Tuesday, July 31, 2007

I've been going through Rolling Stone's "The 40 Essential Albums of 1967" (written by Robert Christgau and David Fricke), so I thought I'd take a look at my records and see what they missed. Some candidates:

• Captain Beefheart, Safe as Milk (Buddah)
• Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia)
• Miles Davis, Nefertiti (Columbia)
• Duke Ellington, His Mother Called Him Bill (RCA)
• Johnny Hodges, Triple Play (RCA)
• Skip James, Devil Got My Woman (Vanguard)
• Magic Sam, West Side Soul (Delmark)
• Otis Redding, Love Man (Atco)
• Otis Redding, The Dock of the Bay (Atco)
• The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request (London)

Monday, July 30, 2007

Music: Current count 13447 [13406] rated (+41), 784 [800] unrated (-16). I can't recall a previous rated count over 40, and this one especially surprises me given what seemed to be a slow start. (OK, this should be easy enough to check out, with: fgrep 'rated (' *.nbk; which reveals: +60 (0503), +59 (0405), +54 (0602), +52 (0511), +49 (0503), +44 (0408), +42 (0403), +42 (0607), +41 (0512), +40 (0501). So it's not unprecedented, but the +60 and +59, for instance, included bunches of '70s LPs that I found in old records lists and remembered an approximate grade. The +49 week was spent playing unrated records and just grading them -- not trying to write much of anything. Some weeks are helped with catching up on sloppy bookkeeping, but I only recall one case this week where I found a missing grade. What helped this week was that I grabbed a pile of CDs from the library and ripped through them in one day, then I didn't get out of the house on the weekend. Still, I did quite a bit of jazz prospecting, and came close to finishing August's Recycled Goods column. The latter is at most a day away, and I'm in a good position to crunch down on Jazz CG.

Another thing the quick search shows is that the average rated count this year is 23.68. That amounts to a little more than 1000 per year. Also note that the unrated count dropped below 800 for the first time in ages. Last week was a very slow mail week, aside from everything else.

• King Sunny Ade: Gems From the Classic Years (1967-1974) (1967-74 [2007], Shanachie): In 1982, Chris Blackwell's Island Records, having turned Bob Marley into a worldwide star, gambled they could do the same with Nigerian juju master King Sunny Ade. They released three albums, spent a lot of money schlepping Ade's entourage around, and gave up. Even at the time, Ade didn't seem like such a long bet: his Nigerian albums were legendary among the few who had heard them, and his sweet guitars, polypercussion, and hypnotic chants were as effervescent as any music anywhere. Two decades later Shanachie raided the earliest Nigerian albums for a stellar compilation, The Best of the Classic Years (1967-74 [2003], Shanachie). Here they belatedly return for more, signalling in title, packaging, and lack of documentation that these leftovers aren't quite up to snuff. They should be more confident. In fact, what they should do is track down an expert and reissue the whole series of pre-Island albums with histories and maybe even some bonus tracks. I've always heard that The Message, Ajoo, Bobby, and one from 1980 with a red cover are especially wonderful. A-
• Miles Davis: Love Songs 2 (1956-84 [2003], Columbia/Legacy): Starts off with two terrific Cole Porter songs, including an 11:46 "Love for Sale" that's pretty much all you need to know about Miles c. 1958. The small group stuff doesn't prepare you for the slide into Gil Davis producerland, which at first appears unnecessarily ornate. I'm not a big fan of those records, but even I would rather have them whole, where they stand on their own. Then they jump to the '80s, landing in a funky spot that turns unpleasantly mushy. B
• Bill Frisell: The Intercontinentals (2003, Nonesuch): Nice groove record, with oud (Christos Govetas), steel guitar (Greg Leisz), percussion (Sidiki Cmara, Vinicius Cantuaria, the latter also playing some guitar), and violin (Jenny Scheinman). Vocals don't help, but don't hurt much either. B+(***)
• The Dizzy Gillespie Story (1945-50 [2003], Savoy Jazz): Eight 1950 tracks with Gillespie towering over Johnny Richards and His Orchestra, a strings-dominated classical confab that's as awful as the string ensembles Charlie Parker worked with. As with Parker's strings, it may have been gratifying to the artist at the time, but there's no need returning to the event. The album's padded out with four 1946 cuts with Ray Brown's All Stars, including Hank Jones, Milt Jackson, James Moody, and an alto saxophonist named John Brown who sounds an awful lot like Charlie Parker. Two bonus tracks pick up Gillespie in Boyd Raeburn's 1945 orchestra. B
• Earl Hines: Swingin' Away (1973 [1995], Black Lion): Two sextet sessions with Doc Cheatham and Rudy Rutherford, fleet-footed, hard swinging, terrific piano player; what'd you expect? B+
• Billie Holiday: Love Songs 2 (1936-41 [2003], Columbia/Legacy): Missed the first one, but no matter -- I have Columbia's nine Quintessential discs, but not the big box. With bits like "These Foolish Things," "A Fine Romance," "He's Funny That Way," "Body and Soul," and "I Cover the Waterfront," they're a long way from scraping bottom. Redundant to any other compilation. A-
• LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver (2006 [2007], DFA/Capitol): Not much impressed by the vocalist, but each pulsing riff turns me on. From library, so I'm working fast. B+(***)
• Daniel Lee Martin: On My Way to You (2007, Chin Music): Country singer -- maybe alt, certainly neotrad. I used to be getting some of these, but they've pretty much died off since F5 folded, and frankly I haven't had time. But I used to find a few gems in mail like this. This may be a cut below, but it's a real solid album. Sounds impeccable. Great voice. Pretty good songs. B+(**)
• Fats Navarro: Nostalgia (1946-47 [1991], Savoy Jazz): Three sessions, four cuts each, about par for the 78 era. Although Navarro plays on all three, only the first four cuts were really his, where he leads a quintet with Charlie Rouse, plays the title cut, and filler like "Fats Blows." Next up is another quintet, playing four songs credited to the tenor saxman: three titles are "Dextivity," "Dextrose," and "Dexter's Mood." Gordon is terrific throughout. The other session, last on the record but first chronologically, is a sextet led by Eddie Davis, with someone named Huey Long on guitar. Research indicates that Long was one of the original Ink Spots, lives in Houston, and was still around to celebrate his 102nd birthday last September. A-
• Putumayo World Party (1975-2007 [2007], Putumayo World Music): Groove-wise this holds up all right, with pieces from Haiti and Martinique in the lead, followed by one from Italy; the weak spot is a group called Laid Back from Denmark; the odd choice is a 1975 crossover by Osibisa (UK out of Ghana), which with a Zydeco cut violates the label's usual habit of only picking up recent, presumably cheap, obscurities. B
• Pharoah Sanders: Moon Child (1989, Timeless): Cut with a no-name quintet in Paris, sandwiched between what may have been his two best albums (Africa and Welcome to Love), this pales only in comparison, and maybe in concept. The title piece includes a throwaway hippie chant, and the closer is an Abdullah Ibrahim thing he doesn't do much with but is wonderful anyway. B+(***)
• The Spiritualaires of Hurtsboro, Alabama: Singing Songs of Praise (2004-05 (2007), CaseQuarter): One of the last active vocal groups from gospel's golden age, led by Robert Marion, who joined as a teenager in 1948, with new guy Jimmy Anthony joining in the early '80s; the rough-edged simplicity works as long as the guitar pushes them along, but free-form pieces like "The Lord's Prayer" are as awkward as ever. B+(*)

Jazz Prospecting (CG #14, Part 7)

Another week in the middle, with a little bit of this, that, and the other. Recycled Goods is still pending, but I should get past that in a day or two. I actually did manage to write a bit on Jazz CG this week, which tips it past the half-way point. This makes me think that it may be time to start to close down this cycle -- there's enough rated stuff to fill out a column, including pick hits if I don't get squeamish about Vandermark and Murray. Probably a dud down there too, somewhere. Hardly got any mail last week, so for once the replay shelves are fuller than the unplayed shelves. A quick check of this cycle's prospecting file adds up to 183 records, closing in fast on last cycle's 218. So maybe it's time.

Kelly Eisenhour: Seek and Find (2007, BluJazz): Jazz singer, originally from Tucson, graduated from Berklee, currently based in Salt Lake City, teaching at Brigham Young -- has an entry at "Famous Mormons in Music," along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Osmonds, the Killers, Warren Zevon, and Arthur "Killer" Kane. Third album. Terrific voice, clear, sharp, arresting. Wrote the title cut and some vocalese lyrics, but mostly takes standards and gives them distinctive readings. Bob Mintzer gets a "featuring" on the cover, and repays it with tasty sax accompaniment. B+(*)

Alison Faith Levy & Mushroom: Yesterday, I Saw You Kissing Tiny Flowers (2002-05 [2007], 4Zero): Levy is a San Francisco singer-songwriter, with credits going back to a 1994 EP -- only one I've heard before is a bit part on Mushroom's Glazed Popems. AMG classifies her as Alternative Pop/Rock and Indie Rock. AMG classifies Mushroom as Experimental Rock, Prog-Rock/Art Rock, Kraut Rock, Instrumental Rock, Jazz-Rock, Avant-Prog, Psychedelic, and figures their influences to have been Herbie Hancock, King Crimson, Caravan, Can, and Gong. The group has a dozen or so records, but once more, I've only heard Glazed Popems (although I do have a new one with Eddie Gale in the queue), which is some sort of '60s London tribute. Among the others are titles that suggest they're a real critics band, like Mad Dogs and San Franciscans and Foxy Music. I haven't tried to work out the comings and goings, but aside from Levy, the only constant on the four sessions here is drummer Pat Thomas. Maybe it's the band vibe, but Levy reminds me enough of Grace Slick to make this sound like a postmodern, not to mention postrevolution, Jefferson Airplane -- certainly a more interesting tangent than Paul Kantner's Starship. [B+(**)]

Mushroom With Eddie Gale: Joint Happening (2007, Hyena): No recording date info -- lack of documentation is Joel Dorn's characteristic contribution to the dark ages -- but at least we have personnel information, which helps sort out who is in Mushroom. Pat Thomas (drums), Ned Doherty (bass), and Matt Cunitz (keyboards) are on all cuts, with Thomas production supervisor and Cunitz cited for production assistance. Four cuts add Tim Plowman (guitar) and David Brandt (vibes, percussion). The other three use Erik Pearson (guitar, flute, sax) and Dave Mihaly (marimba, percussion), to similar effect. Gale is guest and headliner. He produced two terrific avant-funk albums for Blue Note in the late '60s, then largely disappeared until Water Records reissued them in 2003, followed by a nice new groovefest, Afro-Fire, on subsidiary label Black Beauty. Both labels were handled by Runt Distribution, whose publicist at the time was Pat Thomas, q.v. Together, the obvious reference point becomes Miles Davis, although the groove's spacier, and the trumpet brighter and more loquacious. [B+(***)]

Bruford: Rock Goes to College (1979 [2007], Winterfold): An Oxford concert, broadcast by the BBC, two albums into prog-rock's premier drummer's solo career, still pretending his last name was a group, not quite ready to call the music made of Allan Holdsworth's guitar and Dave Stewart's keybs fusion, let alone the jazz that got there first. Added attraction: two Annette Peacock vocals, but little more than perfunctory. B

Paul Scea: Contemporary Residents (2005 [2007], BluJazz): Plays flute, soprano and tenor sax, wind synth, etc. Teaches at West Virginia University (Morgantown WV). Has co-led groups with guitarist Steve Grismore (present here) and drummer Damon Short (absent; Marc Gratama is the drummer here), but this is first album solely under his own name. Reports describe him as heavily influenced by the '60s avant-garde, with his flute coming out of a line from Eric Dolphy through James Newton. Hard to tell. There's some edginess in the soprano sax, but the three horns -- Eric Haltmeier plays alto sax and clarinet, Brent Sandy trumpet -- do a lot of bobbing and weaving, and in any case the electric guitar and bass -- Grismore and Anthony Cox -- run on fusion lines. Sounds promising at times, but each of three plays left me with no net impressions. B

Helen Sung: Sungbird (2006 [2007], Sunnyside): Pianist, originally from Houston, educated in Boston, based in New York. Trained in classics, didn't take up jazz until well into college, which brought he under Kenny Barron's wing. Works in postbop mainstream, definitely knows her stuff. First album, a trio on Fresh Sound New Talent, was an Honorable Mention here. This one is a quintet, with extra percussion and Marcus Strickland on tenor and soprano sax. It's built on a tour of Spain, with a couple of stabs at tango and other dance themes, including the attractive title cut. I haven't digested the piano yet, which starts solo and takes a while to cohere, but I adore the light melodic flair Strickland adds, and may for once even prefer his soprano over tenor. [B+(***)]

Joan Stiles: Hurly-Burly (2005 [2007], Oo-Bla-Dee): Pianist, sings credibly on two cuts, but that's not her calling card. Second album, after Love Call (1998-2002 [2004], Zoho), which I've heard but didn't think much of and barely recall. Don't have birth date or biographical info suggesting her age -- one side comment about liking Monk and Evans as a teenager suggests an upper bound of 60. Teaches at New School, and has an interest in Mary Lou Williams. So I didn't expect much here, at least until I read the band roster: Jeremy Pelt, Steve Wilson, Joel Frahm, Peter Washington, Lewis Nash. They appear as a sextet on 4 of 12 cuts, dropping down to subsets for the rest, with one piano solo, a duo with Wilson, and various 3-4 configurations. The songs favor Monk, Ellington, and Williams, with Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz" and Jimmy Rowles' "The Peacocks" thrown in, a Ray Charles song (one of the vocals), and two or three originals -- the question is a juxtaposition of Monk and Ellington-Hodges called "The Brilliant Corners of Theloious' Jumpin' Jeep." The band is terrific, of course, but the pianist is impressively on top of everything. The Charles song has been sung better, but the other vocal, "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee," is a gas. Still need to play it again and pay some attention to the solo. [A-]

David Sills: Green (2006 [2007], Origin): Tenor saxophonist, based in Los Angeles, with a handful of albums since 1997, both under his own name and as the Acoustic Jazz Quartet. He has a big, smooth mainstream sound, the sort of thing I easily fall for. Also plays a little flute; nothing to complain about. Could be characterized as neo-cool, both in tone and in artful arrangement. Six-piece group, with Gary Foster's alto sax kept close, and both piano and guitar for chords. I don't find such complexity all that useful, but it's worth noting that this is the third appearance by guitarist Larry Koonse in my logs over the last two weeks, and again he adds something special. B+(*)

Ron Di Salvio: Essence of Green: A Tribute to a Kind of Blue (2005 [2007], Origin): Jazz pianist, from New York, lives and teaches in Kalamazoo, author of a book called The Marriage of Major and Minor, the Synthesis of Classical and Jazz Harmony. The booklet has some interesting theory about how this relates to the Miles Davis classic, but I'm just reacting to what I hear. Group is a septet, with Derrick Gardner's trumpet fronting three saxophones, and original band member Jimmy Cobb on drums. That affords a lot of harmonic options, a combination I find unappealing. Some pieces add a quartet of voices, arranged for vocalese. Some of this sails along marvelously, but too many things turn me off. B-

The Claudia Quintet: For (2006 [2007], Cuneiform): Booklet tells us nothing -- just four graphics, cutouts with large degradé pixels. Pattern shifting is also the music idea, but there at least it's grown far more sophisticated. When I first tuned in, on the group's second album (I Claudia), everything seemed to revolve around drummer John Hollenbeck's post-minimalist rhythms. Two albums later the music has broadened to the extent that there's no clear-cut center: Chris Speed's reeds, Matt Moran's vibes, Ted Reichman's accordion, even Drew Gress's bass, cloud up the picture, obscuring simple reactions or explanations. The hype sheet says "file under: jazz/post-jazz" as if anyone has a clue what "post-jazz" might be. The delta between this and what we conventionally think of as jazz is that this doesn't feel improvised, because it isn't built on individualism -- even when Moran talks, or Speed squawks. Rather, it has an organic vitality to it that envelops you, like something new age or ambient might aspire to but doesn't have the brains to make interesting enough. Yet I'm never really certain with this group: the last two albums took me ages to settle on, and this one raises the same conflicting responses. But it consistently scores points, and builds over time -- almost as if it makes marginality an aesthetic pursuit. Album title reflects each song having some sort of dedication, mostly to people I've never heard of -- the exception is Mary Cheney, who's offered an ode to pity. A-

Andy Milne: Dreams and False Alarms (2006 [2007], Songlines): Canadian pianist; studied with Oscar Peterson; moved to New York in 1991, working with M-Base; more lately formed a group called Dapp Theory. This is solo piano, mostly folk-rock tunes, with fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young the most frequent sources. Didn't readily ID familiar songs without listening closely, and wasn't able to manage that, although I found the deliberate pacing attractive as background. Life's not fair, but I'm pretty sure that if I stuck with it this is where I'd wind up. B+(*)

Andy Milne + Grégoire Maret: Scenarios (2007, Obliqsound): Maret plays harmonica. He's already won a Downbeat Rising Star poll, and seems likely to replace Toots Thielemans from his Misc. Inst. perch a year or two after he dies. He adds a complementary voice to Milne's piano, but perhaps a bit too complementary: interesting ideas, but not enough range to make for much of a contrast. Two cuts have a guest: Anne Drummond on alto flute; Gretchen Parlato singing "Moon River." B+(*)

Guy Klucevsek/Alan Bern: Notefalls (2006 [2007], Winter & Winter): I looked Klucevsek up in Wikipedia and saw that they have a link to "Avant-garde accordionists"; clicked that, and discovered that Klucevsek is the only one listed. That seems appropriate. I can think of some avant-jazz accordionists, but no one he's unique in having come out of the what I guess is called "modern composition" these days -- his early discography includes work with Lukas Foss, Virgil Thomson, Pauline Oliveros, people like that. Bern plays accordion as well, but his background is more common, coming out of the klezmer group Brave Old World. In the long run Klucevsek has ranged far and wide, including a fair amount of klezmer and polka, a lot of jazz, and an occasional appearance with someone like Laurie Anderson. This is his second duo album with Bern, who doubles up on accordion on several pieces, but more often plans piano, and in one case melodica. This is another record I'm cutting corners on. It feels composed through, and loses my interest in spots, but the upbeat cuts "Don't Let the Boogie-Man Get You" and "March of the Wild Turkey Hens" are choice. B+(*)

Albert van Veenendaal/Meinrad Kneer/Yonga Sun: Predictable Point of Impact (2006 [2007], Evil Rabbit): Dutch pianist, born 1956, leans avant, likes to work with prepared piano, in a trio with bassist Kneer and drummer Sun. Van Veenendaal's website lists 36 records, some credits pretty marginal; first is a 1981 LP, then a 1986 cassette, then a few side appearances from 1990; first with his name on marquee was a sax-piano duo in 2002. As far as I can tell, AMG only lists one of these records, with his name misspelled. Has one previous trio recod with this group, and two more prepared piano records on this label. I keep saying that I'll know a piano trio I like when I hear it, and this is it. Mostly hard rhythmic stuff, which bass and drums are clearly up for. One slow stretch shows off the prep very nicely, giving the roll a guitar-like sound. Elegant, low budget package, too. A-

Play Station 6: #1 (2006 [2007], Evil Rabbit): A sextet of more/less well known Dutch avant-gardists: Maartje Ten Hoorn on violin, Eric Boeren on clarinet, Tobias Delius on clarinet/tenor sax, Achim Kaufmann on piano, Meinrad Kneer on bass, Paul Lovens on drums. Strikes me as par for the course, with each player taking interesting but even-tempered shots without coming together into a more cohesive whole. Nothing wrong with that. B+(**)

Joachim Kühn/Majid Bekkas/Ramon Lopez: Kalimba (2006 [2007], ACT): Drummer Lopez has his name on the spine, but on the cover he's listed "with" below the title, while Kühn and Bekkas are in larger print above. He's a useful guy, but the action here is between the top-liners. Bekkas is a gnawa guy from Morocco. He plays guembri ("a bass-like lute"), oud, and kalimba, and sings, more like a stiff chant. I'm not sold on the latter, but I'm not turned off either. He makes for an interesting counterpoint to Kühn, who is dazzling as usual on piano, and surprisingly assured on alto sax. [B+(***)]

Nguyên Lê: Purple: Celebrating Jimi Hendrix (2002, ACT): Vietnamese guitarist, based in France, with ten or so albums going back to 1989. This is somewhat old, inexplicably showing up in the mail. A trio with guitar, electric bass, and drums, plus guests, including vocals and North African percusion. The vocals have a soft fuzziness, framing the words without really grabbing them, let alone cutting them off as Hendrix did. The guitar also lacks definition, although in the end the purple smudge does have some appeal. B

Nguyên Lê Duos: Homescape (2004-05 [2006], ACT): Home studio recordings, made at leisure with Lê on various guitars with various electronics and either Paolo Fresu or Dhafer Youssef. Fresu plays trumpet/flugelhorn; Youssef plays oud and sings. Not actually specified who played which tracks, but it wouldn't be hard to figure out if I had taken more careful notes. I could also point out choice cuts -- there are some, but not enough to draw another play right now. B+(*)

Kenny Burrell: 75th Birthday Bash Live! (2006 [2007], Blue Note): Advance had a different title, mentioning Yoshi's in Oakland, where some of this occured. However, other tracks were cut at Kuumbawa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz -- maybe the lawyers figured that out. Six tracks, mostly from Santa Cruz, feature the Gerald Wilsons Orchestra, sounding hoarse and wheezy. Joey DeFrancesco (3 cuts) hardly picks up the slack, especially when Hubert Laws (5 cuts) joins on flute. Burrell sings two, no help either. Early in his career Burrell established himself on solid albums with Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane; here the best he can do is Herman Riley, and it takes "A Night in Tunisia" to get Riley going. At least they didn't include any patter, but I'm too annoyed at the black-on-blue booklet print to cut them any slack over that. C+

James Carney Group: Green-Wood (2006 [2007], Songlines): Pianist, originally from Syracuse NY; studied in Los Angeles, where he was based until moving to NYC in 2004. Fourth album, widely spaced since 1994, and little side work, suggesting he sees himself primarily as a composer. Wrote or co-wrote everything here, including two pieces commissioned for the Syracuse International Film Festival. I'd never run across him before, but I recognize and have been impressed by everyone in his septet. The four horns -- Peter Epstein and Tony Malaby on reeds, Ralph Alessi and Josh Roseman on brass -- are especially formidable, but they also strike me as too much. But there are strong stretches here, and sterling individual play, not least from the pianist. B+(*) [Aug. 7]

Alan Ferber Nonet: The Compass (2006 [2007], Fresh Sound New Talent): Trombonist, twin brother of drummer Mark Ferber; not to be confused with saxophonist Alon Farber or trombonist Joe Fielder let alone drummer Alvin Fielder, though sometimes it takes some effort. Third album, second nonet, a configuration I almost always abhor. Played it to clear it off my shelf, then had to play it again to verify what I was hearing. It does have a fair amount of that complex postbop harmony I care so little for, but the delicate parts of something like "North Rampart" are luscious, even when the horns weigh in. And the charging trombone sells the hard stuff. B+(**)

Rodrigo Amado/Carlos Zíngaro/Tomas Ulrich/Ken Filiano: Surface: For Alto, Baritone and Strings (2006 [2007], European Echoes): Amado is a Portuguese saxophonist. Plays alto and baritone here, and wrote pieces where he accompanies a string trio -- Zíngaro plays violin and viola, whichever. Has a couple of previous albums, on his own and leading the Lisbon Improvisation Players. The string stuff here is what I like to call difficult music: arch, grating, hard to follow, sometimes hard to stand. I'm always surprised when I do and can, even more so when I start to enjoy it. [B+(**)]

Hugh Masekela: Live at the Market Theatre (2006 [2007], Times Square/4Q, 2CD): A 30th anniversary bash -- for the Johannesburg venue, that is; the South African trumpeter-vocalist goes back further, having started his globetrotting at least a decade earlier. This is a triumph, an informal career summary that tracks the struggle against apartheid and baser oppressions. Its two discs allow him to stretch out and work the crowd, even to preach a little, knowing there's more than celebrating left to do, but pleased to be there that night. A-

New Wonderland: The Best of Jeri Brown (1991-2006 [2007], Justin Time): Canadian jazz singer, with nine solid albums providing plenty of choice material, but it's the players who shine -- especially Kirk Lightsey on "Orange Colored Sky" and David Murray on "Joy." On the other hand, they gamble with four previously unreleased cuts, which are anything but choice. B

Daniel Carter & Matt Lavelle: Live at Tower Records (2006, Tubman Atnimara): A CDR, part of a series of items Lavelle sent me for background. Just a duo, eight pieces, both musicians moving from instrument to instrument: Carter plays tenor sax, alto sax, clarinet, piano, flute; Lavelle plays piano, pocket trumpet, bass clarinet, flugelhorn, trumpet. By far the most interesting is Lavelle's bass clarinet, but overall not a lot of chemistry or action. B-

Matt Lavelle and Daniel Carter (2006. downtownmusic.net): Another duo, just a CDR in a plastic scallop case, recorded at Downtown Music Gallery. Four pieces, much further developed than the Tower Records set. Still, typical of avant duos, limited pallette of sounds, a lot of feeling each other out, but strong performances if you pay attention. B

Matt Lavelle: Cuica in the Third House (2007, KMB): Solo project, with spoken bits I didn't really follow, and blasts of trumpet or flugelhorn and bass clarinet, as interesting as ever. Limited edition CDR, hand packaged. B

Spark Trio: Short Stories in Sound (2006, Utech): Another limited edition CDR, a trio with saxophonist Ras Moshe, drummer Todd Capp, and Matt Lavelle on trumpet and bass clarinet. Energetic thrash, especially from the drummer, who strikes me as overly busy. The horns are in your face throughout. I find them bracing and sometimese exciting, but this is not the sort of thing I can easily recommend to non-believers. B

Matt Lavelle: Trumpet Rising Bass-Clarinet Moon (2004, 577 Records): Recorded live, with a quintet. If guitarist Anders Neilson isn't a typo, he's as obcure as the rest -- Atiba N. Kwabena on djembe, flute, percusion; Francois Grillot on bass; Federick Ughi on drums. They provide a more varied background than the duo/trio albums, but the focus is still on Lavelle's trumpet and bass clarinet -- both distinctive. Lavelle describes this as "a summation of my work from 1990-2000," and dedicated it to the late Sir Hildred Humphries, his formative link back to the pre-bop era. B+(**)

Eye Contact: War Rug (2006 [2007], KMB Jazz): Musician credits in booklet are: "Cuica-Wind," "The Cuica-Earth," "Lone Wolf-Tree." Elsewhere they've been identified as Matt Lavelle (trumpet, bass clarinet), Matthew Heyner (bass), Ryan Sawyer (drums). Looks like there have been two previous Eye Contact albums, on Utech. Seems understated compared to the other Lavelle records, which may be a help but allows for some dull spots. B+(*)

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around.

Circus (2006, ICP): Dutch avant-garde group, with four more/less well known names -- Han Bennink, Ab Baars, Misha Mengelberg, Tristan Honsinger -- and vocalist Alessandra Patrucco. The fractured music is often interesting, but not enough to carry the fractured vocalizing -- at times shrill, often just thin. B

Michel Camilo: Spirit of the Moment (2006 [2007], Telarc): Dominican pianist, although even with Puerto Rican Charles Flores on bass and Cuban Dafnis Prieto on drums, this hardly counts as Latin jazz. The covers draw on the Miles Davis songbook, including Coltrane and Shorter, and the originals fit in. A skillful group, and an appealing piano trio record. B+(**)

The Tierney Sutton Band: On the Other Side (2006 [2007], Telarc): Her pursuit of happiness bags eight songs with "happy" in the title, plus "You Are My Sunshine," "Smile," and "Great Day!" -- more fascinated with the search than the attainment, which she has reservations about anyway. Maybe that explains the odd song out, "Haunted Heart" -- the whole album feels haunted, from its tentative opening exhortation ("Get Happy") to its wistful end. I never thought she had a good album in her, much less a great concept. Last time all she aspired to was to be with the band; this time the band's with her. A-

Unpacking:

• Arjun: Pieces (Pheromone)
• Dave Brubeck: Indian Summer (Telarc)
• John Coltrane: Fearless Leader (1956-58, Prestige, 6CD)
• Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet: Inner Constallation: Volume One (Nemu)
• El-P: I'll Sleep When You're Dead (Definitive Jux)
• Bill Mays/The Inventions Trio: Fantasy (Palmetto): advance, Aug. 21
• Arturo O'Farrill: Wonderful Discovery (MEII)
• Lalo Schifrin & Friends (Aleph)
• Maris Schneider Orchestra: Sky Blue (ArtistShare)

Purchases:

• Celia Cruz con la Sonora Matancera: La Guarachera de Cuba (1950-53, Tumbao)
• Julio Cueva y Su Orchestra: Desintegrando (1944-47, Tumbao)
• Benny Moré y Su Banda Gigante: El Legendario Ídolo del Pueblo Cubano: Grabaciones Completas 1953-1960 (Tumbao, 4CD)
• Perez Prado and His Orchestra: Kuba-Mambo (1947-49, Tumbao)
• Arsenio Rodriguez y Su Conjunto: Dundunbanza (1946-51, Tumbao)
• Sonora Matancera: Se Formó la Rumbantela (1948, Tumbao)
• Sexteto Nacional: Cubaneo (1927-28, Tumbao)
• Sexteto y Septeto Habanero: Las Raíces del Son: Grabaciones Completas 1925-1931 (Tumbao, 4CD)

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Posted the Tom Segev 1967 book quotes.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Weekly Links

It occurred to me that I should open a file where I jot down links to significant pieces I read on the web. Then it occurred to me that I could track them in my "scratch" file and dump out a report once a week, like I do with my Jazz Prospecting. Figured Saturday might be a good day for such a report. Here's the first installment:

TomDispatch: Agency of Rogues: Chalmers Johnson reviews Tim Weiner's CIA history, Legacy of Ashes, for TomDispatch. I've posted a quote from this already. I saw a bit of a Charlie Rose interview with Weiner, but turned it off as both were getting too stupid to bear. Rose wanted to know which secret intelligence agencies were actually any good, so Weiner offered that the UK's isn't bad. Both seem to still cling to the belief that the CIA is a necessity in today's world. Johnson argues that the State Dept. can collect info about foreign countries, and the Defense Dept. can blow things up on the rare occasions when someone thinks that is called for. He didn't go into this, but it should be straightforward to set up international laws regarding terrorism and organizations to coordinate policing and justice -- the FBI and DOJ would be the obvious US agencies to work on that.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Lawrence Wright on TV. He told a story about after many attempts finally getting a confidential copy of the CIA's dossier on Osama Bin Laden, and discovering that everything in it was wrong.

Rootless Cosmpoloitan: Why an EU That Knows Better Apes the US on Hamas: Tony Karon, Mark Perry, and others. One of the most discouraging things in the world these days is how Europeans who certainly know better have failed to break with Bush on almost every aspect of US policy in the Middle East -- the opposition to the democratically elected Hamas government in Occupied Palestine just one major case in point. Karon polls several friends on the subject. He doesn't get a lot of insight, but at least exposes the problem. One odd thing here is that eventually the EU will break free, once they get an American leader who is less demanding and less nuts than Bush, much like Eastern Europe broke not from Brezhnev, Kruschev, or Stalin, but from the one Soviet leader who offered reform, Gorbachev. On the other hand, the time when someone needs to stand up to Bush is now.

Rootless Cosmopolitan: The Dissembling of Dennis Ross: Tony Karon on America's favorite Israeli apologist:

Having presided over the failure of the U.S. to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, [Ross] now puts himself forward as a sage among sages (lately by writing a book about 'statecraft' in which he introduces some of the .101s of diplomacy as if these were prophetic revelations, and always evading the policy failures he helped author).

TomDispatch: Democratic Doublespeak on Iraq: Ira Chernus on Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, on how they won't quite withdraw from Iraq:

With an election looming, the Democrats portray themselves as the polar opposite of the Republicans. They blame the Iraq fiasco entirely on Bush and the neocons, conveniently overlooking all the support Bush got from the Democratic elite before his military venture went sour. They talk as if the only issue that matters is whether or not we begin to withdraw some troops from Iraq sometime next year.

TomDispatch: How Withdrawal Came in from the Cold: Tom Engelhardt on the latest offical parsing of how we can't really afford to withdraw from Iraq. Like Israel's West Bank settlements, it turns out there's just too much stuff to move:

Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley caught the enormity of withdrawal this way: "In addition to 160,000 troops . . . , the U.S. presence in Iraq has ballooned over four years to include more than 180,000 civilians employed under U.S. government contracts -- at least 21,000 Americans, 43,000 other foreigners and 118,000 Iraqis -- and has spread to small 'cities' on fortified bases across Iraq." In fact, such lists turn out never to end -- as a series of anxious news reports have indicated -- right down to the enormous numbers of port-a-potties that must be disposed of.

Then there's the canard about the future bloodbath if we withdraw -- a replay of Vietnam, as if that actually happened. But, of course, it would be even worse in Iraq, with all that age-old sectarian strife.

WarInContext: Sectarian bias is a blight on a rare Afghan good news story: The story describes the restoration of a garden in Kabul. The comment:

Just suppose -- even though it might seem like a fanciful notion -- but just suppose that the response to the 9/11 attacks had been this: President Bush had noted that the attackers regarded the United States and the West as a threat to their culture. He thus declared that with the support of the American people he was going to demonstrate otherwise -- not necessarily with the hope of influencing ideologically-blinkered jihadists but in order to reach out to the population at large across the Muslim world. The United States was going to lead and encourage others to follow in an investment program aimed at restoring a multitude of sites of Islamic heritage to their former glory. The U.S. would do nothing more than provide funding -- project management, choice of sites etc. would all be handled by local organizations. Imagine what could have been done for less than it costs to fund the war in Iraq for just one month?

In that event would the United States not now surely be less likely to be attacked than it is? Far from appearing vulnerable, would it not have demonstrated towering strength? Rather than expressing its fear of the world, would it not have shown supreme confidence in its ability to act as a positive force? And even for those Americans who don't give a damn about the rest of the world, wouldn't it have simply been a cheap and practical way of defying a small but troublesome enemy?

All that stopped this happening was a failure of imagination and lack of courageous leadership. The little men with weak knees, small minds, big egos and fat wallets could never have dreamed of such a thing.

A good question for those tough-as-nails Democratic presidential candidates is: Why do they insist on acting on the same moral plane as Al-Qaeda? If that confuses them, the follow-up asks why can't they see the equivalence of us and them inevitably killing bystanders?

Free Democracy: Paul Krugman: The Sum of Some Fears: Krugman's column on falling stock prices is itself unremarkable, citing the usual fears of risk, the housing bubble, and oil prices -- in the latter case mentioning Peak Oil without weighing in on it. But the first three comments did weigh in. E.g.:

The Saudis are notorious for witholding information on their reserves and production. However, you don't have to go to Saudi to see they are struggling to maintain production now. Just look at what they are buying from the oil services companies -- smart well technology to shut off early water production, sand control screens, and even ESPs, or electric submersible pumps. At the same time they are spending billions redeveloping fields they had produced and abandoned earlier. They are drilling expensive maximum contact horizontal wells and moving OFFSHORE and developing heavy and sour oil and gas resources. IF they had ready reserves, or their fields were not in the last stages of production, they would not be doing any of this.

Also:

I would point out that one of the basic ideas of peak oil, namely that we will exhaust the cheap sources of oil and then increasingly have to replace them with more expensive oil (from ultra deep water, Arctic, and heavy/sour reserves) is playing out right now. The supergiant oil fields in production have been producing for several decades, and there simply are no direct replacements for them.

Finally, more philosophically:

The idea that we can have endless growth in consumption when our resources are finite never made much sense to me anyway, and surveys show rampant consumerism has failed to make us any happier. But maybe I'm just ill informed; perhaps an economist can explain how the 6.5 billion people on the planet can all enjoy standards of living that match the average American, since although estimates vary most seem to predict we would need an extra 9 planets to live like this?

Friday, July 27, 2007

Fact Checkers

David Remnick has a piece in The New Yorker this week, on Israeli ex-politician Avraham Burg, called "The Apostate." Remnick frequently dwells in a fantasy world where Israel is always nobly seeking peace according to a two-state scenario that Remnick often proclaims as self-evident. Still, I was astonished to read:

More recently, Hezbollah's ideological ally in Palestine, Hamas -- the Islamic Resistance Movement -- led a violent uprising in the Gaza Strip, overwhelming its secular rival, Fatah. Suddenly, Israel, backed by the United States, found itself propping up the Fatah leadership, in order not to lose the West Bank to Hamas as well.

I always thought The New Yorker was legendary for its fact-checking department. Leaving aside the question of whether the Hezbollah-Hamas alliance is anything more than the fevered product of neocon imagination -- if so it is the only functioning instance of Sunni-Shia harmony in today's Middle East -- the key error is Hamas came to power not by violent uprising but by a democratic election, which the US (over Israeli objections) first insisted on staging, then (with Israeli agreement) rejected, as (oops!) the wrong side won. The "violent uprising" -- actually, a coup attempt against the Hamas government -- was started by US-armed warlord Mohammed Dahlan's gang, which Hamas managed to disarm in Gaza, but not in the West Bank.

Maybe this escaped the fact-checkers because it was too gross to be seen as mere fact. It amounts to no less than a systematic abuse of history.

The main part of the article consists of a couple of quotes from an interview of Burg by Ari Shavit, resulting in numerous people attacking Burg. One quote ends with Burg saying: "There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part -- I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community -- I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don't understand me, either." Burg's outrage was his slandering of Zionism: "He describes the country in its current state as Holocaust-obsessed, militaristic, xenophobic, and, like Germany in the nineteen-thirties, vulnerable to an extremist minority."

Remnick's article bears out that description. Burg's critics put their outrage out front to avoid having to discuss anything substantial. Or they just dither around the edges, avoiding the subject, as in this quote:

"The comparison with pre-Nazi Germany is absurd," Shavit said over lunch one afternoon in Jerusalem. "Also, Israel was much more militaristic in the old days. I don't like the role of generals in political life, and i regret the lack of a Truman to restrain the influence of generals -- a tough, decent civilian who understands the need to use power but who is decisive in controlling the Army. But there is nothing here of that Junker tradition or even anything like America's military élites and academies. Israelis live in an open, free society with a very free spirit, even verging on anarchy. To describe us as a Bismarckian state with expansionist chauvinism -- if there was a grain of truth to that, it was thirty years ago! Soldiers here take off their uniforms as soon as they come home. They're not proud of their uniforms or their ranks. Wearing a uniform doesn't get you girls." There are anti-Arab racists in Israel, he added, but nothing like those in Burg's favorite part of the world. "There are actual racist parties in Continental Europe that are far more powerful than any of the sickening elements here," Shavit said. "There is no chance that an Israeli Day parade will draw as many as the number of people who came out for the Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv. So to describe this as a Prussian Sparta is ridiculous."

Then what is it? Much the same can be said about America, but still we have armed forces based in hundreds of countries abroad, including very hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we have an arsenal large enough to toast the entire earth. Talk to Americans in the streets all across the country and you'd never imagine we're capable of doing the things our government routinely does, but there's such an enormous disconnect between everyday life and politics in the US that those questions never even come up for debate -- no one is allowed to debate them. It's not surprising that the same thing applies in Israel, but there's also a lot of willful self-deception. Remnick quotes one poll as showing that 30% of Israelis want Yitzhak Rabin's assassin to be pardoned. It's hard to reconcile that with Shavit's comment about how marginal the "sickening elements" are.

Postscript: After writing this, I saw a note at WarInContext on a piece from Haaretz noting that 4,300 Israelis have received German citizenship in the past year. Paul Woodward commented, quoting Berg, then adding: "The willingness of Jews to 'return' to Germany is an indication that the possibility is now opening for some Israelis to go move beyond the core of that trauma. At the same time, Zionists will clearly feel threatened by the possibility that a significant number of the 300,000 Israelis entitled to German citizenship might take up that opportunity."

Having recently read Tom Segev's 1967 and Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree, I've been thinking about revisions to the piece plan piece I posted a couple of years ago. I've been looking for unilateral acts -- things that do not require Israeli agreement -- that would move the argument toward resolution. One thing that I think should be done would be for as many other countries as possible to adopt Israel's "Law of Return" and extend it to Palestinians as well as to Jews. It's very unlikely that it would have much if any demographic impact in any countries, but it would establish the point that Jews don't have to go to or stay in Israel -- that the whole world welcomes them. It would also help settle Palestinian refugees, making some small progress against their tragedy -- and thereby reducing the settlement problem. It would require some soul searching, and a commitment to respect and protect minority rights, but both of those would be good things. It would also drive the Zionists crazy, or crazier, because it would show up how dated and dysfunctional their ideology is.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Accumulation of Ashes

Chalmers Johnson has another review of Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, at TomDispatch. The dirt sure piles up there. He points out that Harry Truman justified founding the CIA by pointing to our need to never again be surprise-attacked like Pearl Harbor, a single mission that did us no good come 9/11/2001. The review pulls out more examples of incompetence and skullduggery, and comes to the same conclusions I did in yesterday's post -- that information collection and undercover operations are incompatible, and that the CIA should be abolished. But it adds something worth repeating about the role of journalism:

Tim Weiner's book, Legacy of Ashes, is important for many reasons, but certainly one is that it brings back from the dead the possibility that journalism can actually help citizens perform elementary oversight on our government. Until Weiner's magnificent effort, I would have agreed with Seymour Hersh that, in the current crisis of American governance and foreign policy, the failure of the press has been almost complete. Our journalists have generally not even tried to penetrate the layers of secrecy that the executive branch throws up to ward off scrutiny of its often illegal and incompetent activities. This is the first book I've read in a long time that documents its very important assertions in a way that goes well beyond asking readers merely to trust the reporter.

Weiner, a New York Times correspondent, has been working on Legacy of Ashes for 20 years. He has read over 50,000 government documents, mostly from the CIA, the White House, and the State Department. He was instrumental in causing the CIA Records Search Technology (CREST) program of the National Archives to declassify many of them, particularly in 2005 and 2006. He has read more than 2,000 oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers, and diplomats and has himself conducted more than 300 on-the-record interviews with current and past CIA officers, including ten former directors of central intelligence. Truly exceptional among authors of books on the CIA, he makes the following claim: "This book is on the record -- no anonymous sources, no blind quotations, no hearsay."

The key thing here is that Weiner is not just working to get the story but to establish the record. That's a high standard for journalists, one that achieves relative security against the by now commonplace use of leaks for spreading misinformation. But it also leaves us lacking the non-public part of the story, which in the case of the CIA is no doubt proportioned like an iceberg.

The main thing the CIA has going for itself isn't the secrets but the allure of secrecy -- our blind hope, or gullibility, that there must be something of more value than what they can disclose. Why anyone would believe that is hard to say: in this day and age, it's hard to imagine anyone, least of all a government bureaucracy, that wouldn't publicize, and for that matter glorify, anything it might pass off as an accomplishment.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Legacy of Ashes

Tim Weiner has a big new book out called Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007, Doubleday). He has previously written on the Aldrich Ames scandal, and has a 1990 book titled Black Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget, which while dated would be all the more relevant -- and no doubt much larger -- now. I'm not in a big hurry to read the CIA book, but a few paragraphs from Evan Thomas' summary in The New York Times Book Review will do for now:

Tim Weiner's engrossing, comprehensive Legacy of Ashes is a litany of failure, from the C.I.A.'s early days, when hundreds of agents were dropped behind the Iron Curtain to be killed or doubled (almost without exception), to more recent humiliations, like George Tenet's now infamous "slam dunk" line. Over the years, the agency threw around a lot of money and adopted a certain swagger. "We went all over the world and we did what we wanted," said Al Ulmer, the C.I.A.'s Far East division chief in the 1950s. "God, we had fun." But even their successes turned out to be failures. In 1963, the C.I.A. backed a coup to install the Baath Party in Iraq. "We came to power on a C.I.A. train," said Ali Saleh Saadi, the Baath Party interior minister. One of the train's passengers, Weiner notes, was a young assassin named Saddam Hussein. Weiner quotes Donald Gregg, a former C.I.A. station chief in South Korea, later the national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush: "The record in Europe was bad. The record in Asia was bad. The agency had a terrible record in its early days -- a great reputation and a terrible record." [ . . . ]

When presidents finally faced the reality that the agency was bumbling, they could be bitter. Reviewing the C.I.A.'s record after his two terms in office, Dwight Eisenhower told the director, Allen Dulles, "I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this." He would "leave a legacy of ashes" for his successor. A fan of Ian Fleming's spy stories, John F. Kennedy was shocked to be introduced to the man described by C.I.A. higher-ups as their James Bond -- the fat, alcoholic, unstable William Harvey, who ran a botched attempt to eliminate Fidel Castro by hiring the Mafia. Ronald Reagan went along with the desire of his C.I.A. director, William Casey, to bring back the mythical glory days by "unleashing" the agency -- and his presidency was badly undermined by the Iran-contra affair.

In Weiner's telling, a president trying to use the C.I.A. resembles Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. The role of Lucy is played by scheming or inept directors. Dulles is particularly egregious, a lazy, vain con artist who watches baseball games on television while half-listening to top-secret briefings (he assesses written briefings by their weight). Casey mumbles and lies and may have been almost mad from a brain tumor by the end. Even the more honorable directors, like Richard Helms, can't resist telling presidents what they want to hear. To fit the policy needs of the Nixon Whtie House in 1969, Helms doctored a C.I.A. estimate of Soviet nuclear forces. In a draft of the report, analysts had doubted the Soviet will or capacity to launch a nuclear strike. Helms erased this crucial passage -- and for years thereafter, untilt he end of the cold war, the C.I.A. overstated the rate at which the Soviets were modernizing their arsenal. The C.I.A.'s bogus intelligence on Iraq in 2002-3, based on the deceits of dubious sources like the one known as Curveball, was hardly unprecedented. To justify the Johnson administration's desire for a pro-war Congressional resolution on Vietnam in 1964, the intelligence community manufactured evidence of a Communist attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. [ . . . ]

High-ranking officials, it appears, were often the last to know. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Robert M. Gates, who is now the secretary of defense but at the time was the first President Bush's top intelligence adviser, was at a family picnic. A friend of his wife's joined the picnic and asked him, "What are you doing here?" Gates asked, "What are you talking about?" "The invasion," she said. "What invasion?" he asked. A year earlier, when the Berlin Wall fell, Milt Bearden, the leader of the C.I.A.'s Soviet division, was reduced to watching CNN and deflecting urgen calls from White House officials who wanted to know what the agency's spies were saying. "It was hard to confess that there were no Soviet spies worth a damn -- they had all been rounded up and killed, and no one at the C.I.A. knew why," Weiner writes. [ . . . ]

When Henry Kissinger traveled to China in 1971, Prime Minister Chou En-lai asked about C.I.A. subversion. Kissinger told Chou that he "vastly overestimated the competence of the C.I.A.." Chou persisted that "whenever something happens in the world they are always thought of." Kissinger acknowledged, "That is true, and it flatters them, but they don't deserve it."

A few years later, in 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the American embassy in Tehran. They captured a C.I.A. case officer named William Daugherty and accused him of running the agency's entire Middle Eastern spy network while plotting to assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini. Daugherty, who had been in the C.I.A. for only nine months, tried to explain that he didn't even speak the native tongue, Persian. The Iranians seemed offended that the Americans would send such an inexperienced spy. It was "beyond insult," Daugherty later recalled, "for that officer not to speak the language or know the customs, culture and history of their country."

I changed the order around, moving the Kissinger quote from the top to the bottom. Thomas winds up wondering, "Is an open democracy capable of building and sustaining an effective secret intelligence service? Maybe not." But rather than explore that question, he then throw in the towel: "But with Islamic terrorists vowing to set off a nuclear device in an American city, there isn't much choice but to keep on trying." Given these repeated failures, maybe a "secret intelligence service" isn't the right answer to such a terrorist threat. I doubt that the reason for the CIA problem has anything to do with the US being "an open democracy" -- that the CIA even exists suggests the US isn't as open as it should be, and the failures just go to show that the main effect of secrecy is to let the failures go uncorrected. I don't have a problem with intelligence gathering, but all intelligence is suspect unless it can be viewed and critiqued from all sides, which means it must be public.

If all the CIA did was to gather and analyze information, did so openly, in public from verifiable sources, and subjected it to open critique aimed at attaining the best understanding of the data possible, it wouldn't have the quality reputation it has, and it would also be spared the nefarious reputation of the "operations" department -- the dirty tricks branch of the spy racket. The record pretty clearly shows that the only thing worse than the CIA's operational failures has been its operational successes. Clearly, when the CIA backs a Mohammed Pahlevi or a Sese Mobutu or a Saddam Hussein or an Osama Bin Laden they have no clue what that's going to cost us in the end. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they shut down the KGB. We should have done the same to the CIA.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Leave Iraq Now

Davis Merritt wrote an op-ed in the Wichita Eagle today arguing that the US should leave Iraq now. Merritt's a former editor of the Eagle, where he pioneered some interesting ideas about how to develop a local newspaper as a dynamic force for democracy. After retiring, he wrote a good book, Knightfall, about how parent company Knight Ridder lost that vision. Haven't read much by him lately, but this makes two columns in a little over a week. Glad to see him back.

His conclusion is right, of course, but his argument has become such a cliché that it's worth commenting on:

For 1,400 years, radical elements of the Sunni and Shiite sects have been killing each other over questions of religion and tribal rivalries and resentments. They will continue to do it long after our surviving husbands and wives and daughters and sons are home.

What happened 1,400 years ago is hardly forgotten, at least on the Shiite side, but the intervening millenia haven't seen anything near continuous bloodshed. The real problem between Sunni and Shia is the recent violence, which is the result of cynical manipulation of group identity for political gain. It's generally true that Iraq has been dominated by Sunni elites going back from Saddam Hussein to the British to the Ottomans all the way back to the Abassids, but the real source of the violence has been political opportunism.

This started to emerge with the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, when Iran attempted to mobilize Iraqi Shiites to turn against Baghdad, much as Iraq tried to exploit Iran's Arab minority. Neither were all that successful, but in the 1990-91 war over Kuwait, George Bush managed to encourage a Shiite rebellion then let Saddam brutally suppress it, creating a sectarian wedge that a second George Bush could exploit later. Same thing happened with the Kurds, aided by Iran and/or the US to weaken Iraq, and often left hanging for their efforts. The more Kurds and Shiites threatened Saddam, the more he repressed them, and the more he depended on Sunni identity for a power base, the more anti-Saddam became anti-Sunni. Once the US removed Saddam, the Kurds and Shiites the US had cultivated as an opposition force saw a chance to take advantage not just from the ruling clique but from the whole Sunni elite opportunity. The US was dumb enough to allow the revolution to extend from the initial "deck of 52" to deep within the Baath party to all of Sunni Iraq, making enemies all along the way. But, ironically, the resistance allowed Bush to cling on by offering the Shiites protection against the Sunnis, and later vice versa.

Even now, the threat of the civil war the US did so much to unleash is used by Bush to rally support for an occupation that makes things worse -- by its direct actions and by extending the war indefinitely, giving all sides reason to fight on and not to compromise. It is strangely comforting for Americans to think that Iraqis would be fighting each other even if we were not there. But the evidence backing that assertion is limited: a few brief bursts triggered by external wars, and lots of background police-state repression, but nothing resembling the massive civil destruction that has occurred since 2003.

It is strange that Americans have so much trouble recognizing that our own presence is the source of such pervasive violence. It should be obvious that as long as US forces occupy Iraq there will be Iraqis willing to fight us. (General Abizaid predicted that US forces would be an "antibody" in Iraq.) Why isn't it equally obvious that when we leave their fight will be over? It likely is true that the more we fight them, the more they'll be inclined to keep fighting other Iraqis after we leave, but that's hardly a reason for staying. (It may be a reason for "our" Iraqis to leave also. It's worth noting that the US ambassador in Baghdad is so hard up recruiting Iraqi workers that he's trying to arrange visas for them now for when they have to flee later.) The Iraqi resistance against US occupation provides the context and cover for all of the other violence in Iraq. The US occupation is itself an even stronger force of division in Iraq than sect identity: anyone who tries to work with us becomes tainted with everything we do. The longer we stay, the worse that becomes.

On the other hand, some Americans, like Merritt, do see civil war as reason enough to leave. There are enough such people that the Bush administration spent a couple of years trying to deny that there was a civil war before they changed tune to the new refrain. The interesting thing about them is that they haven't internalized the sense that the US cannot afford not to dominate every square inch of the Middle East. In short, they don't seem to really understand how leaving Iraq would put the US empire at peril, or even why that is such a bad thing. They don't see it, of course, because for most Americans the empire is nothing but trouble. But it remains an unstated subtext because the empire itself is cloaked in so much denial.

But we should start talking about just that, because it's the real issue. You don't really think that Bush cares whether Iraqis kill each other after we leave, do you? He only cares about what happens to the empire, and to his own cabal. So if leaving Iraq causes the empire to collapse, where does that leave us? If you're deep in bed with Bush, that may be a bad thing. But for most Americans, losing the whole empire means next to nothing: lose some military jobs, but save the taxes; pay market prices for oil, but you're doing that anyway. That'll be an interesting learning experience for the American people, because the one thing the ever-worsening condition in Iraq portends is that sooner or later we'll realize we can't afford to sustain that empire. When we can't, we won't. When we don't, we need to face up to the people to conned so many of us into such a grand self-delusion.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Music: Current count 13406 [13383] rated (+23), 800 [811] unrated (-11). Looks pretty much like an average week as far as ratings go, mostly jazz including some reissues, plus a few other recycleds. No major deadlines looming, so I'm mostly trying not to fall too far behind.

• Roy Acuff: Columbia Historic Collection (1936-51 [1985], Columbia): The first of three generations of Columbia/Legacy compilations, which surprisingly have very little in common. This one turns out to be the odd one out, probably because it avoided 12 of 15 cuts from an earlier 1970 Greatest Hits package. Consequently, only 3 of 16 cuts here reappear on 1992's 20-cut The Essential Roy Acuff 1936-1949, and only 1 reappears on 2004's 14-cut The Essential Roy Acuff. All are fairly interchangeable, with 9 cuts shared by the two Essentials. Compared to the honky tonkers who followed him, Acuff was rather stiff and proper, but his "king of country music" reputation wasn't unearned or undeserved. This one trails marginally, lacking key songs like "Great Speckle Bird" and "Wreck on the Highway." Also beware that a 2002 reissue by Sony Music Custom Marketing Group dispensed with virtually all of the documentation. Turns out I have a copy of both. B+
• Dirty Dancing (Legacy Edition) (1956-87 [2007], RCA/Legacy, CD+DVD): The 5-song DVD sure doesn't justify the bump from $11.98 to $25.98 -- the only watchable cut has Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes looking like high school chapperones; on the other hand, the CD adds all 34:19 of More Dirty Dancing to the original 39:04 soundtrack, plus a previously unreleased Michael Lloyd waltz, and sorts them so the mixed bag originals bounce back with surefire oldies, bridged by Lloyd's dance exercises. B
• Sidsel Endresen: Exile (1993 [1994], ECM): Legendary Norwegian jazz singer, way on the cool side, with a group that includes Bugge Wesseltoft, Django Bates, Nils Petter Molvaer, David Darling, and Jon Christensen -- Molvaer is the closest affinity, but without the drum programming. B+
• Phil Woods: The Rev & I (1998, Blue Note): Featuring Johnny Griffin, who probably takes more leads than Woods, and steers it harder into bebop territory. Also with Cedar Walton, Peter Washington, Ben Riley. Much to enjoy; little to worry about. B+
• World Circuit Presents . . . (1950s-2005 [2006], World Circuit/Nonesuch, 2CD): Front cover continues: Buena Vista Social Club, Orchestra Baobab, Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, Toumani Diabate, Oumou Sangare, Cachaito, Cheikh Lô. The back cover continues with a full list of lesser knowns, most from Cuba or Africa with Radio Tarifa a near miss from Spain looking south. Ann Hunt and Mary Farquharson founded the London-based label in 1986 as a sideline to their Arts Worldwide touring business, and with Nick Gold turned it into one of the more successful world music labels. Ry Cooder also helped out, working with Ali Farka Touré and Buena Vista Social Club, improving neither but adding a marketing angle. Like most eclectic label samplers, the hits warrant further study and the misses waste opportunity -- although flow is more of a problem than flopping. So you could cut to the chase and go straight to the A records: Orlando Cachaito López: Cachaito; Orchestra Baobab: Specialist in All Styles; Oumou Sangare: Oumou. B+(*)

Jazz Prospecting (CG #14, Part 6)

Another week, mostly jazz, but some Recycleds as well -- the high point turned out to be the Blue Note Connoisseurs that do double duty. This is roughly the mid-point in the JCG cycle, where I try to survey as much incoming as possible, but start thinking about how the column will shape up. Didn't make a lot of progress either way, just barely getting into the second round. Next week should be much the same, as I need to finish the August Recycled Goods column before I can focus squarely on Jazz CG. Incoming mail has been light. Sweltering weather. Don't feel all that good either, and of course there's way too much to do.

Erin McKeown: Sing You Sinners (2006 [2007], Nettwerk): Counted as a folk singer, a point reinforced by listing the dates of the songs -- aside from a new one, they range fromn 1930-56, clustered toward the ends. Still, it's no stretch to consider this as jazz: half or more of the songs are standards jazz singers like to work on, she approaches them with interpretive imagination, and the backing swings and shines with horns -- nowhere more so than on "Melody," her original. B+(***)

Helena: Bang! Dillinger Girl & "Baby Face" Nelson (2006 [2007], Sunnyside): The pictures are more suggestive of Bonnie and Clyde, but bank robbers in America are as interchangeable, not to mention boring, as anyone else. Dillinger Girl is Helena Noguerra, who has two previous albums of French pop under her first name. Baby Face Nelson is Federico Pellegrini, who had something to do with a group called Little Rabbits, and who has more recently styled himself as French Cowboy. This album was cut in Tucson with little if any French accent. I don't really know what to make of it. B

Theo Bleckmann/Ben Monder: At Night (2005 [2007], Songlines): Bleckmann may be the most interesting jazz vocalist to appear in the last 10-20 years, at least in the sense that he is doing things no one else has ever done, sounding like no one else has ever sounded. His high-pitched voice can sound fey or winsome, but it's less pleasing without appropriate words. Here he mostly exercises it as instrument, aided and abetted by live electronic processing, Monder's guitar, and Satoshi Takeishi's percussion. Monder gains traction when he goes heavy. Interesting, of course, but that's an odd form of praise, or dismissal. B

Diane Hubka: Goes to the Movies (2005-06 [2007], 18th & Vine): Singer; plays a little 7-string guitar, although most of the fine guitar here is credited to Larry Koonse. Website bio has no biographical information, and is otherwise dubious -- "arguably the biggest discovery since Roberta Gambarini"? (FYI, I've never heard Gambarini, although I recognize the name.) Looks like she came from Appalachia, worked in DC and/or NYC, has three previous albums, mostly on Dutch labels, and a favorable entry in Penguin Guide, likening her to Sheila Jordan. I don't hear that here, but haven't heard the earlier albums. She has a clear, clean, articulate voice, and gets unassuming support from a quintet led by pianist Christian Jacob, with Carl Saunders providing finish touches on trumpet and flugelhorn. Record rises and falls on the songs, which include enough melodramatic themes and noirish ballads to turn me off. Could use another play. [B+(*)]

Jacques Coursil: Clameurs (2006 [2007], Sunnyside): Trumpet player, born in Paris, his parents from Martinique; appeared on several avant records in 1960s (Burton Greene, Sunny Murray, Frank Wright) plus a couple under his own name. Then basically dropped out of jazz, pursuing a career teaching French literature and linguistics, winding up in Martinique. In 2005 Tzadik released a new album titled Minimal Brass. Haven't heard it, but this follow-up is pretty minimal, with percussion and spare trumpet juxtaposed with spoken texts, including a piece by Frantz Fanon and poems by Edouard Glissant. I can't vouch for the texts, but mix appealing in its simple drama. B+(**)

André Ceccarelli: Golden Land (2006 [2007], CAM Jazz): Drummer, from Nice in the south of France, been around since the mid-'70s, working with Jean-Luc Ponty, Didier Lockwood, Michel Legrand, Birelli Lagrene, Martial Solal, Michel Portal, Stephane Grappelli, Eddy Louiss, Dee Dee Bridgewater -- a few names further afield, like Aretha Franklin. Has several albums under his own name, going back to 1977. This one is a pan-European quartet, with Enrico Pieranunzi on piano, Hein van de Geyn on bass, and David El-Malek on saxophone. Pieranunzi has an especially good outing here, both on fast and slow pieces, but El-Malek is also a discovery. His sax has a deep, rich tone, and he plays with great ease. Born in France, has several albums I haven't heard, with side interests in Jewish folk music and electronics. Together they make impressive, slightly mainstream postbop, but two cuts add a singer I don't find the least bit appealing. Her name is Elisabeth Kontomanou, also born in France, of Greek and African heritage. I can imagine her as the sort who can be mesmerizing in a smoky bar, but here she slows the album down and takes the air out. B

The Phil Woods Quintet: American Songbook II (2007, Kind of Blue): Didn't get the previous American Songbook (2002 [2006], Kind of Blue), which leaned a bit more to Porter (3 songs, vs. 1 here) and Gershwin (2 songs, vs. 0 here). This one is pretty much what one would expect, with Bill Charlap holding the center together, the superb Brian Lynch on trumpet, and dependable Woods on alto sax. [B+(**)]

Los Angeles Jazz Ensemble: Expectations (2007, Kind of Blue, CD+DVD): Looks like another attempt to hide one of those unpronounceable Polish names. The leader here is bassist Darek Oleszkiewicz, who's also recorded as Darek Oles, and has four albums from 1994 on listed under Los Angeles Jazz Quartet. He was born 1963 in Wroclaw in Poland; moved to Krakow in 1983, and on to Los Angeles in 1988, studying with Charlie Haden, and teaching currently at UC Irvine. The Ensemble is a quintet with vocalist Janis Siegel added on four tracks. Guitarist Larry Koonse is a holdover from the Quartet. Bob Sheppard and Peter Erskine take over sax and drums, respectively, while the added position goes to Alan Pasqua on organ. The songs are a mix of pop and jazz standards -- Tom Harrell's "Sail Away" is the only latecomer. Oleszkiewicz arranged them, and they flow with marvelous ease, with Koonse and Pasqua taking especially attractive turns. I'm not so pleased with the vocals, which might have benefitted from a lighter voice. Haven't watched the DVD, but might. [B+(***)]

Stanley Turrentine: A Bluish Bag (1967 [2007], Blue Note): Two big band sessions, with 6-7 horns and 3-4 rhythm each, the former chopped up for two 1975-79 albums, the latter stuck in the vaults until now. Mr. T doesn't get a lot of solo space, but Duke Pearson's arrangements give everyone a lot to do, and several cuts really swing together. B+(***)

Frank Foster: Manhattan Fever (1968-69 [2007], Blue Note): The 6- and 7-piece groups here sound larger than that -- Foster's apprenticeship with Count Basie skilled him at sharpening the edges of the arrangements, and he never wastes an instrument, typically riffing against sharp blasts of brass, then parting the waters for a deft solo with a bit of piano; Duke Pearson produced, and must have pushed him hard. A-

Introducing Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet (1968-69 [2007], Blue Note): A no-name hard bop crew from Detroit, cut two albums sandwiched together on one disc here, then mostly vanished -- a couple showed up on an MC5 record, and hung out with Phil Ranelin's Tribe, and much later Cox appeared on James Carter's Live at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. Actually, they're sharp and lively, especially trumpeter Charles Moore. B+(***)

Andrew Hill: Change (1966 [2007], Blue Note): The fine print notes that this, minus two alternate takes, was originally issued under Sam Rivers' name as half of the 1976 2-LP Involution. That it should now revert to Hill's catalogue reflects the changing fortunes of the principals. Hill was a pet project of Francis Wolf in the '60s, but much recorded then went unreleased at the time, including this quartet with Rivers. From the late '90s, Hill mounted quite a comeback, with two much admired albums on Palmetto and a return to Blue Note, Time Lines, which swept most jazz critic polls in 2006. I'm not a huge fan of the late albums, but they've led to a massive reissue of Hill's 1963-69 Blue Note period, which has if anything grown in stature. Rivers' career actually parallels Hill's quite nicely, with Blue Note in the '60s, a long stretch in the wilderness, and a comeback in 1999, with two large ensemble albums, Inspiration and Culmination, released on RCA. Hill died in 2007, but Rivers carries on in his 80s, with an exemplary trio album, Violet Violets (Stunt) in 2004. Still, it is appropriate to restore this session to Hill's ledger: he wrote all of the pieces, and once you get past the ugliness of an 11:04 opener called "Violence" the sax calms down and the piano emerges, as impressive as ever. A-

Jimmy Smith: Straight Life (1961 [2007], Blue Note): A simple organ-guitar-drums trio, as restrained as anything he's ever done, which makes the eloquence of his phrasing on such a crude instrument all the more impressive. This has actually been a remarkable installment in Blue Note's Connoisseur Series: five albums, all so obscure I've never heard of them, each surprisingly close to my A- cusp. The series are nominally limited editions, although those that sell out have been known to return as RVG Editions. B+(***)

Joseph Jarman: As If It Were the Seasons (1968 [2007], Delmark): The arty 23:47 title cut was done by a trio plus voice, the sort of thing that AACM could do when imagining great black classical music. But when the gang -- including Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Anderson, and John Stubblefield -- showed up for the 20:58 "Song for Christopher" all hell broke loose. You already know whether you can stand this or not, but if you can, focus on the percussive thrash, credited to Everybody. B+(**)

Club D'Elf: Perhapsody: Live 10.12.06 (2006 [2007], Kufala, 2CD): The paper insert where you might expect a booklet merely explains the "biodegradable/no plastic/no chemicals/no toxins" packaging -- not that you'll really be in much hurry to throw this away. The diversity shown on their one studio album, Now I Understand, was the result of networking and taking eight years to record the thing. On any given night, they're likely to be much more specialized. On this one the absence of Ibrahim Frigane means no Middle Eastern charms, and the presence of John Medeski means lots of boogie groove. Indeed, it all sort of flows together. Only by the end does one start wondering why Medeski can't keep his own group motoring so effortlessly. Most likely, the answer is bassist and clubmaster, Mike Rivard. B+(**)

Charlie Haden/Antonio Forcione: Heartplay (2006 [2007], Naim): Forcione is an Italian guitarist, or as his website puts it, "acoustic guitar virtuoso" -- close enough for me. Haden you know. So these are bass-guitar duets, simple things, gorgeous in their own way. Similar to things Haden did with Egberto Gismonti -- I'm tempted to say better, but I haven't heard the best regarded one, In Montreal (1989, ECM). I only wonder if there's enough here. [B+(***)]

David Witham: Spinning the Circle (2006 [2007], Cryptogramophone): Pianist, works with electronics, plays accordion, all prominent here. This is only his second album, following the self-released On Line from 1988, but he has a fairly broad albeit scattered resume: studied with Jaki Byard and Alan Broadbent; worked as George Benson's "musical director" since 1990; produces a community TV show called "Portable Universe"; current projects with Ernie Watts, Jay Anderson, Jeff Gauthier, Luis Conte; dozens of credits, although there isn't much overlap between the obscure names AMG lists and the better-known ones listed on his website. This album pulls several of those threads together, but not into a clear picture. The record opens with a synth percussion rush, but rarely returns to it. There is a lot of texturing with guitar -- Nels Cline's electric on two tracks, Greg Leisz's steel on three more, the latter affecting a Hawaiian twist -- and reeds, with an occasional oasis of clearly thought-out piano. Most of the eight pieces have ideas worth exploring further, but few are followed up on. I've played this tantallizing album five times, and doubt that I'm going to figure much more out. B+(**)

The Nels Cline Singers: Draw Breath (2007, Cryptogramophone): The group name always throws me: there are no vocalists here, although Cline claims a credit for "megamouth" here, whatever that is. Cline plays guitar, electric more than acoustic, with or without effects. The group is what back in the '60s was called a Power Trio: guitar-bass-drums, like Cream, or the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Devin Hoff plays contrabass, which I take to be the big acoustic one. Scott Amendola is credited with drums, percussion, "live" electronics/effects. Glenn Kotche appears on one track, as if Amendola isn't enough. This is their third album, although Cline has other projects, including a rock band called Wilco -- or maybe he's just hired help there. This is as close as anyone's gotten to heavy metal jazz. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing; if I'm just not in the mood, or just got put out of the mood. I think I'll put it on the replay shelf and wait for a better time. Could be it's amazing. Could be it's not. I do recommend an earlier one called The Giant Pin (2003 [2004], Cryptogramophone). [B+(**)]

Rob Garcia's Sangha: Heart's Fire (2005 [2007], Connection Works): Drummer, based in New York (I think), plays Latin, mainstream, free, dixieland, whatever. This one leans Latin, and I'm impressed as long as I focus on the drummer. But I'm more dubious about all the flute and soprano sax, and simply don't care for the singer, who moves this into unappealing prog territory. B-

Boca do Rio (2007, Vagabundo): Unfair to make fun of these hard-working Brasil wannabes to point out that their rio is the Sacramento; the percussion is pretty sharp, and saxophonist Larry de la Cruz is always welcome, so I guess the problem is the vocals, and not just that Kevin Welch has swallowed way too much US pop harmonizing. C+

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around.

Abbey Lincoln: Abbey Sings Abbey (2006 [2007], Verve): Francis Davis raved about this in the Voice. I suspect that anyone else already in love with her will feel much the same. I've long been a disappointed skeptic, so the best I can say is that listening to her old songs redone here fails to remind me of whatever it was that annoyed me about her in the past. One possibility is that her voice has coarsened her voice, taking it off that pedestal I never cared for. But also, the arrangements are refreshing. The group is string-oriented, with Larry Campbell playing acoustic and electric guitar, National resonator guitar, pedal steel guitar, and mandolin; he's backed with cello, bass, drums, and accordion for color. The pedal steel is the biggest surprise, with "Blue Monk" played as a cowboy tune. The rest of the songs are originals, selected (I assume) for strong melodies that fit the framework -- a "greatest hits" effect, but given my ignorance without regrets. A couple of songs in I thought about suspending my skepticism, but the record runs long and isn't always convincing. B+(***)

The Puppini Sisters: Betcha Bottom Dollar (2005-06 [2007], Verve): The WWII-era pieces that set the stage here refer these figurative-sisters -- Marcella is the only Puppini; Kate Mullins and Stephanie O'Brien were added to the act in London -- back to the Andrews Sisters. Pieces like "Mr. Sandman," "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön," and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" always appealed to me, and here they're as bright and perky as ever. More recent fare, including Kate Bush and Morrissey, are harder sells, but at least I'll take their "Heart of Glass." B+(*)

Unpacking:

• Don Cherry: Live at Cafe Montmartre 1966 (1966, ESP-Disk)
• Happy Apple: Happy Apple Back on Top (Sunnyside)
• The Harlem Experiment (Ropeadope): advance, Oct. 31.
• Norman Howard & Joe Phillips: Burn Baby Burn (ESP-Disk)
• Ed Johnson & Novo Tempo: The Other Road (Cumulus)
• Movement Soul Volume 2 (ESP-Disk)
• New York Voices: A Day Like This (MCG Jazz)
• Michel Portal: Birdwatcher (Sunnyside)
• Helen Sung: Sungbird (Sunnyside)
• Billy Taylor & Gerry Mulligan: Live at MCG (1993, MCG Jazz)
• We Love Ella! A Tribute to the First Lady of Song (Verve, DVD): advance, July 2007

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Day Off

I had a decent daily run going in July until yesterday, although most of the posts have been book quotes, and it helped that I had started to build up a backlog of them. Felt sick yesterday; spent most of the day in bed. Doesn't look like anything serious -- may have been something I ate. Does give me more time to read. I'm half way through Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree, which seemed like the logical successor to Tom Segev's 1967. The latter provided a lot of useful detail about how Israelis viewed the war, but failed to provide much context, either in terms of what others -- notably Arabs and Russians -- were actually thinking and doing or in terms of what the war's legacy actually turned out to be. It's as if the idea is that since Israelis are so schizophrenic, not to mention voluble, that one can cover all sides of issues by only examining the numerous Israeli variants. Tolan covers the same ground in 20 pages or so, including a Palestinian viewpoint that Segev omits. Still, I have a lot of remarkable quotes marked in Segev's book. Despite my critique, I came out wanting to read his 1949, but held back figuring I have the big picture anyway. I'm trying to gear my reading toward writing, and there are few subjects I feel I've researched more adequately than Israel. (My books section currently lists 29 books on Israel, plus there are a few others listed under Middle East, etc. An idea for a future post would be a short annotation of each book on the list.)

As it is, I'm mostly muddling through. The default activity is to listen to music and write notes about it. As I write this, I have 20 jazz prospecting notes ready to post, and the database rated count for the week is +21. Both numbers are close to long term norms, but certainly aren't banner weeks. Recycled Goods for August is pretty much written. Jazz Consumer Guide is up in the air, with no clear plan to close -- although there's something to be said for trying to knock it off quickly. I'm reading about as much as usual -- the Segev book that took me all week is 585 pages, but I've always been a slow reader. But I've fallen far short of keeping up with my usual web sources -- I have several TomDispatch articles open in tabs, but can't recall looking at Juan Cole or Helena Cobban in the last 2-3 weeks. I'm not making any progress on my book. I have been making fairly steady progress on many house projects. Also way behind on some website work; e.g., for Robert Christgau, who's 4-5 Consumer Guides ahead of me, plus I barely know what else. The big recent advance is that the Vista computer is finally running. Once I plug speakers into it I will be able to download music and play DVDs, which I haven't been able to do since February. The next big push is to get to where the piles of stuff all around me are shelved somewhat sensibly. I have both short- and long-term plans for that, which is good because short-term solutions never work.

The weather has finally gotten hot around here. Don't think we've officially had a 100-degree day yet, which may be some kind of record, but it's been well in the 90s for a couple of weeks now, and more humid than usual. All the rain pretty much ruined the wheat crop -- I've seen figures 30-40% down from norms. Most of the global warming models predict drought, but a pretty sure rule of thumb is that more heat means more rain somewhere. Even if the models are fallible, that doesn't mean the outcome is going to be favorable.

I'm rambling here, but wanted to get a post in. Jazz Prospecting tomorrow, then more book posts.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Decay and Disaster

New York City had an explosion yesterday, demonstrating once again that stupidity and incompetence can do things that terrorists can only dream of. David Caruso, writing for AP, picked up in the Wichita Eagle today, writes:

With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable. [ . . . ]

"This may be a warning sign for this very old network of pipe that we have," said Anil Agrawal, a professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York. "We should not be looking at this incident as an isolated one."

From Boston to Los Angeles, a number of American cities are entering a middle age of sorts, and the infrastructure propping them up is showing signs of strain.

DePaul University transportation professor Joe Schwieterman said his city of Chicago, where much of the infrastructure dates to the early part of the 20th century, is now faced with tough choices on what to fix first.

"The aging infrastructure below the streets is an enormous liability for the city," Schwieterman said. "We know it needs modernization but the cost is staggering. We're forced to pick our battles wisely."

Thousands of miles of underground water and sewage pipes are nearing the end of their expected life, sometimes with a bang and a flash flood.

Electrical systems, operating with components that are decades old, have been groaning to handle record power demand.

Parts of New York were plunged into darkness for a week last summer when a series of power cables failed in Queens, and much of the Northeast was blacked out when power transmission systems failed across several states in 2003.

In New York and Boston, aging sidewalk utility panels were blamed for delivering electric shocks to pedestrians and pets in wet weather.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will take $1.6 trillion over the next five years to get the nation's roads, bridges, dams, water systems and airports into good condition.

$1.6 trillion is, like, double what Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the US since 2001. It is a number that is both prohbitively huge and more/less manageable. The only real difference is that nobody selling the Iraq war in 2002-03 came out and stated that the war would cost us a trillion dollars or more but would be worth it. Rather, we were told that the war would practically pay for itself -- mostly because no one would believe that anything over there would be worth spending trillions of dollars. For the warmongers, myopia was a necessity. But facing up to the infrastructure deficit requires exactly the opposite condition: it's easy to see that the investment is worth it in the long run, but hard to work it into the budget just now. Of course, as things do break, budgeting will get easier -- cf. the levies of New Orleans.

There are people who argue that government should be run like a business, which is scary given how notoriously short-term businesses think. The exact opposite is more like it: anything that a business can do most likely will be done by a business, unless government flat out obstructs it -- some businesses, like recreational drugs, even survive prohibition. The private sector responds to immediate demand, at least within frameworks where supply can be metered. On the other hand, government can act deliberately, subject only to politics. So government can do things that businesses cannot, like plan for the long term, or create public goods that need not be metered. The big problem is getting to where we can make sound political decisions. Politicians and government bureaucrats have notoriously poor reputations in that regard, in large part because government is relatively immune to the market corrections businesses respond to -- cf. the Iraq war. Getting better at political decision making requires that we get smarter about what we need government for, clearer about how we conceive of a public interest to counter against overly powerful private interests, more transparent and honest. It may even mean that we need to be willing to sacrifice some private interests to a broader, deeper good. That in turn requires trust and faith that most of our experience under unregulated power and greed turns us against.

Needless to say, this is going to get worse before it gets better. That much is clear from the people in power now and the trendline they represent and do so much to further.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Rory Stewart: The Places In Between

Rory Stewart's The Places In Between (2004; paperback, 2006, Harvest Books) is nominally a travel book, but you can just as well file it under shaggy dog stories. (Hint: a large dog is a prominent character here.) Stewart's idea was to walk from Istanbul to Nepal, or something like that. Due to political exigencies, he skipped over Afghanistan, then decided to fill it in after the Taliban scattered in late 2001 -- or fill some of it in, specifically the stretch from Herat to Kabul. It was winter, which gave him a notable predecessor: Emperor Babur, ruler of Kabul, made the same trek in 1504, describing it in a diary that provides a reference point here.

On a press conference with Ismail Khan, the warlord who took over Herat following the fall of the Taliban (pp. 53-54):

"I would like to say," said Ismail Khan, "that before we came there was no furniture here -- the Taliban was against furniture. We've bought all this furniture in the last two weeks."

Ismail Khan disagreed with the Taliban more about furniture than about Islam. He believed in the jihad and hated atheist foreigners interfering in Afghanistan. He had encouraged women to return to schools but believed they should be well covered and should not speak to men to whom they were not related. He was about to order new "vice and virtue" squads to raid the arcades I had seen and burn the DVDs. He had implemented laws requiring women to wear head carves and forbidding men from wearing neckties. Women who met men to whom they were not related could be forcibly examined in hospitals to determine whether they had recently had sex. But I was not sure how many of the people in the room understood his vision of an Islamic state. He was certainly not going to share his views on women with the reporter from Television France 2, who had not covered her blond hair.

In Jam, the famed Turqoise Mountain of the Ghorid kingdom (p. 159):

Antiquity looting is an ancient and highly controversial problem and because of the money involved, it is almost impossible to stop. But the situation in Jam was comparatively simple. A single, small site of immense historical importance lay in a remote location that could be manageably enclosed, policed, and monitored. Any items reaching the international market from Jam were not chance finds, but deliberately stolen. The local villagers were earning only a dollar or two a day digging and could have been employed by an archaeological team to work with an official excavation, rather than against it. Ismail Khan, the most powerful man in the provine, did not earn much from the illegal antiquities trade in comparison with the cross-border trade in other items from Herat. He would have seen providing security at the site as an inexpensive and uncontroversial opportunity to cooperate with the international community. One reasonably energetic and committed foreign archaeologist with decent funds could have stepped in to protect the site at any time. I guessed, however, that the international community would not act before it was too late, and I was right.

On the road to Chaghcharan (pp. 161-162):

In the Indian Himalayas, villagers had described their landscape in terms of religious myth. "This hill is where Shiva danced," they said, or, "This lake was made by Arjuna's arrow." But like Abdul Haq [Stewart's escort for the first leg of the trek], the Aimaq villagers defined their landscape by acts of violence or death. I was shown the hundred yards the young Commander Mullah Rahim Dad galloped when morally wounded after an ambush by men from Majerkanda, then the grave of a young man who had died of starvation on his way to the refugee camp.

Places in the Scottish Highlands are also remembered for acts of violence: the spot where Stewart of Ardvorlich shot a MacDonald raider, or where the MacGregors decapitated Ardvorlich's brother-in-law. Around my house in Scotland the Gaelic place-names record death: "Place of Mourning" or "Field of Weeping." But here the events recorded were only months old.

They were inflicted not by Russians but by one community on another. The settlement of Tangia was now only a line of red mud pillars like giant rotting teeth. The school in Ghar had been destroyed. Everyone knew the men who did these things. They had watchem them at it.

On the "new" Afghanistan (pp. 174-175):

The agreement setting up the future shape of Afghanistan had been signed in Bonn a month earlier. In five months a Loya Jirga assembly was to choose a new government. Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN Special Representative running this process, had staffed his Political Affairs office with some of the most competent expatriates in Afghanistan: people who spoke Dari or Pashto well, had worked in Afghanistan for years, and had experience with village culture. But these few people had to manage the conflicting interests of foreign governments, other UN agencies, warlords, international organizations, and Afghan technocrats. They knew too much of the reality on the ground to be popular with either the new Afghan government or the international bureaycracy. By the end of the year they had been moved into almost meaningless jobs.

On the changing of the Taliban (pp. 243-244):

In Herat many war reporters predicted Afghans would hate the American-led assault on the Taliban. They said the Taliban treatment of women, the Taliban's use of Sharia law, and their demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas had not been unpopular in the villages. The Taliban were "no crueller" than the Northern Alliance and had improved security in rural areas. Intervention would simply replace one group of crooks with another and anger Afghans in the process.

I had indeed found that Tajik and Aimaq communities wee not entirely opposed to the Taliban. They agreed that security had been better under the Taliban. Tajik women now wore head scarves in the village and only put on the full-face burqas to visit town, but no one objected to the lack of female education under the Taliban or the imposition of Islamic Sharia law. Seyyed Umar, who had complained the most about them ("They stole donkeys from me"), turned out to have been a Taliban commander.

But the Hazara I met were delighted the Taliban had gone, and they did not resent the Americans for expelling them. Nowhere in Afghanistan did the cruelty of the Taliban seem so comprehensive or have such an ethnic focus. In a three-day walk from Yakawlang, where the Taliban had executed four hundred, to Shaidan, where eighty shop fronts had been reduced to blackened shells, every Hazara village I saw had been burned. In each settlement, people had been murdered, the flocks driven off, and the orchards razed. Most of the villages were still abandoned.

The Hazara knew little and cared less about the World Trade Center. But in the short term things had improved for them. They were freer and more secure; they had some power again; and they were pleased with their own provincial governor, Khalili.

A footnote on the war reporters: "This may have been becuase many of them had been in the Balkans and remembered the fury of anti-Milosevic Serbs over the Kosovo bombing."

A footnote to "policy makers would find it impossible to change Afghan society in the way they wished to change it" (p. 247-248):

Critics have accused this new breed of administrators of neocolonialism. But in fact their approach is not that of a nineteenth-century colonial officer. Colonial administrations may have been racist and exploitative, but they did at least work seriously at the business of understanding the people they were governing. They recruited people prepared to spend their entire careers in dangerous provinces of a single alien nation. They invested in teaching administrators and military officers the local language. They established effective departments of state, trained a local elite, and continued the countless academic studies of their subjects through institutes and museums, royal geographical societies, and royal botanical gardens. They balanced the local budget and generated fiscal revenue because if they didn't their home government would rarely bail them out. If they failed to govern fairly, the population would mutiny.

Postconflict experts have got the prestige without the effort or stigma of imperialism. Their implicit denial of the difference between cultures is the new mass brand of international intervention. Their policy fails but no one notices. There are no credible monitoring bodies and there is no one to take formal responsibility. Individual officers are never in any one place and rarely in any one organization long enough to be adequately assessed. The colonial enterprise could be judged by the security or revenue it delivered, but neocolonialists have no such performance criteria. In fact their very uselessness benefits them. By avoiding any serious action or judgment they, unlike their colonial predecessors, are able to escape accusations of racism, exploitation, and oppression.

Perhaps it is because no one requires more than a charming illusion of action in the developing world. If the policy makers know little about the Afghans, the public knows even less, and few care about policy failure when the effects are felt only in Afghanistan.

That first paragraph includes a lot of wistful romantic thinking. Nineteenth-century colonialists may have been racist and exploitative? No shit? While the threat of revolt provided a check on their greed and/or folly, as it still does now, the manageable containment of revolt isn't much of a metric of success. The 19th century case may have been better managed in the sense that it was longer-term profit-seeking, but it also benefitted immeasurably by happening in the 19th century, when natives had primitive arms and communications networks, and often didn't understand the full impact of what the imperialists were up to. That colonialists have fared much worse in the 20th century can't be wholly chalked up to losing their skill set.

Stewart later moved on to Iraq, where he tried his hand at running a chunk of the country for the British. That's the subject of another book, The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. I haven't read that book yet, but I gather he didn't do all that well.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Tony Judt: Postwar

At 933 pages, Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005; paperback, 2006, Penguin Press) is a big book on a huge subject. He does a masterful job of pulling together the main political, economic, and cultural threads, starting with the devastation of WWII and the postwar reconstruction -- literally, of course, but also structurally through the cold war division and the emergence of a distinct and ultimately unifying European identity. A marvelous synthesis, the starting point for thinking about post-WWII Europe.

I could have quoted much more than the quite-a-bit I do quote below. The most striking things for me were the immediate postwar period. From the vantage point of subsequent recovery, we tend to gloss over the extent of the devastation and the bitterness of recriminations. In particular, the "greatest generation" myth has left us thinking that the US did something brilliant in the postwar rebuilding of Germany and Japan, whereas the facts here and in John Dower's Embracing Defeat suggest we were just damn lucky. Such myths then inspire our neo-interventionists to think we can apply that same genius to places like Afghanistan and Iraq -- in fact, we never had much of a knack for telling others how to live, and to shift from the most left to the most right administrations in US history disposed of the good will that made our luck possible.

So I've tended to pick quotes thinking of now rather than attempting to cover the book evenly -- a task impossible with any breadth at all.

From the introduction (p. 6):

In the West the prospect of radical change was smoothed away, not least thanks to american aid (and pressure). The appeal of the popular-front agenda -- and of Communism -- faded: both were prescriptions for hard times and in the West, at least after 1952, the times were no longer so hard. And so, in the decades that followed, the uncertainties of the immediate post-war years were forgotten. But the possibility that things might take a different turn -- indeed, the likelihood that they would take a different turn -- had seemed very real in 1945; it was to head off a return to the old demons (unemployment, Fascism, German militarism, war, revolution) that western Europe took the new path with which we are now familiar. Post-national, welfare-state, cooperative, pacific Europe was not born of the optimistic, ambitious, forward-looking project imagined in fond retrospect by today's Euro-idealists. It was the insecure child of anxiety. Shadowed by history, its leaders implemented social reforms and built new institutions as a prophylactic, to keep the past at bay.

This becomes easier to grasp when we recall that authorities in the Soviet bloc were in essence engaged in the same project. They, too, were above all concerned to install a barrier against political backsliding -- though in countries under Communist rule this was to be secured not so much by social progress as through the application of physical force. Recent history was re-written -- and citizens were encouraged to forget it -- in accordance with the assertion that a Communist-led social revolution had definitively erased not just the shortcomings of the past but also the conditions that had made them possible. As we shall see, this claim was also a myth; at best a half-truth.

Some of what WWII wrought (pp. 18-19):

The overall death toll is staggering (the figures given here do not include Japanese, US or other non-European dead). It dwarfs the mortality figure for the Great War of 1914-18, obscene as those were. No other conflict in recorded history killed so many people in so short a time. But what is most striking of all is the number of non-combatant civilians among the dead: at least 19 million, or more than half. The numbers of civilian dead exceeded military losses in the USSR, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. Only the in the UK and Germany did military losses significantly outnumber civilian ones.

Estimates of civilian losses on the territory of the Soviet Union vary greatly, though the likeliest figure is in excess of 16 million people (roughly double the number of Soviet military losses, of whom 78,000 fell in the battle for Berlin alone). Civilian deaths on the territory of pre-war Poland approached 5 million; in Yugoslavia 1.4 million; in Greece 430,000; in France 350,000; in Hungary 270,000; in the Netherlands 204,000; in Romania 200,000. Among these, and especially prominent in the Polish, Dutch and Hungarian figures, were some 5.7 million Jews, to whom should be added 221,000 gypsies (Roma).

The causes of death among civilians included mass extermination, in death camps and killing fields from Odessa to the Baltic; disease, malnutrition and starvation (induced and otherwise); the shooting and burning of hostages -- by the Wehrmacht, the Red Army and partisans of all kinds; reprisals against civilians; the effects of bombing, shelling and infantry battles in fields and cities, on the eastern Front throughout the war and in the West from the Normandy landings of June 1944 until the defeat of Hitler the following May; the deliberate strafing of refugee columns and the working to death of slave labourers in war industries and prison camps.

The greatest military losses were incurred by the Soviet Union, which is thought to have lost 8.6 million men and women under arms; Germany, with 4 million casualties; Italy, which lost 400,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen; and Romania, some 300,000 of whose military were killed, mostly fighting with the Axis armies on the Russian front. In proportion to their populations, however, the Austrians, Hungarians, Albanians and Yugoslavs suffered the greatest military losses. Taking all deaths -- civilian and military alike -- into account, Poland, Yugoslavia, the USSR and Greece were the worst affected. Poland lost about one in five of her pre-war population, including a far higher percentage of the educated population, deliberately targeted for destruction by the Nazis. Yugoslavia lost one person in eight of the country's pre-war population, the USSR one in 11, Greece one in 14. To point up the contrast, Germany suffered a rate of loss of 1/15; France 1/77; Britain 1/125.

The Soviet losses in particular include prisoners of war. The Germans captured some 5.5 million Soviet soldiers in the course of the war, three quarters of them in the first seven months following the attack on the USSR in June 1941. Of these, 3.3 million died from starvation, exposure and mistreatment in German camps -- more Russians died in German prisoner-of-war camps in the years 1941-45 than in all of World War One. Of the 750,000 Soviet soldiers captured when the Germans took Kiev in September 1941, just 22,000 lived to see Germany defeated. The Soviets in their turn took 3.5 million prisoners of war (German, Austrian, Romanian and Hungarian for the most part); most of them returned home after the war.

A long quote on populations movements during and after WWII (pp. 22-26):

The problem of feeding, housing, clothing and caring for Europe's battered civilians (and the millions of imprisoned soldiers of the former Axis powers) was complicated and magnified by the unique scale of the refugee crisis. This was something new in the European experience. All wars dislocate the lives of non-combatants; by destroying their land and their homes, by disrupting communications, by enlisting and killing husbands, fathers, sons. But in World War Two it was state policies rather than armed conflict that did the worst damage.

Stalin had continued his pre-war practice of transferring whole peoples across the Soviet empire. Well over a million people were deported east from Soviet-occupied Poland and the western Ukraine and Baltic lands between 1939-41. In the same years the Nazis too expelled 750,000 Polish peasants eastwards from western Poland, offering the vacated land to Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans from occupied eastern Europe who were invited to 'come home' to the newly-expanded Reich. This offer attracted some 120,000 Baltic Germans, a further 136,000 from Soviet-occupied Poland, 200,000 from Romania and others besides -- all of whom would in their turn be expelled a few years later. Hitler's policy of racial transfers and genocide in Germany's conquered eastern lands must thus be understood in direct relation to the Nazis' project of returning to the Reich (and settling in the newly cleared property of their victims) all the far-flung settlements of Germans dating back to medieval times. The Germans removed Slavs, exterminated Jews and imported slave workers from west and east alike.

Between them Stalin and Hitler uprooted, transplanted, expelled, deported and dispersed some 30 million people in the years 1939-43. With the retreat of the Axis armies, the process