A View From The Left -NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

It goes without saying that in the midst of a brutal civil war both sides produce information and propaganda that should be met with skepticism – especially when on side’s narrative is so enthusiastically taken up by the establishment media.  Thus the avalanche of heartrending stories about the starvation in the town of Madaya, which is besieged by Syrian government forces.  It does not diminish the suffering of innocent civilians there or elsewhere to point out the cynical and selective mobilization of sympathy to further the narrative of “Assad’s” attack on his own people.  Photos from Madaya have been regularly faked by rebel and foreign media, while there are credible sources that it is at least in part the rebel occupiers who have been responsible for starvation there.  In fact it is foreign intervention that is at the root of so much bloody mayhem and suffering in Syria.  As Americans, there is not much we can do to make Syria better, but we can do what we can to pressure our government and its allies to stop making it worse.

 

THE U.S. STARVES SYRIA

If the corporate media in the United States are truly interested in the plight of Syrians perhaps they ought to do the real work of journalism instead of acting as courtiers for the Obama administration… The American plan for regime change in Syria has killed 250,000 people and displaced 9 million more. There would be no bullets, bombs or sieges absent the United States and the rest of NATO, Saudi Arabia and Turkey attempting to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government. All of the people who drowned in the Mediterranean as they tried to flee bloodshed were killed by the United States. The towns and cities that have been destroyed by warring armies were in fact destroyed by the United States. Absent American action, none of the other parties would have taken on this project. It is important to keep these facts in mind when seeing footage of starving people in Madaya. The corporate media lay all of the blame at Assad's feet and claim that the Syrian army is holding people hostage. There are in fact many Madayas in Syria with starving populations but if the narrative doesn't make the case for western aggression the story disappears. According to the United Nations some 400,000 Syrians are trapped by combatants in hard to reach areas and are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.  More

 

How to Help the Syrians Who Want to Return Home

Quite simply, the world has helped foster the migrant crisis by not supporting refugees in the Middle East. The United States prides itself on how much we have given to the refugee crisis, but we lag behind the European Union. On a per-capita basis, we are far outranked by many much smaller countries, among them Britain, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Full funding of the United Nations appeals would go some way toward stemming the flow of refugees. The United States alone could give at least $500 million more to the United Nations Appeal annually. But even with full funding, some refugees need to be resettled. Though the United States may prefer to pretend that this crisis is Europe’s problem alone, it is not. United States policy in the region bears at least some responsibility for the tragic chaos in the Levant and the resulting rise of the Islamic State.   More

 

Democratic Candidates Have Not Gotten Syria Right: They Should Be Talking Peace, Not War

By their reticence, the candidates are failing to mobilize political support to bolster the administration’s fragile commitment to the diplomatic path…  Of course, the Democratic candidates must weigh pragmatic concerns. Can a progressive position on the Syrian civil war endure the heat of a general election? The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee may face a Republican, such as Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, who favors more aid to Syrian rebels, including an ambitious no-fly zone. In addition, no matter who she or he is, the Democratic candidate will probably have to bear the burden of the current majority perception that Obama has been “weak” in foreign policy. In these circumstances, can it really be good politics to insist on diplomatic rather than military action in Syria? The answer is yes, it can… With most Americans reluctant to escalate the civil war, a full-throated justification of the alternative diplomatic route— including how it would help mobilize Syrians against ISIS—should fall on ready ears. By supporting ongoing negotiations, instead of simply warning about escalation, Democrats could offer a positive approach that would address Republican complaints that they “have no strategy.”  More

 

Chomsky accuses Turkey of double standards on terrorism

Hours after Tuesday’s bomb attack on a tourist area of Istanbul, Erdoğan delivered a sneering criticism of Chomsky and “so-called intellectuals” who had signed a letter calling on Turkey to end the “deliberate massacre” of Kurdish people in the south east of the country…  In the open letter to Erdoğan released last month, Chomsky and hundreds of others accused him of waging war against his own people… In his email to the Guardian, Chomsky accused Erdoğan of hypocrisy. He said: “Turkey blamed Isis [for the attack on Istanbul], which Erdoğan has been aiding in many ways, while also supporting the al-Nusra Front, which is hardly different. He then launched a tirade against those who condemn his crimes against Kurds – who happen to be the main ground force opposing Isis in both Syria and Iraq. Is there any need for further comment?”   More

 

Enduring Bases, Enduring War in the Middle East

…the New York Times revealed that the Obama administration is considering a Pentagon proposal to create a “new” and “enduring” system of military bases around the Middle East.  Though this is being presented as a response to the rise of the Islamic State and other militant groups, there's remarkably little that’s new about the Pentagon plan. For more than 36 years, the U.S. military has been building an unprecedented constellation of bases that stretches from Southern Europe and the Middle East to Africa and Southwest Asia.

The record of these bases is disastrous. They have cost tens of billions of dollars and provided support for a long list of undemocratic host regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti. They have enabled a series of U.S. wars and military interventions, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which have helped make the Greater Middle East a cauldron of sectarian-tinged power struggles, failed states, and humanitarian catastrophe. And the bases have fueled radicalism, anti-Americanism, and the growth of the very terrorist organizations now targeted by the supposedly new strategy.  More

 

Air war against Islamic State group cost $5.5 billion

The air war against the Islamic State group has cost the American taxpayer $5.5 billion, roughly $11.2 million per day, a $2 million increase since June, according to the latest Defense Department data.  The Air Force accounts for $3.75 billion — nearly 70 percent — of that cost, about $7.7 million a day since the U.S. began launching airstrikes in August 2014.  More than 50 percent of the cost accounts for daily flight operating tempo: The Air Force in 2015, for example, conducted 21,000 sorties over Iraq and Syria, 9,000 of which included at least one weapons release, Air Forces Central Command statistics say.  More

 

Defense Industry Revenue Forecast Gushes Over Global Turmoil

The global aerospace and defense industry is out of its doldrums. According to a new report by the accounting firm Deloitte, “the resurgence of global security threats” promises a lucrative “rebound” in defense spending.  The report alerts investors that “revenue growth” is “expected to take a positive turn” due to the terrorism and war in the Middle East and the tensions in Eastern Europe and the South China Sea.  Many analysts predicted declining revenue for the weapons industry as the U.S. scaled down military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.   More

 

As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy

Mr. Obama has long advocated a “nuclear-free world.” His lieutenants argue that modernizing existing weapons can produce a smaller and more reliable arsenal while making their use less likely because of the threat they can pose. The changes, they say, are improvements rather than wholesale redesigns, fulfilling the president’s pledge to make no new nuclear arms.  But critics, including a number of former Obama administration officials, look at the same set of facts and see a very different future. The explosive innards of the revitalized weapons may not be entirely new, they argue, but the smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use — even to use first, rather than in retaliation.   More

 

 

A View From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

Fearmongering Around Muslim Immigrants Echoes Anti-Asian Hysteria of Past On May 6, 1882, U.S. President Chester Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first in a series of discriminatory legal measures aimed at curbing immigration from Asia. Speaking at the time of its passage, California Sen. John F. Miller, a leading proponent of the law, declared that the Chinese were “an inferior sort of men” and that “Chinese civilization in its pure essence appears as a rival to American civilization… Japanese-Americans and Muslims in particular share another touchstone experience: a major attack on U.S. soil to which their community was ascribed collective blame. Following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, Japanese-Americans were subjected to an unprecedented degree of hostility and scrutiny, particularly by mainstream media figures… Decades later, a congressional study commissioned to look into the internment order said that the decision had been undertaken not for legitimate security reasons, but rather as a result of ”racial prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership.”    More

The not always so lovable Dr. Suess, 1942. . .

 

German Feminists: Racialising sexism is no good for women

The fact that some two dozen male asylum seekers and numerous men of North-African descent have been linked to the muggings and sexual assaults in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve is being shamelessly used by various right wing movements to brandish the trope of Muslim men as a threat to women’s rights.  This is, of course, nothing new. Historically, this trope was deployed by European colonizers and, more recently, it was rebranded by the Bush administration during the occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, when the bombing of the country was presented as necessary to liberate Afghani women from Islamic oppression… So while the trope of Muslim men as women’s enemies completely ignores actual statistics and has been used to depict Muslim women as victims of oppression at the hand of savage Muslim males, none of these anti-Islam and anti-immigration spokesperson seems to have any problem with the exploitation and segregation of Muslim (and non-western migrant) women in European households.   More

 

How Flint, Michigan's tap water became toxic

Nearly two years ago, the state decided to save money by switching Flint's water supply from Lake Huron (which they were paying the city of Detroit for), to the Flint River, a notorious tributary that runs through town known to locals for its filth… The switch was made during a financial state of emergency for the ever-struggling industrial town. It was supposed to be temporary while a new state-run supply line to Lake Huron was ready for connection. The project was estimated to take about two years… Later it became publicly known that federal law had not been followed. A 2011 study on the Flint River found it would have to be treated with an anti-corrosive agent for it to be considered as a safe source for drinking water… In 2011, Flint was declared to be in a financial state of emergency, and the state took budgetary control. Therefore, all the decisions made during the water crisis were at the state level, which state officials confirmed, not by the City Council or the mayor.    More

 

This is how toxic Flint’s water really is

The city reconnected to Detroit's water system in October, but the damage was done. Water from the Flint River was found to be highly corrosive to the lead pipes still used in some parts of the city. Even though Flint River water no longer flows through the city's pipes, it's unclear how long those pipes will continue to leach unsafe levels of lead into the tap water supply. Experts currently say the water is safe for bathing, but not drinking.  A group of Virginia Tech researchers who sampled the water in 271 Flint homes last summer found some contained lead levels high enough to meet the EPA's definition of "toxic waste."   More

 

Surprise! A Venture Capitalist Says We Need Inequality

Paul Graham, a venture capitalist and one of the founders of the startup incubator Y Combinator, would have you believe this rising inequality is a good thing. Or, at very worst, the inevitable consequence of a good thing. "You can't prevent great variations in wealth without preventing people from getting rich," he wrote in an essay that went viral online last week, "and you can't do that without preventing them from starting startups." … The argument takes several turns, but it boils down to two points. First, whether inequality comes from good or bad sources, it does not, by itself, hurt anyone; just because the rich get richer does not mean the poor and middle class can't get richer, too. He concedes that some rich people got that way by taking money from the poor, but not most of them.  That's his second point: We shouldn't try to reduce inequality, because doing so would necessarily mean killing off the innovators and entrepreneurs who get rich for socially good reasons… Research suggests Graham is both overestimating the importance of startups to inequality and underestimating the damage high inequality can inflict.    More

 

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IRAN AGREEMENT AVOIDS A WAR – BUT NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY

 

A BAD WEEK FOR WARMONGERS

This week is not looking kind to opponents of the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Iran. On Wednesday, Iran freed 10 U.S. sailors less than 24 hours after their two U.S. ships entered Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. This comes just days before the Iran nuclear deal is set to take effect, easing sanctions and freeing up billions in frozen Iranian money. Is this a new era for U.S.-Iran ties? … I think what we saw here is that the administration did not panic, and they did not enter into any bluster, and as a result, this issue was resolved peacefully within 16 hours. If the next president of the United States approaches these issues—and not just with Iran, but with other countries, as well—in the manner that some of the GOP candidates have said that they would, then most likely not only would the sailors not have been released this quickly, but potentially this would have escalated into an actual conflict.   More

 

Iran nuclear deal implementation day could be due within hours

Expectations were high on Saturday as the Iranian foreign minister said that nuclear-related sanctions on his country would be lifted imminently, with some Iranian social media accounts saying the official announcement was coming within "the hour".  Sources at the UN also indicated to AFP that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will announce today that Iran can no longer acquire nuclear weapons, which will prompt the start of sanctions being lifted in what is known as "Implementation Day".  As Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrived on Saturday in Vienna, where the nuclear agreement with world powers were finally agreed last July, he said this "was a good day for the world".  "It's a good day for the people of Iran ... and also a good day for the region. The sanctions will be lifted today," Iran's official ISNA news agency reported.   More

 

Iran Nuclear Deal Implementation Day

To reach the implementation stage, Iran had to verifiably dismantle and store under IAEA seal more than 13,000 centrifuge machines, including its more advanced centrifuges, leaving Tehran with 6,104 first-generation IR-1 machines, of which 5,104 will be allowed to continue to enrich uranium to low levels (3.67 percent U-235) for energy production purposes. The remaining 1,044 centrifuges will be at the Fordo site, which can only be used for medical isotope production… The JCPOA also required Iran to ship to Russia over 8.5 tons of all forms of low enriched uranium material, leaving Iran with a working stockpile of just 300 kilograms of uranium enriched to no more than 3.67 percent U-235— far less than what is necessary to enrich further for one bomb. The stockpile cap and prohibition on enrichment above 3.67 percent will remain in place for the next 15 years.  Additionally, Iran was required to remove the core of the Arak reactor and fill the channels with cement, rendering it inoperable. The world’s six major powers, also known as the EU3+3 or P5+1, worked with Iran on a new design, which will optimize medical isotope production.   More

 

Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif:

SAUDI ARABIA'S RECKLESS EXTREMISM

Following the signing of the interim nuclear deal in November 2013, Saudi Arabia began devoting its resources to defeating the deal, driven by fear that its contrived Iranophobia was crumbling. Today, some in Riyadh not only continue to impede normalization but are determined to drag the entire region into confrontation.  Saudi Arabia seems to fear that the removal of the smoke screen of the nuclear issue will expose the real global threat: its active sponsorship of violent extremism… Let us not forget that the perpetrators of many acts of terror, from the horrors of Sept. 11 to the shooting in San Bernardino and other episodes of extremist carnage in between, as well as nearly all members of extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Nusra Front, have been either Saudi nationals or brainwashed by petrodollar-financed demagogues who have promoted anti-Islamic messages of hatred and sectarianism for decades.   More

 

Republicans’ Self-Defeating Attack on Obama’s Iran Policy

Republican presidential hopefuls didn’t celebrate the quick release of the U.S. military personnel who found themselves in Iranian waters near a sensitive military site. Rather, they portrayed it as a failed opportunity to escalate tensions with Iran, tear up the nuclear deal, and, in the process, potentially put the safety of U.S. military personnel in jeopardy.   Republican frontrunner Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning, after the sailors had been released, that the U.S. should renege on the nuclear agreement and refuse to unfreeze Iranian funds… Trump wasn’t the only GOP presidential hopeful desperately trying to paint the incident as a failure rather than a dividend from years of negotiations between the State Department and Iranian diplomats… Indeed, all of the Republican presidential frontrunners jumped at the opportunity to turn the incident into an indictment of the Obama administration’s Iran diplomacy. But none of them offered an alternative strategy that could produce an outcome more optimal than the quick release of the sailors negotiated by John Kerry.  More

Impending lifting of Iran sanctions worries Israel

Senior Israeli officials, meanwhile, have accused the American administration of ignoring - knowingly and intentionally - the military aspects of the sanctions removal, saying Washington did not put any pressure on the Iranians on the development of strategic weapons - like long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead… Israel views the public missile experiments conducted in recent months by Iran as a move meant to test international reaction - particularly the American one. President Obama's decision not to press Tehran on this issue encourages the Iranians to continue chipping away at these international agreements meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.   More

 

Following the Lead of Israel and its US Lobby. . .

Democrats, frustrated with Obama on Iran, float new sanctions proposals

Democrats in Congress are losing patience with the Obama administration for failing to respond quickly enough to Iran’s test of a ballistic missile.  So frustrated, in fact, that some lawmakers are introducing legislation to ensure the next time Iran violates U.S. or international sanctions in any way, they don’t have to wait on Obama to act. Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) is preparing to introduce a bill, along with Rep. Theodore E. Deutch (D-Fla.) and a bipartisan group of co-sponsors, to expedite the procedure for imposing additional sanctions on Iran linked to terrorism, human rights violations, or ballistic missile activities. “No response is in effect, a response…if responses are nonexistent, ineffective or delayed, those are also responses,” Kennedy said in an interview. “When it comes to the enforcement mechanisms, Congress should be acting with the administration…there needs to be a mechanism to allow for stronger and more rapid response going forward.”   More

 

 

Draft Call to Action-CALL TO ACTION -In the name of all humanity we say:Yes to Unity, Solidarity, and Justice! NO to hate and fear mongering.

National conference call: tues Jan 19 at 8pm eastern std time at 641-715-3300 access code 994310.

 

Draft Call to Action-CALL TO ACTION -In the name of all humanity we say:Yes to Unity, Solidarity, and Justice! NO to hate and fear mongering.

The corporate media and some politicians on both sides of the aisle believe their interests can be advanced by scapegoating the poor and those oppressed by racism, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant prejudice, mass deportations, and the exclusion of refugees fleeing endless U.S.-supported wars abroad. 

Hate, fear mongering and war are increasingly publicly promoted for heinous ends and especially to divide the victims of the ever-deepening social cutbacks government austerity policies inflict.

We say no to Islamophobia and all forms of religious prejudice. We denounce the endless racist police murders of unarmed members of the nation's Black and poor communities. We reject militarily-sealed borders and mass deportations of Latino people.

We strive for the unity and solidarity of all who cherish human and democratic rights.

We will join together in a week of coordinated protests, February 13 - 21 across the country. Now is the time to organize in your community, school or place of worship. 

Stand with us against hate and persecution in all their manifestations.

Friends,

 

Last night (Jan 4) the Albany, NY city council passed a resolution against Islamophobia.  Similar resolutions were passed in the last few days by the Albany County Legislature and the Schenectady City Council.  Please see the email below.

 

Additionally, Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace (my local peace group) will be holding a vigil against Islamophobia on Monday.  We expect a big turnout.  The Mayor of Albany is also sponsoring a rally at the Albany City Hall against Islamophobia, which unions and activist groups will be joining.

 

This important work in Albany has also been inspiring to all activists in the area including those involved in Black Lives Matter, many of whom have been active in this campaign.

 

At all the meetings where resolutions have been passed, large groups of people, Muslims and non-Muslims, have attended to speak in favor of the resolutions. 

 

I think much of this has been in reaction to the statements by Trump.  I hope this is not just and Albany phenomenon and it would be great for others to try to replicate this in other areas of the country.

 

Joe Lombardo, Co-Coordinator UNAC

---

From: jfin125@gmail.com
Subject: more good news: Albany Common Council unanimously passes anti-Islamophobia resolution
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 14:15:35 -0500

Hello everyone,

            The good news just keeps getting better: last night the Albany Common Council unanimously passed (with 14 co-sponsors, plus vocal support from the council president) an anti-Islamophobia resolution, very similar to the one passed on January 1 by the Albany County Legislature. The resolution was introduced by Hon. Leah Golby (Ward 10). The meeting was public, and a very large number of speakers, from the interfaith, Muslim, and activist communities, spoke in support of the resolution. Leah Golby writes: "The palpable feel of a strong community was incredible...All the thanks go to you and the community!" 

            This makes the *third* such resolution passed by local governments in our area: the Schenectady City Council's on December 28, the Albany County Legislature's on January 1, and now the Albany Common Council's on January 4. In addition to bringing in the new year with solidarity, this cluster of resolutions seems to be unique in the country: only the City Councils of Portland, Oregon and Spokane and Seattle, Washington appear to have passed similar resolutions. It is pretty obvious what this says about our Capital Region community and how we support and respect our Muslim neighbors, colleagues, and friends. 

            But more important was that amazing meeting, with all the speakers. Each one spoke eloquently, precisely, and often movingly of their experiences and support. So many people signed up to speak that we'd still be there if they'd all had their chance; the council finally had to end the public comment period, with many people not getting a chance to speak. (we will try and remedy this in the future). A highlight of the meeting--and I'll bet unique to any Common Council meeting before this--was Ruth Pelham, musician and proprietor of the MusicMobile, who decided to *sing* her speech, by means of a song she'd written especially for the occasion. It was a "sight" to "hear" the entire Council, plus all attendees, sing along with her, and you will definitely be hearing more of this song in the future. 

            Here's a very good piece from Channel 9, featuring one of the most memorable speakers, Tasneem Ali: http://www.twcnews.com/nys/capital-region/news/2016/01/5/standing-ovation-given-on-decision-to-help-curb-islamophobia-albany.html

   And below is a picture of Leah Golby presenting a copy of the resolution to Dr. Shamshad Ahmad, president of the Masjid As-Salam in Albany (photo from Leah Golby's Facebook page). 

   The text of the resolution is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/293978690/RESOLUTION-OF-THE-COMMON-COUNCIL-STATING-THAT-THE-CITY-OF-ALBANY-STANDS-WITH-MUSLIM-NEIGHBORS-AGAINST-ISLAMOPHOBIA

            Finally, if you didn't attend the meeting (or even if you did), here is another way to show your support for the Muslim community: a 

Vigil: Solidarity with Muslims!, NO to Islamophobia!

Monday, January 11 at 5 PM

Corner of Kenwood & Delaware Ave., Delmar, NY

sponsored by Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. "Stay for a few minutes or an hour. Let's stand together for peace. Please bring a sign. Other sign suggestions: "We Stand in Solidarity with Our Muslim Friends and Neighbors", Stop Islamophobia, Defend the Muslim Community" , "We say NO to Racism and anti-Islamic Bigotry". 518-466-1192 for further information. Join us!"  https://www.facebook.com/events/1490179531290904/

            And I will post news of the upcoming solidarity event (sponsored by Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan), postponed from Wednesday (tomorrow), when the rescheduled date is set.

            To Councilmember Golby: a huge thank you for all your efforts and for bringing us together as a city and community. To all speakers: thank you for sharing your hearts! To all attendees: "It takes a city...", and we were that last night.

Jeanne

 

 

*****Searching For The American Songbook - In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute-With The Joy Street Coffeehouse In Mind

*****Searching For The American Songbook - In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute-With The Joy Street Coffeehouse In Mind

 

Introduction

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I recently completed the second leg of this series, sketches from the time of my coming of age classic rock and roll from about the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, a series which is intended to go through different stages of the American songbook as it has evolved since the 19^th century, especially music that could be listened to by the general population through radio, record player, television, and more recently the fantastic number of ways to listen to it all from computers to iPods. This series was not intended to be placed in any chronological order so the first leg dealt, and I think naturally so given the way my musical interests got formed, with the music of my parents’ generation, that being the parents of the generation of ’68, those who struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s.

This third leg is centered on the music of the folk minute that captured a segment of my generation of ’68 as it came of social and political age in the early 1960s. It is easy now to forget in the buzz of the moment that this segment was fairly small to begin with people who stayed with it for a few years and then like the rest of us got back to the new rock and roll that was taking center stage by the time of the summers of love. Today when talking to people, to those who slogged through the 1960s with me, those who will become very animated about Deadhead experiences, Golden Gate Park Airplane going-ons, their merry-prankster-like “on the bus” experiences, even death Altamont when I ask about the influence of folk they will look at me with pained blank expressions or cite ritualistically Bob Dylan confirms how small and where that folk minute was concentrated.

Early on though some of us felt a fresh breeze was coming through the land, were desperately hoping that it was not some ephemeral rising and then back to business as usual, although we certainly being young did not dwell on that ebb tide idea since like with our physical selves we thought our ideas once implanted would last forever. Silly kids. Maybe it was the change in political atmosphere pulling us forward as men (and it was mostly men then) born in the 20^th century were beginning to take over from the old fogies (our father/uncle/godfather Ike and his ilk) and we would fall in behind them. Maybe it was the swirl just then being generated questioning lots of old things like the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) red scare investigations, like Mister James Crow in the South and  the ghettos of the North, like why did we need all those nuclear bombs that were going to do nothing but turn us into flames. Maybe it was that last faint echo of the “beats” with their poetry, their be-bop jazz, their nightly escapade trying to hold onto that sullen look of Marlon Brando, that brooding look of James Dean, that cool pitter-patter of Alan Ginsberg against the night-stealers. Heady stuff, no question.

Maybe too since it involved cultural expression (although we would be clueless to put what we felt in those terms, save that for the folk music academics complete with endnotes and footnotes after the fire had burned out) and our cultural expression centered around jukeboxes and transistor radios it was that we had, some of us, tired of the Fabians, the various Bobbys (Vee, Darin, Rydell, etc.), the various incarnations of Sandra Dee, Leslie Gore, Brenda Lee, etc., wanted a new sound, or as it turned out a flowing back to the roots music, to the time and place when people had to make their own music or go without (it gets a little mixed up once the radio widened the horizons of who could hear what and when). So, yes, we wanted to know what on those lonely Saturday nights gave our forebears pause, let them sit back maybe listen to some hot-blooded black man with a primitive guitar playing the blues (a step up from the kids’ stuff nailed one-eyed string hung from the front porch but nowhere near that coveted National Steel beauty they eyed in the pawnshop in town just waiting to rise up singing), some jazz, first old time religion stuff and then the flicker of that last fade be-bop with that solid sexy sax searching for the high white note, mountain music, all fiddles and mandolins, playing against that late night wind coming down the hills and hollows reaching that red barn just in time to finish up that last chance slow moaning waltz. Yes, and Tex-Mex, Western swing, Child ballads and the “new wave” protest sound that connected our new breeze political understandings with our musical interests.

The folk music minute was for me, and not just me, thus something of a branching off for a while from rock and roll in its doldrums since a lot of what we were striving for was to make a small musical break-out from the music that we came of chronological age to unlike the big break-out that rock and roll represented from the music that was wafting through many of our parents’ houses in the early 1950s.

In preparing this part of the series I have been grabbing a lot of anecdotal remarks from some old-time folkies. People I have run into over the past several years in the threadbare coffeehouses and cafes I frequent around New England. You know, and I am being completely unfair here, those guys with the long beards and unkempt balding hair hidden by a knotted ponytail, flannel, clean or unclean, shirt regardless of weather and blue jeans, unclean, red bandana in the back pocket, definitely unclean and harmonica at the ready going on and on about how counter-revolutionary Bob Dylan was to hook up the treasured acoustic guitar to an amp in about 1965 and those gals who are still wearing those shapeless flour bag dresses, letting their hair grow grey or white, wearing the formerly “hip” now mandatory granny glasses carrying some autoharp or other such old-time instrument like they just got out of some hills and hollows of Appalachia (in reality mostly with nice Ivy League seven sisters resumes after their names)  arguing about how any folk song created after about 1922 is not really a folk song both sexes obviously having not gotten the word that, ah, times have changed. In short those folkies who are still alive and kicking and still interested in talking about that minute. And continuing to be unfair not much else except cornball archaic references that are supposed to produce “in the know” laughs but which were corny even back then when they held forth in the old Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford of blessed memory where budding songwriters wrote on etched napkins the next great Kumbaya hit, non-songwriters tuned up their Yamaha guitars by ear, by ear, Jesus, to play for the “basket” out in the mean streets after they had their fill of the see-through coffee provided by the place, small-voiced poets echoed Ginsberg eve of destruction sonnets, and new guard writers wore down pencil stubs and erasers catching all the sounds and hubris around them mixed with sotted winos, sterno bums , con men, hustlers, misguided hookers, and junkies to fill the two in the morning air.

For those not in the know, or who have not seen the previously described denizens of the folk night in your travels, folk music is still alive and well (for the moment, the demographic trends are more frightening as the dying embers flicker) in little enclaves throughout the country mainly in New England but in other outposts as well. Those enclaves and outposts are places where some old “hippies,” “folkies,” communalists, went after the big splash 1960s counter-cultural explosion ebbed in about 1971 (that is my signpost for the ebb, the time when we tried to “turn the world upside down” in Washington over the Vietnam war by attempting to shut the government down if they refused to shut down the war and got nothing but teargas, police sticks and thousands of arrests for out troubles, others have earlier and later dates and events which seemed decisive but all that I have spoken to, or have an opinion on, agree by the mid-1970s that wave had tepidly limped to shore). Places like Saratoga, New York, Big Sur and Joshua Tree out in California, Taos, Eugene, Boise, Butte, Boulder, as well as the traditional Village, Harvard Square, North Beach/Berkeley haunts of memory. They survive, almost all of them, through the support of a dwindling number of aficionados and a few younger kids, kids who if not the biological off-spring of the folk minute then very much like those youthful by-gone figures and who somehow got into their parents’ stash of folk albums and liked what they heard against the current trends in music, in once a month socially-conscious Universalist-Unitarian church basement coffeehouses, school activity rooms booked for the occasional night, small local restaurants and bars sponsoring “open mics” on off-nights to draw a little bigger dinner crowd, and probably plenty of other small ad hoc venues where there are enough people with guitars, mandos, harmonicas, and what have you to while away an evening.            

There seems to be a consensus among my anecdotal sources  that their first encounter with folk music back then, other than when they were in the junior high school music class where one  would get a quick checkerboard of various types of music and maybe hear This Land Is Your Land in passing, was through the radio. That junior high school unconscious introduction of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land had been my own introduction in Mr. Dasher’s seventh grade Music Appreciation class where he inundated us with all kinds of songs from everywhere like the Red River Valley and the Mexican Hat Dance. For his efforts he was innocently nicknamed by us “Dasher The Flasher,” a moniker that would not serve him well in these child-worried times by some nervous parents.    

A few folkies that I had run into back then, fewer now, including a couple of girlfriends back then as I entered college picked up, like some of those few vagrant younger aficionados hanging around the clubs, the music via their parents’ record collections although that was rare and back then and usually meant that the parents had been some kind of progressives back in the 1930s and 1940s when Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Pete Seeger and others lit up the leftist firmament in places like wide-open New York City. Today the parents, my generation parents would have been in the civil rights movement, SDS or maybe the anti-war movement although the latter was drifting more by then to acid rock as the foundational music.

That radio by the way would be the transistor radio usually purchased at now faded Radio Shack by frustrated parents, frustrated that we were playing that loud unwholesome rock and roll music on the family record player causing them to miss their slumbers, and was attached to all our youthful ears placed there away from prying parents and somehow if you were near an urban area you might once you tired of the “bubble gum” music on the local rock station flip the dial and get lucky some late night, usually Sunday and find an errant station playing such fare.

That actually had been my experience one night, one Sunday night in the winter of 1962 (month and date lost in the fog of memory) when I was just flipping the dial and came upon the voice of a guy, an old pappy guy I assumed, singing a strange song in a gravelly voice which intrigued me because that was neither a rock song nor a rock voice. The format of the show as I soon figured out as I continued to listen that night was that the DJ would, unlike the rock stations which played one song and then interrupted the flow with at least one commercial for records, drive-in movies, drive-in theaters, maybe suntan lotion, you know stuff kids with disposable income would take a run at, played several songs so I did not find out who the singer was until a few songs later. The song was identified by the DJ as the old classic mountain tune “discovered” by Cecil Sharpe in the hills and hollows of Appalachian Kentucky in 1916 Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, the singer the late Dave Von Ronk who, as I found out later doubled up as a very informative folk historian and who now has a spot, a street last I heard, in the Village in New York where he hailed from named after him, the station WBZ in Boston not a station that under ordinary circumstances youth would have tuned into then since it was mainly a news and talk show station, the DJ Dick Summer a very central figure in spreading the folk gospel and very influential in promoting local folk artists like Tom Rush on the way up as noted in a recent documentary, No Regrets, about Rush’s fifty plus years in folk music. I was hooked.

That program also played country blues stuff, stuff that folk aficionados had discovered down south as part of our generation took seriously the search for roots, music, cultural, family, and which would lead to the “re-discovery” of the likes of Son House (and that flailing National Steel guitar that you can see him flail like crazy on Death Letter Blues on YouTube these days), Bukka White (all sweaty, all feisty, playing the hell out of his National face up with tunes like Aberdeen, Mississippi Woman and Panama, Limited) Skip James (all cool hand Luke singing that serious falsetto on I’d Rather Be The Devil Than Be That Woman’s Man which got me in trouble more than one time with women including recently), and Mississippi John Hurt (strumming seemingly casually his moaning Creole Belle and his slyly salacious Candy Man).

I eventually really learned about the blues, the country stuff from down south which coincides with roots and folk music and the more muscular (plugged in electrically) Chicago city type blues that connects with the beginnings of rock and roll, which will be the next and final leg of this series, straight up though from occasionally getting late, late at night, usually on a Sunday for some reason, Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour from WXKE in Chicago but that is another story. Somebody once explained to me the science behind what happened on certain nights with the distant radio waves that showed up mostly because then their frequencies overrode closer signals. What I know for sure that it was not was the power of that dinky transistor radio with its two nothing batteries. So for a while I took those faraway receptions as a sign of the new dispensation coming to free us, of the new breeze coming through the land in our search for an earthly Eden. Praise be.          

If the first exposure for many of us was through the radio, especially those a bit removed from urban areas, the thing that made most of us “folkies” of whatever duration was the discovery and appeal of the coffeehouses. According to legend (Dave Von Ronk legend anyway) in the mid to late 1950s such places were hang-outs for “beat” poets when that Kerouac/Ginsberg/Cassady flame was all the rage and folkies like him just starting out were reduced to clearing the house between shows with a couple of crowd-fleeing folk songs, or else they got the boot and the remnants of street singer life forlorn “basket” in front trying to make rent money.

But by the early 1960s the dime had turned and it was all about folk music. Hence the appeal for me of Harvard Square not all that far away, certainly close enough to get to on weekends in high school. With Club 47, the “flagship,” obviously, Café Nana, the Algiers, Café Blanco, and a number of other coffeehouses all located within a few blocks of each other in the Square there were plenty of spots which drew us in to that location. (That Cub 47, subject a few years ago to its own documentary, was the spawning grounds and the testing ground for many folk artists like Dylan, Baez, Rush, Von Schmidt, Paxton, to perform and perfect their acts before friendly appreciative audiences that would not heckle them. The Club which has had something of a continuous history now operates as a non-profit as the Club Passim in a different location in Harvard Square near the Harvard Co-Op Bookstore.)    

The beauty of such places for poor boy high school students like me or lowly cash-poor college students interested in the folk scene was that for the price of a coffee, usually expresso so you could get your high a little off the extra caffeine but more importantly you could take tiny sips and make it last which you wanted to do so you could hold your spot at the table in some places, and maybe some off-hand pastry (usually a brownie or wedge of cake not always fresh but who cared as long as the coffee, like I said, usually expresso to get a high caffeine kick, was fresh since it was made by the cup from elaborate copper-plated coffeemakers from Europe or someplace like that), you could sit there for a few hours and listen to up and coming folk artists working out the kinks in their routines. Add in a second coffee unless the girl had agreed to an uncool “dutch treat,” not only uncool but you were also unlikely to get to first base especially if she had to pay her bus fare too, share the brownie or stale cake and you had a cheap date. 

Occasionally there was a few dollar cover for “established” acts like Joan Baez, Tom Rush, the Clancy Brothers, permanent Square fixture Eric Von Schmidt, but mainly the performers worked for the “basket,” the passing around of the hat for the cheap date guys and others “from hunger” to show appreciation, hoping against hope to get twenty buck to cover rent and avoid starving until the next gig. Of course since the audience was low-budget high school students, college kids and starving artists that goal was sometimes a close thing and accordingly the landlord would have to be pieced off with a few bucks until times got better.

Yeah, those were “from hunger” days at the beginning of their careers for most performers as that talent “natural selection process” and the decision at some point to keep pushing on or to go back to whatever else you were trained to do kept creeping foremost in their thoughts when the folk minute faded and there was not enough work to keep body and soul alive whatever the ardent art spirit. Some of them faced that later too, some who went back to that whatever they were trained to do and then got the folk music gig itch again, guys like Geoff Muldaur and Jim Kweskin from the Kweskin Jug Band, David Bromberg, gals like Carolyn Hester, Minnie Smith after somebody said “hey, whatever happened to….” and they meant them. That natural selection thing was weird, strange for those who had to make decisions in those days (now too) about talent and drive over the long haul. You would see some guy like Paul Jefferson a great guitar player who did lots of Woody Guthrie covers and had a local following in the Café Nana working hard or Cherry La Plante who had a ton of talent and a voice like floating clouds and had steady work in the Café Blanc fold up their tents once they hit a certain threshold, a few years working the local clubs and no better offers coming along and so they bailed out. They and those like them just did not have the talent or drive or chutzpah to keep going and so they faded. You still see Paul once in a while at “open mics” around Boston performing for much smaller crowds than in the old days and the last I heard of Cherry was that she had drifted west and was getting a few bookings in the cafes out in Oregon. But in the day it was all good, all good to hear and see as they tried to perfect their acts.   

For alienated and angst-ridden youth like me (and probably half my generation if the information I have received some fifty years later stands up and does not represent some retro-fitted analysis filtered through a million sociological and psychological studies), although I am not sure I would have used those words for my feelings in those days the coffeehouse scene was the great escape from household independence struggles of which I was always, always hear me, at the short end of the stick. Probably the best way to put the matter is to say that when I read J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, over a non-stop weekend I was so engrossed in the page after page happenings, I immediately identified with Holden Caulfield whatever differences of time, place and class stood between us and when asked my opinion of him by my English teacher I made her and the whole class laugh when I said “I am Holden Caulfield”), or when I saw The Wild One at the retro-Strand Theater in downtown Carver I instinctively sided with poor boy Johnny and his “wanting habits” despite my painfully negative experiences with outlaw motorcycle guys headed by local hard boy Red Riley who hung out at Harry’s Variety Store as they ran through our section of town like the Huns of old. If I had been able to put the feelings into words and actions it would have been out of sympathy for the outcasts, misfits, and beaten down who I identified with then (not quite in the Jack Kerouac beaten down hipsters or night-dwellers who survived with a certain swagger and low hum existence sense). So yeah, the coffeehouses offered sanctuary.

For others (and me too on occasion) those establishments also provided a very cheap way to deal with the date issue, as long as you picked dates who shared your folk interests. That pick was important because more than once I took a promising date to the Joy Street Coffeehouse up on Boston’s Beacon Hill where I knew the night manager and could get in for free who was looking for something speedier like maybe a guy with a car, preferably a ’57 Chevy or something with plenty of chrome, and that was the end of that promise.  For those who shared my interest like I said before for the price of two coffees(which were maybe fifty cents each, something like that, but don’t take that as gospel), maybe a shared pastry and a couple of bucks in the “basket” to show you appreciated the efforts, got you those hours of entertainment. But mainly the reason to go to the Square or Joy Street early on was to hear the music that as my first interest blossomed I could not find on the radio, except that Dick Summer show on Sunday night for a couple of hours. Later it got better with more radio shows, some television play when the thing got big enough that even the networks caught on with bogus clean-cut  Hootenanny-type shows, and as more folkies got record contracts because then you could start grabbing records at places like Sandy’s in between Harvard and Central Squares.               

Of course sometimes if you did not have dough, or if you had no date, and yet you still had those home front civil wars to contend with and that you needed to retreat from you could still wind up in the Square. Many a late weekend night, sneaking out of the house through a convenient back door which protected me from sight, parents sight, I would grab the then all-night Redline subway to the Square and at that stop (that was the end of the line then) take the stairs to the street two steps at a time and bingo have the famous (or infamous) all-night Hayes-Bickford in front of me. There as long as you were not rowdy like the winos, hoboes, and con men you could sit at a table and watch the mix and match crowds come and go. Nobody bothered you, certainly not the hired help who were hiding away someplace at those hours, and since it was cafeteria-style passing your tray down a line filled with steam-saturated stuff and incredibly weak coffee that tasted like dishwater must taste, you did not have to fend off waitresses. (I remember the first time I went in by myself I sat, by design, at a table that somebody had vacated with the dinnerware still not cleared away and with the coffee mug half full and claimed the cup to keep in front of me. When the busboy, some high school kid like me, came to clear the table he “hipped me” to the fact that nobody gave a rat’s ass if you bought anything just don’t act up and draw attention to yourself. Good advice, brother, good advice.)

Some nights you might be there when some guy or gal was, in a low voice, singing their latest creation, working up their act in any case to a small coterie of people in front of them. That was the real import of the place, you were there on the inside where the new breeze that everybody in the Square was expecting took off and you hoped you would get caught up in the fervor too. Nice.        

As I mentioned in the rock and roll series, which really was the music of our biological coming of age time, folk was the music of our social and political coming of age time. A fair amount of that sentiment got passed along to us during our folk minute as we sought out different explanations for the events of the day, reacted against the grain of what was conventional knowledge. Some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to why we were attuned to this music when we came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which we too like most of our parents had not created, and had no say in creating. That clueless in the past about the draw included a guy, me, a coalminer’s son who got as caught up in the music of his time as any New York City Village Jack or Jill or Chi Old Town frat or frail. My father in his time, wisely or not considering  what ill-fate befell him later, had busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacks down in some Appalachia hills and hollows, headed north, followed the northern star, his own version, and never looked back and neither did his son.

Those of us who came of age, biological, political, and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from the commercial Tin Pan Alley song stuff. The staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he our parents’ organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike). Hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had restless night’s sleep, a nightmare that, he or she, was trapped in some fashionable family fall-out shelter bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Yelling in that troubled sleep please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential. And as we matured Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind.    

We were moreover, some of us anyway, and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear in this quarter, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a newer world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through the 60s decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone.

These following sketches and as with the previous two series that is all they are, and all they pretend to be, link up the music of the generation of ‘68s social and political coming of age time gleaned from old time personal remembrances, the remembrances of old time folkies recently met and of those met long ago in the Club 47, Café Lena, Club Paradise, Café North Beach night.

The truth of each sketch is in the vague mood that they invoke rather than any fidelity to hard and fast fact. They are all based on actual stories, more or less prettified and sanitized to avoid any problems with lose of reputation of any of the characters portrayed and any problems with some lingering statute of limitations. That truth, however, especially in the hands of old-time corner boys like me and the other guys who passed through the corner at Jack Slack’s bowling  alleys must always be treated like a pet rattlesnake. Very carefully.

Still the overall mood should more than make up for the lies thrown at you, especially on the issue of sex, or rather the question of the ages on that issue, who did or did not do what to whom on any given occasion. Those lies filled the steamy nights and frozen days then, and that was about par for the course, wasn’t it. But enough of that for this series is about our uphill struggles to make our vision of the our newer world, our struggles to  satisfy our hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in our youth  we dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.