Monday, September 05, 2011

[ItsAllAboutMeMan] Fwd: British Rocker Billy Bragg on Labor Strikes and Songs, Activism, and the Murdoch Hacking Scandal | Democracy Now! Daily Digest for 09/05/11

I left this on Democracy Now!'s online comment form:

I went to the story online to see if you were going to challenge Billy Bragg on his support for My Little Tony. It was really disgraceful, and people should say what gives, just as they shouldn't give Neil Young a free ride about his support for Reagan and Bush. I was disappointed to see there is no room on your website for listener feedback. Even National Propaganda Radio has that, and it's more liberal in its moderation than Huffington. If being in the left is about community building, we should be able to talk to each other and debate, and not just listen to the wisdom on high - and you should want to facilitate the conversation. And you should find somebody else to talk about Libya, Juan Cole has seriously lead us astray. Oh, I imagine that down the road he'll be saying "they tricked me into holding up that bottle of talcum and saying it was chemical weapons, they talked fancy to me," but we need accurate information now.

I do not understand the loinization for Billy Bragg by the left given his slavish devotion to the horrible Clinton and Bush lapdog (or is it lapdancer?) Tony Blair. A couple of years ago that woman in Mecca Normal did a similar rimjob of Bragg on her blog. I left a very reasonable and moderate comment about this, but she moderates her blog, and did not publish the comments, so now I know she is no leftist, either.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Democracy Now! <digest@democracynow.org>
Date: Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 10:00 AM
Subject: British Rocker Billy Bragg on Labor Strikes and Songs, Activism, and the Murdoch Hacking Scandal | Democracy Now! Daily Digest for 09/05/11
To: mattlove1@earthlink.net

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A daily TV/radio grassroots, global news hour, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States.

Democracy Now! Daily News Digest
September 5, 2011

British Rocker Billy Bragg on Labor Strikes and Songs, Activism, and the Murdoch Hacking Scandal

We spend the hour with legendary British rocker and activist, Billy Bragg. His music career began in the late 1970s in London when he formed the punk rock band Riff Raff. His 1984 album, "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg," included the song "It Says Here," a critique of politics and tabloid newspapers that still rings true today in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. In 1998 and 2000, he participated in two well-known albums — Mermaid Avenue, Volumes 1 and 2 — that gave voice to another folk troubadour who sang about the poor and working class: Woody Guthrie. Bragg composed music for lyrics written by Guthrie and performed many of the songs alongside the album's other main contributor, Wilco. But to speak of Bragg simply as a singer-songwriter misses his passion for speaking out against injustice and fighting for many causes. In the 1980s, he called for support for the 1984 strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the most significant chapters in Britain's trade union history. It was ultimately defeated under the watch of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Bragg went on to organize for the defeat of Thatcher and her Conservative government. He joins us for an extended interview and performance. He reflects on his long history of activism and sings several songs, including his latest, "Never Buy The Sun," about the phone-hacking scandal engulfing the Rupert Murdoch media empire. Watch/Listen/Read