In the new issue of The Progressive (November 2006), on page 19, they feature five photos. The first two are from the anti-war protest at the UN 9-19-06 by United for Peace and Justice. The other three are of of an August gathering. August 11, though the text doesn't tell you. The Veterans for Peace conference in Seattle, though the text doesn't tell you that either. The photos are by Jeff Paterson of Not In Our Name and they're of war resister Ricky Clousing who self-checked out of the military and, on August 11th, announced that he was turning himself in.
The issue obviously went to print before they could update. Clousing is serving three months (of an eleven months sentence), was demoted in rank, and, upon completion of the three months, will receive a dishonrable discharge.
To date, this is the only coverage the independent print media has given Clousing. (Though big media did show interest in the story.) More information on war resisters can be found at Courage to Resist.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
MyTV's Fascist House
This week on MyTV's Fascist House, The First Lady Is Missing! But her art exhibit goes on!
The First Lady decided to work in the visual field and came up with an exhibit entitled "The Destroyer." Shortly after, she vanished. Rumors have her vacationing in Gitmo.
Bully Boy attends the opening of the exhibit with Condi Rice. They hem and haw and the sexual tension between them will remind you of Brenda & Dylan or Pacey & Joey or
Mr. Ed & Wilbur.
Big Denny Hastert gets stood up at the last minute and considers attending stag. Instead, he calls Mark Foley who suggest he call the Congressional Page program for a hook up. So he ends up escorting the 16-year-old Roy (played by Fall Out Boy's delightful Pete Wentz)who threatens to have another Fall Out Boy moment even though no cell phones are around.
Musical guests Barbara & Jenna perform "Vogue" and demonstrate that talent is AWOL from this family.
MyTV's Fascist House airing 365 days a year, 52 weeks. All new episodes!
The First Lady decided to work in the visual field and came up with an exhibit entitled "The Destroyer." Shortly after, she vanished. Rumors have her vacationing in Gitmo.
Bully Boy attends the opening of the exhibit with Condi Rice. They hem and haw and the sexual tension between them will remind you of Brenda & Dylan or Pacey & Joey or
Mr. Ed & Wilbur.
Big Denny Hastert gets stood up at the last minute and considers attending stag. Instead, he calls Mark Foley who suggest he call the Congressional Page program for a hook up. So he ends up escorting the 16-year-old Roy (played by Fall Out Boy's delightful Pete Wentz)who threatens to have another Fall Out Boy moment even though no cell phones are around.
Musical guests Barbara & Jenna perform "Vogue" and demonstrate that talent is AWOL from this family.
MyTV's Fascist House airing 365 days a year, 52 weeks. All new episodes!
So what's up?
Quick note to clue in the people who are wondering. (And cut down on e-mails that are coming in since the highlights wen up.) We have six features completed. We have seven illustrations. Rebecca's still trying to get them all up at her site. Problems with Blogger/Blogspot (repeated) that were network wide, resulted in our decision this morning (at or around five in the morning) to go to sleep and do a late edition today.
We had six features completed. Those will be going up. While they are, we'll be working on at least two additional features. Fingers crossed, this will all be done within two hours.
We'll use the illustrations Rebecca can get up at her site. Sometimes, adding an illustration to an entry requires several attempts. Translation, patience.
We also will be pasting the majority of what we have completed into Blogger/Blogspot. Due to the problems, we lost several features when we'd attempt to save them. One of which was Ava and C.I.'s latest TV review. We were able to use "recover post" (a feature in Blogger/Blogspot) to recover most of the review. The conclusion is missing and we're of the opinion that that will just have to do. Everything we paste over here (text) will also require hunting down links. So two hours may be an unreasonable expectation but that's what we're shooting for.
We have input from Kat on two features this edition. We also got that readers are sick to death of 'horse race coverage'. That was the biggest complaint in the e-mails, that everywhere you looked or listened, you were being swamped with that. We have avoided it before and we avoided it this week. But the e-mails were asking for something extremely different so we tried to hit the arts aspect more this week.
If, like most readers who come to this site, you knew how you were going to vote a month ago and are feeling talked down to in the saturation of "It's election time!" coverage, don't worry. There won't be anything like that here. You won't hear how 'groovy' Harold Ford Jr. is. You won't be told "This guy wrote 'Still The One!'" or any of the other 'coverage' that has you so bothered.
We'll leave the puff Meet-the-Candidate!-And-Vote!-For-Him/Her! to others.
We had six features completed. Those will be going up. While they are, we'll be working on at least two additional features. Fingers crossed, this will all be done within two hours.
We'll use the illustrations Rebecca can get up at her site. Sometimes, adding an illustration to an entry requires several attempts. Translation, patience.
We also will be pasting the majority of what we have completed into Blogger/Blogspot. Due to the problems, we lost several features when we'd attempt to save them. One of which was Ava and C.I.'s latest TV review. We were able to use "recover post" (a feature in Blogger/Blogspot) to recover most of the review. The conclusion is missing and we're of the opinion that that will just have to do. Everything we paste over here (text) will also require hunting down links. So two hours may be an unreasonable expectation but that's what we're shooting for.
We have input from Kat on two features this edition. We also got that readers are sick to death of 'horse race coverage'. That was the biggest complaint in the e-mails, that everywhere you looked or listened, you were being swamped with that. We have avoided it before and we avoided it this week. But the e-mails were asking for something extremely different so we tried to hit the arts aspect more this week.
If, like most readers who come to this site, you knew how you were going to vote a month ago and are feeling talked down to in the saturation of "It's election time!" coverage, don't worry. There won't be anything like that here. You won't hear how 'groovy' Harold Ford Jr. is. You won't be told "This guy wrote 'Still The One!'" or any of the other 'coverage' that has you so bothered.
We'll leave the puff Meet-the-Candidate!-And-Vote!-For-Him/Her! to others.
Reminder, Kat's site is still active
Kat is in Ireland but her site is still active. Monday, Betty posted her thoughts on Kyle Snyder. Saturday morning, C.I. posted on students and activism. Ruth was unable to log in Wednesday (a problem for several Blogger/Blogspot sites) and wasn't able to post.
Though she's in Ireland, Kat did dictate a new review ("Kat's Korner: The death of Ani DiFranco?") over the phone to C.I. last night. In addition to that, while C.I. was on the phone with her, we (Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava) were pestering like crazy to speak to Kat. C.I. put her on speaker after she finished dictating the review. We were able to get her input on a feature we're doing on Tina Turner and she also weighed in on a roundtable we did on movies. So we've got Kat's input on two features.
She's assuming that she will be in Ireland through next week and possibly one more.
Though she's in Ireland, Kat did dictate a new review ("Kat's Korner: The death of Ani DiFranco?") over the phone to C.I. last night. In addition to that, while C.I. was on the phone with her, we (Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava) were pestering like crazy to speak to Kat. C.I. put her on speaker after she finished dictating the review. We were able to get her input on a feature we're doing on Tina Turner and she also weighed in on a roundtable we did on movies. So we've got Kat's input on two features.
She's assuming that she will be in Ireland through next week and possibly one more.
Music Spotlight: Kat ponders Ani DiFranco
Kat's still in Ireland. The plan was for C.I. to go through some notes she'd made on two CDs and assemble notes on one of them together (not adding anything) to get up a review by Oct. 31st. On Monday, Kat called C.I. to see which one had the most notes? Ani DiFranco's Reprieve. Kat offered that she had some issues with that and didn't know whether C.I. would want to put them up at The Common Ills. As Kat shared them (quickly, it was a less than five minute call), C.I. offered to go with the other CD but Kat said she thought she'd have time this weekend to call. They scheduled a call. Kat dictated the review over the phone. It's her latest and we love it. Bet you will too.
Kat's Korner: The death of Ani DiFranco?
Kat: Back before Ani DiFranco released Reprieve, I was excited, I was counting down the weeks. Then the CD came out and I thought I had a review for it. I made notes on various scraps of paper and was all set to assemble it into one review.
I never did.
That's not due to the fact that I'm in Ireland dealing with a dying family member. That's due to the news by way of Toni.
I practically grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from my front door to the living room to listen to Reprieve shortly after it came out. We all love Ani but Toni's probably been her biggest and longest fan of my small circle of friends.
I was full of "Isn't it great" and "Isn't it wonderful" talk and basically stepping on every word Toni started to say. Finally, after I shoved her on the sofa and went to the stereo, it hit me that Toni wasn't excited.
I made all the pleasantries I normally would have greeted her with but now I was listening for any indication of something seriously wrong. No indications were given and no words of distress were spoken.
Assuming it was the heat, this was still summer and these were furnace days, I ran to the kitchen for the pitcher of margaritas I'd made earlier and came back with salted glasses. Toni's face lit up like Maggie's. Since she's not quite the booze hound Maggie is, I assumed it was the weather, poured her a glass and headed towards the stereo.
"Do we have to listen?"
Okay, now I was seriously disturbed. This is the woman who drags me to Ani concerts. This is the woman who argued for fifteen minutes with a clerk at Tower over a free poster that was supposed to come with purchase of Evolve. (She got the Ani poster but only after she'd created such a scene that the manager had to intervene.) This is the woman who begged me to help her create an Ani T-shirt in 1994 because she didn't think any of the ones available (on either market) did Ani justice. What the hell was going on?
Hadn't I heard, Toni wondered, Ani was pregnant.
Oh.
I put on the Who's Tommy and turned the lights down. We listened in silence and didn't begin speaking until the next CD, around the time Janis was singing "Call On Me."
See, the thing is, women have to fight for any kind of artistic credibility. And, for women who've listened to music for any length of time, pregnancy doesn't mean "joy." It usually means soggy.
You start getting 'lullaby' CDs that the artists wouldn't normally put out until after the chart making days were over. Or you get these audio equivalents of "destiny." You get a whole lot of crap, you just don't get any art.
I was never a huge fan of Sarah McLachlan. But she was getting better with each album and, by the time of Surfacing, I was actually starting to enjoy her arc of growth. Then came the news that she was pregnant. I knew the next album would be a retreat. And it was, despite being called World On Fire.
Shawn Colvin's often used these days as an example by some of how women can't really work. The argument goes, it's not 'natural' for women, they have to really work at it. (Well the last few few Bob Dylan albums have felt phoned in -- maybe everyone needs to work a little harder?) They toss out Shawn Colvin and the soggy mush she released post-pregnancy and the overly lit commercials she did. And every woman suffers from that 'logic.'
'Logic' because Shawn Colvin wasn't a rocker before she got pregnant. She was as soggy as she is today long before she had her first bout of morning sickness. But the 'logic' dominates and there are plenty of examples to back it up.
The woman who've left a big impact tend to be childless or else they adopted a child (or gave one up for adoption). That includes Janis who died early. It includes Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Ann Wilson, and not many others.
Laura Nyro is an artist I love but when she emerged post-pregnancy, the art lost its urgency. Some argue Cass Elliot, whom I love, went into schmaltz after her pregnancy. There are too many arguments to be made to put it down just as 'getting older.' Even Chrissie Hynde who can usually be counted on to kick out the jams when everyone around her is brewing tea and reaching for a caftan began making drippy statements about women's 'nature' as she began having children.
Toni and I started talking about what women we could think of who didn't go into retreat at the first sign of pregnancy? We could name three: Etta James, Aretha Franklin and Carly Simon. We were depressed and you might be able to name more. I actually hope you can.
Lady Soul was always Lady Soul. She might get the worst producer in the world and, goodness knows, she's had some of them. But her work that goes soggy can be traced to that. Etta James? The original 'bad girl' -- the archetype before the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las ever harmonized on their first note. Carly? That keen eye for observation didn't switch to soft focus as a result of Sally and Ben.
Think Toni and I were making too much of it? Did you ever listen to Patti Smith's Dream of Life? That the album which provided one of her best songs ("People Have The Power") could be surrounded with so much corn was heart breaking. Or take the strange career of Pat Benetar who came out belting hard rocking songs in her caberet voice, traded in the tights for shoulder pads and then seemed to turn the whole career over to her husband and lose every fan who'd ever screamed along to "Treat Me Right" with the acoustic drip that was Tropico. The woman who once snarled, "You Better Run" has spent the rest of her career trying to reclaim her fans, often via the blues, but traveling the road with some sort of Cowsills act.
Benatar, the woman who won four consecutives Grammys in the women rock vocals category (all before she gave birth and none since), also provided MTV with the second video they ever played. Not even the blues could allow her to, as the Jefferson Starship once sang, "Find Your Way Back" to her fans.
The two Pats offer an interesting comparison. One was an artistic heavy hitter (Smith), the other a chart topper. Both rocked. Both went soft.
A little over a decade ago, we got another 'year of the women' in rock. The poster girl was Liz Phair. Exile in Guyville was a smart album full of angry thoughts and angry music. It rocked. She had a highly limited vocal range but she got crowned by most as the 'rocker.' Then came the days of Mommy-dom. And her career's never been the same. While her self-titled CD was so idiotic and so art-free, it made more than a few fans wish for the days of Whip Smart, the truth is that Liz Phair was already on the road to soggy.
The reality of pregnancy for many rocking women (I've gone with 'big' names because smaller artists, of any gender, have enough problems trying to break through) is not that different from the average women. It's late nights in the rocking chair, it's blurry mornings where you sit at the kitchen table watching the high chair. It's a lot of yawning, it's a lot adjustment to a new schedule. And, reality, it's still an enormous amount of work that falls mainly on women.
To be a woman in rock is to invert, subvert or spoof the stereotype and possibly there's no energy left for that in the post-birth days? Now an artist could explore these moments, and Toni and I give Carly credit for doing so. But most ignore reality. It's as though when the creative urge strikes them, they're going for a Calgon-take-me-away feel.
And it's drippy and it's sad and it hurts all women. So, for most women I know, the early days of being interested in sharing the news that ___ is pregnant quickly turns into an avoid the topic all together mood. Toni was tying it into an episode of Sex in the City which I never saw but apparently Sarah Jessica Parker and company go to a party thrown by a woman who's become a mother and it becomes a nightmare. (Sarah Jess' Carrie even loses her beloved shoes. Clearly a tragedy akin to Dorothy losing her red ruby slippers.) Even without having seen the episode, I could nod along to Toni's recap of retreat portrayed.
So what does the future hold for Ani DiFranco? The self-described "punk" (she didn't want to be called folk) has always rejected most labels. She's been lesbian, she's been bi-sexual, she's been married to a man, she's spoken of, and sang of, the 'girl police' who want her to be one thing when she wants to be another.
Long before the first wave of concern over the career from dedicated fans, Ani had declared, "I am no poster girl with a poster" ("32 Flavors"). So despite the talent that practically screams for you to say, "Okay, with Ani, with Ani there will be a difference!"; you find yourself quickly realizing that asking her to be a standard-bearer is asking for disappointment and all but inviting her to run the other way.
Now Patti Smith, unlike Pat Benatar, bounded back in the 90s and has stayed strong. Dream of Life sounds, now, like something she just had to get out of her system. Ani shares more similarities to Patti than to Pat so there may be reason to hope. But, to be honest, for too many women who've seen SoggyStock play out (the ever evolving 'happening' that's outlived Woodstock and any other 'event' in the rock era), there's not much reason to hope.
Add in that Ani's had problems in the last few years (which led to a tour cancellation) that interfered with her guitar playing and the 'news' is enough to depress the hell out of you. You might, as Toni and I did, try to find comfort in the fact that, if the sog-fest is temporary, the artist usually rebounds while, on the male end, they often seemed trapped in a cartoon version of themselves.
But that doesn't change the fact that the 'news' depresses us. We're fans of the music, not the artist. If we were fans of the personality, we could probably be as exicted for Ani as anyone who spent the summer breathless over Angelina and Brad's offsprings or Tom and Katie's.
A pitcher and a half of margaritas later, we were ready to listen. "Half-Assed" is probably the best track on the CD. But what we noticed was that this is Ani's album. She's had albums that worked before from start to finish as something more than a collection of songs. Obviously the live albums but the studio ones too (Not A Pretty Face, Little Plastic Castle, Evolve, Educated Guess). But on this one, it's not just the songs that add together for a total portrait, it's the musical accents. I honestly had missed that until C.I. pointed them out.
Reprieve is a CD for the big speakers, no question. But it's also one that you really should put on the head phones for at least once. You'll discover so much more to it if you do. In terms of the production, it's a very textured work. Which is interesting considering that last time around, Ani had surrendered production duties to Joe Henry (Knuckle Down, an album that still hasn't spoken to me). The textures are so wonderful (again, use headphones -- birds, traffic and more) that if Ani's going out, she's going out with a blaze.
"Hypnotized" opens the album softly and it may rank with "Both Hands" for Ani's most beautiful of her gentle songs. "So that's how you found me/ Rain falling around me . . . And you were no picnic/ And you were no prize/ But you had enough pathos/ To keep me hypnotized." On the second track, "Subconscious," the key line is "I know where I'm going/ And it aint' where I've been." That really sums up the album. Reprieve is looking at the world and refusing to take part in the uglier parts. The uglier parts are summed up best in "Millennium Theater:"
While out in TV nation
Under darkening skies
The resistance is just waiting
To be organized.
That's the album. She's looking at where the world is going and where it's been. Of the illustration on the cover, Ani writes in the liner notes: "the cover tree was inspired by a photgraph taken in nagasaki, japan on august 10, 1945 by yosuke yamahata, just hours after the explosion of the atomic bomb." The tree on the cover is half-destroyed, half-alive. That too goes to what she's commenting on this time around. It's a powerful album.
Still, it's hard not to hear "Millennium Theater" now (post 'news') and not worry, or at least wonder, where the 'news' will take Ani next? The fear is soggy in a New Morning retreat.
I hope that's not the case but most women into music can tell you they've pinned their hopes on a person before, "She'll be the one! She is the one!" The comedown is never pretty. While back, around Ray of Light, I can remember some of my friends talking up Madonna as the "one." She was more marketeer than muscian. But she'd had a run on the charts like no one since Olivia Newton-John. So, on the basis of that, there was some excitement even though she was doing the faux British accent, even though she was aspiring for 'respectable.' Today, she seems genuinely puzzled that her stage shows, where the most creativity has always gone, are seen as controversial in a manner that doesn't excite media debate but just brings condemnations. When you go for 'respectable,' maybe you bring that criticism on yourself? It's one thing to court controversy and try for 'edgy' when you're all but passing out snapshots of your vagina, it's quite another when you're reinvented yourself for the last mile.
Ani's no Madonna. There's never been a team of writers or musicians needed for her to produce an album. All Ani's learned, all she's observed, come together on this album. Is Reprieve the swan song?
On 1974's Hotcakes, Carly Simon observed the following in "Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby:"
Platform shoes on table tops
I think I'm going to have a baby
Opinons flying right and left
I think I'm going to tell them maybe
They're puttin' out to many photographs records
Think I'm gonna have a baby, a baby . . .
I'm sure there are many "opinions flying right and left" with regards to Ani's 'news.' And for her, it may be all annoying. (If so, don't follow your press.) But it is a real very concern. Janis Joplin was blazing a trail of exploration and, once she died, she became a cautionary note. The 'boys' can be wild and never suffer the 'afterschool special' portrayals (Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, . . .). The reality is that women are the first overlooked in the histories. That's still true. They'll do their 'exception' and note a Joni Mitchell but, for instance, having just read a 'history of US rock' here in Ireland which lists only one female (Joni) but goes on and on about Jan & Dean, the Rascals, the Bee Gees, the Blues Magoos, and just about every other name of someone with a penis attached to the body, things haven't changed that much. In the late eighties, pop stations in the United States, were going out of their way to attempt to figure out how to play the hits but avoid playing a woman after another. The same 'concern,' then or now, has never been applied to male artists.
So there's a lot that women are up against. When someone manages to carve out their own space, that's cause for celebration. Maybe in forty years, there won't be a need for women to respond to the news that a favorite female artist is pregnant with fears? But that's reality as well.
Of the big name female artists who 'crossed over' (even temporarily) into the 'boys' club' (which is what it is, it's not 'the club,' it's the 'boys' club' and a lot of men in the print set work harder than Spanky of The Little Rascals to keep it that way), the only one to give birth and not cause embarrassment is Carly Simon. She did it by exploring life, what she was doing before. Maybe Ani will follow that path?
Time will tell. After a couple of hours discussing the topic, Toni and I were able to think of one more woman of 'rock' whose work didn't go soggy as a result of motherhood: Tori Amos. So we were left with four.
Right now, we have Reprieve and if you haven't checked it out yet, make a point to. Forget the 'news,' just blast "Half-Assed" out your speakers:
You start trippin
And I start slippin away
I was taught to zip it
If I got nothing nice to say
And down in the Texas of my heart
Driving a really big truck
Headed down a dirt road . . .
I never did.
That's not due to the fact that I'm in Ireland dealing with a dying family member. That's due to the news by way of Toni.
I practically grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from my front door to the living room to listen to Reprieve shortly after it came out. We all love Ani but Toni's probably been her biggest and longest fan of my small circle of friends.
I was full of "Isn't it great" and "Isn't it wonderful" talk and basically stepping on every word Toni started to say. Finally, after I shoved her on the sofa and went to the stereo, it hit me that Toni wasn't excited.
I made all the pleasantries I normally would have greeted her with but now I was listening for any indication of something seriously wrong. No indications were given and no words of distress were spoken.
Assuming it was the heat, this was still summer and these were furnace days, I ran to the kitchen for the pitcher of margaritas I'd made earlier and came back with salted glasses. Toni's face lit up like Maggie's. Since she's not quite the booze hound Maggie is, I assumed it was the weather, poured her a glass and headed towards the stereo.
"Do we have to listen?"
Okay, now I was seriously disturbed. This is the woman who drags me to Ani concerts. This is the woman who argued for fifteen minutes with a clerk at Tower over a free poster that was supposed to come with purchase of Evolve. (She got the Ani poster but only after she'd created such a scene that the manager had to intervene.) This is the woman who begged me to help her create an Ani T-shirt in 1994 because she didn't think any of the ones available (on either market) did Ani justice. What the hell was going on?
Hadn't I heard, Toni wondered, Ani was pregnant.
Oh.
I put on the Who's Tommy and turned the lights down. We listened in silence and didn't begin speaking until the next CD, around the time Janis was singing "Call On Me."
See, the thing is, women have to fight for any kind of artistic credibility. And, for women who've listened to music for any length of time, pregnancy doesn't mean "joy." It usually means soggy.
You start getting 'lullaby' CDs that the artists wouldn't normally put out until after the chart making days were over. Or you get these audio equivalents of "destiny." You get a whole lot of crap, you just don't get any art.
I was never a huge fan of Sarah McLachlan. But she was getting better with each album and, by the time of Surfacing, I was actually starting to enjoy her arc of growth. Then came the news that she was pregnant. I knew the next album would be a retreat. And it was, despite being called World On Fire.
Shawn Colvin's often used these days as an example by some of how women can't really work. The argument goes, it's not 'natural' for women, they have to really work at it. (Well the last few few Bob Dylan albums have felt phoned in -- maybe everyone needs to work a little harder?) They toss out Shawn Colvin and the soggy mush she released post-pregnancy and the overly lit commercials she did. And every woman suffers from that 'logic.'
'Logic' because Shawn Colvin wasn't a rocker before she got pregnant. She was as soggy as she is today long before she had her first bout of morning sickness. But the 'logic' dominates and there are plenty of examples to back it up.
The woman who've left a big impact tend to be childless or else they adopted a child (or gave one up for adoption). That includes Janis who died early. It includes Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Ann Wilson, and not many others.
Laura Nyro is an artist I love but when she emerged post-pregnancy, the art lost its urgency. Some argue Cass Elliot, whom I love, went into schmaltz after her pregnancy. There are too many arguments to be made to put it down just as 'getting older.' Even Chrissie Hynde who can usually be counted on to kick out the jams when everyone around her is brewing tea and reaching for a caftan began making drippy statements about women's 'nature' as she began having children.
Toni and I started talking about what women we could think of who didn't go into retreat at the first sign of pregnancy? We could name three: Etta James, Aretha Franklin and Carly Simon. We were depressed and you might be able to name more. I actually hope you can.
Lady Soul was always Lady Soul. She might get the worst producer in the world and, goodness knows, she's had some of them. But her work that goes soggy can be traced to that. Etta James? The original 'bad girl' -- the archetype before the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las ever harmonized on their first note. Carly? That keen eye for observation didn't switch to soft focus as a result of Sally and Ben.
Think Toni and I were making too much of it? Did you ever listen to Patti Smith's Dream of Life? That the album which provided one of her best songs ("People Have The Power") could be surrounded with so much corn was heart breaking. Or take the strange career of Pat Benetar who came out belting hard rocking songs in her caberet voice, traded in the tights for shoulder pads and then seemed to turn the whole career over to her husband and lose every fan who'd ever screamed along to "Treat Me Right" with the acoustic drip that was Tropico. The woman who once snarled, "You Better Run" has spent the rest of her career trying to reclaim her fans, often via the blues, but traveling the road with some sort of Cowsills act.
Benatar, the woman who won four consecutives Grammys in the women rock vocals category (all before she gave birth and none since), also provided MTV with the second video they ever played. Not even the blues could allow her to, as the Jefferson Starship once sang, "Find Your Way Back" to her fans.
The two Pats offer an interesting comparison. One was an artistic heavy hitter (Smith), the other a chart topper. Both rocked. Both went soft.
A little over a decade ago, we got another 'year of the women' in rock. The poster girl was Liz Phair. Exile in Guyville was a smart album full of angry thoughts and angry music. It rocked. She had a highly limited vocal range but she got crowned by most as the 'rocker.' Then came the days of Mommy-dom. And her career's never been the same. While her self-titled CD was so idiotic and so art-free, it made more than a few fans wish for the days of Whip Smart, the truth is that Liz Phair was already on the road to soggy.
The reality of pregnancy for many rocking women (I've gone with 'big' names because smaller artists, of any gender, have enough problems trying to break through) is not that different from the average women. It's late nights in the rocking chair, it's blurry mornings where you sit at the kitchen table watching the high chair. It's a lot of yawning, it's a lot adjustment to a new schedule. And, reality, it's still an enormous amount of work that falls mainly on women.
To be a woman in rock is to invert, subvert or spoof the stereotype and possibly there's no energy left for that in the post-birth days? Now an artist could explore these moments, and Toni and I give Carly credit for doing so. But most ignore reality. It's as though when the creative urge strikes them, they're going for a Calgon-take-me-away feel.
And it's drippy and it's sad and it hurts all women. So, for most women I know, the early days of being interested in sharing the news that ___ is pregnant quickly turns into an avoid the topic all together mood. Toni was tying it into an episode of Sex in the City which I never saw but apparently Sarah Jessica Parker and company go to a party thrown by a woman who's become a mother and it becomes a nightmare. (Sarah Jess' Carrie even loses her beloved shoes. Clearly a tragedy akin to Dorothy losing her red ruby slippers.) Even without having seen the episode, I could nod along to Toni's recap of retreat portrayed.
So what does the future hold for Ani DiFranco? The self-described "punk" (she didn't want to be called folk) has always rejected most labels. She's been lesbian, she's been bi-sexual, she's been married to a man, she's spoken of, and sang of, the 'girl police' who want her to be one thing when she wants to be another.
Long before the first wave of concern over the career from dedicated fans, Ani had declared, "I am no poster girl with a poster" ("32 Flavors"). So despite the talent that practically screams for you to say, "Okay, with Ani, with Ani there will be a difference!"; you find yourself quickly realizing that asking her to be a standard-bearer is asking for disappointment and all but inviting her to run the other way.
Now Patti Smith, unlike Pat Benatar, bounded back in the 90s and has stayed strong. Dream of Life sounds, now, like something she just had to get out of her system. Ani shares more similarities to Patti than to Pat so there may be reason to hope. But, to be honest, for too many women who've seen SoggyStock play out (the ever evolving 'happening' that's outlived Woodstock and any other 'event' in the rock era), there's not much reason to hope.
Add in that Ani's had problems in the last few years (which led to a tour cancellation) that interfered with her guitar playing and the 'news' is enough to depress the hell out of you. You might, as Toni and I did, try to find comfort in the fact that, if the sog-fest is temporary, the artist usually rebounds while, on the male end, they often seemed trapped in a cartoon version of themselves.
But that doesn't change the fact that the 'news' depresses us. We're fans of the music, not the artist. If we were fans of the personality, we could probably be as exicted for Ani as anyone who spent the summer breathless over Angelina and Brad's offsprings or Tom and Katie's.
A pitcher and a half of margaritas later, we were ready to listen. "Half-Assed" is probably the best track on the CD. But what we noticed was that this is Ani's album. She's had albums that worked before from start to finish as something more than a collection of songs. Obviously the live albums but the studio ones too (Not A Pretty Face, Little Plastic Castle, Evolve, Educated Guess). But on this one, it's not just the songs that add together for a total portrait, it's the musical accents. I honestly had missed that until C.I. pointed them out.
Reprieve is a CD for the big speakers, no question. But it's also one that you really should put on the head phones for at least once. You'll discover so much more to it if you do. In terms of the production, it's a very textured work. Which is interesting considering that last time around, Ani had surrendered production duties to Joe Henry (Knuckle Down, an album that still hasn't spoken to me). The textures are so wonderful (again, use headphones -- birds, traffic and more) that if Ani's going out, she's going out with a blaze.
"Hypnotized" opens the album softly and it may rank with "Both Hands" for Ani's most beautiful of her gentle songs. "So that's how you found me/ Rain falling around me . . . And you were no picnic/ And you were no prize/ But you had enough pathos/ To keep me hypnotized." On the second track, "Subconscious," the key line is "I know where I'm going/ And it aint' where I've been." That really sums up the album. Reprieve is looking at the world and refusing to take part in the uglier parts. The uglier parts are summed up best in "Millennium Theater:"
While out in TV nation
Under darkening skies
The resistance is just waiting
To be organized.
That's the album. She's looking at where the world is going and where it's been. Of the illustration on the cover, Ani writes in the liner notes: "the cover tree was inspired by a photgraph taken in nagasaki, japan on august 10, 1945 by yosuke yamahata, just hours after the explosion of the atomic bomb." The tree on the cover is half-destroyed, half-alive. That too goes to what she's commenting on this time around. It's a powerful album.
Still, it's hard not to hear "Millennium Theater" now (post 'news') and not worry, or at least wonder, where the 'news' will take Ani next? The fear is soggy in a New Morning retreat.
I hope that's not the case but most women into music can tell you they've pinned their hopes on a person before, "She'll be the one! She is the one!" The comedown is never pretty. While back, around Ray of Light, I can remember some of my friends talking up Madonna as the "one." She was more marketeer than muscian. But she'd had a run on the charts like no one since Olivia Newton-John. So, on the basis of that, there was some excitement even though she was doing the faux British accent, even though she was aspiring for 'respectable.' Today, she seems genuinely puzzled that her stage shows, where the most creativity has always gone, are seen as controversial in a manner that doesn't excite media debate but just brings condemnations. When you go for 'respectable,' maybe you bring that criticism on yourself? It's one thing to court controversy and try for 'edgy' when you're all but passing out snapshots of your vagina, it's quite another when you're reinvented yourself for the last mile.
Ani's no Madonna. There's never been a team of writers or musicians needed for her to produce an album. All Ani's learned, all she's observed, come together on this album. Is Reprieve the swan song?
On 1974's Hotcakes, Carly Simon observed the following in "Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby:"
Platform shoes on table tops
I think I'm going to have a baby
Opinons flying right and left
I think I'm going to tell them maybe
They're puttin' out to many photographs records
Think I'm gonna have a baby, a baby . . .
I'm sure there are many "opinions flying right and left" with regards to Ani's 'news.' And for her, it may be all annoying. (If so, don't follow your press.) But it is a real very concern. Janis Joplin was blazing a trail of exploration and, once she died, she became a cautionary note. The 'boys' can be wild and never suffer the 'afterschool special' portrayals (Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, . . .). The reality is that women are the first overlooked in the histories. That's still true. They'll do their 'exception' and note a Joni Mitchell but, for instance, having just read a 'history of US rock' here in Ireland which lists only one female (Joni) but goes on and on about Jan & Dean, the Rascals, the Bee Gees, the Blues Magoos, and just about every other name of someone with a penis attached to the body, things haven't changed that much. In the late eighties, pop stations in the United States, were going out of their way to attempt to figure out how to play the hits but avoid playing a woman after another. The same 'concern,' then or now, has never been applied to male artists.
So there's a lot that women are up against. When someone manages to carve out their own space, that's cause for celebration. Maybe in forty years, there won't be a need for women to respond to the news that a favorite female artist is pregnant with fears? But that's reality as well.
Of the big name female artists who 'crossed over' (even temporarily) into the 'boys' club' (which is what it is, it's not 'the club,' it's the 'boys' club' and a lot of men in the print set work harder than Spanky of The Little Rascals to keep it that way), the only one to give birth and not cause embarrassment is Carly Simon. She did it by exploring life, what she was doing before. Maybe Ani will follow that path?
Time will tell. After a couple of hours discussing the topic, Toni and I were able to think of one more woman of 'rock' whose work didn't go soggy as a result of motherhood: Tori Amos. So we were left with four.
Right now, we have Reprieve and if you haven't checked it out yet, make a point to. Forget the 'news,' just blast "Half-Assed" out your speakers:
You start trippin
And I start slippin away
I was taught to zip it
If I got nothing nice to say
And down in the Texas of my heart
Driving a really big truck
Headed down a dirt road . . .
Access over 1 million songs - Yahoo! Music Unlimited Try it today.
Humor Spotlight: Betinna scoffs at a column 'miracle'
Betty was one of the ones who posted early Saturday morning only to not have her post show up. It's her latest chapter and 'magically' it appeared Saturday evening. This was part of the problem with Blogger/Blogspot all weekend that led us to decide to decide at 5:00 am (when we couldn't even log in to our account) that we'd go to sleep and post later today.
The column 'miracle'
I'm thinking of taking up smoking. I understand it shortens the life span and, between it and my husband Thomas Friedman's columns, I figure I'd be put out of my misery in six months top.
The wonderful days while he was gone? I enjoyed them. I thought I enjoyed them for all they were worth but now that he's back . . .
I see his columns as globalization run amuk. For two days a week, the rest of the world gets to know what it's like to live with Thomas Friedman. They may grimace and scowl as they attempt to read his poly-blend of new age meets neocon (gentically modified, I'm sure) but they can put it down. Me, I'm stuck with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
He drones on and on. He's on some bi-polar meds. Apparently, while he was cross-dressing as Trish Friedman, he attempted to mug the homeless, using a water pistol, and got picked up by the cops who sent him in for a psych consult.
He's been on the meds ever since. They make him very verbal. I never knew so many words could say so little -- despite the fact that I've suffered through his writing throughout my marriage. Somethings you only think you know.
"Allies Dressed in Green" was the latest punishment he inflicted upon the world. The paper refused to run it as was.
Why? Oh, don't think the "New York Times" was suddenly discovering a set of standards for their op-ed pages. The quantity, not the quality, was what had them upset. It was 62 typed pages, single space. It was as though he wrote it on a manic jag.
The first time he was asked to condense, he snarled, "Condense? It's not canned soup, Gail!"
Then he hung up on her. She's out in January, so he figures he doesn't need to listen to her. Gail went Bill Keller who called to say that the column needed to be cut to a reasonable length. Thomas Friedman spent ten hours editing and finally got it down to 61 pages.
At which point, Bill Keller drug me into it, begging me to edit Thomas Friedman's column.
"Can't you do it?" I asked.
He explained to edit the column, he'd have to read it and since Judith Miller left the paper, he's really been working at curbing his own masochistic tendencies.
So I grabbed a Sharpie, sat down at the kitchen table and spent five minutes pairing the 61 pages down to 12 paragraphs.
I reminded myself that if it made too much sense, it would upset his usual readers. So I turned it into a messy goulash of pro-nuclear industry (and left out his 17 pages on how this didn't apply to Iran), kept in one of his 136 references to 'Islamic radicalism,' and his section on Germany because I didn't think he'd insulted that country in some time. For easy laughs, I left in his latest attempt to become a linguist: "geo-greenism." He's very proud of that term. I'm sure he will be for at least 8 more months, at which point, he'll either have another bad phrase he's coined or purloined or he'll have noticed that he's the only one using the phrase.
I also eliminated the 22 pages on how, even though the anti-war voices were correct, they have no right to talk because "Nobody needs to be reminded they were wrong." He's still very touchy about that -- that so many were right all along about the illegal war and he was wrong.
I think after being called "fat ass," being told he was wrong about Iraq is the thing that ticks him off the most.
Bill Keller called as soon as I faxed the edited column over. He told me I'd performed a miracle. Performing a miracle on one of Thomas Friedman's columns?
I believe that requires either matches or a paper shredder.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, October 27, 2006. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, US war resister Kyle Snyder prepares to return to the US; a G.I. coffeehouse opens in Watertown, NY; Gerhard Schroder weighs in on the special relationship between Tony Blair and Bully Boy; the barking puppet of the occupation gets his leash yanked;
Tomorrow Kyle Snyder will return to the United States, Mike Howell reports for the Toronto Star noting that Snyder notes war resister Darrell Anderson's decision to return to the US (Anderson returned September 30th). Like Anderson, Snyder elected to self-check out of the military. For Snyder, that happened in April 2005. As Snyder explains in Michelle Mason's Breaking Ranks, military recruiters were circling throughout high school: "I had just received my high school diploma. I get off of the stage and here's another recruiter right outside the door -- waiting for me. I look back at i now and everything that I'm going through, everything that I've worked through I can retrace down to that moment that I signed the f**king contract." Snyder has addressed how the military broke its contract with him -- such as by refusing to investigate incidents of violence targeting Iraqis.
In August, Synder explained his decision to self-check out of the US military and go to Canada to Karen Button noting, "You know, if they want to help people in Iraq . . . imagine a 15 year-old kid, for the last . . . years all he's seen is [US] military personnel with weapons going through his city. How is that child supposed to believe that the man, in that uniform is helping him? Now, if that child saw a convoy of logs being brought to his city, or a convory of water being brought to his city, still guarded, it would be a completely different situation. That's where the American military messed up. Because they forgot about the perception of civilisation. They forgot about the perception of the Iraqi people."
Kyle Snyder intends to return to the US Saturday and turn himself in. Michelle Mason's documentary Breaking Ranks takes a look at US war resisters who have gone to Canada seeking asylum. In addition to Mason's film, more information on war resisters hoping to be granted refugee status (which the Canadian government has thus far refused to do, unlike during the Vietnam era) can be found at War Resisters Support Campaign.
Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Carl Webb, Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Aidan Delgado, Ryan Johnson, Joshua Key, Katherine Jashinski, Ivan Brobeck, Robin Long, Kevin Benderman and Clifford Cornell are among those war resisters who have gone public. And that's only the names of those who have gone public. The war resistance within the military is a movement.
Earlier this week, US service members created a website, Appeal for Redress, and are attempting to collect 2000 signatures for their petition to Congress to end the illegal war. From Appeal for Redress :
An Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq
Many active duty, reserve, and guard service members are concerned about the war in Iraq and support the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.S. military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January 2007.
The wording of the Appeal for Redress is short and simple. It is patriotic and respectful in tone.
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.
If you agree with this message, click here.
The Appeal for Redress is sponsored by active duty service members based in the Norfolk area and by a sponsoring committee of veterans and military family members. The Sponsoring committee consists of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Military Families Speak Out.
Members of the military have a legal right to communicate with their member of Congress. To learn more about the rights and restrictions that apply to service members click here.
Attorneys and counselors experienced in military law are available to help service members who need assistance in countering any attempts to suppress this communication with members of Congress.
Several members of Congress have expressed interest in receiving the Appeal for Redress.
Click here to send the Appeal to your elected representatives.
Meanwhile, Citizen Soldier announces the opening, today, of "the first soldiers' coffeehouse of the current Iraq war in Watertown, NY." More information can be found at Citizen Soldier and at Different Drummer, the name of the coffeehouse. It is a movement and for those wanting more information on the importance of the GI coffeehouse to a peace movement should view David Zeiger's Sir! No Sir! documentary.
As resistance and opposition to the illegal war spreads throughout the world spreads, Bully Boy & Friends attempts to remarket/re-brand all week. At the start, the US State Department's Alberto Fernandez was having to eat his own words ("arrogance" and "stupidity" used to describe the war) after the White House first attempted to claim that Fernandez had suffered from mistranslation. We also heard the announcement by Tony Snow, White House flack, that the phrase "stay the course" was being stricken from the official White House language. Wednesday, the Bully Boy attempted to show how involved and concerned he was with the war Wednesday by noting the "93" US troops who had died in Iraq this month when, in fact, the US military's official count before the speech, during the speech and until Thursday morning was "91." While the White House removed one phrase from the official lexicon, Donald Rumsfeld added a new one on Thursday, "Just back off."
While the US administration played word games and offered faulty numbers, chaos and violence continued in Iraq. Despite this, Zalmay Khalilzad (US ambassador to Iraq) and George Casey ("top US general" in Iraq) held a joint press conference where they declared that success was yet again just around that ever elusive corner and it will only take a year to a year-and-a-half for it to show up. (For those who've forgotten, the illegal war began in March 2003.)
Meanwhile a US & Iraqi raid in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, led to a barking puppet of the occupation. Nouri al-Maliki rejected the raid, rejected the notion that he (who holds the position of commander-in-chief of the Iraqi military) had been involved in the planning of the raid, and rejected the "timelines" and "timetable" speak that Khalilzad and Casey had told reporters of the day before.
In his laughable Wednesday press conference, Bully Boy was asked why al-Maliki hadn't been included in the Tuesday press conference held by Khalilzad and Casey?
His response? "I have no idea why he wasn't there," said Bully Boy the 'decider' but not the planner. He added, "I have no idea. I'm not -- I'm not the scheduler of news conferences." Once again, out of the loop.
In Iraq today, Alastair Macdonald (Reuters) reports that Nouri al-Maliki issued "a joint statement with the U.S. ambassador [that] his government had 'timelines' for the resolution of the country's problems". The strings get pulled, the puppet plays along.
Macdonald notes: "The statement appeared aimed at dispelling the impression of mounting friction between Washington and its Iraqi allies". If the 'friction' is gone, does that leave only fiction? Bronwen Maddox (Times of London) labels the whole thing "Operation Cross Fingers" -- surely a 'strategy.'
Monday night in Baghdad, a US soldier went missing and is believed to have been kidnapped. AFP reports that the US military continues searching Baghdad "with armoured vehicles and backed by helicopter gunships" but the soldier has still not been located. AP reports that the soldier has been identified as Ahmed Qusai al-Taei.
The US press had trouble locating the 2800 mark for US troops who have died in Iraq -- a milestone passed this week. (In October 2005, passing the 2000 mark was news. Possibly the press is saving their energies for the 3,000 mark?) 2809 is the current toll since the start of the illegal war with 96 for the month. Or was until the US military announced: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier assigned to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, was injured Thursday as a result of enemy action in Diyala province. The Soldier was transported to a coalition forces medical treatment facility and later died of wounds." That brought the monthly toll to 97 and the number who have died since the start of the illegal war to 2810. October has been the deadliest month for US troops serving in Iraq this year.
Meanwhile a British soldier died today near Basra due to "road traffic" according to the British Ministry of Defense. This brings the total British soldiers who've died this month in Iraq to two and the total since the start of the illegal war to 120.
Among the violence reported so far today in Iraq, is the death toll in Baquba where fighting broke out Thursday. CBS and AP report that 43 people died ("including 24 officers" -- police officers).
Shootings?
CBS and AP report that, in the Diyala province, a group of nine mourners returning from a funeral in Najaf were attacked with four being shot to death and the other five being injured.
Corpses?
The BBC notes five corpses were discovered in Mosul Thursday and that the city is now under a curfew and vehicle ban. Reuters notes that number of corpses discovered in Mosul rose to 12. AFP notes that, "Thursday and overnight," eleven corpses were discovered in Baghdad.
Bombings?
Reuters reports the death of one woman "when two rounds slammed into the house of a Sunni Arab member of parliament, Abdul Nasir al-Janabi, in the town of Mussayab".
The woman's death comes at a time when, as Edith M. Lederer (AP) reports, the UN's executive director of the Development Fund for Women speaks out. Noeleen Heyzer states: "What UNIFEM is seeing on the ground -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia -- is that public space for women in these situations is shrinking. Women are becoming assassination targets when they dare dfend women's right in public decision-making."
Meanwhile a new book, Decisions: My Life in Politics, takes a look at the special relationship between Bully Boy of the US and Tony Blair of England. The book's author? Gerhard Schroder, the previous chancellor of Germany. Jess Smee (Guardian of London) writes that the book takes a look at Blair's rush to please Bully Boy, that Blair now pays for the price for his role in the illegal war, and notes that Blair had no interest in Europe -- Gerhard writes: "Quite the opposite, the country will continue to protect its role as a translantic mediator, even if that is to the cost of the European decision-making process."
In abuse news, Anne Plummer Flaherty (AP) reports: "The Halliburton susidary that provides food, shelter and other logistics to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance, according to a report released Friday."
In England, Michael Evans (Times of London) reports the latest on the seven British soldiers accused of abused prisoners in a Basra prison -- RAF soldier Scott Hughes has testified that he saw eye gouging of a prisoner and the prisoner being kicked "in the lower back". Donald Payne, one of the seven accused soldiers, has already pleaded guilty to war-crimes. In the United States, as Linda Deutsch (AP) reports, US marine John Jodka "pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice in the death of" Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52-years-old, in Al-Hamdaniyah.
In music news, Lydia Howell (Pulse of the Twin Cities) interviews singer, musician, songwriter and activist Michael Franti who says of his trip to Iraq, "I got tired of watching the news every night with generals and politicians talking about the economic costs of war WITHOUT mentioning the human crisis there. Rather than sit around frustrated, I picked up a guitar and a camera, flew to Baghdad and played music on the street." Michael Franti & Spearhead's latest CD is Yell Fire!
Finally, Bob Watada began his latest speaking tour yesterday. He is the father of Ehren Watada who is the first commissioned US officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Below are dates through Monday:
Oct 27, 7PM
Albuquerque, NM
Location: Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice
202 Harvard Dr SE
Sponsor: Veterans for Peace Chapter 63
Contact: Sally-Alice Thompson, 505-268-5073, 512-463-2014, sally-aliceanddon@juno.com
Oct 28, 1 -- 4:30PM
Houston, TX.
Sponsor: Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace Chapter 12, Iraq Veterans Against the War , Cy-Fair Democratic Club
Location: Live Oak Friends House, 1318 West 26th Street
Entertainment by Bill Passalacqua and Hank Woji, "Sir, No Sir"
Oct 28, 6:15PM
Houston, TX
Location: Dan Electro's Guitar Bar, 1031 East 24th Street. "Celebration of Resistance"Sponsors: Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace Chapter 12, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Contact: Sherry Glover, sglover001@houston.rr.com,(H) 832-363-1741, (C) 713-929-1132
-Bob Watada, ---- David Rovics
Oct 29, 1PM
Austin, TXPM
Sponsor: Code Pink/Austin, Veterans for Peace Chapter 66
Contact: Fran Hanlon, 512-454-6572, mfhanlon@swbell.net
Peter Ravella, 512-220-1740Heidi Turpin, (C)512-565-2242, heiditurpin@yahoo.com
Oct 29, 5:30PM
Austin, TX
Café Caffeine -- 206 West Mary
Sponsors: Code Pink, Veterans for Peace Chapter 66, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Contact: Doug Zachary, dbzvfp@gmail.com, (C) 512-791-9824
Heidi Turpin, (C) 512-565-2242, heiditurpin@yahoo.com
Fran Hanlon (H) 512-454-6572, , mfhanlon@swbell.net
Oct 30
Austin High Schools
Oct 31, 7-9PM
Norman, OK
Location: Cleveland County Fairgrounds - Lobby
615 E. RobinsonSponsor: Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Contact: Jeri Reed, 405-307-0352, cell 405-606-9598, jlreed@ou.edu
A full schedule can be found at Veterans for Peace and those interested in hosting a Bob Watada speaking engagement in their area are urged to contact Doug Zachary.
More information on Watada and other war resisters can be found at Courage to Resist.
The wonderful days while he was gone? I enjoyed them. I thought I enjoyed them for all they were worth but now that he's back . . .
I see his columns as globalization run amuk. For two days a week, the rest of the world gets to know what it's like to live with Thomas Friedman. They may grimace and scowl as they attempt to read his poly-blend of new age meets neocon (gentically modified, I'm sure) but they can put it down. Me, I'm stuck with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
He drones on and on. He's on some bi-polar meds. Apparently, while he was cross-dressing as Trish Friedman, he attempted to mug the homeless, using a water pistol, and got picked up by the cops who sent him in for a psych consult.
He's been on the meds ever since. They make him very verbal. I never knew so many words could say so little -- despite the fact that I've suffered through his writing throughout my marriage. Somethings you only think you know.
"Allies Dressed in Green" was the latest punishment he inflicted upon the world. The paper refused to run it as was.
Why? Oh, don't think the "New York Times" was suddenly discovering a set of standards for their op-ed pages. The quantity, not the quality, was what had them upset. It was 62 typed pages, single space. It was as though he wrote it on a manic jag.
The first time he was asked to condense, he snarled, "Condense? It's not canned soup, Gail!"
Then he hung up on her. She's out in January, so he figures he doesn't need to listen to her. Gail went Bill Keller who called to say that the column needed to be cut to a reasonable length. Thomas Friedman spent ten hours editing and finally got it down to 61 pages.
At which point, Bill Keller drug me into it, begging me to edit Thomas Friedman's column.
"Can't you do it?" I asked.
He explained to edit the column, he'd have to read it and since Judith Miller left the paper, he's really been working at curbing his own masochistic tendencies.
So I grabbed a Sharpie, sat down at the kitchen table and spent five minutes pairing the 61 pages down to 12 paragraphs.
I reminded myself that if it made too much sense, it would upset his usual readers. So I turned it into a messy goulash of pro-nuclear industry (and left out his 17 pages on how this didn't apply to Iran), kept in one of his 136 references to 'Islamic radicalism,' and his section on Germany because I didn't think he'd insulted that country in some time. For easy laughs, I left in his latest attempt to become a linguist: "geo-greenism." He's very proud of that term. I'm sure he will be for at least 8 more months, at which point, he'll either have another bad phrase he's coined or purloined or he'll have noticed that he's the only one using the phrase.
I also eliminated the 22 pages on how, even though the anti-war voices were correct, they have no right to talk because "Nobody needs to be reminded they were wrong." He's still very touchy about that -- that so many were right all along about the illegal war and he was wrong.
I think after being called "fat ass," being told he was wrong about Iraq is the thing that ticks him off the most.
Bill Keller called as soon as I faxed the edited column over. He told me I'd performed a miracle. Performing a miracle on one of Thomas Friedman's columns?
I believe that requires either matches or a paper shredder.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, October 27, 2006. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, US war resister Kyle Snyder prepares to return to the US; a G.I. coffeehouse opens in Watertown, NY; Gerhard Schroder weighs in on the special relationship between Tony Blair and Bully Boy; the barking puppet of the occupation gets his leash yanked;
Tomorrow Kyle Snyder will return to the United States, Mike Howell reports for the Toronto Star noting that Snyder notes war resister Darrell Anderson's decision to return to the US (Anderson returned September 30th). Like Anderson, Snyder elected to self-check out of the military. For Snyder, that happened in April 2005. As Snyder explains in Michelle Mason's Breaking Ranks, military recruiters were circling throughout high school: "I had just received my high school diploma. I get off of the stage and here's another recruiter right outside the door -- waiting for me. I look back at i now and everything that I'm going through, everything that I've worked through I can retrace down to that moment that I signed the f**king contract." Snyder has addressed how the military broke its contract with him -- such as by refusing to investigate incidents of violence targeting Iraqis.
In August, Synder explained his decision to self-check out of the US military and go to Canada to Karen Button noting, "You know, if they want to help people in Iraq . . . imagine a 15 year-old kid, for the last . . . years all he's seen is [US] military personnel with weapons going through his city. How is that child supposed to believe that the man, in that uniform is helping him? Now, if that child saw a convoy of logs being brought to his city, or a convory of water being brought to his city, still guarded, it would be a completely different situation. That's where the American military messed up. Because they forgot about the perception of civilisation. They forgot about the perception of the Iraqi people."
Kyle Snyder intends to return to the US Saturday and turn himself in. Michelle Mason's documentary Breaking Ranks takes a look at US war resisters who have gone to Canada seeking asylum. In addition to Mason's film, more information on war resisters hoping to be granted refugee status (which the Canadian government has thus far refused to do, unlike during the Vietnam era) can be found at War Resisters Support Campaign.
Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Carl Webb, Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Aidan Delgado, Ryan Johnson, Joshua Key, Katherine Jashinski, Ivan Brobeck, Robin Long, Kevin Benderman and Clifford Cornell are among those war resisters who have gone public. And that's only the names of those who have gone public. The war resistance within the military is a movement.
Earlier this week, US service members created a website, Appeal for Redress, and are attempting to collect 2000 signatures for their petition to Congress to end the illegal war. From Appeal for Redress :
An Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq
Many active duty, reserve, and guard service members are concerned about the war in Iraq and support the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.S. military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January 2007.
The wording of the Appeal for Redress is short and simple. It is patriotic and respectful in tone.
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.
If you agree with this message, click here.
The Appeal for Redress is sponsored by active duty service members based in the Norfolk area and by a sponsoring committee of veterans and military family members. The Sponsoring committee consists of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Military Families Speak Out.
Members of the military have a legal right to communicate with their member of Congress. To learn more about the rights and restrictions that apply to service members click here.
Attorneys and counselors experienced in military law are available to help service members who need assistance in countering any attempts to suppress this communication with members of Congress.
Several members of Congress have expressed interest in receiving the Appeal for Redress.
Click here to send the Appeal to your elected representatives.
Meanwhile, Citizen Soldier announces the opening, today, of "the first soldiers' coffeehouse of the current Iraq war in Watertown, NY." More information can be found at Citizen Soldier and at Different Drummer, the name of the coffeehouse. It is a movement and for those wanting more information on the importance of the GI coffeehouse to a peace movement should view David Zeiger's Sir! No Sir! documentary.
As resistance and opposition to the illegal war spreads throughout the world spreads, Bully Boy & Friends attempts to remarket/re-brand all week. At the start, the US State Department's Alberto Fernandez was having to eat his own words ("arrogance" and "stupidity" used to describe the war) after the White House first attempted to claim that Fernandez had suffered from mistranslation. We also heard the announcement by Tony Snow, White House flack, that the phrase "stay the course" was being stricken from the official White House language. Wednesday, the Bully Boy attempted to show how involved and concerned he was with the war Wednesday by noting the "93" US troops who had died in Iraq this month when, in fact, the US military's official count before the speech, during the speech and until Thursday morning was "91." While the White House removed one phrase from the official lexicon, Donald Rumsfeld added a new one on Thursday, "Just back off."
While the US administration played word games and offered faulty numbers, chaos and violence continued in Iraq. Despite this, Zalmay Khalilzad (US ambassador to Iraq) and George Casey ("top US general" in Iraq) held a joint press conference where they declared that success was yet again just around that ever elusive corner and it will only take a year to a year-and-a-half for it to show up. (For those who've forgotten, the illegal war began in March 2003.)
Meanwhile a US & Iraqi raid in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, led to a barking puppet of the occupation. Nouri al-Maliki rejected the raid, rejected the notion that he (who holds the position of commander-in-chief of the Iraqi military) had been involved in the planning of the raid, and rejected the "timelines" and "timetable" speak that Khalilzad and Casey had told reporters of the day before.
In his laughable Wednesday press conference, Bully Boy was asked why al-Maliki hadn't been included in the Tuesday press conference held by Khalilzad and Casey?
His response? "I have no idea why he wasn't there," said Bully Boy the 'decider' but not the planner. He added, "I have no idea. I'm not -- I'm not the scheduler of news conferences." Once again, out of the loop.
In Iraq today, Alastair Macdonald (Reuters) reports that Nouri al-Maliki issued "a joint statement with the U.S. ambassador [that] his government had 'timelines' for the resolution of the country's problems". The strings get pulled, the puppet plays along.
Macdonald notes: "The statement appeared aimed at dispelling the impression of mounting friction between Washington and its Iraqi allies". If the 'friction' is gone, does that leave only fiction? Bronwen Maddox (Times of London) labels the whole thing "Operation Cross Fingers" -- surely a 'strategy.'
Monday night in Baghdad, a US soldier went missing and is believed to have been kidnapped. AFP reports that the US military continues searching Baghdad "with armoured vehicles and backed by helicopter gunships" but the soldier has still not been located. AP reports that the soldier has been identified as Ahmed Qusai al-Taei.
The US press had trouble locating the 2800 mark for US troops who have died in Iraq -- a milestone passed this week. (In October 2005, passing the 2000 mark was news. Possibly the press is saving their energies for the 3,000 mark?) 2809 is the current toll since the start of the illegal war with 96 for the month. Or was until the US military announced: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier assigned to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, was injured Thursday as a result of enemy action in Diyala province. The Soldier was transported to a coalition forces medical treatment facility and later died of wounds." That brought the monthly toll to 97 and the number who have died since the start of the illegal war to 2810. October has been the deadliest month for US troops serving in Iraq this year.
Meanwhile a British soldier died today near Basra due to "road traffic" according to the British Ministry of Defense. This brings the total British soldiers who've died this month in Iraq to two and the total since the start of the illegal war to 120.
Among the violence reported so far today in Iraq, is the death toll in Baquba where fighting broke out Thursday. CBS and AP report that 43 people died ("including 24 officers" -- police officers).
Shootings?
CBS and AP report that, in the Diyala province, a group of nine mourners returning from a funeral in Najaf were attacked with four being shot to death and the other five being injured.
Corpses?
The BBC notes five corpses were discovered in Mosul Thursday and that the city is now under a curfew and vehicle ban. Reuters notes that number of corpses discovered in Mosul rose to 12. AFP notes that, "Thursday and overnight," eleven corpses were discovered in Baghdad.
Bombings?
Reuters reports the death of one woman "when two rounds slammed into the house of a Sunni Arab member of parliament, Abdul Nasir al-Janabi, in the town of Mussayab".
The woman's death comes at a time when, as Edith M. Lederer (AP) reports, the UN's executive director of the Development Fund for Women speaks out. Noeleen Heyzer states: "What UNIFEM is seeing on the ground -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia -- is that public space for women in these situations is shrinking. Women are becoming assassination targets when they dare dfend women's right in public decision-making."
Meanwhile a new book, Decisions: My Life in Politics, takes a look at the special relationship between Bully Boy of the US and Tony Blair of England. The book's author? Gerhard Schroder, the previous chancellor of Germany. Jess Smee (Guardian of London) writes that the book takes a look at Blair's rush to please Bully Boy, that Blair now pays for the price for his role in the illegal war, and notes that Blair had no interest in Europe -- Gerhard writes: "Quite the opposite, the country will continue to protect its role as a translantic mediator, even if that is to the cost of the European decision-making process."
In abuse news, Anne Plummer Flaherty (AP) reports: "The Halliburton susidary that provides food, shelter and other logistics to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance, according to a report released Friday."
In England, Michael Evans (Times of London) reports the latest on the seven British soldiers accused of abused prisoners in a Basra prison -- RAF soldier Scott Hughes has testified that he saw eye gouging of a prisoner and the prisoner being kicked "in the lower back". Donald Payne, one of the seven accused soldiers, has already pleaded guilty to war-crimes. In the United States, as Linda Deutsch (AP) reports, US marine John Jodka "pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice in the death of" Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52-years-old, in Al-Hamdaniyah.
In music news, Lydia Howell (Pulse of the Twin Cities) interviews singer, musician, songwriter and activist Michael Franti who says of his trip to Iraq, "I got tired of watching the news every night with generals and politicians talking about the economic costs of war WITHOUT mentioning the human crisis there. Rather than sit around frustrated, I picked up a guitar and a camera, flew to Baghdad and played music on the street." Michael Franti & Spearhead's latest CD is Yell Fire!
Finally, Bob Watada began his latest speaking tour yesterday. He is the father of Ehren Watada who is the first commissioned US officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Below are dates through Monday:
Oct 27, 7PM
Albuquerque, NM
Location: Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice
202 Harvard Dr SE
Sponsor: Veterans for Peace Chapter 63
Contact: Sally-Alice Thompson, 505-268-5073, 512-463-2014, sally-aliceanddon@juno.com
Oct 28, 1 -- 4:30PM
Houston, TX.
Sponsor: Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace Chapter 12, Iraq Veterans Against the War , Cy-Fair Democratic Club
Location: Live Oak Friends House, 1318 West 26th Street
Entertainment by Bill Passalacqua and Hank Woji, "Sir, No Sir"
Oct 28, 6:15PM
Houston, TX
Location: Dan Electro's Guitar Bar, 1031 East 24th Street. "Celebration of Resistance"Sponsors: Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace Chapter 12, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Contact: Sherry Glover, sglover001@houston.rr.com,(H) 832-363-1741, (C) 713-929-1132
-Bob Watada, ---- David Rovics
Oct 29, 1PM
Austin, TXPM
Sponsor: Code Pink/Austin, Veterans for Peace Chapter 66
Contact: Fran Hanlon, 512-454-6572, mfhanlon@swbell.net
Peter Ravella, 512-220-1740Heidi Turpin, (C)512-565-2242, heiditurpin@yahoo.com
Oct 29, 5:30PM
Austin, TX
Café Caffeine -- 206 West Mary
Sponsors: Code Pink, Veterans for Peace Chapter 66, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Contact: Doug Zachary, dbzvfp@gmail.com, (C) 512-791-9824
Heidi Turpin, (C) 512-565-2242, heiditurpin@yahoo.com
Fran Hanlon (H) 512-454-6572, , mfhanlon@swbell.net
Oct 30
Austin High Schools
Oct 31, 7-9PM
Norman, OK
Location: Cleveland County Fairgrounds - Lobby
615 E. RobinsonSponsor: Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Contact: Jeri Reed, 405-307-0352, cell 405-606-9598, jlreed@ou.edu
A full schedule can be found at Veterans for Peace and those interested in hosting a Bob Watada speaking engagement in their area are urged to contact Doug Zachary.
More information on Watada and other war resisters can be found at Courage to Resist.
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Ruth's Report
Ruth's Report
Ruth: Attempting a report again. Saturday's was lost due to some technical problem. The Third Estate Sunday Review wrote about Kyle Snyder on Sunday and that was one of the topics I covered in the lost report. I enjoyed their editorial and Mike Howell's Vancouver Courier report on Kyle Snyder which features a photo of Mr. Snyder with a guitar. Mr. Howell recounted Mr. Snyder's experiences in Iraq and what led him to decide to leave the military in April of 2005. What I wondered was what would happen if, in one week, all the people who self-checked out of the U.S. military turned themselves in?
How would the system handle that? Would they be able to? I thought of the old Woody Allen joke, from Love & Death and delivered by Diane Keaton, of how if everyone "If everyone went to the same restaurant on the same night and ordered blintzes, there'd be chaos."
For the record, I am not advocating that. I say that not out of fear of an overwhelmed military justice system. I say that because I firmly believe that if you think a war is illegal then it is your duty to stand up to it and if that means self-check out, then so be it.
I think we have seen more bravery from those who have left the military on their own than we have seen in six years from the current administration.
But to stay with that thought for a moment more, what would it mean to coverage? Would there be more or would there be less?
Regardless of the hypothetical, Kyle Snyder announced return comes at a time when we have seen some very disappointing coverage of war resisters from independent media. This was one of the key stories of the summer as various people went public or, in some case, went even more public. Court-martials and Article 32 hearings began and ended as most of us were left to wonder where was independent media?
Maybe they failed to grasp what was going on? If that were the case, they have had plenty of time to process it and I will be very curious to see how they do or do not cover Mr. Snyder?
Community member Greg noted Stephen Philion's interview with professor, author and Vietnam vet Jerry Lembcke in CounterPunch. In the interview, the two men discuss the Vietnam spitting myth that took hold despite reality. They also address how a slogan was used to tap down on dissent in this war and Professor Lembcke offers a criticism about some anti-war rallies that, my opinion, also applies to independent media coverage. I would boil that down to watering down your message to play safe. The sort of option that one might use if they wanted to cover Iraq but were more comfortable hiding behind what, for instances, generals say as opposed to what the people say.
I can remember Vietnam and I cannot imagine any of my fellow activists buying into the line of "Let's hide behind the generals." But today that seems to be much more common as people hide in some sort of search of 'respectability' and 'reasoned.' There will never be anything 'respectable' or 'reasoned' about the illegal war and making the assumption that because military brass is critical of the orders coming out of the White House should not translate to, "Listen to us, we will bring all the troops home." That was not reality during Vietnam and it is not reality today.
But, after awhile, you have to wonder what is or passes for reality today? Sir! No Sir! has to be the most watched film in my family. We pass the DVD of the documentary back and forth, we have watched it together countless times. In the film, Professor Lembcke also addresses the myth of the spitting. He also speaks of how, at the time, the myth would not take hold because people knew what was going on. They knew, for instance, that among those protesting the war were vets and how you could read about that in Life and countless other periodicals as well as see it on your television set.
Today that is not the case. I can pick up an independent publication and read about everything except the peace movement. If someone, anyone, offers a critique and they are not a part of the movement, I can watch as independent media gloms on them. Sadly, that includes James Baker whose recent coverage should be clipped by Mr. Baker and put into a scrapbook because I am sure he has never received so many valentines in one year. But those protesting the war, the fact that it is illegal and immoral, they don't receive valentines, they really do not recieve coverage.
I share Rob and Kara's enthusiasm for Christian Hill's "Activists are a diverse group" and I share their regrest that the article, an important one, comes via a mainstream newspaper, The Olympian, and not one of our independent periodicals. As a grandmother of very active, very vocal teenagers and young adults opposed to the war, I find it amazing that so many columns are written by people willing to show off their own ignorance as they attack today's youth for not being active when, if you ask me, the ones not being active is independnent media which acts not as a leader in covering the illegal war but as outlets fearful of not toeing the line.
In my last posted report, I specifically critized Democracy Now! so one topic I touched on in the lost report was the interview Amy Goodman did last week with Staughton Lynd which is the type of coverage we should be seeing much more of. From where I sit, in my golden years, I do not see young people refusing to participate or shirking their responsibilities to stop the war. I cannot same the same about most of the independent media, print version, which seems to think telling us what lie was told on TV or acting as the same sort of mouthpiece for 'officials' as the mainstream media does is more important than addressing the war and covering the peace movement. Though not as old as me, I am sure they are old enough to know better.
How would the system handle that? Would they be able to? I thought of the old Woody Allen joke, from Love & Death and delivered by Diane Keaton, of how if everyone "If everyone went to the same restaurant on the same night and ordered blintzes, there'd be chaos."
For the record, I am not advocating that. I say that not out of fear of an overwhelmed military justice system. I say that because I firmly believe that if you think a war is illegal then it is your duty to stand up to it and if that means self-check out, then so be it.
I think we have seen more bravery from those who have left the military on their own than we have seen in six years from the current administration.
But to stay with that thought for a moment more, what would it mean to coverage? Would there be more or would there be less?
Regardless of the hypothetical, Kyle Snyder announced return comes at a time when we have seen some very disappointing coverage of war resisters from independent media. This was one of the key stories of the summer as various people went public or, in some case, went even more public. Court-martials and Article 32 hearings began and ended as most of us were left to wonder where was independent media?
Maybe they failed to grasp what was going on? If that were the case, they have had plenty of time to process it and I will be very curious to see how they do or do not cover Mr. Snyder?
Community member Greg noted Stephen Philion's interview with professor, author and Vietnam vet Jerry Lembcke in CounterPunch. In the interview, the two men discuss the Vietnam spitting myth that took hold despite reality. They also address how a slogan was used to tap down on dissent in this war and Professor Lembcke offers a criticism about some anti-war rallies that, my opinion, also applies to independent media coverage. I would boil that down to watering down your message to play safe. The sort of option that one might use if they wanted to cover Iraq but were more comfortable hiding behind what, for instances, generals say as opposed to what the people say.
I can remember Vietnam and I cannot imagine any of my fellow activists buying into the line of "Let's hide behind the generals." But today that seems to be much more common as people hide in some sort of search of 'respectability' and 'reasoned.' There will never be anything 'respectable' or 'reasoned' about the illegal war and making the assumption that because military brass is critical of the orders coming out of the White House should not translate to, "Listen to us, we will bring all the troops home." That was not reality during Vietnam and it is not reality today.
But, after awhile, you have to wonder what is or passes for reality today? Sir! No Sir! has to be the most watched film in my family. We pass the DVD of the documentary back and forth, we have watched it together countless times. In the film, Professor Lembcke also addresses the myth of the spitting. He also speaks of how, at the time, the myth would not take hold because people knew what was going on. They knew, for instance, that among those protesting the war were vets and how you could read about that in Life and countless other periodicals as well as see it on your television set.
Today that is not the case. I can pick up an independent publication and read about everything except the peace movement. If someone, anyone, offers a critique and they are not a part of the movement, I can watch as independent media gloms on them. Sadly, that includes James Baker whose recent coverage should be clipped by Mr. Baker and put into a scrapbook because I am sure he has never received so many valentines in one year. But those protesting the war, the fact that it is illegal and immoral, they don't receive valentines, they really do not recieve coverage.
I share Rob and Kara's enthusiasm for Christian Hill's "Activists are a diverse group" and I share their regrest that the article, an important one, comes via a mainstream newspaper, The Olympian, and not one of our independent periodicals. As a grandmother of very active, very vocal teenagers and young adults opposed to the war, I find it amazing that so many columns are written by people willing to show off their own ignorance as they attack today's youth for not being active when, if you ask me, the ones not being active is independnent media which acts not as a leader in covering the illegal war but as outlets fearful of not toeing the line.
In my last posted report, I specifically critized Democracy Now! so one topic I touched on in the lost report was the interview Amy Goodman did last week with Staughton Lynd which is the type of coverage we should be seeing much more of. From where I sit, in my golden years, I do not see young people refusing to participate or shirking their responsibilities to stop the war. I cannot same the same about most of the independent media, print version, which seems to think telling us what lie was told on TV or acting as the same sort of mouthpiece for 'officials' as the mainstream media does is more important than addressing the war and covering the peace movement. Though not as old as me, I am sure they are old enough to know better.
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C.I. offers a reality check
Bully Boy doesn't know the number of US fatalities but timid media can't tell you that
"This month we've lost 93 service members in Iraq; the most since October of 2005."
That's what the Bully Boy said yesterday morning in his press conference. We noted it in the snapshot yesterday and noted the number wasn't right. CNN has this remark in their partial transcript.
Who was going to call Bully Boy out in the mainstream media? I have no idea I was on plane when the networks broadcast their evening news. What I do see in the e-mails is anger and disbelief that our independent media not only didn't question the figure but repeated it as fact.
Fearless leader says it so it must be true? Is that how it works?
That's embarrassing and shameful and if you're doing the news and you don't know the count then you're not paying enough attention to Iraq.
From CNN today:
Five U.S. troops have died during military operations in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, a U.S. military statement said Thursday.
The deaths bring the U.S. military death toll in October to 96, the highest monthly toll since October a year ago.
"One Sailor assigned to 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 and two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died Wednesday from injuries sustained due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province," the statement said.
Thursday the military announced five US troops had died. That brought the toll to 96. 96 minus 5 is? 91. Which was the number when Bully Boy spoke yesterday.
Bully Boy didn't get the number right. If you think the number matters then his 'mistake' matters. If you look at the casual way he's treated this illegal war from the start, then his 'mistake' goes to pattern. He stood up before the press and the people to make his soft-sell on his illegal war yesterday and he couldn't even get the number of troops who had died this month correct. That is shameful.
That others don't want to call him out on it shows you how timid and frightened many still are. (But don't forget the lapdogs and the handmaidens who've served this administration from the start.)
Here's AP:
The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of five U.S. troops in fighting in Iraq, raising to 96 the number of American forces killed this month.
The four Marines and one Navy sailor all died in fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi government allies.
The latest deaths raised to 96 the number of U.S. forces killed in October, the highest toll for any month this year and on course to surpass the October 2005 total of 96.
From the New York Times transcript of the song and dance yesterday:
And we've suffered casualties of our own. This month we've lost 93 servicemembers in Iraq; the most since October of 2005.
Watch how Jim Rutenberg looks the other way in "Conceding Missteps, Bush Urges Patience on Iraq" (New York Times):
Before taking questions from reporters, Mr. Bush offered an opening statement that amounted to a kind of scorecard for Iraq, in which he acknowledged disappointments as well as successes. Among successes, he listed the capture of Saddam Hussein, free elections, and economic progress for farms and small businesses. Among the developments he called "not encouraging," he listed "the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the fact that we did not find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the continued loss of some of America’s finest sons and daughters."
Notice it? Rutenberg takes a pass on Bully Boy's mistake because, heaven forbid, to this day, that the idiot get called out on the fact that he doesn't pay attention to anything. From the CNN transcript:
Other developments were not encouraging, such as the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the fact that we did not find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the continued loss of some of America's finest sons and daughters.
Recently, American and Iraqi forces have launched some of the most aggressive operations on enemy forces in Baghdad since the war began. They have cleared neighborhoods of terrorists and death squads and uncovered large caches of weapons, including sniper scopes and mortars and powerful bombs.
There had been heavy fighting. Many enemy fighters had been killed or captured.
And we've suffered casualties of our own. This month we've lost 93 service members in Iraq; the most since October of 2005.
I understand (from the e-mails) that one program made a big to do about the fact that Bully Boy didn't note the 655,000 from The Lancet study (Iraqis who've died due to the war). Way to focus. Way to zoom in. Bully Boy's denied that. He's refused that study. (I believe the study.) He's not going to attempt to sway the American voters by bringing up that number. Get real and grow up.
If you mistook that critique for bravery, it wasn't. Bully Boy's never been concerned about Iraqi fatalities. He is, however, attempting to switch the debate by acting as though he's concerned about the 'toll' it's taken on 'all of us' (which, in his mind, translates as American voters). And to show his 'concern,' he tosses out a number of Americans troops who died this month in the Iraq war. The number is incorrect. That does matter.
The press covering for him (apparently the press is all press, big and small)? That's shameful.
The count was 91 until the US military announced the five today. Bully Boy doesn't announce the count. If you have a loved one serving in Iraq and you heard '93,' chances are (unlike the news media) you knew the count, you knew the number. Your first thought was, "Two more?" And your second thought was wondering if it was your loved one? If that was your story, you spent Wednesday trying to find out details.
Bully Boy got the count wrong. While pretending that he cares about American troops who have died while serving in his illegal war, he couldn't even be bothered with getting the number right and our media, big and small, seems too scared to tell the American people that fact.
Also flying his coward flag today is John M. Broder with what's billed as a "news analysis" by the New York Times and entitled "Bush's Gamble: Turning the Spotlight on the Iraq War as Republicans Try to Dim It." Broder's 'analyzing' the speech but can't point out that Bully Boy didn't know how many American troops died this month in Iraq.
Alternative theory, the media's not a coward -- they, like the Bully Boy, just don't give a damn about how many American soldiers died.
The number who've died matters. You're dreaming and worse if you think Bully Boy's going to suddenly say, "By golly, The Lancet study was right!" But if you're trying to demonstrate that he just doesn't care, the answer was right there but, from the e-mails, even small media couldn't address it. That's shameful. The American toll was tossed out as sap for American voters. This wasn't an 'international' speech, this was an attempt to sway voters. The point, that media wants to look away from, is that even when trying to sway (American) voters, Bully Boy and his handlers don't even care enough to get the number of American troops who've died in this war correct. Looking the other way or jerking off to the fact that (no surprise), he didn't mention the 655,000 number (which he doesn't accept) is making yourself useless.
That's what the Bully Boy said yesterday morning in his press conference. We noted it in the snapshot yesterday and noted the number wasn't right. CNN has this remark in their partial transcript.
Who was going to call Bully Boy out in the mainstream media? I have no idea I was on plane when the networks broadcast their evening news. What I do see in the e-mails is anger and disbelief that our independent media not only didn't question the figure but repeated it as fact.
Fearless leader says it so it must be true? Is that how it works?
That's embarrassing and shameful and if you're doing the news and you don't know the count then you're not paying enough attention to Iraq.
From CNN today:
Five U.S. troops have died during military operations in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, a U.S. military statement said Thursday.
The deaths bring the U.S. military death toll in October to 96, the highest monthly toll since October a year ago.
"One Sailor assigned to 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 and two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died Wednesday from injuries sustained due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province," the statement said.
Thursday the military announced five US troops had died. That brought the toll to 96. 96 minus 5 is? 91. Which was the number when Bully Boy spoke yesterday.
Bully Boy didn't get the number right. If you think the number matters then his 'mistake' matters. If you look at the casual way he's treated this illegal war from the start, then his 'mistake' goes to pattern. He stood up before the press and the people to make his soft-sell on his illegal war yesterday and he couldn't even get the number of troops who had died this month correct. That is shameful.
That others don't want to call him out on it shows you how timid and frightened many still are. (But don't forget the lapdogs and the handmaidens who've served this administration from the start.)
Here's AP:
The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of five U.S. troops in fighting in Iraq, raising to 96 the number of American forces killed this month.
The four Marines and one Navy sailor all died in fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi government allies.
The latest deaths raised to 96 the number of U.S. forces killed in October, the highest toll for any month this year and on course to surpass the October 2005 total of 96.
From the New York Times transcript of the song and dance yesterday:
And we've suffered casualties of our own. This month we've lost 93 servicemembers in Iraq; the most since October of 2005.
Watch how Jim Rutenberg looks the other way in "Conceding Missteps, Bush Urges Patience on Iraq" (New York Times):
Before taking questions from reporters, Mr. Bush offered an opening statement that amounted to a kind of scorecard for Iraq, in which he acknowledged disappointments as well as successes. Among successes, he listed the capture of Saddam Hussein, free elections, and economic progress for farms and small businesses. Among the developments he called "not encouraging," he listed "the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the fact that we did not find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the continued loss of some of America’s finest sons and daughters."
Notice it? Rutenberg takes a pass on Bully Boy's mistake because, heaven forbid, to this day, that the idiot get called out on the fact that he doesn't pay attention to anything. From the CNN transcript:
Other developments were not encouraging, such as the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the fact that we did not find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the continued loss of some of America's finest sons and daughters.
Recently, American and Iraqi forces have launched some of the most aggressive operations on enemy forces in Baghdad since the war began. They have cleared neighborhoods of terrorists and death squads and uncovered large caches of weapons, including sniper scopes and mortars and powerful bombs.
There had been heavy fighting. Many enemy fighters had been killed or captured.
And we've suffered casualties of our own. This month we've lost 93 service members in Iraq; the most since October of 2005.
I understand (from the e-mails) that one program made a big to do about the fact that Bully Boy didn't note the 655,000 from The Lancet study (Iraqis who've died due to the war). Way to focus. Way to zoom in. Bully Boy's denied that. He's refused that study. (I believe the study.) He's not going to attempt to sway the American voters by bringing up that number. Get real and grow up.
If you mistook that critique for bravery, it wasn't. Bully Boy's never been concerned about Iraqi fatalities. He is, however, attempting to switch the debate by acting as though he's concerned about the 'toll' it's taken on 'all of us' (which, in his mind, translates as American voters). And to show his 'concern,' he tosses out a number of Americans troops who died this month in the Iraq war. The number is incorrect. That does matter.
The press covering for him (apparently the press is all press, big and small)? That's shameful.
The count was 91 until the US military announced the five today. Bully Boy doesn't announce the count. If you have a loved one serving in Iraq and you heard '93,' chances are (unlike the news media) you knew the count, you knew the number. Your first thought was, "Two more?" And your second thought was wondering if it was your loved one? If that was your story, you spent Wednesday trying to find out details.
Bully Boy got the count wrong. While pretending that he cares about American troops who have died while serving in his illegal war, he couldn't even be bothered with getting the number right and our media, big and small, seems too scared to tell the American people that fact.
Also flying his coward flag today is John M. Broder with what's billed as a "news analysis" by the New York Times and entitled "Bush's Gamble: Turning the Spotlight on the Iraq War as Republicans Try to Dim It." Broder's 'analyzing' the speech but can't point out that Bully Boy didn't know how many American troops died this month in Iraq.
Alternative theory, the media's not a coward -- they, like the Bully Boy, just don't give a damn about how many American soldiers died.
The number who've died matters. You're dreaming and worse if you think Bully Boy's going to suddenly say, "By golly, The Lancet study was right!" But if you're trying to demonstrate that he just doesn't care, the answer was right there but, from the e-mails, even small media couldn't address it. That's shameful. The American toll was tossed out as sap for American voters. This wasn't an 'international' speech, this was an attempt to sway voters. The point, that media wants to look away from, is that even when trying to sway (American) voters, Bully Boy and his handlers don't even care enough to get the number of American troops who've died in this war correct. Looking the other way or jerking off to the fact that (no surprise), he didn't mention the 655,000 number (which he doesn't accept) is making yourself useless.
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