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Lest we forget (Masters of War)
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Subject: Lest we forget From: GUEST,Vince Date: 14 Feb 03 - 07:44 AM Thinking of the world's anti war demo's tomorrow this is dedicated........ To Mr Bush and Mr Blair To Saddam Hussain And those who don't care To the arms dealers Whose profits will soar And to the oil barons They'll be knocking on the door But more especially to the innocent who'll die And pay the price of the politicians' lie To the thousands of children who've died so far As victims of sanctions imposed from afar And the many, many more who'll scream and die As Bush's terror bombs drop, and the missiles fly... They shall grow not old........... ------------------------------------------------------------- Masters of War, Bob Dylan Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you Even Jesus would never Forgive what you do Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand o'er your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Stephen L. Rich Date: 14 Feb 03 - 12:08 PM It is well that we should be reminded. Stephen Lee |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: GUEST,alinact Date: 14 Feb 03 - 12:12 PM Don't forget Little Johhny Howhigh - Australia's pawn in this deadly chess game. Allan |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Mrrzy Date: 14 Feb 03 - 12:22 PM Don't forget my dad, killed by terrorists of this same ilk way back in the early 80's, when this war was new to them and being completely ignored by our government. Whom else shall we recall tomorrow as we march against this particular unjust war? |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Dead Horse Date: 14 Feb 03 - 02:02 PM Let us not also forget those who will die if Saddam is allowed to continually get away with the murder of his own and sundry other innocents, or is this an unfashionable view? |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: TIA Date: 14 Feb 03 - 04:47 PM Not unfashionable at all Dead Horse, let's remember them all. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Kaleea Date: 15 Feb 03 - 01:22 AM guest, Vince: Lest we forget, since you mention "arms dealers" and "oil barons," after "Desert Storm" 60 minutes did an expose about the fact that when pappy bush was in charge of the cia, he put sadsack insane into power in iraq, and then the family arms company sold him weapons (this was documented), much of which was paid for with our taxpayers' money as a gesture of good faith & in an effort to give iraq "financial aid." [not my words, but the facts reported by 60 minutes!] Now what in the world would an oil baron from texas want with a friend in power in iraq where there are many oil fields, and tankers being constantly filled to sail to the USA to be bought up by various oil companies, especially when the USA EPA was restricting the amount of oil which could be pumped on US soil? "Things that make you go, hmmmmmmmmmmm . . ." |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: GUEST,An Pluiméir Ceolmhar at home Date: 15 Feb 03 - 05:57 AM Let's not forget those who died in "the war to end war" 1914-1918 in "old Europe". After the re-run in 1939-45 the lessons of the League of Nations were supposed to have been learned, and the UN was prototype no.2. It was wrecked by the cold war and continuing neo-imperialist behaviour by old and new worlds. Do we hae to wit for more millions to be killed before making a third attempt? |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: John MacKenzie Date: 15 Feb 03 - 01:32 PM On the side of a hill In a land called somewhere A little boy lies asleep in the earth While down in the valley a cruel war rages And people forget what a childs life is worth. Giok |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Deda Date: 15 Feb 03 - 01:44 PM Thank you for posting these words, especially Dylan's extraordinary lyrics. Here is the final verse of Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach" (1867) Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. |
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Subject: ADD: Channel Firing (Thomas Hardy) From: Rapparee Date: 15 Feb 03 - 01:56 PM Channel Firing That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgement-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into their mounds, The glebe-cow drooled. Till God called, `No; It's gunnery practice out at sea Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be: `All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you that are helpless in such matters. `That this is not the judgement-hour For some of them's a blessed thing, For if it were they'd have to scour Hell's floor for so much threatening... `Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need).' So down we lay again. `I wonder, Will the world ever saner be,' Said one, `than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!' And many a skeleton shook his head. `Instead of preaching forty year,' My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, `I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.' Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. --Thomas Hardy |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 06 Aug 03 - 10:00 AM Other things not to forget: On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, killing an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare Amos |
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Subject: BS: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 06 Aug 03 - 10:01 AM This is a non-music thread....
-Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: mack/misophist Date: 06 Aug 03 - 11:52 AM Those favor, those opposed; both are right. I have to agree with you all. Ain't life a bitch. The real shame of what's happening in Iraq is that it was planned and set in motion by idiots and madmen. Sly and sharp, but madmen nonetheless. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 08 Aug 03 - 10:48 AM On this date in 1974 (God, has it been 30 years? Wow)....Richard Milhaus Nixon threw int he towel, announc ing he would resign his position as Presidentof the United states as a result of scandal and concomitant pressure related to the Watergater breakins. To this day I don't think we know the whole story. But it's nice to remember that we could at one time embarass a Republican out of office!! :>) A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 19 Aug 03 - 11:42 AM Today is August 19th. In 1934 on this date, absolute executive power for the state of Germany was voted to reside int he single person of the Fuhrer. The NEw York TImes reported the next morning: Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20 -- Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected. The German people were asked to vote whether they approved the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor in a single Leader-Chancellor personified by Adolf Hitler. By every appeal known to skillful politicians and with every argument to the contrary suppressed, they were asked to make their approval unanimous. Nevertheless 10 per cent of the voters have admittedly braved possible consequences by answering "No" and nearly [text unreadable] made their answers, ineffective by spoiling the simplest of ballots. There was a plain short question and two circles, one labeled "Yes" and the other "No," in one of which the voter had to make a cross. Yet there were nearly 1,000,000 spoiled ballots." Rest of the day's story here. Regards, A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 29 Aug 03 - 11:20 AM ONe of the most important headlines in my own lifetime, anyway, was displayed on newspapers around the world on this date: Soviets Bar Communist Party Activities; Republics Press Search for a New Order By SERGE SCHMEMANN Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES Apparatchik to Nationalist: Ukrainian's Fancy Footwork Direct Aid to Republics Moscow, Aug. 29 -- After three hours of anguished debate, the Soviet Parliament voted today to suspend all activities of the Communist Party pending an investigation of its role in the coup. It was an action that confirmed the demise of the old regime even as the search quickened for new forms of association and order. The fate of the party was already sealed before Parliament's vote. Individual republics had closed its offices and seized its vast properties and funds and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had quit as its General Secretary and had called on the leadership to step down. But Parliament was the only national institution with the formal powers to act against the entire organization, and its decision served to confirm the indictment already passed by the people. ... A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 29 Aug 03 - 11:21 AM Sorry -- that was in 1991, a fact I should have included. A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: alanabit Date: 29 Aug 03 - 11:31 AM Thanks for reminding me Amos. As it happened, I was in Prague at the time. Of course, this brought about the final collapse of that dictatorship in the Soviet Union. It also effectively guaranteed the safety of The Velvet Revolution, as the Czechs called it. It was a lovely time to be in Prague and one of the luckiest coincidences of my busking career. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Jim McLean Date: 29 Aug 03 - 12:09 PM I think we should remember that we are in fact the masters of war. You cannot be forced to fight and kill, just say no. Your neighbours may not like it, your family may not like it, you may be jailed but at the end of it all you are your own master. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: alanabit Date: 29 Aug 03 - 12:30 PM In the epilogue to, "Sergeant Musgrave's Dance", the playwright John Arden made a comment to the effect that he was not sure he could advocate pacifism - as he was not sure whether he was strong enough to carry it through himself. He was pointing out that true pacifism is a very hard road to go down. I like to think that I would have refused to fight in Viet Nam, or the recent Gulf War. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to refuse. (I am way too old anyway). My own feelings about pacifism changed when I went to a former concentration camp. Oddly enough, the part which I found the most thought provoking was reading bits of grey paper. These had been filled in, rubber stamped and then passed on. There were things like, "Confirm execution of Schulz, Thon and Miller, Thursday 0800." "Need more women for brothel.." (in reality, bestial rape compounds, of course). The people who did this work were office clerks, who after the war probably returned to being shipping clerks and civil servants. I agree with AJP Taylor's conclusion about the Second World War. He said that with all its horrors, it actually ended a greater evil than the one which the war itself was. Violence disgusts me every time, but I am prepared to use it to prevent an even greater evil. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: GUEST,mg Date: 29 Aug 03 - 01:36 PM just say no???? In some regimes, it is a little bit more than your family might not like it and your neighbors might not like it and you might have to go to jail. I personally think this was the dilemma many, if not most, Germans and Austrians found themselves in with their evil incaranted...Your family could be killed. Your neighbors could be killed. Perhaps not quickly. People are still facing those decisions today. Do you go with the evil program and save your immediate family? That is the dilemma. Not whether someone likes you any more or not. mg |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Jim McLean Date: 29 Aug 03 - 02:44 PM All the soldiers in the recent war against Iraq were professionals, not conscripted or am I wrong? |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: mack/misophist Date: 29 Aug 03 - 03:58 PM No, Mr McLean, you're not wrong. But many of those 'professionals' just want a steady job in a country where it's getting harder to feed a family or get enough education to better yourself. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Jim McLean Date: 29 Aug 03 - 04:59 PM Dylan's rather näive song allows people to opt out of any personal responsibilty for war and blame it on the armament manufacturors. The world will always be full of those despicable bastards, but we must show that we, as individuals, don't have to be part of their schemes. You don't have to be part of a country's killing machine to earn a living. The days of the King's shilling are gone and that excuse is not good enough. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: GUEST Date: 29 Aug 03 - 05:00 PM misophist, I hardly think that is good justification to sign yourself up to become part of a killing machine. Don't forget the soldiers we saw on tv that signed their bombs before they dropped them. And all that rubbish about it being for September 11th. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: GUEST,skippy Date: 29 Aug 03 - 05:26 PM lets not forget that you have the right to say what you wish, a right hopefully that we all respect, but it was bought a price, a high price! demoracy costs, it costs lives but we all want it. |
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Subject: Lyr Add: NO BLOOD FOR OIL From: Mark Ross Date: 29 Aug 03 - 06:29 PM NO BLOOD FOR OIL words;Mark Ross, tune;Troopers' Lament There's a man down in Washington who wants to start a war, Wants to kill a hundred thousand like his daddy did before, Send handsome sons and pretty daughters off to die on foreign soil, He doesn't listen when we tell him that we won't trade blood for oil. In the Middle East they're saying that there's oil beneath the sand, Are a thousand dirty barrels worth the life of one young man? Let the honest soul come forward who will now stand up and say, That these actions they are justified, it is worth the price we'll pay. When the Gulf War ended just a dozen years ago, We forgot the old injunction, "You shall reap just what you sow." Now there comes a generation who we've taught that might is right, Is it any wonder that we're the ones they want to fight. There are half a million children dead because we went to war, And if the battle starts again there will be a million more, The sound of grieving parents should make us feel ashamed, Of all the things that we have done, and all in Freedom's name. Back here in this country we're consumed by all our fears, We are giving up the freedoms that we've had for all these years, We turn neighbor against neighbor, turn our children into spies, Our friends become our enemies, and it all is based on lies. Can you hear the sound of people marching all across the world, Half a hundred million with their flags of peace unfurled, From the dampened streets of Portland to Madrid in sunny Spain, Voices swelling up in protest, "We shall never kill again." |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: GUEST,mg Date: 29 Aug 03 - 06:37 PM I doubt that a lot of people in the Iraqi forces were given too many choices. mg |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 15 Sep 03 - 10:23 AM September 15th A moment of memory for four children: Cynthia Wesley, 14, the only child of Claude A. Wesley, principal of the Lewis Elementary School, Birmingham, Ala., and Mrs. Wesley, a teacher there. Denise McNair, 11, also an only child. Carol Robertson, 14. Addie Mae Collins, 14. These four girls were killed by a bomb thrown into the basement of their church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15th, 1963, one the most grievous reactions in the fight for civil rights in the southern United States. The bombing came five days after the desegregation of three previously all-white schools in Birmingham. The way had been cleared for the desegregation when President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and the Federal courts issued a sweeping order against Governor Wallace, thus ending his defiance toward the integration step. The four girls killed in the blast had just heard Mrs. Ella C. Demand, their teacher, complete the Sunday school lesson for the day. The subject was "The Love That Forgives." Regards, A Birmingham Sunday |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: open mike Date: 15 Sep 03 - 12:34 PM There are so many things, events and people and places to remember-- thank you Amos for reminding us of the events of that fateful day Sept. 15 of 40 years ago. I think there may have been a court case recently involving the perpetrators of this? |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: wysiwyg Date: 22 Sep 03 - 01:17 AM Read patiently; it's a music post, from a mail list. ~S~
Sixty-five years ago, on Sept. 21 - the "Great New England Hurricane of 1938" ripped across Long Island, and slammed into the southern coast of New England. In its wake, over 600 people were killed, and nearly another 100 were never found. The storm traveled northward, at over 50 miles an hour. (By comparison - Isabel traveled at 20 mph.) Beginning in the Mid-Atlantic - as a Category 5 - the storm was at Category 3 when the 50-mile-wide eye came ashore at Bayport, Long Island, at 2:30 pm. It then swept directly across Long Island Sound, and up the Connecticut River Valley. With winds averaging 115 mph, the Blue Hills Observatory, south of Boston, recorded over 5 minutes of sustained wind at 120 mph - and one wind gust measured a record 187 miles an hour. (In the top few of the highest winds EVER recorded on earth.) Only one of the Observatory's anemometers survived the storm. However, the worst problem was flooding - with Providence, RI recording over 13-1/2 feet of water in the downtown business district. "In New London, Connecticut, the tidal surge drove the five-masted school ship Marsala into a warehouse complex along the docks, setting off a short circuit and fire which consumed a quarter-mile area of the business district..." "...The material damage of the storm has been calculated to be $4.7 billion in 2001 dollars. Six hundred and eighty lives were lost in the destruction and rising waters. No hurricane since then has claimed so many Americans." (The American Experience - see note*) Directly across the Thames River from New London - The Bacon Banjo Company Inc., of Groton, CT, was located on the eastern bank. Part of its small factory building was erected on pilings - and sat directly OVER the water. The building itself was not lost in the hurricane, but was inundated with water - and Bacon could no longer continue production operations. Bacon's President - veteran banjo designer and builder, David L. Day - soon contracted with The Fred Gretsch Company, to produce banjos under the "Bacon" and "B&D" trade names. (Fred Bacon had retired in 1932.) During a career of banjo-making, spanning over 55 years - Mr. Day had organized and managed several of the world's finest banjo-production facilities: Fairbanks & Cole, A. C. Fairbanks & Co., The Vega Company, and The Bacon Banjo Co. Inc. Day was one week out of school - when he went to work as an errand boy, with Fairbanks and Cole. (Possibly as their first employee.) He eventually became General Manager of A. C. Fairbanks & Co. Inc., and Vice President of its successor - the VEGA Company. Both of Boston, MA. Some of the finest banjos ever made, were developed and produced under Day's direction - such as the superb Presentation-grade Fairbanks Electric banjos, of the late 1890s. Day also developed and holds the patent on the Fairbanks "Whyte Laydie" banjo. In 1922, David Day joined his old friend - banjo virtuoso, Fred Bacon - at the Bacon Banjo Co. Within the year, Day designed and patented the world's finest jazz banjo - the "B&D Silver Bell". In 1928, when a new Ford cost $450 - Bacon's opulent solid-ebony "Ne Plus Ultra #9" model cost $900. It was sought by many of the premier vaudeville and jazz banjoists. Today, the Fairbanks Whyte Laydie and B&D Silver Bell, are still highly coveted - by many of the world's best players, and collectors. The 1938 hurricane hit just three days after Day's 16th anniversary at Bacon. He was in his early seventies at the time - too old to begin rebuilding yet another factory. In combination with the Great Depression, and a lessening demand for banjos - the hurricane was the final blow. In late 1939, the Bacon Company filed for bankruptcy. In early 1940, the remnants of The Bacon Banjo Co. Inc. were sold to Gretsch - but the quality never again compared to the artistic instruments made under Day's watchful eye. A year-or-so after the sale to Gretsch, David L. Day left Groton - and retired to his previous home of Revere, Massachusetts. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Gurney Date: 22 Sep 03 - 05:34 AM I'll put my tick alongside guest Skippy's. People who, like me, have generations of ancestors raised in a democratic country, are ready to express their opinion on anything, and criticise anyone. It behoves us to remember that democracy suppresses people who are inclined to be bullies, thugs, and tyrants, much more than it suppresses punters like me, -I'd say us, from my reading of this site. Democracy seems to me to be an unnatural state, in that it only arises in the long term, or as an existing example when there is a country in a political void after a revolution or war. The long term, as Skippy points out, cost blood and lives and stubborness and courage. Democracy isn't perfect, but everything else is ranges from more perilous to dreadful. Express your opinion. Good people suffered to let you. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: mack/misophist Date: 22 Sep 03 - 10:53 AM Note to Jim McLean: Tell me that again after you've worked a year at McDonald's, if they're hiring. And don't forget that most of the troops in Iraq are youngsters with little more than high school educations, deliberately (who really knows?) housed in rural enclaves where respect for authority and the government are taken for granted. Under stress, the thing that keeps them going is the 'us' and 'them' paradigm. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 29 Sep 03 - 10:28 AM ANd on a less sober note: On Sept. 29, 1957, The New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds, losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates 9-1. The Giants moved to San Francisco for the next season. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 29 Sep 03 - 10:39 AM Not to mention: TODAY IN HISTORY 1687 - Parthenon destroyed in war between Turks & Venetians. 1777 - The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia. 1864 - General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men assault a Federal garrison near Pulaski, Tennessee. 1918 - German Ace Ernst Udet shoots down two Allied planes, bringing his total for the war up to 62. 1944 - Allies slaughtered by Germans in Arnhem: On this day in 1944, Operation Market-Garden, a plan to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem, fails, as thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. 1945 - First American soldier killed in Vietnam: Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Vietnam, is shot and killed in Saigon. Dewey was the head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese. 1950 - General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: wysiwyg Date: 30 Sep 03 - 10:13 AM On today's date, verdict at Nuremburg: Guilty. ~S~ |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Wolfgang Date: 30 Sep 03 - 12:55 PM Verdicts, not verdict. 19: guilty 3: non guilty Wolfgang |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: Amos Date: 21 Oct 03 - 10:30 AM On a positive note, this is the anniversary of Edison's announcement that he had perfected an electric light globe and intended to replace gas-lighting throughout civilization. (My expression, not his). The New York Times of the day wrote up an interesting visit to Edison at Menlo Park, which he was starting to light up at night on an experimental basis. The story can be found on this page. Regards, A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget From: alanabit Date: 21 Oct 03 - 01:50 PM For us Brits, today is the one hundred and ninety eighth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. As it happened, Napoleon's plans for invasion were as silly an idea as has ever been propounded. However, the destruction of a French and Spanish fleet of thirty-three ships effectively ended any question of an attack on the UK mainland. |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget (Masters of War) From: Amos Date: 30 Oct 03 - 11:21 PM It has been 65 years since the American people were duped into panic in many areas by Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of a Martian invasion: War of the Worlds, Orson Welles, And The Invasion from Mars “The ability to confuse audiences en masse may have first become obvious as a result of one of the most infamous mistakes in history. It happened the day before Halloween, on Oct. 30, 1938, when millions of Americans tuned in to a popular radio program that featured plays directed by, and often starring, Orson Welles. The performance that evening was an adaptation of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of the earth. But in adapting the book for a radio play, Welles made an important change: under his direction the play was written and performed so it would sound like a news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, a technique that, presumably, was intended to heighten the dramatic effect. As the play unfolded, dance music was interrupted a number of times by fake news bulletins reporting that a “huge flaming object” had dropped on a farm near Grovers Mill, New Jersey. As members of the audience sat on the edge of their collective seat, actors playing news announcers, officials and other roles one would expect to hear in a news report, described the landing of an invasion force from Mars and the destruction of the United States. The broadcast also contained a number of explanations that it was all a radio play, but if members of the audience missed a brief explanation at the beginning, the next one didn’t arrive until 40 minutes into the program. At one point in the broadcast, an actor in a studio, playing a newscaster in the field, described the emergence of one of the aliens from its spacecraft. “Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake,” he said, in an appropriately dramatic tone of voice. “Now it’s another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face. It...it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate....The thing is raising up. The crowd falls back. They’ve seen enough. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can’t find words. I’m pulling this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop the description until I’ve taken a new position. Hold on, will you please, I’ll be back in a minute.” As it listened to this simulation of a news broadcast, created with voice acting and sound effects, a portion of the audience concluded that it was hearing an actual news account of an invasion from Mars. People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens, oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in a radio play. Not unlike Stanislaw Lem’s deluded populace, people were stuck in a kind of virtual world in which fiction was confused for fact. “ (Such mass delusion was not seen again in so widespread a form until the elections of November 2000 and the subsequent Bush Administration.) Regards, A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget (Masters of War) From: Amos Date: 20 Nov 03 - 10:37 AM OF interest is the New York Times coverage of the opening of the Nuremburg trials on this date in 1945. A |
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Subject: RE: Lest we forget (Masters of War) From: GUEST,Phil Date: 16 Nov 04 - 07:57 AM http://www.alternet.org/rights/20506/ Of Piercings and Protest Songs By Greg Cahill, AlterNet, 16 Nov 2004: What started innocently enough as a band of Boulder High punks using the Nov. 12 school talent show to make a political statement has sparked a national free-speech debate and led to an unexpected civics lesson complete with red-faced school officials and humorless federal agents. Sure, they may not be Rage Against the Machine, but for one glorious fleeting moment the punks at Boulder, Colo., ruled the high-school auditorium. It all began last week when the impromptu band of students and one teacher was rehearsing Bob Dylan's Vietnam-era protest song "Masters of War," a bitter indictment of those that deal in death. An unidentified female student claimed that the musicians – who she said were calling themselves the Tali-banned – had modified the lyrics to say, "George Bush, I hope that you die/And your death will come soon," all set to a provocative slide show with images of war and President Bush. The student told her mother – and mom did what every red-blooded American should do when the president's life is in danger: she called a local talk-radio show. Before you could say "First Amendment," U.S. Secret Service agents descended on the campus to investigate the alleged threats. Principal Ron Cabrera insisted no such threats were made. According to a published report, the band had planned to call themselves the Tali-banned, but, at the urging of faculty, later changed the name to Coalition of the Willing (wouldn't Unwilling have been more appropriate?). "We were misunderstood," singer Allyse Wojtanek told the "Daily Camera" after the talent show, while news vans packed the school parking lot. "People thought we were like communists, and that was not it at all. We have a peaceful message." It's a message that even the song's author managed to muddle during a previous Bush administration. In 1991, in the midst of the Gulf War and with protesters clamoring to air their views, Dylan performed "Masters of War" so unintelligibly during the national broadcast of the Grammy Awards show that his band members were uncertain what song they were performing. In his recent autobiography "Chronicles, Vol. 1," Dylan writes that he detested being foisted into the role as a spokesman for the protest generation and took every opportunity to sabotage that status. The Boulder punks have proven the power of protest music is, indeed, bigger even than Dylan. Meanwhile, the ringing in the ears has faded and the talent show is just a sweaty memory, but the Secret Service investigation goes on and repercussions may just be starting as the feds seek to make the world safe from piercings and protest songs. After all, everything in high school goes on your permanent record. One can only imagine a tattooed Boulder High grad applying for a job as a teacher a few years down the road in a society rife with compassionate conservatives: "You seem like a bright young woman and your qualifications are impressive," the interviewer might explain, "but our policy is not to hire terrorists who threaten the president. "I'm sure you understand." |
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