home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
|
|
The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad "The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater." Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
|
October 22 / 23, 2005 Billy Sothern Ralph Nader October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
October 19, 2005 Christopher Reed Stephen Soldz Chet Richards Patrick Cockburn Scott Richard
Lyons Ralph Nader Website of
the Day
October 18, 2005 Chet Flippo Ron Jacobs Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor Dave Lindorff Virginia Rodino Thomas Healy Ralph Nader Stephen Lendman Patrick Cockburn
October 17, 2005 Peter Linebaugh Norman Solomon Cockburn /
Sengupta Mike Whitney Uri Avnery Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
October 15 / 16, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Neve Gordon Moshe Adler Christopher Brauchli Diane Farsetta Sam Husseini Monica Benderman Mickey Z. Douglas C.
Smyth Lee Sustar Fred Gardner Elizabeth Schulte Joshua Frank David Vest Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 14, 2005 Farrah Hassen Ron Jacobs Sasha Kramer Katrina Yeaw Nicole Colson Raúl Zibechi Nikolas Kozloff Website of the Day
Jeremy Scahill Jeff Birkenstein Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher Stan Cox Anis Memon Gary Leupp Dave Zirin Matthew Koehler Werther Website of
the Day
Omar Waraich William Cook Phil Gasper Dave Lindorff Matt Vidal John Gautreaux Diana Johnstone Mark Weisbrot Brian J. Foley Website of
the Day
October 11, 2005 Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt Lila Rajiva Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Mitchel Cohen Tariq Ali Website of
the Day
October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig
Corrie Joshua Frank Gideon Levy Alan Wallis Mickey Z. CounterPunch News Service Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Jennifer Van Bergen Saul Landau Jeff Halper Lenni Brenner Nikolas Kozloff Brian Cloughley Alice Slater John Gautreaux Fred Gardner Niranjan Ramakrishnan M.G. Piety Tom Gorman Mike Whitney Aseem Shrivastava Ben Tripp Poets' Basement
October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson Will Youmans Dave Lindorff Judith Scherr Russell D. Hoffman Jared Bernstein Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of
the Day
P. Sainath Scott Parkin Paul Craig
Roberts Andréa Schmidt Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank M. Junaid Alam Matthew Koehler Robert Pollin
October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Col. Dan Smith Dave Zirin Paul Craig Roberts Alan Maass
October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Mike Roselle Joshua Frank John Chuckman Alan Farago Mickey Z. Christine & Ethan Rose Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Seth Sandronsky Jeffrey St. Clair
October 1 / 2, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair Dave
Marsh Ralph
Nader Flavia
Alaya Uri
Avnery Chris
Kutalik Greg
Moses Brian
J. Foley Nicole
Colson Ray
McGovern Fred
Gardner Justin
Felux Will
Youmans Mike
Ferner David
Krieger Agustin
Velloso Saul
Landau Ben
Tripp Poets
Basement Website
of the Weekend
September 30, 2005 Mary
Geddry Paul
Craig Roberts Dave
Lindorff Gregory
Wilpert Benjamin
Dangl James
McMurtry T.R.
Johnson
September 29, 2005 Sen.
Russ Feingold Carl
G. Estabrook Ramzy
Baroud Dave
Lindorff Mike
Whitney Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski Gary
Handschumacher Winslow
T. Wheeler
September 28, 2005 Dr.
Eyad Serraj William
A. Cook Liaquat
Ali Khan Mike
Whitney Joshua
Frank CounterPunch
Wire Chris
Genovali Linn
Washington, Jr.
September 27, 2005 Forrest
Hylton Jason
Leopold Jennifer
K. Harbury Ray
McGovern Mike
Ferner Antony
Loewenstein Harry
Browne
September 26, 2005 Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz Joshua
Frank Lamis
Andoni Mike
Marqusee Rep.
Cynthia McKinney Ron
Jacobs Norman
Solomon John
Chuckman Paul
Craig Roberts
September 24 / 25, 2005 Kathy
and Bill Christison Ralph
Nader Saul
Landau Greg
Moses Roger
Burbach Vijay
Prashad Laura
Carlsen Robert
Fisk Dave
Lindorff Kirkpatrick
Sale / Thomas Naylor Maj.
Anthony Milavic Brian
Concannon, Jr.
September 23, 2005 CounterPunch
News Service Diane
Farsetta Robert
Sandels Christopher
Brauchli Alan
Farago Dave
Zirin Maxine
Conant David
Price
September 22, 2005 Smith,
Wood, Leas, and Greenfield Patrick
Cockburn Manuel
Garcia, Jr. Lucia
Dailey Mokhiber
/ Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Kona
Lowell Jason
Leopold Website
of the Day
September 21, 2005 Jorge
Mariscal Linda
S. Heard Joshua
Frank Eric
Ruder Pierre
Tristam Dave
Lindorff Mike
Ferner Missy
Comley Beattie Jeffrey
St. Clair Website
of the Day
September 20, 2005 Steve
Breyman George
Galloway Patrick
Cockburn M.
Shahid Alam Mike
Whitney Winslow
T. Wheeler Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Paul
Craig Roberts
Subscribe Online
|
October 22 / 23, 2005 New Orleans is More Than the Hot Fives and Wynton MarsalisLetter from the Circle BarBy BILLY SOTHERN
People here in New York seem shocked when I tell them that locals at New Orleans' Circle Bar, didn't sit around listening to Louis Armstrong and the Hot Fives on the jukebox all night long. While their jukebox, the best in town in my estimation, wasn't afraid to look back into the city's past with Irma Thomas' "Drip drop, Drip drop, It's raining so hard, Looks like it's gonna rain all night," pouring out of the speakers occasionally, the live music at the Circle Bar had a decidedly less anachronistic tone. I moved from New York to New Orleans almost five years ago with the promise of cheap, old, beautiful, falling-apart homes and drawn to the city's current and dynamic cultural life which I had seen glimmers of while visiting. While in the past month the media has focused on the city's cultural history and its most prominent export, jazz, this reflects only a small corner of what many of us loved about the city. There have been some honest assessments of local music tastes in the press. My favorite bit of reporting from the Times Picayune touched on the looting of the music section of the hated Lower Garden District Wal-Mart: "They took everything - all the electronics, the food, the bikes," said John Stonaker, a Wal-Mart security officer. "People left their old clothes on the floor when they took new ones. The only thing left are the country-and-western CDs. You can still get a Shania Twain album." It is true. There was not a single "new country" fan among any of my friends and neighbors. However, while there may be more traditional jazz fans per capita in New Orleans than anyplace in the world, New Orleans had many great musicians of all different stripes-from rockabilly, to alt-country, to klezmer, and many hybrids therein. The Circle Bar played host to the city's smart and eclectic rock scene and while the city's music roots have passed a torch from Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong, Professor Longhair, and others patron saints of New Orleans music, the bands I saw there on a daily basis reflected the Third World city that was laid waste by the storm in a present and immediate manner. Luke Allen, the front man of the Happy Talk Band, could be found behind the bar at Circle Bar serving drinks pretty much any night that he was not elsewhere singing his songs or sitting on the other side of the bar. He's a red-bearded character who wears a staff-issue Angola State Penitentiary hat and who hails from Salinas, California, "the home of John Steinbeck," he always explains. In the post-punk tradition, he is a less-than-perfect singer and held a guitar on stage mostly to keep him from having to stand there bare, and so he could jam his cigarette between the strings and the tuners while he was singing. Whatever his weaknesses - he would tell you that they are many - they are more than made up for by his songs about the city. I realized one night that almost all of the songs had an element specific to New Orleans. "Ash Wednesday" sings of flooding and murder in the Lower 9th Ward. "Forget-Me-Not" sings of losing your mind, getting picked up by the police in Bywater for murder, and waking up on the 3rd floor of Charity Hospital, a mental health ward of New Orleans' public hospital. The Happy Talk Band's songs are of New Orleans: the Huey P. Long Bridge, being drunk and naked with a girl on the levee, Collins-mix and Methadone, and the melancholy jealousy of dating a stripper. Luke even has an eye for the city's ubiquitous flora and commented on the angel's trumpets blooms, the smell of jasmine in a woman's hair when she walks in from the street, and the cat's-claw vines that creep up anything that sits on the ground for more than a few minutes in our rich swampy soil. When do you ever hear New York's "it bands" singing about Bellevue Hospital or East New York? The Happy Talk Band's sense of place was mirrored throughout the local music scene, filled with people who fell in love with the city as one enters a deeply dysfunctional love affair. Many came to New Orleans like sailors drawn to the sirens and crashed against the rocks, but no less smitten. But now they are scattered around the country. When I talked to Luke Allen on the phone from Lafayette, Louisiana, he mentioned that his upright bass player, Mike Lenore, was tending bar in a restaurant on the Lower East Side in New York, his drummer, Andy Harris, found work as a cook in Peachtree City, Georgia, and his guitar player, Bailey Smith, who was to marry his wife Emily in New Orleans last month, is trying find gigs with another New Orleans rock band, the raucous Morning 40 Federation (http://www.morning40.com/). Though the Happy Talk Band remains committed to staying together and telling the stories of its city, it is hard to imagine them either playing their beloved Circle Bar or coming to a town near you any time soon. Here in New York, Alex McMurray (http://alexmcmurray.com/), who sang his strange and beautiful songs in gravelly tones at the Circle Bar every Wednesday for years, is now playing on the Lower East Side a couple times a week. I haven't been but its hard to imagine where he is going to find a tubaist or washboard player with an ear for his sound in this town or if people will appreciate, or relate to, the drama of selling your plasma. Who knows, maybe his perfect tuba-washboard-rock will be the next big thing in the Big Apple? In short, though everyone was always talking about leaving New Orleans for some other city to find work, decent public schools for their kids, or a music business that might allow them to stop singing first person non-fiction narratives about doing medical testing for money, these bands and musicians don't make much sense living anywhere else because the real, sad, living New Orleans fed their art at the very same time as it was eating its young. For my part, I have spent too many nights sitting half drunk in the Circle Bar staring up at the old florescent clock from K & B, a defunct, nostalgia-prompting, local drug store chain, listening to music about floods, poverty, and urban decay. Now, it breaks my heart that there is no one left in New Orleans to play these songs and that the rest of the country is forced to hear about these same horrors on the television in their living rooms while politicians claim that what unfolded was unforeseeable. Too bad that Bush didn't spent more time in places like the Circle Bar in his wild, younger years visiting New Orleans. Sure, he might have gotten drunk and obnoxious, but it would have provided a much needed education. Billy Sothern is an anti-death penalty lawyer and
writer from New Orleans. He can be reached at: billys@thejusticecenter.org
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair                      |
