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

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

 

War, American Style, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing

Looking back on almost 15 years in which the United States has been engaged in something like permanent war in the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, one thing couldn’t be clearer: the planet’s sole superpower with a military funded and armed like none other and a “defense” budget larger than the next seven countries combined (three times as large as number two spender, China) has managed to accomplish -- again, quite literally -- absolutely nothing, or perhaps (if a slight rewrite of that classic song were allowed) less than nothing. 

Unless, of course, you consider an expanding series of failed states, spreading terror movements, wrecked cities, countries hemorrhaging refugees, and the like as accomplishments.  In these years, no goal of Washington -- not a single one -- has been accomplished by war… For the weapons makers and the rest of that complex, failure or success may increasingly be beside the point.    More

 

Saturday, March 12

MASSACHUSETTS PEACE ACTION

2016 Annual Meeting

@11:00am- 4:00pm

First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Cost- $10- $20 (includes lunch)

It's that time of year!  Join Massachusetts Peace Action for our 2016 Annual Meeting.  Our  keynote speakers are Phylis Bennis and Representative Jim McGovern. 

 

Phylis Bennis is the author of Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Her focus at this meeting will be on the Syrian War ,ISIS, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

 

Representative Jim McGovern represents Massachusetts' 2nd Congressional District in Congress. Rep. McGovern will be awarded the 2016 Peacebuilders Prize for his leadership in Congress on peace and justice issues.

 

The U.S. Extends Its Drone War Deeper Into Africa With Secretive Base

ON OCTOBER 14, President Barack Obama announced to Congress that America’s global war on Islamic terrorism had expanded to yet another front: The U.S. was sending 300 troops to a new drone base inside Cameroon, along that country’s volatile border with Nigeria, where Boko Haram is most active… Garoua [Camaroon] represents the newest expansion of America’s stealth war against jihad in Africa. Piloted and unmanned aircraft have flown from bases in Djibouti — the center of U.S. drone operations on the continent — as well as Ethiopia and Kenya, in addition to ships off the coast of East Africa. Predator MQ-1 drones and their larger cousins, MQ-9 Reapers, have been based in Niamey in Niger, N’Djamena in Chad, and Seychelles International Airport. There is plenty more to come. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2016 appropriated $50 million for construction of an “Airfield and Base Camp at Agadez, Niger … to support operations in western Africa.”   More

 

US-Russian Cease-Fire Pact: Closer to a Syria War Endgame?

The United States and Russia are hoping that the partial Syrian cease-fire agreement they reached Monday to take effect February 27 will begin a new phase of the war. The cease-fire will not apply to operations against al-Qaeda's franchise in Syria (al-Nusra Front), and the two powers have apparently agreed to try to split off a significant number of armed opposition groups from their cooperation with al-Nusra Front.   Along with continued Russian, Syrian and Iranian operations against al-Nusra Front, that split could further weaken the al-Qaeda franchise and begin a process of winding down the war between the Assad regime and military forces other than ISIS… The reality that has shaped the nature of the war since 2013 has been that virtually all armed opposition groups that were not already partisans of an Islamic emirate in Syria gravitated to tight military alliances with al-Nusra, because the latter had superior organization and highly effective military tactics. Also, such cooperation was being urged on them by Turkish, Saudi and Qatari agents who were generous with heavy weaponry     More

 

Syrian rebels want Al-Qaeda included in cease fire

The United States and Russia announced plans for a "cessation of hostilities" in Syria that would take effect on Saturday but exclude groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda's Nusra Front, a loophole Syrian rebels immediately highlighted as a problem… The plan allows the Syrian army and allied forces, as well as Syrian opposition fighters, to respond with "proportionate use of force" in self-defense. It leaves a significant loophole by allowing further attacks, including air strikes, against Islamic State, Nusra and other militant groups.  Bashar al-Zoubi, head of the political office of the Yarmouk Army, part of the rebel Free Syrian Army, said that would provide cover for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies to keep attacking opposition-held territory where rebel and militant factions are tightly packed.   More

 

Kerry warns of breakup of Syria; but is that Realistic?

Amid ongoing talks in Geneva around a cessation of hostilities in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday night in a joint telephone call with other diplomats, “It may be too late to keep it as a whole Syria if we wait much longer.” … A fragile reconstituted state, similar to what has happened in Algeria, could be one outcome of such a situation. Another possible scenario would be Afghanistan, where the central government is just very weak in some provinces and constantly battling insurgents in a low-intensity conflict.  A break-up of Syria, however, on a South Sudan model, seems unlikely… If al-Qaeda and Daesh are defeated on the battleground and deprived of territory, it is true, they could devolve into terrorist organizations again. But that pathway does not lead to a break up of Syria.   More

 

BBC Report Explains How US & UK Weapons Flow To Al-Qaida & Other Extremists In Syria

Western weapons and equipment flow freely between the so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria and their close allies from extremist groups like al-Qaida, according to an investigation from a BBC reporter.  In a Dec. 17 episode of the BBC Radio series “The Report,” investigative journalist Peter Oborne documented disturbing evidence that the United Kingdom and United States continue to support the Syrian opposition, particularly the Free Syrian Army, despite ample evidence that they work closely with extremist groups NATO has traditionally thought of as enemies.  Oborne reported that at least two Westerners who were accused of aiding extremist groups in the region, found their charges rapidly dropped when they argued that by seeking to destabilize Syria and depose its president, Bashar Assad, they’d fought on the same side as the U.K.  He also explained how the U.S. has aided al-Qaida’s efforts to “rebrand” its Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, as a moderate group able to be safely financed and “managed” by the U.S.   More

 

More Arms to Saudi Arabia: More Mideast Conflicts

Until recently, the military relevance of sending weapons to Saudi Arabia had less to do with the Saudis using U.S.-supplied arms than it did with cementing ties with Washington. The implicit understanding was that the purchase of large quantities of U.S. armaments was a form of payback for Washington’s commitment to come to the rescue of the Saudi regime in a crisis…  The idea that the Saudis were unlikely to use their U.S.-supplied arms went out the window with the 2015 intervention in Yemen. The Saudis are the key players in a coalition that has caused thousands of civilian casualties while bombing everything from hospitals and markets to water supply systems. Coupled with a naval blockade that has made it extremely difficult to get food and medicine into the country, the Saudi intervention has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. And Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have described the use of U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in civilian neighborhoods by the Saudi coalition as possible war crimes.  More

 

Yemen conflict: Al-Qaeda joins Saudi coalition battle for Taiz

During a visit to the frontline outside Taiz late last year, documentary maker Safa AlAhmad spoke to pro-government militiamen attacking Houthi fighters on a key hilltop with the support of troops from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who were providing tactical advice.  While there, Ms AlAhmad was warned by one group participating in the battle not to film them.  She was told they were members of Ansar al-Sharia, an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and that they were angered by the presence of a woman… Several reports of coalition forces and AQAP militants battling the Houthis in the same areas in southern Yemen have emerged over the past 11 months, despite the jihadists' long-standing violent opposition to US-allied coalition governments.   More

 

Obama’s Russian Rationale for $1 Trillion Nuke Plan Signals New Arms Race

The Obama administration has historically insisted that its massive $1 trillion nuclear-weapons modernization program does not represent a return to Cold-War era nuclear rivalry between Russia and the United States.  The hugely expensive undertaking, which calls for a slew of new cruise missiles, ICBMs, nuclear submarines, and long-range bombers over the next three decades has been widely panned by critics as “wasteful,” “unsustainable,” “unaffordable,” and “a fantasy.”  The administration has pointed to ageing missile silos, 1950s-era bombers and other outdated technology to justify the spending, describing the steps as intended to maintain present capabilities going forward – not bulking up to prepare for a future confrontation.   … But President Obama’s defense budget request for 2017 includes language that makes it clear that nuclear “modernization” really is about Russia after all.  The budget request explicitly cites Russian aggression, saying “We are countering Russia’s aggressive policies through investments in a broad range of capabilities… [including] our nuclear arsenal.”  More

A View From The Left-“SUPER TUESDAY” March 1. . . On Presidents and Lesser Evils

“SUPER TUESDAY” March 1. . . On Presidents and Lesser Evils

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will hold primaries for both parties next Tuesday; Alaska will hold its Republican caucus while American Samoa will caucus for Democrats. Colorado will caucus for both parties though only the Democrats are choosing a candidate. Republicans in Colorado have opted to select delegates only and then let those delegates choose which candidate to support at the national convention… In all, 595 Republican delegates- about 25 percent of the total number – are available on Super Tuesday. Republicans need 1,237 delegates to win the party's nomination; Democrats need 2,383. There are 1,004 Democrat delegates available on March 1. The states involved in Super Tuesday also represent about 130 so-called Super Delegates, Democrats who are not pledged to support the winner from their states. The vast majority of Super Delegates have already pledged support for Clinton.

 

*   *   *   *

Paul Krugman (a Clinton supporter) makes the point that Republican Party economic orthodoxy does not (and never did) represent a majority of voter support; he could have said the same thing about the modern Democratic Party, whose pro-bank and pro-Wall Street politics are out of step with the party base.  That’s why wonkish arguments against the Sanders proposals to tax the rich,  extend health care and make public colleges free are having so little impact on Sanders supporters.  People want radical change, not centrist “competence” to continue and maybe lightly tweak the status quo.

 

KRUGMAN: Twilight of the Apparatchiks

Seriously, Republican political strategy has been exploiting racial antagonism, getting working-class whites to despise government because it dares to help Those People, for almost half a century. So it’s amazing to see the party’s elite utterly astonished by the success of a candidate who is just saying outright what they have consistently tried to convey with dog whistles… Yet the Republican establishment still seems unable to understand that hardly any of its own voters, let alone the voters it would need to win in the general election, are committed to free-market, small-government ideology. Indeed, although Marco Rubio — the establishment’s last hope — has finally started to go after the front-runner, so far his attack seems to rest almost entirely on questioning the coiffed one’s ideological purity. Why does he imagine that voters care?   More

 

What the Mainstream Media Won't Tell You About Bernie Sanders' Economic Plan

If you depend for your news on the New York Times you have been subjected to a drumbeat of articles attacking Bernie Sanders – and the conclusion of everyone “serious” that his economics are daft… In the 90’s the “establishment” may have gotten away with this and established a “truthiness” to the claim that Sanders’ numbers don’t add up (even though they are actually Friedman’s numbers). Spending on fixing our infrastructure actually would “create jobs” and raise wages. Shifting health care costs off of people’s and business’ backs though a Medicare-for-All plan actually would help the economy. Increasing Social Security benefits and the minimum wage actually would enable people to spend more at local stores, boosting the economy.  We don’t have to accept slow growth, resulting from austerity policies, as the “new normal.”   More

 

THE POST-HOPE DEMOCRATS

Expectations, having been systematically beaten down for thirty-five years, must be beaten down further, whether it’s Clinton saying that to go to college one needs some “skin in the game,” or Representative John Lewis reminding us that nothing is free in America. A challenge from the left has forced centrist Democrats to reveal themselves as proud capitalist tools… It would not be hard at all to make higher education completely free in the USA. It accounts for not quite 2 percent of GDP. The personal share, about 1 percent of GDP, is a third of the income of the richest ten  thousand households in the US, or three months of Pentagon spending. It’s less than four months of what we waste on administrative costs by not having a single-payer health care finance system. But introduce such a proposal into an election campaign and you would be regarded as suicidally insane…  The only obstacles are political — elites, which include Hillary and Starr, don’t want it… Establishment Democrats haven’t merely gone post-hope — they’ve declared war on it.   More

 

Top GOP Pollster: Young Americans Are Terrifyingly Liberal

President Obama is not their favorite political figure — Bernie Sanders is…   They aren’t nationalistic: 58 percent of respondents said they agreed more with the statement “America isn’t better or worse than most other countries” than with “America is exceptional. It’s better than every other country in the world.” In fact, 35 percent of 18 to 26-year-olds, including 42 percent of 18 to 21-year-olds, said they considered themselves more a citizen of the world than of the U.S.  In response to the question, “Which type of political system do you think is the most compassionate?”, 58 percent said socialism and 9 percent said communism. Just 33 percent chose capitalism. 66 percent of the poll’s respondents said corporate America “embodies everything that is wrong about America.”  … Finally, more young Americans declared that the “most pressing issue facing America today” is income inequality than anything else.   More

 

Clintons and Wall Street: 24 Years of Enriching Each Other

For twenty four years the Clintons have orchestrated a conjugal relationship with Wall Street, to the immense financial benefit of both parties.   They have accepted from the New York banks $68.72 million in campaign contributions for their six political races, and $8.85 million more in speaking fees.  The banks have earned hundreds of billions of dollars in practices that were once prohibited—until the Clinton Administration legalized them… A 2014 story in Time magazine said this:  “Few in American history have collected and benefited from so much money in so many ways over such a long period of time…the Clintons have attracted at least $1.4 billion in contributions…”

Time failed to dig deeply enough.  A more thoroughly researched expose’ in the Washington Post a year later doubles the amount to $3 billion… That performance pales, however, compared to the Clintons’ self-serving transformation of the Democratic Party, from the champion of working people to the lapdog of Wall Street—and of corporate America in general.  Cleverly the Clintons still pander to the traditional constituency, but in serving its new clientele the transformed party abandoned the less fortunate strata of American society, especially the communities of color.   More

 

 

A Sanders Foreign-Policy Doctrine? How About ‘No Wars for the Billionaire Class’?

Lots of people—supporters and opponents alike—are asking what a Bernie Sanders foreign policy doctrine would look like. Beyond a few specific references and the important reminder that he, unlike Hillary Clinton, opposed the Iraq War, he’s tended to redirect questions about international issues to his strong suit—his powerful talking points about economic inequality at home…  Coming out against wars that benefit the US and global 1 percent provides a whole new 21st-century way of understanding both President Eisenhower’s warning about the power of the military-industrial complex and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning about the deadly triplets of militarism, racism, and extreme materialism.  No Wars for the Billionaire Class means standing up to the overarching influence of the arms-producing companies, especially their overpaid CEOs.   More

 

More U.S. troops killed by Halliburton than by Iraqis

The geniuses running the U.S. military set up U.S. bases at the sites of old chemical weapons piles, dug giant burn pits into the ground, and began burning the military's trash -- monumental quantities of trash, something like The Story of Stuff on steroids. They burned hundreds of tons of trash every day, including everything you can think of: oil, rubber, tires, treated wood, medicines, pesticides, asbestos, plastic, explosives, paint, human body parts, and . . . (wait for it) . . . nuclear, biological, and chemical decontamination materials.  The burn pits poisoned Iraq, together with depleted uranium weapons, napalm, white phosphorous, and various other horrors, creating unprecedented epidemics of birth defects, and killing untold masses of Iraqis. The burn pits also poisoned tens of thousands of U.S. troops, many of whom have died as a result, including very likely the son of the current U.S. vice president. The burn pits profited Halliburton, the company of the previous U.S. vice president.   More

 

Hillary Clinton And The Syrian Bloodbath

In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence – Clinton’s intransigence – that led to the failure of Annan’s peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton’s insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead… When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change… Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called “Friends of Syria” to back the CIA-led insurgency.   More

 

With Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton?

With a consensus now emerging that the real estate mogul is the likely GOP nominee, it would stand to reason that the most important factor for many Democrats in choosing their own nominee is electability: meaning, who has the best chance of defeating the GOP Satan in the general election? In light of that, can Democrats really afford to take such a risky gamble by nominating Hillary Clinton? In virtually every poll, her rival, Bernie Sanders, does better, often much better, in head-to-head match-ups against every possible GOP candidate… why would anyone assume that a candidate who is the very embodiment of Globalist Establishment Power (see her new, shiny endorsement from Tony Blair), who is virtually drowning both personally and politically in Wall Street cash, has “electability” in her favor? Maybe one can find reasons to support a candidate like that. But in this environment, “electability” is most certainly not one of them. Has anyone made a convincing case why someone with those attributes would be a strong candidate in 2016? Despite this mountain of data, the pundit consensus – which has been wrong about essentially everything – is that Hillary Clinton is electable and Bernie Sanders is not. There’s virtually no data to support this assertion.    More

 

Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: the racially charged rise of a demagogue

Nearly three decades before the rambunctious billionaire began his run for president – before he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, for the expulsion of all undocumented migrants, before he branded Mexicans as “rapists” and was accused of mocking the disabled – Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York following a horrific rape case in which five teenagers were wrongly convicted.  The miscarriage of justice is widely remembered as a definitive moment in New York’s fractured race relations. But Trump’s intervention – he signed full-page newspaper advertisements implicitly calling for the boys to die – has been gradually overlooked as the businessman’s chances of winning the Republican nomination have rapidly increased. Now those involved in the case of the so-called Central Park Five and its aftermath say Trump’s rhetoric served as an unlikely precursor to a unique brand of divisive populism that has powered his rise to political prominence in 2016.   More

 

Evangelical voters like Donald Trump because he hates the same people they do

Pundits are going all a-flutter trying to explain why Republican evangelical voters, who are filled with peace and love and Jesus, seem to be flocking to candidate Donald Trump, who is a human piñata stuffed with wealth and spite and old divorce papers… Evangelicals that are flocking to Trump are doing so for the same reasons other Republicans are. They don't like immigrants, they're mortified that the sitting president is a black man and they are absolutely beside themselves with panic at the thought there are Muslims among us, and Donald Trump is the shouty, red-faced man who promises flat-out that he'll be getting rid of people like that. No muttering about checks and balances or working within the confines of the Constitution, like wimpy Marco Rubio. No nonsense about how immigrants aren't all rapists and drug dealers, like the doomed Jeb Bush piped up quietly with from time to time. Nope. Just good ol' fashioned, white-hot racism with its own private jet.    More

 

Black thinkers like Bernie Sanders. They've studied the Clintons' true cost

If anyone is smart enough to effectively make Sanders’ case to black America, it would be the intellectual leaders who have endorsed him thus far. Take Spike Lee. He is one of the contemporary black geniuses who have helped the nation (and me personally) reconsider race in transformative ways – and the latest to be feeling the Bern. Or Cornel West, who has been stumping for “Brother Bernie” for months… Similarly, much of the country first got woke about the scale and racism of mass incarceration when they read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Alexander has not endorsed Sanders or any candidate – “I endorse the revolution” she wrote – but she has offered the most skewering critique on why “Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve the black vote” in the Nation. She has also reminded black voters that “we are not checkmated” – that we can approach politics with a sense of possibility.   More

 

*   *   *   *

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

Tell Congress a Message: Vote for the People's Budget in March!

Each year, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) offers an alternative budget resolution to the “austerity” budgets supported by the House Majority and Speaker Ryan. The People's Budget offers a solid blueprint to:

• Invest more than $1 trillion in housing, education, transportation, clean energy and safe water to create millions of jobs
• Prevent cuts, restore social spending and reduce poverty by half in 10 years
• Increase educational opportunities, provide Pre-K and debt-free college for all
• Increase, not cut, Social Security and health care
• Close corporate tax loopholes, tax Wall Street speculation and raise taxes on the top 2%
• Redirect wasteful Pentagon spending and direct to peoples needs, ending Pentagon pork and the overseas contingency "slush fund" 

The People's Budget is backed by hard numbers and research by the Economic Policy Institute.

Send your message to Congress here.

 

Ted Cruz wants to give the Pentagon an extra $155 billion when what's needed are significant cuts

In his quest for the GOP presidential nomination, Cruz—who has been climbing in the polls—has been pushing the 67-year-old “Democrats are weak on defense” theme. At the January 28 Republican debate, for instance, where he reiterated his support for World War II-style carpet-bombing of ISIS/Daesh, the senator also bellowed that "Barack Obama right now, No. 1, over seven years, has dramatically degraded our military… As Gordon Adams points out in Foreign Policy magazine, “the campaign whiners have missed the reality: the Pentagon is now rolling in dough.” In fact, average Pentagon spending in the Obama years has been about $100 billion a year above Cold War levels…  54 percent of federal discretionary spending now flows to the military. But that’s only so when a narrow view is taken regarding what comprises military spending. The overall Veterans Affairs budget including benefits and health care adds another 7 percent in discretionary spending. There is also national security spending for international FBI activities, Selective Service, the National Defense Stockpile, and other miscellaneous defense-related activities that add another 4 percent. An additional 5 percent goes to Homeland Security functions that are not part of the Department of Defense or Department of Energy. So federal discretionary spending that actually goes for national security purposes is 70 percent.    More

 

GOP backers of defense budget hike got millions in donations

House Republicans urging a steep increase in the Pentagon's budget have received $10 million in campaign contributions over the course of their congressional careers from defense contractors that would benefit from higher levels of military spending.  The 34 GOP lawmakers, all members of the House Armed Services Committee, are pressing for an $18 billion increase in the 2017 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. The push is rooted in their position that the U.S. military has atrophied severely on President Barack Obama's watch, leading America's allies as well as adversaries to question the country's will.  The bid also reflects the message GOP presidential candidates have hammered relentlessly on the campaign trail, where Obama has been cast as a feckless commander in chief. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last week unveiled his blueprint for a "Reagan-style military buildup" to reverse the damage he said has been done during Obama's two terms. Cruz didn't say exactly what his plan would cost.   More

 

Turning American Communities Into War Zones, Death By Death

In the aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, many white people woke up to a reality that was hardly news in most communities of color where death-by-police is all too common. What’s new is that the rest of us are suddenly hearing about the Eric Garners, Freddie Grays, and Sandra Blands who die literally every day in this country.  The rest of the U.S. is beginning to understand what the police already represent to so many communities from Ferguson to Baltimore to Waller County, Texas, to -- yes -- San Francisco. Far from seeing the police as a source of help and protection, many Americans feel the same way about them as people living under corrupt authoritarian regimes feel about their police or armies. They see them as an occupying force, not there to protect and serve but to frighten and extort.   More

 

Black Musicians' Political Protest-Honor The "Godmother" Nina Simone-Mississippi Goddam-Alan Light's What Happened Miss Simone-Book Review

Black Musicians' Political Protest-Honor The "Godmother" Nina Simone-Mississippi Goddam-Alan Light's What Happened Miss Simone-Book Review 

Yeah, you can talk about your Beyoncé and Kendrick but remember who paid the price back in the day as Mister Whitey took offense when Nina Simone ripped the lip off of what everybody was thinking-thinking in silence. Yeah Mississippi Goddam… and Alabama too.

See The Netflix Film-What Happened Miss Simone

Click on link to an NPR On Point discussion of black musicians’ political protest songs that have raised a stir lately and remember the “godmother”  

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/02/19/beyonce-kendrick-lamar-black-lives-matter

About What Happened, Miss Simone?

Inspired by the Academy Award-nominated Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?, an intimate and vivid look at the legendary life of Nina Simone, the classically trained pianist who evolved into a chart-topping chanteuse and committed civil rights activist. 
 
From music journalist and former Spin and Vibe editor-in-chief Alan Light comes a biography of incandescent soul singer and Black Power icon Nina Simone, one of the most influential, provocative, and least understood artists of our time. Drawn from a trove of rare archival footage, audio recordings and interviews (including Simone’s remarkable private diaries), this nuanced examination of Nina Simone’s life highlights her musical inventiveness and unwavering quest for equality, while laying bare the personal demons that plagued her from the time of her Jim Crow childhood in North Carolina to her self-imposed exile in Liberia and Paris later in life.

Harnessing the singular voice of Miss Simone herself and incorporating candid reflections from those who knew her best, including her only daughter, Light brings us face to face with a legend, examining the very public persona and very private struggles of one of our greatest artists.

 

Click on link to an NPR On Point discussion of black musicians’ political protest songs that have raised a stir lately and remember the “godmother”  

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/02/19/beyonce-kendrick-lamar-black-lives-matter


Markin comment:

50 years later and even the mere mention of Mississippi puts me directly in mind of Nina Simone's no-nonsense song about the struggle down South in the early part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Thanks, Nina.

Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it for now! see ya' later

*****In The Beginning Was... The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

*****In The Beginning Was... The Jug- The Jim Kweskin Jug Band

 

Who knows how it happened, how the jug bug craze got started in the folk minute of the 1960s, maybe it happened just like in the 1920s and early 1930s when “jug” got a boost by the likes of the Memphis Jug Band, The Mississippi Sheiks, and about twelve other state-named Sheik groupings using home-made weapons, uh, instruments, picked up from here and there, a jug here, a triangle there, fashion a kazoo of wood or grab a metal one at Woolworth's 5&10 there (got you on that one folkies, right, but they along with Sears & Roebuck's catalogue and maybe Marshall Fields' too sold all manner of musical instruments and before the folk boom of the 1960s when with disposable income [read: allowances and parents of means ready to indulge a few fantasies through their kids] which allowed kids to buy instruments from music stores a lot of guys, guys like Hobart Smith, Homer Jones and Matthew Arnold got their instruments handed down to them or some desperate mother or father like Guy Davis,' Son House's, Cliff Mathers', and Slim Parsons' ordered straight from the catalogue not the finest instruments but those guys spoke highly of their first store-bought instruments even when they could afford better when they made their marks), pluck a worn out grandmother's washtub there and come up with some pretty interesting sounds. Yeah, once you listen to the old stuff on YouTube these days where the Memphis Jug Band has a whole video file devoted to their stuff, same with a lot of the others, you could see where that period might have been the start of the big first wave.

Maybe though back in the 1960s somebody, a few musicians, got together and figured here was something that folk-crazed kids, a very specific demographic not to be confused with all of the generation of ’68 post-war baby boomers coming of age rock and roll jail break-out but those who were sick unto death of the vanilla rock and roll that was being passed out about 1960 or so, get this, music that more than one mother, including my mother, thought was “nice” and that was the kiss of death to that kind of music after the death of classic Elvis/Chuck/Bo/Jerry Lee rock for a while before the Brits came over the pond to stir things up and the West Coast acid-eaters ate enough of the drug to sink the Golden Gate Bridge or at least the park and headed east in the Second Coming of rock and roll (not to be confused with the Christian second coming which would signify the end of the world as we know it or with Yeats' mystical version with the seven-headed dragon staring you in the face so stay away from those who want to travel that route) so they started tinkering. Maybe, and remember the folk milieu perhaps more widely that the rock milieu was very literate, was very into knowing about roots and genesis and where things fit in (including where they, the folkies who also a vision about a kinder, gentler world all mixed in until heads got busted in goddam Mississippi goddam, got their heads busted on Fifth Avenue in NYC for calling for an armed truce to the Vietnam War, got their heads busted come May Day 1971 when all the evil spirits in the world rose to bust a certain kind of dream) somebody in the quickly forming and changing bands looked up some songs in the album archives at the library, or, more likely from what later anecdotal evidence had to say about the matter, found some gem in some record store, maybe a store like Sandy’s over between Harvard and Central Squares in Cambridge who had all kinds of eclectic stuff if you had the time and wherewithal to shuffle through the bins. Institutions like Sandy's and a lot of towns had such oases even some unknown name ones like Larry's in Portland, Maine and Sukie's out in Eire, Pennsylvania if you can believe that sustained many for hours back then in the cusp of the 1960s folk revival when there were record stores on almost every corner in places like Harvard Square and the Village in the East you could find some gems if you searched long enough and maybe found some old moth-eaten three volume set Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and came up with The Memphis Jug Band and K.C. Moan or the Sheiks doing Rent Man Blues, maybe Furry Lewis on Kassie Jones (although sometimes the search was barren or, maybe worse, something second hand by Miss Patti Page singing about Cape Cod Bay all moony for the parents or try to hustle our young emotions but traipsing a dog in front of us, Tennessee Ernie Ford singing about sixteen tons, tons of coal and breaking your back too, or good god, some country bumpkin George Jones thing like I couldn't even give you a title for stared you in the face).

From there they, the jug masters of the revival, found the Cannon’s Stompers, the Mississippi Sheiks or the Memphis Jug Band, could be the way to prosper by going back to those days if they kept the arrangements simple, since that was what allowed the jug bands to prosper in the commercial markets of those days, keep the melody so simple that every working stiff and every forlorn housewife had the tune coming out of the sides of their brains and that was that. See, everybody then was looking for roots, American music roots, old country roots, roots of some ancient thoughts of a democratic America before the robber barons and their progeny grabbed everything with every hand they had on their fetid bodies. Let’s make it simple, something that was not death-smeared we-are- going-to-die-tomorrow if the Ruskkies go over the top red scare bomb shelter Cold War night that we were trying to shake and take our chances, stake our lives that there was something better to do that wait for the foreordained end.

And that wide awake search was no accident, at least from the oral history evidence I have held from those who came of age with me in that time after having grown up with rock and roll and found in that minute that genre wanting.  Some went reaching South to the homeland of much roots music, since those who were left behind or decided out of ennui or sloth to stay put kept up the old country British Isles Child ballad stuff (their own spin on the stuff not Child’s Brattle Street Brahmin rarified collection stuff) and found some grizzled old geezers like Buell Kazee, Hobart Smith, Homer Jones, Reverend Jack Robinson and the like, who had made small names for themselves in the 1920s when labels like RCA and Paramount went out looking for talent in the hinterlands.

So there was history there, certainly for the individual members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim, Geoff Mulduar, Mel Lymon, Maria Muldaur, Fritz Richmond , the most famous and long-lasting of the 1960s jug groupings, all well-versed in many aspects of the American Songbook (hell, I would say so, say they were well-versed, even old tacky Tin Pan Alley Irving Berlin, smooth Cole Porter and the saucy Gershwin Brothers got a hearing from them and if they could simple those damn complicated Tin Pan Alley melodies they took a shot at those as well), history there for the taking. All they needed was a jug, a good old boy homemade corn liquor jug giving the best sound but maybe some down in the cellar grandpa jug from the old days of Ball jars and crockery, a found washtub grandma used to use before she got that electric washer from the old garage where she put it against a rainy day when she might have to use it again when hard times came again as they usually did, a washboard found  in that same location, a triangle from somewhere, a kazoo from the music store, some fiddle, a guitar, throw in  a tambourine for Maria and so they were off, off to conquer places like Harvard Square, like the Village, like almost any place in the Bay area within the sound of the bay.

And for a while the band did conquer, picking up other stuff chimes, more exotic kazoos, harmonicas, what the heck, even up-graded guitars and they made great music, great entertainment music, not heavy with social messages but just evoking those long lost spirits from the 1920s when jug music would sustain a crowd on a Saturday night. Made some stuff up as they went along, or better, made old stuff their own like Washington At Valley Forge, Bumble Bee, Sweet Sue from Paul Whitman and plenty of on the edge Scotty Fitzgerald Jazz Age stuff that got people moving and forgetting their blues. Here is the beauty of it unlike most of the 1920s first wave stuff which was confined to records and radio listening, a lot of the rarer stuff now long gone lost, you can see the Kweskin Jug Band back in the day on YouTube and see the kind of energy which they produced when they were in high form (music that they, Jim and Geoff anyway, still give high energy to when they occasionally appear together in places like Club Passim in Harvard Square these days). Yeah, in the beginning was the jug… 

Honor Colonel Shaw And The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment

Honor Colonel Shaw And The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Those familiar with the critical role that the recruitment of black troops into the Union Armies in the American Civil War usually know about the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw which has received wide attention in book, film and sculpture. Those heroic black fighters and their fallen leader deserve those honors. Glory, indeed.

Although Shaw was hesitant to take command of those troops after suffering wounds at Antietam, when he accepted, he took full charge of the training and discipline of the regiment. Moreover, as the regiment marched into Boston to cheering crowds before embarking on ships to take them South each trooper knew the score. Any blacks captured (or their white officers, for that matter) were subject to Southern ‘justice’, summary execution. Not one trooper flinched. Arms in hands, they fought bravely at the defeat of Fort Wagner and other Deep South battles, taking many causalities.

I have remarked elsewhere (in a review of William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner)that while the slaves in the South, for a host of reasons, did not insurrect with the intensity or frequency of say Haiti, the other West Indian islands or Brazil that when the time came to show discipline, courage and honor under arms that blacks would prove not inferior to whites. And the history of the Massachusetts 54th is prima facie evidence for that position.

I should also note that the Massachusetts 54th was made up primarily of better educated and skilled freedman and escaped slaves unlike the black troops recruited from the plantations in the Deep South in the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteer black regiments. Thus, one might have suspected that they would not be up to the rigors of Southern duty. Not so. After reading a number of books on the trials and tribulations of various Union regiments, including the famous Irish Brigade, the story of the 54th compares very favorably with those units.

However, so as not to get carried away with the ‘liberalism’ of the Union political and military commands in granting permission for black recruitment it is necessary to point out some of the retrograde racial attitudes of the time. It took a major propaganda thrust by Frederick Douglass and other revolutionary abolitionists to get Lincoln to even consider arming blacks for their own emancipation. Only after several severe military reversals was permission granted to recruit black troops, although some maverick generals were already using them, particularly General Hunter. As mentioned above there were qualms about the ability of blacks to fight in disciplined units. Moreover, until 1864 black troops were paid less than their white counterparts. The Massachusetts 54th is also rightly famous for refusing pay until that disparity was corrected.

One should not forget that the North in its own way was as deeply racist as the South (think of the treacherous role of the Southern-sympathying Northern Copperheads and the Irish-led anti-black Draft Riots in New York City, for examples). This reflected itself in the racial attitudes of some commanding officers and enlisted men as well as the general paternalism of even the best white commanding officers, including Colonel Higginson of the 2nd South Carolina. It was further reflected in the disproportionately few blacks that became officers in the Civil War, despite the crying need for officers in those black regiments and elsewhere. Yet, all of these negatives notwithstanding, every modern black liberation fighter takes his or her hat off to the gallant 54th, arms in hand, and its important role in the struggle for black liberation