked once again at my torn jeans for a validation
of this fact. Fortunately the dog had failed to get any flesh
in its grip and only the cloth was torn. I don't remember too
many of the songs the Stones played, but recall very clearly
that they closed with "Street Fighting Man." At the
time, this was the song in the Stones' repertoire that I wanted
to hear the most. After all, it was a call to us revolutionaries-cultural
and political-and it scared the establishment. Hell, the city
of Chicago had banned radio stations form playing it during the
battles between police and protestors at the Democratic Convention
in 1968. Armed Forces Radio never played it, perhaps from some
fear that it would rile up the GIs. Of course, this wasn't the
only song they had banned. The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
song about the murders at Kent State, "Ohio," was played
no more than a half dozen times before some officer ordered the
radio station to stop playing it. One of the DJs (a GI) played
it after the ban and was removed from his job at the station.
Just like today, the military brass was extremely afraid of
soldiers getting any opinions that might contradict the official
one.
As those of us who had made it inside
left the concert, we were met by an increased police presence
in the parking lot. Apparently, the skirmishes outside had erupted
into a small riot during the concert and more police had been
called in to put it down. As I headed towards a streetcar stop,
I reveled in the scene and thought to myself that the Stones
concert was everything I expected it to be, complete with a riot
outside.
The next time I saw the Stones was in
1981 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. By this time, rock
music was very big business and Mick Jagger was wearing Capri
pants. His jeans and cape were gone, as were his rebellious
fans. Sure, there were some fights and struggles with pushy
police in the Candlestick parking lot, but no cultural revolutionaries
decrying the exploitation of the culture or the $25.00 ticket
price. The music was good, but the daring was gone. The Rolling
Stones were mere entertainment now. Mick was a prancing rooster
and the only remaining integrity left in the original group belonged
to Keith Richards and Charlie Watts.
So, when I saw on the news that Mick
had been knighted recently I wasn't surprised. It is a logical
progression after all. There are those Stones' aficionados who
have always insisted that Mick was never really the bad boy rebel
he has been made out to be. Instead, say these folks, he is
more like the three kings who appear in the apocryphal tale that
Bob Dylan relates on the cover of his album John Wesley Harding:
when asked how far they want to "go in," the first
king answers, "Not too far but just far enough so's we can
say that we've been there." In other words, Jagger has
always been more of a poseur than the genuine article. This
isn't to say the man doesn't have convictions, it just that he
does not seem to have a public stance from which he can't retreat.
Keith has his guitar, a bemused attitude and his rebellious
core. Mick has a career.
But, you might say, Paul McCartney is
a knight. My reply to that would be simply that Paul never pretended
to be a rebel. He was always Paul McCartney, master songwriter
and middle class guy. It was John Lennon, after all, who lobbied
Paul and the other Beatles to reject their earlier knighthood
as a protest against Great Britain's support for America's war
in Vietnam. You don't hear about Mick rejecting his knighthood
to protest Britain's groveling support for the current US war
in Iraq. Indeed, you don't hear Mick saying much of anything
about the war.
Oh well, what can you expect from a culture
that prostitutes itself to the highest bidder, whether it's a
car manufacturer or the Super Bowl? Even overtly political rockers
have to make a buck, right? This is where the contradictions
take center stage. How does a political rock band make a living
within the system of corporate capitalism? Jefferson Airplane
released its call to revolution, Volunteers, in 1969 on
the RCA label. At the time, RCA was one of the nation's top
defense contractors. The Clash, who were punk rock's most radical
band (and actually had a political stance beyond nihilism), recorded
for Epic, owned by Sony. The revolutionary rockers of the 1990s,
Rage Against the Machine, also recorded for Epic. Sony, of course,
is one of the world's largest corporations and makes its money
from any number of ventures, some of which are military-related.
No matter what, its corporate board has little interest in the
revolutionary hopes of either Tom Morello or Joe Strummer; little
interest, that is, that can't be measured in dollars.
Rock bands that eschew the corporate
world of the big labels may remain pure to their artistic and
political beliefs but, unfortunately for their art and the art
of rock itself, most of their potential audience never hears
them. This, then, is the dilemma of rebel music in a world of
corporate profit. Of course, Sir Mick could help out by spending
some of his millions on producing some of these bands, but what
would the Queen think?
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 Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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