Tom Morello

Tom Morello

Tom Morello a.k.a. the Nightwatchman leads a double life. One half, a Grammy award winning guitar virtuoso and the second half, a tireless, committed, political activist. Tom was born on May 30, 1964 in Harlem, New York, to Mary Morello and Ngethe Njoroge, a Kenyan Guerilla soldier and eventual first Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations. Morello then moved to Libertyville, Illinois. At an early age, the guitar hero received his first tastes of racism and oppression.
Libertyville was a virtually all white, conservative community. Much of the townspeople were prejudice and hated Tom for simply being a different color. Morello would later describe some of this prejudice he experienced in his famous folk ballad, “One Man Revolution.”- “Found a noose in my garage, now about that, so tonight I’m in the bushes with a baseball bat.” The white supremacists and Ku Klux Klan members his town placed the nooses in his garage to scare him away. Tom felt small and inferior at first, and then he discovered music.
Initially Tom listened to heavy metal greats such as Black Sabbath and KISS, but by high school he found his solace in politically charged Punk Rock, with the likes of The Clash and The Sex Pistols. Music was an escape for Morello. He claims it made him see past the constraints and boundaries of his small town and see a world that needed change. In 1982, Morello graduated from Libertyville High School and began attending Harvard University. During his college years, he began practicing guitar seriously. This means eight hours a day, no matter how much work he had to complete. By 1986, he graduated with a BA (with honors) in Political Science. In 1988, Morello landed a slot as lead guitarist in the glam metal band, Lock Up. Unfortunately, they found very little success. His next band, however, would permanently alter the role of Politics in music.
Rage Against the Machine was formed in 1991 and took the world by storm. In the past, artists have incorporated social and political issues in their craft, but none like RATM. Every single song by the band preached some sort of radical, revolutionary message. The band saw themselves as renegades in a corrupt world fighting injustice wherever they saw it. In 2000, they broke up and it’s safe to say they were a success: selling millions of albums world wide and more importantly educating their audience about social issues and how they can actively prevent them.
Morello then moved on to form Audioslave, which after six years also became a huge, commercial success, selling millions of albums along the way. However, fans and Morello himself, felt he needed to play political music again, having been in what Tom calls “A right wing purgatory.” He had been playing as The Nightwatchman on the side, but now he is taking it more seriously: Albums and touring. The music is far different from his previous work (heavy metal), being folk and folk rock.
Throughout his adult life he has been a committed activist, specifically in the areas of peace, human rights, social and economic justice, and various other issues. Personally I admire Tom more for his dedicated activism and this is why I chose him. Specifically, I admire his non-profit organization, Axis of Justice (which he formed with Serj Tankian of System of a Down). The organization was formed in 1999, when Tom noticed an overwhelmingly large amount of fans sporting Nazi Swastikas and other hate symbols. The organization has made it clear that they are Anti- Racist and Anti-Fascist. Through the organization, concerts are performed in small communities where all the proceeds go to charities and activist groups. On top of that, Tom and his buddies go into the impoverished communities, where they’re playing and they help them out during their stay.
I can relate to Tom Morello, because he also sees the need for change in the world and like me, he believes in peace, freedom, and equality.

Nardwuar Interviews Tom Morello

Battle Hymns

This is for all soldiers and their families.

Chomsky on War Crimes

If you're a Noam Chomsky fan, then you've probably heard this provocative statement plenty of times: "if the standards of the Nuremberg Trials were applied, then every post World War II American president would have been hanged as a war criminal." Here are some of each president's war crimes, according to Chomsky, from Truman to Clinton (this is taken from a 1996 interview with Tom Morello) :

Well, with Truman you could start with, shortly after he entered office there was the bombing of Hiroshima, which maybe one could give an argument for -- well, I don't think so -- but it is almost impossible to give an argument for the bombing of Nagasaki. That was mostly just trying out a new weapon to see if it would work. Then there was an utterly gratuitous bombing, a one thousand plane raid at the end of the war -- right in fact after Japan surrendered -- called the "finale," the grand finale. Then comes, for example, the support for the brutal counter-insurgency campaign in Greece, which killed about 150,000 people to basically restore Nazi collaborators and demolish the resistance. And then we could go on from there.

Eisenhower. The Eisenhower administration, the Truman and Eisenhower administration, the bombings -- whatever you think about the Korean War, and there is a pretty complicated story when you really look at it, but nevertheless the bombings in North Korea in 1951 and 1952 was just an outright war crime. You can read in the Air Force history about how in the Eisenhower years they had nothing left to bomb, everything was flat, so they just bomb dams, which they exalt how wonderful it was to see the water flooding down and killing people and wiping out the crops and so on. Well people were hanged for that, for less than that. They were hanged for opening dikes in Nuremberg. And then again we can proceed with what happened in Guatemala and elsewhere where it was a terrible crime in the Eisenhower years.

Kennedy is not even worth discussing. The invasion in South Vietnam -- Kennedy attacked South Vietnam, outright. In 1961-1962 he sent Air Force to start bombing villages, authorized napalm. Also laid the basis for the huge wave of repression that spread over Latin America with the installation of Neo-Nazi gangsters that were always supported directly by the United States. That went on and in fact picked up under Johnson.

In the Nixon years, for example, the bombing of inner Cambodia in 1973 was a monstrous crime. It was just massacring peasants in inner Cambodia. It isn't much reported here because nobody paid attention, but it was quite a part in helping create the basis for the Khmer Rouge. Well, the CIA estimate is that 600,000 people were killed in the course of those US actions, either directed or actually carried out by the United States.

In the Carter years there were major crimes, for example the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which happened to start under Ford and led to the nearest thing to genocide since the holocaust, maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the population has been slaughtered. That was using 90% US arms. In the Carter years, when the Indonesians were actually running out of arms in their attack on this country, Carter actually increased the flow of arms in 1978, which was the worst peak of the slaughter. Carter was backing Somoza and his national guard, openly and with direct military and diplomatic support at a time when they had killed about 40,000 people in the terror of the last days of their regime. Again, that's a sample.

Going on to the Reagan years, its not even a question. In fact the US was condemned by the World Court during the Reagan years for its "unlawful use of force," meaning aggression in Nicaragua. In Central America alone, maybe 200,000 people or so were slaughtered in a very brutal fashion by US run programs. In southern Africa about 1.5 million people were killed and over $60 billion of damage were done according to the UN commission which reviewed it later from 1980 to 1988. That's from South African atrocities that the US was directly supporting. Then, again we could go on. Well Bush, we've already talked about him, but the invasion of Panama for example was simply outright aggression. It was condemned internationally -- the US was able to veto the security counsel condemnations, that doesn't change the fact that they were there.

When we move on to the Clinton years, one of his first acts within a few months was to send missiles to bomb Baghdad. Well, he didn't kill a huge amount of people, only I think 8 or so. But there was absolutely no pretext, there wasn't even a pretext. I mean it was to show what a tough guy he is. In fact the pretext was so ludicrous, it's embarrassing to repeat it. The pretext was that this was self defense against armed attack, because two months earlier there had been a failed attempt by someone who might or might not have been Iraqi, no one knew at the time, to kill Bush or something like that. I mean, it's just ridiculous. About half of military aid and training to Latin America under Clinton was going to Columbia, which has absolutely the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, killing thousands of people in a horrifying fashion. These are all crimes. I don't think it's hard to set up a bill of indictment if somebody wants to.

Now, for post-1996 foreign policy, here are just some war crimes:

Clinton armed and funded vicious dictators in Israel and Turkey. Turkish citizens, particularly suffered through some of the worst tortures known to man.

Well, Bush pretty much goes without saying. I'll just make this simple: the entire War on Terrorism.

So, do I think these rich, white guys should be hanged? No, I don't believe in the death penalty. But, I do believe in social justice, so they should be brought to trial for their crimes, as any other citizen would.

Tom Morello interview

This is only part one; part two can be found on Youtube. Glen: notice he practically promotes riots, contrary to your analysis ( a good one at that) on "California's Dark." Ben:look at what he says about the War in Iraq. Everyone else enjoy!