Q) Where are all the protest singers ? A) Rostock
Danny | 29.05.2007 11:01 | G8 Germany 2007 | Analysis | Culture
This question has been asked twice now, and quite rightly hidden. For if your idea of an anti-Thatcher song is by the monster-rock Pink Floyd then you are probably just too dumb to educate. When Sid Vicious was signed up he was wearing a Pink Floyd T Shirt that he'd scrawled 'I HATE' on. Luckily anarchist protest songwriting has progressed a great deal since 'Anarchy in The UK' but I still hate 'the Floyd'.
I could list 50 great current protest singers or bands. Not one of them are signed to a major corporate US label so you could blame your ignorance of them as 'censorship' but I'd blame your own laziness and lack of taste.
Now one protest singer who is mentioned here often - and so is someone you have no excuse not to know - is David Rovics. You asked where are the protest singers ? Last night he was playing at the Rostock G8 Convergence Center concert, this Saturday he is playing at the Rostock G8 rally. I doubt Pink Floyd are, the last time they played anything political it was to celebrate the victory of corporate-capitalism over evil communism when the wall came down. Now I've listened to Pink Floyd, and they were quite good when Barrett was with them, so have the decency before you respond to listen to a few of Davids tunes which are free for download here:
http://www.soundclick.com/pro/view/01/default.cfm?bandID=111310&content=music
And if you choose to see him, he is coming to the UK in October to play with Attila the Stockbroker. Why not arrange a gig for him ? And before you accuse me of musical snobbery, when was the last time Waters/Gilmour wrote an article like this ?
Long jail terms for green activism
US "ecoterrorism" law sends demonstrators to jail for decades.
Dateline: Tuesday, May 15, 2007
by David Rovics
Bill Rodgers died in a jail cell in Flagstaff, Arizona, fist raised above him, plastic bag over his head, of an apparent suicide on the 2005 winter solstice. Two weeks before in Prescott, Bill's baby, the Catalyst Infoshop, had been raided by 15 federal officers and he was taken away.
Bill was essentially accused of destroying corporate property. If he had been arrested for these crimes in, say, an EU country, I'm sure Bill would still be alive today. But the US is not the EU. The prisons of the US are full of nonviolent offenders, and there are special sentences for some of them. Bill knew that in America today, he could do like Jeffrey Luers and go to prison for a very long time. For Bill's property destruction was politically — ecologically — motivated. Bill apparently chose to end his life rather than spend it in prison.
The last time I saw Bill was at the Catalyst, a few months before his death. We were sitting on (or more like enveloped by) some very old couches, and someone was filming an interview for a local cable access program, I think. Bill was a couple of years older than me, but with twice as much energy. He was small, intelligent, full of vitality, full of both good intentions and actions. He was an unassuming Prescott institution, along with the Catalyst Infoshop.
Bill was part of a sweep of arrests of activists around the US, and more broadly, part of the US government's efforts to wipe out what it calls "ecoterrorism." To impose decades-long sentences (Jeffrey Luers was sentenced to a breathtaking 22 years) on people who have harmed no one, people who have essentially committed expensive acts of vandalism against the corporations that are destroying our world.
The term "ecoterrorism" was coined by a corporation, by a PR firm in New York. The laws passed by Congress giving "ecoterrorists" extra decades in prison for their alleged crimes were, of course, like most laws in this alleged democracy, passed at the behest of large corporations.
At the beginning of June, Daniel McGowan, Joyanna Zacher and Jonathan Paul will be sentenced for their alleged crimes of property destruction. Next week, at the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, a judge will decide whether the "terrorism enhancement" law shall be applied to these cases. If applied, the defendants will receive mandatory sentences of 20 years on top of whatever other draconian sentences they will otherwise be receiving. In the same way that communists were once singled out for special punishment, so now are "ecoterrorists." It's the new Red Scare, the Green Scare.
This May 15 court decision comes at an interesting time. Our country is waging an illegal war for oil in Iraq in which over 600,000 people have lost their lives. The ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, and the federal government is invading oil-rich nations and giving tax breaks to Americans for buying Hummers. Last week, a Cuban man named Luis Posada Carrilles was let back onto the streets of Miami. A free man, though he is known to have killed 73 people by planting a bomb on a civilian airplane in 1976, among many other deadly crimes. And the man responsible for blowing up Greenpeace's ship in 1985 while it was docked in New Zealand, killing one, is now living in Virginia and selling arms to the US government.
But real terrorists like Posada are not our government's concern. International law, illegal wars and mass deaths of innocent civilians are just fine. Global warming is just fine. "Ecoterrorists" are the problem, the FBI's enemy #1, by their own admission. And in September 2001, what was the FBI's biggest, most expensive ongoing campaign? Right. Not al-Qaeda, but the nonviolent acts of property destruction carried out by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
Of course, Muslims are also the new bogeymen. Just as anyone in the 1980s who defended the sovereignty of nations in Latin America was called a "communist," now anyone defending the sovereignty of nations in the Middle East is called a "terrorist" or "Islamist." There have even been transparently ridiculous efforts on the part of the State Department to link supporters of Hugo Chavez with al-Qaeda. In the modern era, you don't even need to commit a crime or "conspire" (with FBI infiltrators/provocateurs) to commit a crime. You need only open your mouth.
Such is the case with devout Muslim university professor Dr Sami al-Arian, who has been in prison in Florida for years now. But this is also true of Sherman Austin, a young man from California who recently served a year in prison because someone posted a crude, easily-available smoke bomb recipe on his website.
And it is terrifyingly true in the case of Rod Coronado, who is being threatened with a 25-year prison sentence for a speech he gave in 2003, in which he answered a student's question about an action for which he served years in prison in the early 1990s.
There is a thread running through all of this — the war in Iraq, the criminalization of Muslims in the US and around the world, and the criminalization of environmentalists, particularly those involved with the activities of the ELF. That is, the interests of massive energy corporations. It was due to lobbying efforts by energy companies masquerading as the pseudo-eco "Wise Use Movement" that led Bill Clinton to pass the 1997 law criminalizing speech, under which Rod Coronado is facing his shockingly draconian sentence....
For the whole story, please go to the related site below.
David Rovics wrote this as a Guest Contributor for t r u t h o u t. He is also a singer-songwriter who tours regularly throughout North America, Europe and occasionally elsewhere.
Related addresses:
URL 1: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051407D.shtml
URL 2: www.davidrovics.com
Now one protest singer who is mentioned here often - and so is someone you have no excuse not to know - is David Rovics. You asked where are the protest singers ? Last night he was playing at the Rostock G8 Convergence Center concert, this Saturday he is playing at the Rostock G8 rally. I doubt Pink Floyd are, the last time they played anything political it was to celebrate the victory of corporate-capitalism over evil communism when the wall came down. Now I've listened to Pink Floyd, and they were quite good when Barrett was with them, so have the decency before you respond to listen to a few of Davids tunes which are free for download here:
http://www.soundclick.com/pro/view/01/default.cfm?bandID=111310&content=music And if you choose to see him, he is coming to the UK in October to play with Attila the Stockbroker. Why not arrange a gig for him ? And before you accuse me of musical snobbery, when was the last time Waters/Gilmour wrote an article like this ?
Long jail terms for green activism
US "ecoterrorism" law sends demonstrators to jail for decades.
Dateline: Tuesday, May 15, 2007
by David Rovics
Bill Rodgers died in a jail cell in Flagstaff, Arizona, fist raised above him, plastic bag over his head, of an apparent suicide on the 2005 winter solstice. Two weeks before in Prescott, Bill's baby, the Catalyst Infoshop, had been raided by 15 federal officers and he was taken away.
Bill was essentially accused of destroying corporate property. If he had been arrested for these crimes in, say, an EU country, I'm sure Bill would still be alive today. But the US is not the EU. The prisons of the US are full of nonviolent offenders, and there are special sentences for some of them. Bill knew that in America today, he could do like Jeffrey Luers and go to prison for a very long time. For Bill's property destruction was politically — ecologically — motivated. Bill apparently chose to end his life rather than spend it in prison.
The last time I saw Bill was at the Catalyst, a few months before his death. We were sitting on (or more like enveloped by) some very old couches, and someone was filming an interview for a local cable access program, I think. Bill was a couple of years older than me, but with twice as much energy. He was small, intelligent, full of vitality, full of both good intentions and actions. He was an unassuming Prescott institution, along with the Catalyst Infoshop.
Bill was part of a sweep of arrests of activists around the US, and more broadly, part of the US government's efforts to wipe out what it calls "ecoterrorism." To impose decades-long sentences (Jeffrey Luers was sentenced to a breathtaking 22 years) on people who have harmed no one, people who have essentially committed expensive acts of vandalism against the corporations that are destroying our world.
The term "ecoterrorism" was coined by a corporation, by a PR firm in New York. The laws passed by Congress giving "ecoterrorists" extra decades in prison for their alleged crimes were, of course, like most laws in this alleged democracy, passed at the behest of large corporations.
At the beginning of June, Daniel McGowan, Joyanna Zacher and Jonathan Paul will be sentenced for their alleged crimes of property destruction. Next week, at the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, a judge will decide whether the "terrorism enhancement" law shall be applied to these cases. If applied, the defendants will receive mandatory sentences of 20 years on top of whatever other draconian sentences they will otherwise be receiving. In the same way that communists were once singled out for special punishment, so now are "ecoterrorists." It's the new Red Scare, the Green Scare.
This May 15 court decision comes at an interesting time. Our country is waging an illegal war for oil in Iraq in which over 600,000 people have lost their lives. The ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, and the federal government is invading oil-rich nations and giving tax breaks to Americans for buying Hummers. Last week, a Cuban man named Luis Posada Carrilles was let back onto the streets of Miami. A free man, though he is known to have killed 73 people by planting a bomb on a civilian airplane in 1976, among many other deadly crimes. And the man responsible for blowing up Greenpeace's ship in 1985 while it was docked in New Zealand, killing one, is now living in Virginia and selling arms to the US government.
But real terrorists like Posada are not our government's concern. International law, illegal wars and mass deaths of innocent civilians are just fine. Global warming is just fine. "Ecoterrorists" are the problem, the FBI's enemy #1, by their own admission. And in September 2001, what was the FBI's biggest, most expensive ongoing campaign? Right. Not al-Qaeda, but the nonviolent acts of property destruction carried out by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
Of course, Muslims are also the new bogeymen. Just as anyone in the 1980s who defended the sovereignty of nations in Latin America was called a "communist," now anyone defending the sovereignty of nations in the Middle East is called a "terrorist" or "Islamist." There have even been transparently ridiculous efforts on the part of the State Department to link supporters of Hugo Chavez with al-Qaeda. In the modern era, you don't even need to commit a crime or "conspire" (with FBI infiltrators/provocateurs) to commit a crime. You need only open your mouth.
Such is the case with devout Muslim university professor Dr Sami al-Arian, who has been in prison in Florida for years now. But this is also true of Sherman Austin, a young man from California who recently served a year in prison because someone posted a crude, easily-available smoke bomb recipe on his website.
And it is terrifyingly true in the case of Rod Coronado, who is being threatened with a 25-year prison sentence for a speech he gave in 2003, in which he answered a student's question about an action for which he served years in prison in the early 1990s.
There is a thread running through all of this — the war in Iraq, the criminalization of Muslims in the US and around the world, and the criminalization of environmentalists, particularly those involved with the activities of the ELF. That is, the interests of massive energy corporations. It was due to lobbying efforts by energy companies masquerading as the pseudo-eco "Wise Use Movement" that led Bill Clinton to pass the 1997 law criminalizing speech, under which Rod Coronado is facing his shockingly draconian sentence....
For the whole story, please go to the related site below.
David Rovics wrote this as a Guest Contributor for t r u t h o u t. He is also a singer-songwriter who tours regularly throughout North America, Europe and occasionally elsewhere.
Related addresses:
URL 1: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051407D.shtml
URL 2: www.davidrovics.com
Danny
Comments
Display the following 9 comments