Abuse of Leftist songs by US Rightist politicians

Posted on March 30, 2008 by petrel41

This music video is of Woody Guthrie, This land is your land.

Sing a song of hypocrisy

March 28, 2008

DO THE political candidates pick the songs that fit them? …

Some are, of course, very fine songs in their own right. But you have to wonder if the candidates have ever bothered to actually listen to them. Whose “country,” for example, does John McCain think famously left-leaning rocker John Mellencamp is referring to in “Our Country”?

“That poverty could be just another ugly thing/And bigotry would be seen only as obscene/And the ones that run this land help the poor and common man/This is our country” run the lyrics–hardly in step with the campaign of a man who, in the course of recent months, has backed George W. Bush’s veto of a bill outlawing torture of detainees and said that the U.S. might stay in Iraq for the next “100 or 1,000 or 10,000 years.”

To his credit, Mellencamp pulled the plug on McCain‘s use of his music in February. As Mellencamp’s spokesperson, Bob Merlis, commented to the Associated Press, “You know, here’s a guy running around saying, ‘I’m a true conservative.’ Well, if you’re such a true conservative, why are you playing songs that have a very populist pro-labor message written by a guy who would find no argument if you characterized him as left of center?”

In a similar incident, guitarist Tom Scholz of the band Boston told Mike Huckabee to cease and desist using “More Than a Feeling.” Scholz wrote that “Boston has never endorsed a political candidate, and with all due respect, would not start by endorsing a candidate who is the polar opposite of most everything Boston stands for…I think I’ve been ripped off, dude!”

McCain is hardly the first Republican to appropriate the work of left-wing musicians in an attempt to add luster to his campaign. George Bush Sr., for example, was somehow able to get away with using “This Land Is Your Land“–a searing indictment of inequality in America penned by socialist Woody Guthrie–as his campaign song in 1988.

It’s a good bet that Bush left out the verse that goes: “In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people/By the relief office I seen my people/As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking/Is this land made for you and me?”

Ex Clash bass guitarist Simonon now a painter

Posted on March 30, 2008 by petrel41

This music video is called The Clash – “The Guns of Brixton” [written by Paul Simonon] (Live).

From British weekly The Observer:

When the Clash parted company in 1986, bassist Paul Simonon went back to his first love: art. …

When the London punk scene began in 1976, Simonon was a fledgling painter, fresh from Byam Shaw art college which, back then, was just up the road in Notting Hill. In the spirit of the times, he bought a bass guitar which he drip-painted in the style of Jackson Pollock and learned how to play by writing out the chords and sticking them on to the instrument’s neck.

Thirty years on, he describes himself as ‘a painter who occasionally dabbles in music’. His most recent bout of dabbling, though, led to a number one album as part of the Damon Albarn-orchestrated supergroup, the Good, the Bad and the Queen. ‘It’s done and dusted,’ he says of that project, but later lets slip that the group are in negotiations to play a big benefit for the newly reignited Rock Against Racism campaign. The gig is scheduled for 27 April in Victoria Park, east London, where, 30 years ago, the Clash rocked against racism before 100,000 people.

‘I can dip in and out of music when I feel like it,’ says Simonon, ‘but it’s not my life any more. There was a point after the whole intensity of the Clash finally subsided when I just found that painting grounded me in a way that music didn’t.’ …

Paul Gustave Simonon was born in Brixton, south London in 1955, and grew up, as he puts it, ‘all over the place – Brixton, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Thornton Heath, Bury St Edmunds, Ladbroke Grove’. His mother was a librarian and he describes his father, Gustave, as ‘a Sunday painter. Literally.’ Simonon senior also seems to have been quite a character. He went AWOL from the army having served in Kenya during the time of the Mau Mau rebellion. ‘I think he saw some bad things,’ says Simonon, ‘and was haunted by them for a long time afterwards.’

How the Clash started: here.

Clash stars Mick Jones and Topper Headon have recorded together for the first time in 27 years in aid of an organisation which supplies musical instruments to prison inmates: here.

Northern Rock scandal boss gets over 1.5 million dollars

Posted on March 30, 2008 by petrel41

This video from Britain is about the Northern Rock scandal.

From The Observer weekly in Britain:

Ex-Northern Rock boss gets £750,000

Chief at helm when bank almost crashed will also draw on £2.5m pension as shares plunge to 5p

Richard Wachman, city editor

Sunday March 30 2008

Northern Rock will ignite a storm of controversy tomorrow when it reveals that its former boss Adam Applegarth received a £750,000 [over 1,5 million US dollars] pay-off when he left last December.

Applegarth, who is 46, is also entitled to draw on a pension pot of £2.5m at the age of 55, built up since joining the bank as a graduate trainee almost 20 years ago. Experts say that could bring him retirement benefits of up to £200,000 a year.

Vince Cable, Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said it was ‘outrageous that someone who brought the bank to the brink of destruction and subjected taxpayers to liabilities worth billions of pounds should be rewarded for failure’.

So, a pension of £200,000 a year for Northern rock scandal boss Applegarth when he gets 55. While capitalists like Applegarth are pushing in all countries to get workers’ retirement ages up from 65 to 67 years or something.

$10 million for American Axle CEO: here.

Corruption in Britain: here.

Northern Rock update May 2008: here.

Update March 2009: here.

Banks are crashing while 140,000 repossessions loom at Northern Rock: here.

Bush’s Iraq offensive threatens trade unionists

Posted on March 30, 2008 by petrel41

This video from Ireland shows:

First half of footage from World Against War demonstration. 15th March 2008, Belfast.

From Monthly Review:

Naftana News Release: Basra Assault Threatens Trade Unionists

Press Release

28 March 2008

Basra Assault Confirms Presence of British forces a Threat to Political and Trade Union Rights in Iraq

In a series of telephone calls from Basra over the past 48 hours, Iraqi trade union activists appeal for solidarity and describe how the so-called ‘Security Plan’ started midnight 24 March with intense shelling and fire from all kind of weapons.

The attacking forces now besieging Basra stretched all the way to the city from Dhi Qar province. Two armoured divisions are deployed, in addition to thousands of policemen, backed by US and British planning and air cover.

They have cut off electricity supplies, food and water on the city of1.5 million people. Hundreds have been killed or injured in a savage, premeditated and unprovoked attack, now spreading to much of Iraq as the people protest and show solidarity with Basra’s beleaguered people.

They describe the attack as far worse than the invasion of 2003 and begun in the same barbaric manner that the criminal Saddam employed against Basra to crush the March 1991 people’s uprising. They remind us that the present puppet Iraqi government sentenced Saddam’s Defence Minister to death few months ago for similar crimes of waging war on civilians.

The assault is backed by the US and British occupation forces,particularly in providing air cover. US planes are also bombarding areas in Basra,several southern cities and Baghdad, where tens of thousands marched yesterday denouncing the “puppet regime”. It is now, along with many other cities, under a strict curfew enforced by regime and occupation forces.

Trade union leaders have asked us to inform the public in Britain that the government’s attack on Basra serves the occupation. The city is “steadfast” and the onslaught will end in “utter failure.” The city streets were free of the occupying forces before the assault and the regime’s attacks will make it even more dependent on the occupation forces, they stressed.

Naftana, the UK support committee for the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions in the struggle for democratic trade unionism in Iraq, condemns British collusion in the preparation of the assault on Basra city and British participation in air strikes.Naftana urges all to join in calling for an immediate withdrawal of British forces from Iraq, ending the US-led occupation, and for the payment of reparations to Iraq.

In the absence of adequate media coverage of the nature and context of this savage onslaught, Naftana wants to set the record straight on UK involvement.

In December 2007, the Basra Development Commission (BDC) was formally announced after discussions between Gordon Brown and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih. (1) Brown appointed a British businessman,Michael Wareing, Chief Executive of KPMG International as “Commissioner”, apparently heading the BDC.(2)

Wareing visited Basra in February and made outrageous comments, confirming his real interests to be those of predatory business rather than the security, development and well-being of Basra and its people. Wareing told The Observer: “If you look at many other economies in the world, particularly the oil-rich economies, many of these places are quite challenging countries in which to do business. . . . Frankly, if you can successfully operate in the Niger Delta, that is a very different benchmark from imagining that Basra needs to be like London or Paris.”(3)

Wareing’s appointment was welcomed by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a major advocate of the 2003 invasion and of privatisation.

On March 13 the British Defence Minister Des Browne met with Salih in Basra Airport. Browne promised to show new action on ‘security’ in Basra province and to bring Umm Qasr port up to ‘the highest international standards’.(4)

What this meant was made clear by Salih who threatened the Governor,people of Basra and port workers’ union of Umm Qasr saying ‘there must be a very strong military presence in Basra to eradicate these militias’.(5)

What Salih, himself a former militia leader, was concerned about were organised port workers who had earlier confronted the American SSA Marine corporation in Umm Qasr and the Danish Maersk corporation in Khoraz-Zubair in the two years after these companies were imposed by the occupying forces in 2003.(6)

The new plans involve privatisation measures opposed by the port workers, who are supported by other trade unions and port management. It is likely that the planned corporate takeover of the port is required in order to facilitate the activities of international oil companies. Nevertheless, the scale of what was afoot was not apparent, but the link between military action and breaking trade unionism was.

On March 17-18 the US Vice-President Dick Cheney was in Baghdad meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who presently heads the attack on Basra city.(7)

Top of the agenda was the oil law(8) and how to insure its passage. The oil law means that international oil majors will control Iraqi oil for many decades. Various reports reveal that the present carnage was coordinated and agreed with British and American leaders. Naftana believes they commanded it.

Why? The tide of national public opinion has turned against long-term troop deployment in both the UK and the USA. If the war was fought for oil and total domination of Iraq, then those most closely associated to those interests must speed up their plans. The present onslaught aims to break popular resistance, especially from the Sadrist movement, to the passage of the oil law and to the occupation itself.

Beyond that, with local elections looming next autumn, it aims to destroy morally and physically the popular base which would otherwise be set to drive, first from local power, and subsequently from national power, the US/UK allies, Nouri al-Maliki (al-Dawa party), his main allies in the Supreme Islamic Council, led by Abdulaziz al-Hakim, and the Kurdish leaders, Talbani and Barzani.

Naftana calls on all who support democratic trade unionism to stand by the people of Iraq, with the port workers of Umm Qasr and the oil workers of Southern Iraq, with workers in Baghdad and many other cities who are in danger of physical elimination. Naftana

For further information on Naftana and IFOU:
Sabah Jawad — 07985 336886 sabah.jawad@googlemail.com
Kamil Mahdi — k.a.mahdi@exeter.ac.uk
Sami Ramadani — 07863 138748 sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk

Notes for editors: Naftana (‘Our Oil’ in Arabic) is an independent UK-based committee supporting democratic trade unionism in Iraq. It works in solidarity with the IFOU.

It strives to publicise the union’s struggle for Iraqi social and economic rights and its stand against the privatisation of Iraqi oil demanded by the occupying powers.

For more information see the IFOU’s website.

Notes

1. “Invest Basra,” East of England Energy Group, http://www.eeegr.com/events/info.php?refnum=562&startnum=A0

2. “KPMG Leader appointed as Development Commissioner in Southern Iraq,” KPMG International, 1 January 2008, http://www.kpmg.com/Press/KPMGLeaderappointed.htm

3. David Smith, “Oil Giants Are Poised to Move into Basra,” Observer, 24 February 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/24/iraq.oil

4. “UK Commitment to Iraq ‘Absolute’,” BBC, 13 March 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7294144.stm

5. James Glanz, “Iraqi Troops May Move to Reclaim Basra’s Port,” New York Times, March 13, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/world/middleeast/13basra.html

6. Since 2003 the first shortened its name to SSA Marine. On UmmQasr, see: “SSA Marine Completes Port of Umm Qasr Management Contract,” AllBusiness, 30 June 2004, http://www.allbusiness.com/transportation/marine-transportation-ferries/5665051-1.html, and “Stevedoring Services of America,” Center for Public Integrity, http://www.publici.net/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=56. On Khor az-Zubair, see: Lotte Folke Kaarsholm, Charlotte Aagaard, and Osama Al-Habahbeh, “Iraqi Port Weathers Danish Storm,” CorpWatch, 31 January 2006, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13196; and Andy Critchlow, “IRAQ: A.P. Moeller Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit Amid Security Threat,” Bloomberg, 14 July 2005, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12490.

7. John D. McKinnon, “On Iraq Tour, Cheney Seeks Security Pact,” Wall Street Journal, 20 March 2008.

8. AFP, “Cheney Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq,” 17 March 2008.