Today's Stories

April 17-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

Weekend Edition
April 17-20, 2009

The Musical Patriot

Monkey Music

By DAVID YEARSLEY

A dozen years ago Cory Cullinan’s My Oyster did for the debut CD what Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre did for the Bildungsroman two centuries before that. Had Goethe lived in these techno times he, too, would doubtless have logged many hours in the recording studio now the book-lined study of the me generations, the quill pen now a microphone, thick sheaves of paper now invisible digital files, the marble copy of the Venus de Milo on the library desk turned into a full-sized poster of Céline Dion on the soundproofed wall, the goblet of Rheinwein tossed out the window in favor of a slim can of Red Bull.

The resulting CD would have offered an intense and complicated vision of personal development, exploiting all opportunities to argue a high-minded aesthetic and moral vision.  If you don’t think this is possible, order up a copy of My Oyster and marvel at its range of musical references and the matchless facility in adapting and transforming them. Be dazzled by Cullinan’s ability to imbue his music with wit and spontaneity, yet convey something that transcends the jokey moment, the fashionable aside, the wink and the nudge. Ponder the breathtaking elevation of a host of rock, pop, and Broadway genres to the realm of Art with a capital A. Revel in the myriad ways My Oyster amuses and elevates, conveying its message without beating you over the head with it.

I don’t want to imply, however, that this album is merely an exercise in erudition, although the album is full of it. This youthful masterpiece is also a huge amount of fun. Where Goethe abjured the uplifting possibilities of the frivolous, Cullinan sees in them great potential for moral improvement. There is an almost childlike quality in much of My Oyster, and this quality makes Cullinan’s latest CD, The Ballad of Phineas McBoof an unexpectedly logical development in his career.

Drawing again on his enviable mastery of the most diverse of styles, Cullinan directs his latest endeavor at those most exacting of musical consumers, not to say connoisseurs: kids.

The fifteen tracks of The Ballad of Phineas McBoof tell the story of the title character, a monkey of great musical talents who has tired of the fame he enjoys on the tropical Isle of Thelonius.

With Sgt. Pepper clearly watching from the wings as a worthy predecessor, the CD is presented as a stage show which begins with the audience taking their seats before the entrance of the narrator, Dr. Noize, who relates the events of Phineas’ life, beginning with the Latin and funk-inflected title song “The Ballad of Phineas McBoof.”  The show then proceeds, alternating Dr. Noize’s spoken narration with songs documenting Phineas’s encounters with the various animal and non-animal musicians who will become the members of his International Band of Misunderstood Geniuses.

From Dr. Noize we learn that Phineas left his paradise of sun, sand, and celebrity to go off in search of musical regeneration and fulfillment. But before we follow Phineas on this journey we hear what won for him the adulation of the other monkeys back home—“Don’t Monkey with My Heart,” an homage to the early Beatles. This artistic lineage is referred to later on the CD with inter-textual and inter-generational reference to Paul and John.  Like the best of children’s literature and music, the CD operates on many levels simultaneously: beneath the bubbling surface of pure kiddy appeal runs an undercurrent of musical and lyric allusion aimed at delighting parents.

In spite, or perhaps because, of the success of “Don’t Monkey,” the fame-weary Phineas sets out in his boat with only his guitar to pursue his goal of composing the “world’s perfectest song.”  On the way he meets a range of musicians from various walks of life and non-life and of diverse musical talents and inclinations. And when the whole multi-cultural gang is united in song they do so “Always,” as Dr. Noize informs us by way of illuminating the ecumenical aesthetics that lie at the heart of Cullinan’s project, “reaching out to other kinds of music.”

The first of these chance encounters occurs while Phineas is paddling away from the Isle of Theloniu. Barely out of sight of the shores of home, he meets the future percussionist of the band,  Backbone, The Octopus.  After some introductory banter the pair engages in a duel of musical wits in which one and then the other calls out the parameters of the song they are about to improvise.  Phineas demands seven beats per measure, and Backbone suggests the subject matter, landing on the non sequitur, “dogs.”  Off the two go with congas and guitar and a lyric devoted exclusively to dog sounds.
 
This leads to further transformations as the musical chemistry clicks.  The pair next lands on the idea of a faster six beat measure featuring kazoo and tabla. The lesson here is about rhythm—I defy you to find me another children’s album with any piece in seven—and about the world music ideal of combining any and all possible instruments.  This politically correct message is then deftly ironized in the final section of the song where Phineas vamps on a harmonium, that unwieldy Victorian ladies’ keyboard about as far from world music as Winston Churchill is from Gangsta Rap. The Octopus accompanies on the djembe, an African percussion instrument. The hulking colonial relic of the harmonium is conjured not so much out of the waves as out of Cullinan’s irreverent and inexhaustible imagination.

Such set pieces not only serve Cullinan’s educational aims in sly ways, but also provide an ever-changing forum for his own musical fancy.  When new musicians are encountered—from the funky bassist Bottomus The Hip Popotamus to the fiddling Western lizard Lenny Long Tail to an unlikely quartet of Honky Tonk Monsters—their individual musical chops  serve up yet another challenge to the band.  Even a detour to a concert hall, where the blue-haired audience chides Phineas and company for talking during the performance, gives the Lizard a chance to jam to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on a 1721 Stradivarius.

For all the nuanced song-writing and virtuosic engineering of sound and effects, there are also flat out crowd pleasers like the rollicking “Bananas,” whose lyric consists of that single word. It is a conceit which, in its own way, is as artificial and provocative to Cullinan’s invention as the other works of irrepressible omnivorous allusion.

Needless to say, celebrity shadows Phineas, and he and his Band soon become a world-wide hit; Phineas has run from his island only to find himself burdened by still greater fame.
      
In a just world, talent and its exercise should be duly rewarded, though Phineas professes to pursue the aims of art (the perfect song) over fame and fortune.

Even the most cursory of listenings to this CD reveals how rich the author’s invention is, and one could be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that the monkey is Cullinan’s alter ego. There is far more to these songs than their hooks: Cullinan often takes his music material in unexpected melodic and harmonic directions, challenging our expectations and keeping our ears on their toes.

One hopes that the dumbo ears of Disney have not grown dumb to a genius of this caliber.  If ever there were a kids CD crying out to be optioned this would be it.  But will the free market reward Cullinan for raising us up rather than dumbing things down? It rarely happens that way. The Ballad of Phineas McBoof is full to overflowing with compelling characters, glittering musical riches, and an abundant joy in song and dance, but its covert mission is to educate children in music’s ethical and recreational powers and to do so with imagination and artifice, aesthetic pleasure and visceral fun spiced with provocation. Forget the banal Beethoven for Babies. The Ballad of Phineas McBoof is the musical primer of our times.

David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu   

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