2006-10-17

Progg-Tompa

Skivbolaget Anti släpper ännu en låt från den nya trippelskivan. Låten heter Road to peace och är Toms mest politiska låt någonsin. Terrorister, israeler och amerikanska politiker får sina fiskar varma när Tom, med en detaljrikedom som inte skådats sen Afzelius berättade om Leroy Henderson, släpper loss sin fagra stämma i detta bluesepos.

Här är den ungefärliga texten:
Young Abdel Madi Shabneh was only 18 years old,
He was the youngest of nine children, never spent a night away from home.
And his mother held his photograph up in the New York Times
You see the killing has intensified along the road to peace

He was a tall, thin boy with a whispy moustache disguised as an orthodox Jew
On a crowded bus in Jerusalem, some had survived World War Two
And the thunderous explosion blew out windows 200 yards away
With more retribution and seventeen dead along the road to peace

Now at King George Ave and Jaffa Road passengers boarded bus 14a
In the aisle next to the driver Abdel Madi Shabnet
And the last thing that he said on earth is "God is great and God is good"
And he blew them all to kingdom come upon the road to peace

Now in response to this another kiss of death was visited upon
Yasser Taha, Israel says is an Hamas senior militant
And Israel sent four choppers in, flames engulfed his white Opel
And it killed his wife and his three year old child leaving only a blackened skeleton

They found his toddlers bottle and a pair of small shoes and they waved them in front of the cameras
But Israel says they did not know that his wife and child were in the car
There are roadblocks everywhere and only suffering on TV
Neither side will ever give up their smallest right along the road to peace

Israel launched it's latest campaign against Hamas on Tuesday
And two days later Hamas shot back and killed five Israeli soldiers
So thousands dead and wounded on both sides most of them middle eastern civilians
They fill the children full of hate to fight an old man's war and die upon the road to peace

"Now this is our land we will fight with all our force" say the Palastinians and the Jews
Each side will cut off the hand of anyone who tries to stop the resistance
If the right eye offends thee then you must pluck it out
And Mahmoud Abbas said Sharon had been lost out along the road to peace

Once Kissinger said "we have no friends, America only has interests"
Now our president wants to be seen as a hero and he's hungry for re-election
But Bush is reluctant to risk his future in the fear of his political failure
So he plays chess at his desk and poses for the press 10,000 miles from the
road to peace

In the video that they found at the home of Abdel Madi Shabneh
He held a Kalashnikov rifle and he spoke with a voice like a boy
He was an excellent student, he studied so hard, it was as if he had a future
He told his mother that he had a test that day out along the road to peace

The fundamentalist killing on both sides is standing in the path of peace
But tell me why are we arming the Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets?

And if God is great and God is good why can't he change the hearts of men?
Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help
He's out upon the road to peace

Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
And he's lost upon the road to peace
And he's lost upon the road to peace
Out upon the road to peace.


related links:
link
14a bus victims
Eye-witness

och en lång artikel från NY Times om självmordsbombaren
http://tinyurl.com/ybc6fj

SUICIDE BOMBER
A Sudden, Violent End for a Promising Youth
By IAN FISHER


EBRON, West Bank, June 12 - The puzzling thing was that he studied so much
recently, his family said, as if he was planning on having a future.

The night before Abdel Madi Shabneh, just 18, blew himself up on the No.
14/A bus in Jerusalem, killing 17 others in the process, he sat preparing
for his final high school English examination. He made no comment, his
mother said, on the day's news that Israeli helicopters tried to assassinate
a top leader in the Islamic militant group Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

The next morning he merely told his mother and family he had to study more
for the test.

"He took some papers and said he needed to photocopy them for his exam," his
mother, Rahmeh, 54, said today. "He said, `I'll be right back.' He took his
English book with him. He never disappeared before. This was the first
time."

The next verified sighting of Mr. Shabneh came that evening when he lay dead
in Jerusalem's Jaffa Road, wearing the black pants and a prayer shawl of an
Orthodox Jew, the Israeli police say.

In the intensifying struggle between Hamas and Israel, Mr. Shabneh's attack
is widely viewed, though Israeli officials dispute it, as retribution for
the attack on Mr. Rantisi. But to his family, it is a mystery how this tall
and thin young man with a wispy moustache, who planned to study electronics
in college this year, ended up on that bus.

He is just the latest young man from this tense city south of Jerusalem to
have attacked on Israelis on behalf of Hamas. Since January, more than 10
young men from Hebron have carried out such attacks. Many of them knew each
other from the soccer team at the Jihad Mosque in the Abu Katila
neighborhood. Five of them, including Mr. Shabneh, were suicide bombers.

A senior Israeli security official said tonight there was no immediate
evidence that Mr. Shabneh was linked to the other bombers, but he said the
possibility was being considered. He said intelligence officials were not
certain why Hamas militants, always active in Hebron, have been especially
so in recent months.

"They always had strong bases over there," the official said. "From time to
time they have this ability to carry out these attacks that are very
successful."

Family members said today they did not know he was a member of Hamas, and
said he did not play for the Jihad Mosque team. He did love to play soccer,
they said. "Wherever he goes," his mother said, "he plays soccer."

In interviews here today, though, his family was vague about what teams he
played for. One family member said he played on a school team. Another said
it was for a mosque team in his own neighborhood, Jabal al Rahmeh. One
cousin said that a member of one of the teams was a suicide bomber, but did
not provide any details.

Efforts to find his teammates here today were unsuccessful. Several people
in his neighborhood said local soccer players had gone into hiding for fear
of being arrested.

Unlike some families of Palestinian suicide bombers, who proudly proclaim
their children "martyrs," Mr. Shabneh's family seemed more bewildered than
anything else.

"I don't think this will achieve anything," said his cousin, Zakaria
Shabneh, referring to the suicide attack. "Unfortunately this will bring us
backward instead of forward."

He was the youngest of nine children; their father died five years ago.
Neither he nor his two other brothers had ever been arrested, the family
said, although family members said the brothers and several cousins were
arrested after the bombing. Until Wednesday night, he had never even spent a
night away from home, his mother said.

"I can't imagine how he managed to get to Jerusalem," his mother said. "If I
knew I would have prevented him from doing this. Do you think a mother can
accept to lose her son?"

While she said he had never expressed any particular interest in Hamas or
any other militant group, she said he was affected by the hard life in
Hebron, a city of 130,000 Palestinians with Israeli soldiers protecting an
enclave of 400 hard-line Jewish settlers.

"Everyone is affected by the general atmosphere," she said. "Everything
surrounding us is very difficult. When they go to school, they are checked.
When you go around the neighborhood, there are roadblocks. When you watch
television, you see suffering."

And she said he often commented when young Palestinian men carried out
suicide attacks against Israelis. "These people who became martyrs, when he
heard about them, he said, `He's lucky.' "

Today, a video appeared of Mr. Shabneh, in T-shirt and jeans, but carrying a
Kalashnikov rifle over his shoulder and wearing the green Hamas headband
that reads, "God is great." In a voice more a boy's than a man's, he gave a
short speech that followed Hamas in rejecting the peace plan and urging a
continuation of armed resistance to Israel.

"The martyrs have changed the course of this conflict, and declared that
there is no alternative to resistance and no exchange for our full homeland,
without divisions or separations," he said. "We won't give up our smallest
right, whatever the price is, whatever the sacrifice. Our steadfast
Palestinian people, you are great, your jihad is great. You are standing
like men, providing heroes in the battlefield."

==========================
De andra smakproven, "Bottom of the World" och "You can never hold back spring", samt en hel del bilder hittar du här

9 kommentar(er):

Anonym sa...

Får mej att tänka på Folkan i LA, 1984, eller vad det kan ha varit. Björn i alla fall. Det var gripande om Henderson, minns jag. Hur lång tid han hade att leva, hur kort ...

l.t. fisk sa...

Hej Jonas. Du som är så inne på Waits borde läsa den artikel som Lennart Persson skriver i Sonics senaste nummer. Förmodlingen har du det redan. Mest roligt tycker jag det är när han tar exempel på band som L. P. inte riktigt tror på och så visar det sig vara sant ändå. Just den lurigheten gillar jag hos Waits. Man vet inte riktigt var man har honom. Dessutom verkar han ha kört samma stil på denna box. Han ville inte tala om när det ena eller det andra skrevs. En bra egenskap.

Windy sa...

Jag prenumererar på Sonic och blev glatt överraskad när det senaste numret till och med hade Tom på omslaget!
En rolig intervju, just det där med Shooby "The human beat-box" Taylor och The Spastic Colon som tydligen fanns/finns.
En lite obskyrare skiva är Tom Waits Jukebox, the songs that inspired the man som kommer den 6/11. TW har helt enkelt plockat ihop sina favoritlåtar och sen ger de ut en skiva med dem. Eller fan vet om det är Tom själv som valt låtarna?

l.t. fisk sa...

Jag noterade också att han klassade Newman som en av de i samtiden som gjorde det bäst. Det gladde mig offantligt.

Windy sa...

Om man tycker Lennart perssons intervju är bra, vad ska man då säga om den här från Observer.
Why, I ask, were the Beats so crucial to him?

'They were father figures,' he says softly, his long fingers tracing small circles in the coffee spill on the table. 'They were the ones I looked to for guidance. See, my dad left when I was 10, so I was always looking for a dad. It was like, "Are you my dad? Are you my dad? What about you? Are you my dad?" I found a lot of these old salty guys along the way.'


'I didn't just marry a beautiful woman,' he says, 'I married a record collection.'

'Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them,' he quips. 'Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.'

l.t. fisk sa...

Fråga, Jonas: Har du musiken till one from the heart, och är den bra?

Windy sa...

Den är mycket bra, speciellt Old Boyfriends och broken bicycles. Jag gillar filmen också, Coppola.

Windy sa...

Fisk: Jag har av någon anledning dubbla ex av filmen "One From the Heart". Du kanske vill byta till dig det ena mot ett ex av din förra skiva till exempel? Maila mig i så fall på jonas.nordstrom@gmail.com
Om du inte vill byta, så kanske jag kan få köpa skivan av dig?

Anonym sa...
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