[Marxism] Ron Jacobs on Warren Haynes

[Greg McDonald]

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As a big gov't mule fan, I can't resist the urge to post the essay
below. Last saw the Mule on new years in nyc a couple of lifetimes ago
at the Beacon theatre.

Christmas Weekend Edition
December 24-26, 2010
Warren Haynes' Xmas Jam 2010
Jes Grew Report

By RON JACOBS

"Jes Grew which began in New OrleansThey are calling it a
plague when in fact it is an anti-plague."

--Mumbo Jumbo-Ishamel Reed

“ Jes Grew (comes) from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Topsy and James
Weldon Johnson's description of Afro-American music's unascribed
development, … Jes Grew is a contagion, connected with the
improvisational spirit of ragtime and jazz, that begins to spread
across America in the Twenties. It is an irrational force that
threatens to overwhelm the dominant, repressive traditions of
established culture.”

-- Carl Brucker from his essay on Ishamel Reed in the Critical
Survey of Long Fiction, (1987)

There's a gig that has been happening every December in Asheville,
North Carolina for twenty-two years now.  Its purpose is to raise
money for Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit that helps people without
a home to find shelter.  Its mode of operation is getting together a
group of great musicians to play with their own bands and with each
other for eight or so hours one night every December.

The event is known as the Xmas Jam and the man behind the show is
guitarist Warren Haynes, who plays with the Allman Brothers, the Dead,
his band Gov't Mule and several other combos.  This year's lineup
featured Gregg Allman, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the Steve Miller
Band, members of Widespread Panic, Umphrey's McGee, and Haynes' new
band simply called the Warren Haynes Band.  The music ranged from the
jam-band stylings of Umphrey's McGee to the total New Orleans funk of
the Dirty Dozen Brass Band; from the soulful songs of The Warren
Haynes Band to the rock blues of Steve Miller's group.  It was a
joyful assembly.

If I were to choose a couple favorite parts of the evening they would
be the set delivered by Haynes’ new band and the closing set from The
Dirty Dozen Brass Band.  The former, which was the first public
performance of the group, featured five songs and most of the
musicians that will appear on the group's upcoming CD release.  The
band includes the following personnel besides Haynes: Ivan Neville on
keys (who played with Keith Richards and is a member of the Neville
Brothers and Dumphastunk), bassist Ron Johnson, Terrance Higgins on
drums, Ron Holloway on sax and blues singer Ruthie Foster.  The songs
included an original called "River's Gonna' Rise," a heartrending
version of Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You too Long" and a
suitably funky version of Robert Palmer's "Sneaking Sally Through the
Alley."

How does one describe Haynes' new ensemble?  Soulful would be a good
place to start.  With Haynes weaving leads and rhythms as intricately
as an ancient Chinese weaver of silk cloth for the emperors and Ron
Holloway blowing melodies on a sax straight out of Memphis; a bottom
provided by bassman Ron Johnson and Terrence Higgins and Neville's
keyboards, the word ecstatic comes to mind.  Just to make certain that
ecstasy is the case, Ruthie Foster's vocals bring it all together like
the final stitch on the aforementioned emperors' cloaks.  Tight
describes their playing while loose describes the way they made the
audience feel.

The surprise of the night was Steve Miller and his band.  For most
people, Miller is probably best known for his multitude of popular
hits in the 1970s and 1980s, including songs like "The Joker," "Take
the Money and Run," and "Jet Airliner."  The truth is that Miller and
his band were one of the original San Francisco bands from the
mid-1960s.  Their first album, titled Children of the Future, is
nothing short of a psychedelic classic.  The titled song alone stands
up there with the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," the Grateful
Dead's "Dark Star," and Quicksilver Messenger Service's "Pride of Man"
as a tune that not only popularized the freak culture of the era but
spoke to the ethos present during the best times of that brief but
monumental moment in cultural history.

Unfortunately for those of us in the audience who remember that album,
Miller did not play anything from it.  He did however, play a couple
mean blues tunes: "Further On Up the Road" and "Just Got Back From
Texas."  Warren Haynes accompanied him on the former.  It was the pop
songs that surprised me that night.  After hearing the band open with
a twelve minute version of "Jet Airliner" I will never dismiss that
song again.  The entire audience was on their feet and dancing like
they were worshiping St. Vitus.  The worship did not end until Haynes
joined Miller and his band for their final song "Fly 

Re: [Marxism] Have a happy and merry December 25

[Mark Lause]

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Yes, but it was also the birthday of a radical Jewish carpenter who was
rather pessimistic about the prospects of the rich in saving themselves.

ML

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[Marxism] Have a happy and merry December 25

[Jim Farmelant]

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Today, as the world pauses on the birthday of one of history's greatest
men, whose teachings continue to benefit the entire human race, 
let us join in toasting the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, and of all 
the giants on whose shoulders he stood.



Jim Farmelant
http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
www.foxymath.com
Learn or Review Basic Math

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[Marxism] [Fwd: [unac] April 9th: End the Wars at Home and Abroad]

[Ron J]

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c:\documents and

Unity



United National

Antiwar Committee



unacpe...@gmail.com
 or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054

518-227-6947   www.UNACpeace.org 

 

 

*(Please forward widely)*

 

 

 

*Back to the Streets!  **
**April 9th: Demonstrate Against the Wars at Home and Abroad
**
* Call to Action**

*And Request for Endorsement*

*April 9, 2011 *

*New York & San Francisco*

*from the*

*United National Antiwar Committee*

*To endorse the call, click here
*

  

 

*WHO ARE THE WARMAKERS?  *

* *

*/THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage
war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our
democratic rights and liberties./*

*/ /*

*WHO ARE THE PEACEMAKERS?*

*/ /*

*/WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healthy
planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and
civil liberties for all./*

 

*The Warmakers* spend trillions of dollars yearly on endless wars in
pursuit of global domination and profit while murdering millions of
innocent people, installing corrupt and hated governments and
funding occupations that displace millions from their homelands –
trampling on the right of oppressed people to self-determination.

* *

*THEY* send our youth – victims of the economic draft – to fight
over the very fossil fuels whose unrestrained use threatens the
future of the planet while corrupt and virtually unregulated oil
giants dump billions of gallons of death into our rivers and oceans.

 

*THEY* wage a fake “war on terrorism” at home – the new McCarthyism
– that promotes racism and Islamophobia aimed at destroying civil
liberties and democratic rights.

 

*THEY* grant repeated and untold trillions in bailouts to banks,
corporations and financial institutions while breaking unions,
robbing pensions, destroying jobs, foreclosing homes, de-funding
education and vital social services and are once again threatening
Social Security and Medicare.

 

*THEY *offer no solutions to the current crises other than more of
the same.

 

*THE PEACEMAKERS DEMAND* a better world. Only a massive, united,
inclusive and independent movement has the power to bring it into being.

 

*WE DEMAND* Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home
Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the
threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No
to war and plunder of the people of Latin America and Africa! End
U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of
Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!

* *

*WE DEMAND* trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end
to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a
massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems
and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S.
terror at home and abroad.

 

*WE DEMAND* an end to FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and
international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution
and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police
terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for
immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks
and its contributors and founders.

 

*WE DEMAND* the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials,
drone bombings and death squads.

 

*WE ARE DEDICATED  TO A WORLD*

*OF PEACE AND JUSTICE.*

 

*All Out April 9, 2011*

* *

**

*_To add your group’s name to the endorser list,
_*

*_local, state or national, click here 
_*

 

 

Initial List of Endorsers (List in formation)

* = For Identification only

 

UNAC –United National Antiwar Committee

Center for Constitutional Rights

Muslim Peace Coalition, USA

Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Veterans for Peace

International Action Center

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Fellowship of Reconciliation

Blac

[Marxism] Des Derwin on the United Left Alliance in Ireland

[Louis Proyect]

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I want to call your attention to an article that appeared in the Irish
Left Review by Des Derwin, a long-time labor and left activist. Titled
ULA! “No one would have believed….”, it takes a close and detailed look at
a new electoral formation that has arisen in the wake of the devastating
financial crisis. Derwin has apparently been following the debate about
party-building methodologies internationally since he supplies a very
informed appendix of links to various articles on the topic, including a
couple that I have written.

full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/des-derwin-on-the-united-left-alliance-in-ireland/



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[Marxism] Making the rich happy

[Louis Proyect]

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Christmas Weekend Edition
December 24-26, 2010
CounterPunch Diary
Making the Rich Happy

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Nicely in time for the end-of-year job ratings, President Obama has
crawled from the political graveyard, where only a month ago wreaths were
being heaped around his sepulcher. The Commentariat now gravely applauds
his recent victories in the US Congress:  repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't
Tell inhibitions on gays in the military;  Senate ratification of the new
START treaty on nuclear weapons with the Russians;  passage of a $4.3bn
bill – previously blocked by Republicans - providing health benefits for
emergency rescue workers in the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

Something missing from my list?  You noticed? Yes indeed: first and
absolutely foremost, the successful deal with Republicans on taxes, better
described as a $4 trillion gift to America’s rich people, by extending the
Bush tax cuts. With the all-important tax surrender under their belts the
Republicans don’t seem too upset in having allowing Obama’s his mini-swath
of victories. There aren’t too many votes in insisting that 1500 nukes
aren’t enough for Uncle Sam, particularly since Obama did his usual trick
a year ago of surrendering before the battle began, pledging vast new
outlays to the nuclear-industrial-complex. Would it have been that smart
to deny benefits to 9/11 responders or say that gays in the military have
to stay in the closet. Presumably they’ll fight all the more fiercely now
they can stand Out and Proud.  On things that really matter, once they
reassemble after the break, the Republicans will probably stay awake,
though with a President who surrenders with the alacrity of Obama,
excessive vigilance probably isn’t necessary.

You give $4 trillion to the rich and they express their thanks in measured
terms. Their hired opinion formers laud the spirit of admirable compromise
enabling responsible members of Congress to come together in
bipartisanship to keep the hogwallow open for business.

True, there are the nay-sayers, the left-leaning tribunes of the people
who say, accurately enough, that the great “compromise” was, in the
economist Michael Hudson’s words, “all for the rich… not to promote
stability and recovery… creating new public debt to hand out to the
bankers which future tax payers will spend generations paying off”.

It was a deal of refined cynicism, containing the poison pill of what has
been billed as a generous gesture to working people - a $120 billion
reduction in Social Security contributions by labor – reducing the rate of
contributions to the Social Security pension fund from 6.2 per cent of
wages to 4.2 per cent. But in fact this is a tripwire, setting up an
onslaught on Social Security a year down the road as underfunded and going
swiftly bankrupt and ready to be auctioned off to Wall Street.

The prime constant factor in American politics across the past six decades
has been a counter-attack by the rich against the social reforms of the
1930s.

Twenty years ago the supreme prize of the Social Security trust funds –
the government pensions that changed the face of America in the mid-1930s
- seemed far beyond Wall Street’s grasp. No Republican president could
possibly prevail in such an enterprise. It would have to be an inside job
by a Democrat. Clinton tried it, but the Lewinsky sex scandal narrowly
aborted his bid.

If Obama can be identified with one historic mission on behalf of capital
it is this – and though success is by no means guaranteed, it is closer
than it has ever been.

This brings us to the upcoming 112th Congress, reflecting Republican gains
in November, which will spend the evening of February 2 listening to
Obama’s “bipartisan” agenda laid out in his State of the Union address.

The Politico website – reflecting informed political opinion in Washington
DC - recently predicted that in this next address, “the teleprompter in
chief is expected to announce cuts in Social Security.” As Robert Kuttner
of Politico speculates: Obama’s rationale will be “to pre-empt an even
more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming
House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R,Wisconsin), as a
condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in
April."

But surely for progressives, infuriated by the tax giveaway to the rich,
and whose support Obama will be counting on for re-election in 2012, cuts
in Social Security will be the last straw? Don’t bet on it. As political
beasts of burden, progressives have backs that can sustain a virtually
infinite number of straws.

Against the tax betrayal these middle-class progressives will tout the end
of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Identity politics will trump class politics,  as
has been the case for middle-class progres

[Marxism] Paul Street - "The President and the Climate: Reflections on Progressive Obama Delusion

[Dennis Brasky]

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Paul Street, "The President and the Climate: Reflections on Progressive
Obama 
Delusion

Just what did Barack Obama and his spinners do to the critical faculties of
so many leading American progressives?

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/street231210.html

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