One critic said, "I don't want to be told how to think by four aging hippies." Another said CSNY wasn't interested in free speech, "just the kind they believe in."

The first quoted person actually needs to "be told how to think" (just not by hippies), which is why they can't think for themselves.

The second quote is just plain stupid, for obvious reasons!

Well at least ONE of the protest singers besides Joan Baez is still singing or cares.
Phil Ochs drank himself to death, David Rovics and Country Joe McDonald sold out to the system, Bob Dylan gave up, Pete Seeger is too old, Barry McGuire went nuts with religion, and Peter, Paul, and Mary are dealing with health issues.
Thank you for holding up the torch Neil. We need you.

Young has done some great songs but he has also been all over the map politically ... even supporting Ronald Reagan as he preached the "magic of the marketplace" while sponsoring terrorism throughout Central America.

There are plenty good singers with great music and lyrics out there.

Check out Stephan Smith 'Slash and Burn' for one.

I don't know that Pete Seeger is too old; I saw him playing here in Kingston a couple of weeks back (that would be in Canada) raising money for a seed project to allow farmers in the third world access to non-patent encumbered seed and talking about what's going wrong in his home country.

That said he allowed that he doesn't get around as much as he used to.

I attended the show held in Saratoga NY August 06. Moving experience and I appreciated very much that they (Young) had the balls to do the show. Toward the end on a large screen they showed collage of pictures of every serviceman/woman that had been killed in Iraq up to that point, and it was obviously being updated thruout the tour. That's the war we don't see and haven't seen because of the MSM (with a few exceptions). Young was just interviewed last week on Charlie Rose for a whole hour. It is worth seeing.

In 2005 Charlie Rose said: "We have yet to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet."

When you talk about WMD's, Iraq, Iran of anywhere in the Middle East-ALL roads lead to Jerusalem.

In 1985 Bono joined forces with a group of artists concerned about Apartheid in South Africa. Inspired by his meetings with several of them, he wrote "Silver and Gold"

"Yep, silver and gold.
This song was written in a hotel room in New York City.
'Round about the time a friend or ours, little Steven,
was putting together a record of artists against apartheid.
This is a song written about a man in a shanty town outside of Johannesburg.
A man who's sick of looking down the barrel of white South Africa.
A man who is at the point where he is ready to take up arms
against his oppressor.
A man who has lost faith in the peacemakers of the west while
they argue and while they fail to support a man like bishop Tutu
and his request for economic sanctions against South Africa.
Am I buggin' you?"

Well, I mean to bug you!

Have you heard about 21st century Apartheid in the 'Holy' Land; for it is in pieces: Bantustans!

In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that The Wall is a violation of International Law because it cuts through the West Bank appropriating Palestinian land and destroying Palestinian villages and economy to make way for further Israeli settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.

Negligently unreported by corporate media are the thousands of indigenous Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis and internationals who have been waging a major grassroots nonviolent campaign of resistance to the route of Israel's Wall.

In November 2005, this reporter attended the Gainesville, Florida, Anarchist's Against the Wall Power Point Lecture by Ayed Morrar from the West Bank village of Budrus and Jonathon Pollak, an intense young Israeli and committed activist and organizer for Anarchists Against the Wall/AAtW.

Anarchy is best understood as Rebellion against UNJUST laws. The Yang [male positive force] of anarchy resists authority and causes disorder and is socially and politically incorrect by the norms of the status quo for it seeks the higher ground of justice.

The Yin or feminine passive force of anarchy births a new order out of the chaos and chaos is creativity in action.

Pollak: "I was six years old at my first demonstration and active on my own at thirteen. I am 23 now. When they started to build the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank I would go a few times a week and watch them deceive the world. The Israeli government successfully marketed the Apartheid Wall as a security barrier. But it is all about segregation, separation and ethnic cleansing. The Apartheid Wall has put 76% [of what had been the village of] Jayous on the Israeli side of the Wall."

"Not such a great shock when government lies to you.

"Civilian uprising and non-violent activism is not like the Gandhi movie. It's not carrying posters and saying we don't like your wall, go away. We stand in front of Caterpillar's knowing we will be shot and arrested. I was shot five times in the last two years by rubber bullets which are 1/2 inch steel bullets covered with plastic. I have been shot in the head and the more I experience I have the scarier it is. One learns to recognize the ritual of it all: when the IDF will begin using the billy clubs, when the tear gas will come, when the bullets will come.....We are not a dialogue group, AAtW is an Israeli organization and we are not colonial liberators. All the strategy is done by Palestinians, we are with them seeking justice and giving support. There is no price to high to pay for freedom, equality and universal rights. Without justice there can be no peace.

"Although Israel marketed the Wall as a security barrier, logic suggests such a barrier would be as short and straight as possible. Instead, it snakes deep inside the West Bank, resulting in a route that is twice as long as the Green Line, the internationally recognized border. Israel chose the Wall's path in order to dispossess Palestinians of the maximum land and water, to preserve as many Israeli settlements as possible, and to unilaterally determine a border.

"In order to build the Wall Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of ancient olive trees that for many Palestinians are also the last resource to provide food for their children. The Palestinian aspiration for an independent state is also threatened by the Wall, as it isolates villages from their mother cities and divides the West Bank into disconnected cantons [bantusans/ghettos]. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem conservatively estimates that 500,000 Palestinians are negatively impacted by the Wall.

"We believe that, as with Apartheid South Africa, Americans have a vital role to play in ending Israeli occupation - by divesting from companies that support Israeli occupation, boycotting Israeli products, coming to Palestine as witnesses, or standing with Palestinians in nonviolent resistance." [1]

According to a UN report, Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein admitted that "Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status...even if the wall followed strictly the line of the pre-1967 border, it would still not be justified. The two peoples needed cooperation rather than walls because they must be neighbors." [2]

"An apartheid society is much more than just a 'settler colony'. It involves specific forms of oppression that actively strip the original inhabitants of any rights at all, whereas civilian members of the invader caste are given all kinds of sumptuous privileges." [3]

On May 14, 1948, The Declaration of the establishment of Israel affirmed that, "The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations."

However, reality intrudes, for "The truth which is known to all; through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp."- Israeli Minister of Education, Shulamit Aloni quoted in the popular Israeli newspaper, Yediot Acharonot on December 20, 2006.

How could a state founded on "equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants" come to be such a state of hypocrisy?

A Little History:

On July 5, 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return by which Jews anywhere in the world, have a "right" to immigrate to Israel on the grounds that they are returning to their own state, even if they have never been there before. [4]

On July 14, 1952: The enactment of the Citizenship/Jewish Nationality Law, results in Israel becoming the only state in the world to grant a particular national-religious group—the Jews—the right to settle in it and gain automatic citizenship. In 1953, South Africa's Prime Minister Daniel Malan becomes the first foreign head of government to visit Israel and returns home with the message that Israel can be a source of inspiration for white South Africans. [IBID]

In 1962, South African Prime Minister Verwoerd declares that Jews "took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them, Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state." [IBID]

On August 1, 1967, Israel enacted the Agricultural Settlement Law, which bans Israeli citizens of non-Jewish nationality- Palestinian Arabs- from working on Jewish National Fund lands, well over 80% of the land in Israel. Knesset member Uri Avnery stated: "This law is going to expel Arab cultivators from the land that was formerly theirs and was handed over to the Jews." [IBID]

On April 4, 1969, General Moshe Dayan is quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz telling students at Israel's Technion Institute that "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either… There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."[IBID]

On April 28, 1971: C. L. Sulzberger, writing in The New York Times, quoted South African Prime Minister John Vorster as saying that Israel is faced with an apartheid problem, namely how to handle its Arab inhabitants. Sulzberger wrote: "Both South Africa and Israel are in a sense intruder states. They were built by pioneers originating abroad and settling in partially inhabited areas." [IBID]

On September 13, 1978, in Washington, D.C. The Camp David Accords are signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter. The Accords reaffirm U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which prohibit acquisition of land by force, call for Israel's withdrawal of military and civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and prescribe 'full autonomy' for the inhabitants of the territories. Begin orally promises Carter to freeze all settlement activity during the subsequent peace talks. Once back in Israel, however, the Israeli prime minister continues to confiscate, settle, and fortify the occupied territories. [IBID]

On September 13, 1985, Rep. George Crockett (D-MI), after visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank, compares the living conditions there with those of South African blacks and concludes that the West Bank is an instance of apartheid that no one in the U.S. is talking about. [IBID]

In July 2000, President Bill Clinton convenes the Camp David II Peace Summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Clinton—not Barak—offers Arafat the withdrawal of some 40,000 Jewish settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, all of which are interconnected by roads that cover approximately 10% of the occupied land. Effectively, this divides the West Bank into at least two non-contiguous areas and multiple fragments. Palestinians would have no control over the borders around them, the air space above them, or the water reserves under them. Barak called it a generous offer and Arafat rightly refused to sign. [IBID]

August 31, 2001: Durban, South Africa. Up to 50,000 South Africans march in support of the Palestinian people. In their Declaration by South Africans on Apartheid and the Struggle for Palestine they proclaim: "We, South Africans who lived for decades under rulers with a colonial mentality, see Israeli occupation as a strange survival of colonialism in the 21st century. Only in Israel do we hear of 'settlements' and 'settlers.' Only in Israel do soldiers and armed civilian groups take over hilltops, demolish homes, uproot trees and destroy crops, shell schools, churches and mosques, plunder water reserves, and block access to an indigenous population's freedom of movement and right to earn a living. These human rights violations were unacceptable in apartheid South Africa and are an affront to us in apartheid Israel." [IBID]

October 23, 2001: Ronnie Kasrils, a Jew and a minister in the South African government, co-authors a petition "Not in My Name," signed by some 200 members of South Africa's Jewish community, reads: "It becomes difficult, from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression expressed by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule." [IBID]

Three years later, Kasrils will go to the Occupied Territories and conclude: "This is much worse than apartheid. Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armored vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale." [IBID]

April 29, 2002: Boston, MA. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu says he is "very deeply distressed" by what he observed in his recent visit to the Holy Land, adding, "It reminded me so much of what happened in South Africa." The Nobel peace laureate said he saw "the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. Referring to Americans, he adds, "People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful. Well, so what? The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists." [IBID]

"From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught...that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, 'vomit you out' if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]: "When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself' but also 'you shall love the other.'" [5]

For more information about AATW, please visit:

http://www.awalls.org/

[1] Eileen Fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory, pages 55-56
[2] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444320,00.html
[3] Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77.
[4] The Link, "About That Word Apartheid", April-May 2007, Published by Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc.
[5] Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007

Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" with The Great Spirit on her side and in solidarity for FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Eileenfleming (5:47) Great piece.

I don't understand the stupidity of people who pay to go to a concert they will not enjoy, supporting an artist they don't like, to bitch about his politics, especially when he was merely advocating free speech. They didn't even like it that they can give him the finger and boo.

These dumb bastards can't find a cause to support, so they support one they oppose. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that about half of the voters in the last two elections voted for Bu$h the inferior. McCain will get a lot more votes than the 5% of the people that have been helped by the Republican economic policies.

The Democrats have passively accepted Republican rule like good little lap dogs except for Kucinich and Feingold and a couple of others. I am as cynical as I can get, but it just isn't enough.

A question one needs to ask about Senator McCain-- especially when his aides keep saying how vigorous he is-- is, what is the true state of his adrenal glands? And does he plan to add a sleeping porch to the White House? Because his statements about the Iraq war are definitely tired, warmed-over Bush, and that's very, very tired indeed considering the lack of energy behind Bush's words and thoughts in any year ever.

The war in Iraq supplants Vietnam as the ultimate maniacal result of male chauvinism.

How does John McCain dare speak of "winning" and "returning with honor" after the things that we Americans have done to other peoples and to ourselves in Iraq for no good reason? Only a loser can speak that way.

I admire Neil Young's criticism, complaint and subsequent support when he found out why he was not hearing the powerful songs of today's songwriters.

That such songs are no longer being heard was pointed out in Marie Ourgangian's Free Articulator article http://www.freearticulator.com/culture/no-room-for-protest-music-on-corporate-radio/. Corporate censorship of artistic expression which relies on the most important of all rights - the freedom to express - is insidious and it should cost them their license when it can be demonstrated that they are consistently doing this. It is un-American, it is duplicitous, and it is corrupt. The corporations are able to exist because of democracy; undermining freedom in this way is ultimately going to undermine their own ability to operate, even as it is already.

Neil Young and others are an inspiration to us all, they are a symbol of our freedom being alive and healthy so when they are censored, it is a warning that all are in danger of having their freedoms abrogated and ultimately lost.

High time a lot more people woke up to this important role of the arts in civil and free societies, communities and civilization.

In my opinion, there are artists and then there are entertainers. Anyone who avoids speaking about injustice merely to get along is no artist. Reflecting back to society what is going on in our world is the job of an artist and Young is doing that. The Dixie chicks are a perfect example of artists speaking their conscience and being punished for it. But in they came out on top. As we zoom out and view this in hind sight history will look favorably on those who risked their cushy careers and spoke out about injustice. It is those artists that I will always support in any way that I can. Go Neil and keep on going! Most reasonable people appreciate what you are doing and have done.

"Four dead in O-hio...Four dead in O-hio..."

Some 38 years later the song still haunts me. Our country learned nothing, absolutely NOTHING from the Vietnam experience. The Iraq debacle proves this and I'm afraid it is a permanent stain.

Neil Young, you're a gallant voice in a sea of ignorance and confusion. Then as now, your bravery and conviction are in rare supply. All I can say is: Keep on rockin' in the Free World.

I saw Neil Young's show at Bay Front Center in St. Petersburg, FL in 1972. It was a real pot fest. This was a really huge indoor arena and the whole place smelled like burning marijuana. People were just wandering around shoeless and stoned listening to Neil Young and his band. Those were the days and they're gone forever.

Neil, I can almost forgive you for supporting that fascist, murdering, coot, Reagan back in the 80's.

I don't really understand what the problem was for the people at the concert. How could they not know that CNSY was an anti-war group?

Steven Stills sang the Star Spangled Banner at Honda Center in Anaheim last year at the opening game of the Stanley Cup Final. It was embarrassing to watch, and it seemed like something out of Kafka or Orwell when he sang the lines about bombs bursting in the air and the rest of the oddly aggressive and threatening anthem.

Keep on rockin in the free world.
Hao binh

Please Come to Denver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_iwiZ6wjk&eurl=http://thedrunkablog.blogspot.com/

"a fan facing him from a concert audience with two arms raised, middle fingers extended..."

I guess he was just saying that "Niel is Number One!"

either that, or "turn the amps up to 11!"

canuckchuck July 25th, 2008 10:37 am
either that, or "turn the amps up to 11!"

TWELVE !!

There is only one thing to say; I am with you Neil.

And all the misguided nationalists that think they are somehow defending their country by denying the truth will never understand the first think about patriotism.

g

Neil,

I want to thank you and look forward to seeing Deja Vu. Im 53 and feel like our generation is being recalled to duty.

Ken

Right on Neil! age has no bearing on truth, in fact the older you get the more you should speak it, WHY? cause you've got less to lose,,, ha ha
but seriously, consider this, My Morning Jacket, singing "we are the innovators, they are the imitators" and the imatation of violence to solve world problems just seems more and more insane, with nukes on/under the table,,,where are we going??? is always/and every generation, got to be asked.... and what is our common dream, for??? to live together so everyone is/has it a little better, and lives without fear, posssibly in peace....????!!!!

Lots of new anti-war music out. Ask any 15 year old. Check out Anti-Flag (the liner notes of one cd are all about the PNAC), Avenged Sevenfold, Green Day.

If you have seen the music video for Serj Tankian's "Empty Walls" go to YouTube and check it out. It was quite popular on Fuse.

Very encouraging. It's under the radar, but the kids are eating it up.

Lots of new anti-war music out. Ask any 15 year old. Check out Anti-Flag (the liner notes of one cd are all about the PNAC), Avenged Sevenfold, Green Day.

If you have seen the music video for Serj Tankian's "Empty Walls" go to YouTube and check it out. It was quite popular on Fuse.

Very encouraging. It's under the radar, but the kids are eating it up.

Lots of new anti-war music out. Ask any 15 year old. Check out Anti-Flag (the liner notes of one cd are all about the PNAC), Avenged Sevenfold, Green Day.

If you have seen the music video for Serj Tankian's "Empty Walls" go to YouTube and check it out. It was quite popular on Fuse.

Very encouraging. It's under the radar, but the kids are eating it up.

Lots of new anti-war music out. Ask any 15 year old. Check out Anti-Flag (the liner notes of one cd are all about the PNAC), Avenged Sevenfold, Green Day.

If you have seen the music video for Serj Tankian's "Empty Walls" go to YouTube and check it out. It was quite popular on Fuse.

Very encouraging. It's under the radar, but the kids are eating it up.

woops...

Certainly didn't mean to do that! Mods please delete the dupes.

LWW is a great album but I was also disappointed that it took our older generation to call attention to the truth. The chicks were railroaded and the most frightening thing to me during that period was the war fever that gripped this country. People were wild eyed and crazy. All sense of reason had left them and it was then that I truly understood how the good Germans could stand by and watch others be apprehended. We live in scary times and I thank God for Neil Young, the Chicks, Michael Franti and all the anti war artistic voices in our country today.
Let's impeach shrubby for lying and dickwad for taking up space and breathing his putrid toxic breath over our planet!

Very encouraging this thread of commentary on Youth music...

Elieen Flemming - thanks for the history and living timeline. But there are a couple of questions I've wrestled with that appear in a couple of your statements:

"Without justice there can be no peace." To me this phrase should be reversed, "Without peace there can be no justice"; isn't it an inner peace that allows one to face bulldozers and "plastic" bullets, isn't it a sense of peace that allows one to see justice and find it's path, as well as find the ability to pick oneself up after getting knocked down and return to the front line?

At this point it seems No Justice, No Peace is mostly a rally cry to get a crowd worked up and not a foundational principle. It was in exploring Thick Nhat Hanh's work of social activism that the concept, and now experience, of culturing peace and acting from there was gained as a perspective. At first for avoiding burn out, now for gaining organic function and effectiveness.

Which brings up the second question on the feminine. As opposed to "passive" - is not the feminine a very active opening and expanding? You mentioned the birth process which of course is anything but passive. Don't our feminine aspects once cultured and nurtured to open then expand to the farther reaches of existence and that of which is not yet, finding that which is just, and then conceived with the masculine energy to manifest in material form; though true enough there are many miscarriages of justice?

Doesn't this perspective bring us all to the point of being better served by observing the Torah, ""When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself' but also 'you shall love the other.'" ...whether one's land is the high ground of Earth or the high ground of justice in the mind and human potential?

This has been more and more my personal experience: peace - the fertile ground of the pleasures and joys of justice.