***In The 50th Anniversary Year Of The Beatles Explosion 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

The anniversary of the Beatles 50 years ago invasion drives the following comment from several years ago but is tempered today a little by the fact that both bands were miles ahead of what we had been listening to previously.

 

Stones or Beatles?   

 

I make no bones about my preference for the Rolling Stones and will motivate that point a little below but here let me just set the parameters of the discussion. I am talking about the stuff they and the Beatles did when we were in high school, circa 1964. The time of the "invasion." I do not mean the later material like the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper or The Stones' Gimme Shelter. And no, I do not want to hear about how you really swooned over Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee rather than Mick or Paul.

 

I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably Satisfaction. However, what really hooked me on them was when they covered the old Willie Dixon blues classic Little Red Rooster made famous by the mic-eating Howlin’ Wolf. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and maybe someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But beyond the sexual theme was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make.

That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although the blues, particularly the Chicago blues, also influenced the Beatles, it is the Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the one by the legendary Howlin' Wolf's mentioned above but good. I have also thought about the Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth.

Compare some works like John Lennon's plaintive Working Class Hero and the Stones' agitated Street Fighting Man (yes, I know these are later works but they serve to make my point here) and I believe that something in the way the Stones from early on presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my sense of working- class alienation. But enough. I will close with this. I have put my money where my mouth is with my preference. When the Stones toured Boston at Fenway Park in the summer of 2005 I spend many (too many) dollars to get down near the stage and watch old Mick and friends rock. How about that.

Street Fighting Man Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Rolling Stones
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy

'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy

But what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man

No

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution

'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution

Well, then what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man

No

Hey! Said my name is called disturbance

I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants

Well, what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man

No

"Working Class Hero" lyrics- John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,

By giving you no time instead of it all,

Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,

They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,

Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,

Then they expect you to pick a career,

When you can't really function you're so full of fear,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,

And you think you're so clever and classless and free,

But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

There's room at the top they are telling you still,

But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,

If you want to be like the folks on the hill,

A working class hero is something to be.

A working class hero is something to be.

If you want to be a hero well just follow me,

If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

The Red Rooster
Howling Wolf

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day

Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way

Oh the dogs begin to bark,

and the hound begin to howl

Oh the dogs begin to bark, hound begin to howl

Ooh watch out strange kind people,

Cause little red rooster is on the prowl

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home

There ain't no peace in the barnyard,

Since the little red rooster been gone

Willie Dixon

Join us at our neighborhood meeting in Dorchester! This Saturday, May 17, 11:30 a.m.  Fields Corner Library 1520 Dorchester Ave. Dorchester The 15 Now campaign is coming to YOUR neighborhood. Check out our Dorchester neighborhood meeting and discuss the issues working people face in your neighborhood this Saturday and how you can get involved with the campaign dedicated building a strong movement of working people in the city! 15 Now New England ballot launch meeting in Boston a success! Read more here.         Big things are happening! Massachusetts Teachers Association endorses 15 Now!   As an acknowledgement of the growing momentum for 15 Now and the movement for $15/hr, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, a union of 110,000 teachers and education staff from around the state, voted to endorse the 15 Now campaign! This a huge victory and sends a message that working people are united in our demand for a $15/hr minimum wage!     Fast Food Workers to Strike in Boston!   This Thursday, there will be strikes by fast food workers in 150 US cities and in 33 countries on 6 continents demanding $15/hr and a union. This will be be the single biggest day of action by fast food workers since the movement began in 2012.    Come join 15 Now and others on the picket line this Thursday at either of the two actions in Boston! 5:30 AM - Dorchester 9 Dewar St (Corner of Dewar and Dorchester Ave)   11:30 AM - Downtown Crossing Outside Macy's on Summer Street    RSVP on Facebook!

Glenn Greenwald on NSA Bugging Tech Hardware, Economic Espionage & Spying on U.N. excerpts, from DemNow: "Nearly a year after he first met Edward Snowden, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald continues to unveil new secrets about the National Security Agency and the surveillance state. His new book, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State," is being published today. It includes dozens of previously secret NSA documents, including new details on how the NSA routinely intercepts routers, servers and other computer hardware devices being exported from the United States. According to leaked documents published in the book, the NSA then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal and sends them on. This gives the NSA access to entire networks and all their users. The book includes one previously secret NSA file that shows a photo of an agent opening a box marked CISCO. Below it reads a caption: "Intercepted packages are opened carefully." Another memo observes that some signals intelligence tradecraft is "very hands-on (literally!)." ... The second story which I think was probably even more responsible for the worldwide explosion was the PRISM program, because this program revealed that Facebook and Google and Yahoo and Skype and Microsoft were directly cooperating with the NSA in all sorts of extensive ways to ensure easy NSA access to the communications that take place through those companies. And the reason that was so significant is because, unlike the NSA story of 2005 that involved AT&T and Sprint and Verizon, U.S. domestic telephone companies, these Internet companies are the primary means that the entire First World, for lack of a better term, uses to communicate, and even lots of people in developing countries who are now looking to these companies as the primary means. So you’re not just talking about one country; you’re talking about hundreds of millions, probably billions of people around the world who use these companies. ... but I think what became apparent to people is that literally the mission of the NSA—and this is them in their own words—is to eliminate privacy globally. And that’s not hyperbole. Literally, their institutional mandate is to collect and store and, when they want, analyze and monitor all forms of electronic communication that take place between human beings around the planet. And once people understood that this extraordinary system of suspicionless surveillance, which was truly unprecedented in scope, had been created completely in the dark—I mean, no one knew about any of this, even though it had been done by allegedly democratic governments—it became more than a surveillance story. It became a story about government secrecy and accountability and the role of journalism, and certainly privacy and surveillance in the digital age. AMY GOODMAN: Your book is called No Place to Hide. In it, you reveal previously—previously secret NSA files. Why don’t you go through some of those? ... And then, one of the biggest stories that’s new in the book is this program that really is quite remarkable, which is, all over the world, people buy routers and switches and servers, which are the devices that let corporations or municipalities or villages provide Internet service to large numbers of people at once, hundreds or even thousands. And there are American companies that are leaders in these products, such as Cisco. And what the NSA will do, whenever it decides that it wants to, is, once somebody orders a product from Cisco, Cisco then ships it to that person; the NSA physically intercepts the package, takes it from FedEx or from the U.S. mail service, brings it back to NSA headquarters, opens up the package, and plants a backdoor device on one of these devices, reseals it with a factory seal and then sends it on to the unwitting user, who then provides Internet service to large numbers of people, all of which is instantly redirected into the repositories of the NSA. ... I mean, one of the remarkable parts about this story, this specific story, is that for many years the U.S. government has been warning the world not to buy routers, switches and servers from Chinese companies, on the grounds that the Chinese government is invading these products and putting backdoor surveillance devices onto them, and saying, "You cannot trust Chinese products." And in fact, the largest Chinese technology company, Huawei, recently announced it was leaving the U.S. market, because they had been so demonized by the U.S. government that they couldn’t sell their products anymore. And so, to find out that the U.S. government is doing exactly that which they’ve been accusing the Chinese doing— ... video and full transcript prior to break after the break: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/13/the_stuff_i_saw_really_began excerpt: AMY GOODMAN: That’s Edward Snowden. A federal judge or the president of the United States—and this, of course, is what the Obama administration at first completely denied. GLENN GREENWALD: Right. And the Obama administration—and I say this really advisably—was knowingly lying to the public when they denied the truth of what he had said. And, you know, this was in the very first week, and that was explosive claim, and the NSA had no idea what evidence we had, so they could—they thought they could lie with impunity. And then we ultimately published documents, and I publish on purpose a lot more in the book, that demonstrate exactly what analysts are capable of doing. And what they’re capable of doing is exactly what Edward Snowden said, which is—the phrase that describes what the NSA is attempting to do and is close to doing is their own phrase, which is "collect it all." They want to collect and store the entire Internet, literally every email, every chat, every Google search, every website that you click on.

Dear Al, Every year Congress has two chances to reduce Pentagon waste through the appropriations and authorization bills.  Next week the House will vote on its version of the National Defense Authorization Act. Email your Representative now to reduce Pentagon spending. As it stands, the bill would authorize $521.3 billion plus approximately  $80 billion for the Afghanistan War and other unrelated Pentagon expenditures that are funded in a separate Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account.  Next week, your Representative may offer or support amendments that will cut wasteful Pentagon pork. There will only be a short time next week when we will know exactly what amendments the Republican leadership will allow to be voted on so please write your Representative today. We expect amendments that will: *End the Afghanistan War as soon as possible — it’s time to bring all troops and contractors home and to not leave any behind after this year. *Cut the OCO slush fund — Last year it funded some $30 billion of unrelated items. *Cut the F-35 — the most expensive plane and Pentagon project in history. *Audit the Pentagon — The Pentagon is the only part of the Government that cannot pass an audit. *Cut the Littoral Combat Ship — experts say it will cost over three times the original estimate. *Reduce General's Pensions — currently they are allowed to make MORE in retirement than when working. *Cut the M1 Abrams Tank — the Pentagon doesn’t even want it. *Reduce the Nuclear Triad — Without the Cold War we cannot afford to upgrade all the nuclear weapon delivery systems while we significantly reduce our stockpile. *Cut overseas military bases and support a Base Realignment and Closure Commission — There are over 1,000 U.S. military bases abroad including those in countries who can afford their own security.  Within the U.S. there are bases that the Pentagon doesn’t want. Again please take time NOW towrite your Representative to cut the Pentagon budget so we can afford other priorities like job creation, education and infrastructure. Humbly for Peace, Paul Kawika Martin Political Director Peace Action Take Action Email Your Rep Now to Cut Pentagon Spending CONNECT TO US:  Find us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  Read our blog  Contact us You are subscribed to Peace Action's Action Alert Network. You can unsubscribe here.

NO TO FASCISM IN UKRAINE

NO WAR WITH RUSSIA!

 

Rally

May 17 • 1 pm

Park St T Station

Boston

 

 MONEY FOR JOBS, NOT WAR!

 BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW

 STOP NATO EXPANSION

 HANDS OFF DONETSK & LUGANSK

 END U.S. AID TO NEO-NAZI COUP REGIME IN KIEV

 JUSTICE FOR MURDERED ANTI-FASCISTS

 

 

PART OF THE MAY 9—26 CALL TO ACTION BY UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COALITION

INITIATED BY: INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER IACenter.org

Endorsers list in formation 617-286-6574 iacboston.org No2NATO.org

 

LET’S STOP THE NEXT U.S. WAR BEFORE IT STARTS!

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Crisis in the Ukraine: Cold War? Civil War? Roots of the Conflict

When: Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Where: First Parish Unitarian Church • 3 Church St • Harvard T • Cambridge

Ukraine in 2013; Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation

speakers:

Mark Solomon, professor of history (emeritus), Simmons College

Gary Leupp, professor of history, Tufts University

President Obama in his April visit to Japan commented, "Mr. Putin has had an increasing tendency to see the world through a Cold War prism."  But there are many questions:

• is the US/NATO push into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union  the real source of tension with Russia?  
• Did the US government spend five billion dollars for democracy or regime change?
• Who are the fascists in the new Kiev government?  
• Will sanctions isolate Russia?
• What is behind the conflict in Odessa and Eastern Ukraine and will it lead to civil war?

How should the peace movement respond to rising tensions between the two biggest nuclear powers and the US shift towards covert war?   The UJP forum will examine these issues and possible action items.

sponsored by United for Justice with Peace

617 383 4857 or info@justicewithpeace.org 

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

 

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Alfred, It would be hard to have missed Michelle Obama's photo with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, displaying sad eyes as she gave the pre-Mothers Day President's talk Saturday, assuring the public that the US would do everything it can to help rescue the hundreds of girls kidnapped by the Islamic fundamentalist group Boko Haram in Nigeria. We hope this turns out like the New York Police Department's Twitter campaign recently, which asked for photos of people with #MyNYPD, and got barraged with photos of police brutality from Occupy protests, stop & frisk arrests and unjust murders by the NYPD. In fact, Buzzfeed has gathered some of the response which either turns Michelle's sign into something truthful -- "My husband has killed more girls than Boko Haram ever could," or "BringBackYourDrones." The civilian toll of US drone strikes has penetrated US alternative news media this week like never before. Abu-Bakr al Shamahi writes 8 Stories of Civilians Killed by U.S. Drone Strikes in Yemen about the need to tell the stories of people killed because they are invisible: “That lack of humanity is part of the problem: Drone operators tucked away somewhere in Nevada or New Mexico are shielded from the casualties of their work, the human beings killed, the damage and destruction caused when a hellfire missile explodes into a car packed full of people....The following stories of eight people killed by drone strikes are important to tell because they show that behind every sanitized report of drone casualty figures, there are real people with goals, loves and dreams whose lives have been extinguished.” Learn about these people who lived in Yemen: Abdulaziz al-Huraydan, a child Aref al-Shafi'i, a father Salim Al-Taysi, a father of 6 children Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a teenaged American citizen Salim Ahmed Jaber, an imam who spoke against al-Qaida Waleed Abdullah Jaber, a police officer Jabir al-Shabwani, a deputy governor Ali al-Qawli, a school teacher Pratap Chatterjee writes on TomDispatch, in The Three Faces of Drone War about Rene Lopez, an Army intelligence specialist who says he “has been working in the dark arts of hunting and killing ‘high value targets’ using a National Security Agency (NSA) tool known as Gilgamesh.” Chatterjee explains: “That tool is named after a ruthless Sumerian king who ruled over Uruk, an ancient city in what is now Iraq. With the help of the massive trove of NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill recently explained that Gilgamesh is the code name for a special device mounted on a Predator drone that can track the mobile phones of individuals without their knowledge by pretending to be a cell phone tower.” Brandon Bryant, a 28-year-old U.S. airman, whose squadron has been credited with 1,626 kills, and is “among the first to be openly critical of the impact of remote tracking and targeting, of, that is, robot war.” Chatterjee says that in a new film on the US drone war, “Drone,” by Norwegian film maker Tonye Schei, “Bryant reveals that his former colleagues in the Air Force had not just been carrying out drone strikes on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq where the military was involved in open warfare. They were also conducting the strikes in the supposed CIA drone assassination campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen.” Heather Linebaugh, a former drone intelligence analyst, who wrote in The Guardian in December 2013 about the effects of robotic killing on the targeters: “‘How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?’ She added, ‘When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience.’” Sunrise Anti-Drone War Protest When Obama Speaks at West Point Commencement Wednesday May 28 Knowing what is going on is really important, a first step to stopping it.  But ACTING against it in many different ways is necessary.  We have just learned that President Obama is giving the commencement speech at the US Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday May 28.  It's unlikely he will be dis-invited because of protest. See Rice, Condi. We'll be on public roads at two West Point gates as cars enter the campus for the ceremony.  We will gather at 6:45 am near the Stoney Lonesome Gate of West Point just off Route 9W, one exit north of the exit leading to Highland Falls, NY, home of West Point. The protest will end shortly before 10 am when the commencement is scheduled to begin. MAP  Write for more info. Friday May 23 Global Day of Action to Close the Torture Camp at Guantanamo & End Indefinite Detention Emad Hassan, photographed in Guantánamo. He has been cleared for release since 2007. Actions have been added in Pittsburgh, Portland OR, Mexico City and Redwood City CA. Check Facebook. Received this week from Reprieve in the UK, representing several of the prisoners held in Guantanamo, a letter from Emad Hassan on the ongoing hunger strike, now whited-out by the U.S. military who has stopped reporting numbers of prisoners striking and being force-fed: “‘One Yemeni is 80 pounds and he was brought to his feeding by the Forced Cell Extraction (FCE) team, Guantánamo's official riot police. Yesterday the F.C.E team beat him when they came into and out of his cell. He is 80 pounds with one broken arm. He cannot walk, just crawl from his bed to the faucet or toilet once he needs to use it! How can someone with this condition fight 8 armoured guards?’ Emad, himself a Yemeni who has been on hunger strike since 2007 and cleared for release from the prison since 2007, has never been charged with a crime. He said in another letter: ‘As I write now, [a detainee] is vomiting on the torture chair, having been brought there by the Forced Cell Extraction (FCE) team. The nurse and corpsman have refused to stop the feed, or to slow the acceleration of the liquids.’” Download Organizers Toolkit for May 23rd Day of Action to Close Guantanamo, prepared by Witness Against Torture. Includes sample fliers, songs, poems, and many tips on how to stage a creative and powerful protest, even with just a handful of people! Share this message: World Can't Wait Conversations: Please join us tonight with a special guest who's deeply involved in defending Guantanamo prisoners. Thursday May 15: 10pm Eastern / 7pm Pacific Conversation with Carlos Warner, a federal defender and attorney for Guantanamo prisoners, as we prepare for protests May 23 to Close Guantanamo NOW. For background, see an interview with Carlos from last month on The Talking Dog blog which covers the work of Guantanamo attorneys.  Send in your questions & thoughts for Carlos ahead of time. REGISTER for dial-in info.  — CALENDAR — Join World Can't Wait, War Criminals Watch and the Stop Mass Incarcration Network at: The Left Forum May 31-June 1 John Jay College New Building 524 West 59th Street NYC PANELS: Vast Surveillance of Whole Populations: The NSA Revelations One Year Out The US government collects billions of bytes of “metadata” on phone calls, emails, bank traffic, text messaging, chats -- content, recipients, etc. – storing everything for future use, if not needed immediately.  Edward Snowden and others in the field say the amount of data collected doubles every two years. The ramifications of this data collection and storage process goes beyond issues of civil liberties and abstract rights.  It leads to how the US ruling interests can control whole populations – in this country and throughout the world – with the threat that whoever you are, if you act, or even think about acting in a way that this or a future government doesn't like, you could be targeted. How can this be countered? How do we organize ourselves to engage in visible protest? William Binney, Kevin Gosztola, Abi Hassen, Ray McGovern Bringing CUNY into the US War Machine – Students and Faculty Rise UpCUNY has restored ROTC on a number of campuses after it was driven out by protest 40 years ago. General David Petraeus, architect of the “surge” in Iraq, one-time CENTCOM and CIA Director, is teaching at Macaulay Honors College.  The US military is shifting recruiting on diverse urban campuses like CUNY, saying that in 15 years it needs officers who “reflect the geographic and demographic diversity of the country.” What is the challenge for those who want to stop unjust wars? Prof. Ian Hansen, Sharmin Hossain, Ray McGovern, Prof. Glenn Petersen US “Dirty” Wars, Targeted Killing & Secret Operations Supercede Military Occupations – But Are Still Illegitimate More than twelve years into the “war on terror,” the CIA and Pentagon war planners are increasing emphasis on special operations and targeting killing, with open discussion of targeting US citizens. International law has gone by the wayside, as have constitutional protections of citizens.Medea Benjamin, Ed Kinane, Ben Kuebrich, Nick Mottern, Paki Wieland Imperialist Wars & Global Ecological Degradation With 1100+ bases, the US military is the single largest user of fossil fuels in this century, while at the same time it fights wars and engages in occupations to both to ensure strategic access to those resources and deny rivals control.  In its military, it uses weapons of mass destruction, such as Agent Orange (in Vietnam) and depleted uranium (in the former Yugoslavia and in Iraq) which cause horrendous suffering including cancer and birth defects and remain over time as potent environmental toxins.  The ecological effects of war, such as the burning of oil fields and the destruction of large urban constructions, spreads poisonous fumes and dust, with devastating effects. Larry Everest, Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani More Events Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait

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