Index
Latest
2024
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2023
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2022
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2021
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2020
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2019
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2018
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2017
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2016
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2005
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2004
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2003
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2002
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2001
Dec
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
|
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Wrote some things in the 1960s, including the Spin poll, but didn't
manage to wrap it up, so later . . .
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Rhapsody Streamnotes: March 2013
Pick up text here.
Expert Comments
Spin has a feature on "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s" --
done as a slide panel thing. (I had to temporarily enable gigya.com
to get a page to appear, then by hand shuttled different slide numbers
into the URL.) Might as well transcribe the list here.
- The Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat (Verve, 1968) [A]
- The Stooges: The Stooges (Elektra, 1969) [A-]
- The Velvet Underground & Nico: The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, 1967) [A+]
- Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica (Straight, 1969) [A-]
- The Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M, 1969) [A+]
- Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era (Elektra, 1972) [A]
- Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960) [A-]
- Terry Riley: In C (Columbia, 1968) [B+]
- Sun Ra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 & 2 (ESP-Disk, 1965) [B-]
- Can: Monster Movie (United Artists, 1969) [-+(A-)]
- Tropicalia Ou Panis Et Circensis (Philips, 1968) []
- The 13th Floor Elevators: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (International Artists, 1966) [+(A-)]
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Kontakte (WERGO, 1964) []
- Nico: The Marble Index (Elektra, 1968) [-+(B+)]
- Leonard Cohen: Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia, 1967) [A]
- The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World (Third World, 1969) [B-]
- MC5: Kick Out the Jams (Elektra, 1969) [B+]
- The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle (CBS, 1968) [A-]
- Albert Ayler Trio: Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk, 1964) [A]
- The Mothers of Invention: Freak Out! (1966) [B]
- Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Columbia, 1967) [A]
- The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground (MGM, 1969) [A+]
- Van Dyke Parks: Song Cycle (Warner Bros., 1968) []
- The Fugs: The Fugs First Album (Folkways, 1965) [A-]
- Silver Apples: Silver Apples (Kapp, 1968) [B+]
- Love: Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967) [U+(A-)]
- Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left (Island, 1969) [B]
- John Fahey: The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites (1964, Takoma) [-+(A-)]
- Blue Cheer: Vincebus Eruptum (Philips, 1968) [+(B+)]
- Steve Reich: Early Works (Nonesuch, 1987) []
- John Coltrane: Ascension (Impulse!, 1966) [B+]
- The Meters: The Meters (Josie, 1969) [+(B+)]
- White Noise: An Electric Storm (Island, 1969) [-]
- The Sonics: Here Are the Sonics (Etiquette, 1965) []
- Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief (Island, 1969) [B+]
- The Peter Brötzmann Octet: Machine Gun (FMP, 1968) [B+]
- The Holy Modal Rounders: The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra, 1968) [B+]
- Desmond Dekker: This Is Desmond Dekkar (Trojan, 1969) [-]
- Sonny Sharrock: Black Woman (Vortex, 1969) [A-]
- The Godz: Contact High With the Godz (ESP-Disk) [-+(B+)]
- Alexander Spence: Oar (Columbia, 1969) []
- Anthony Braxton: For Alto (Delmark, 1969) [D]
- Nico: Chelsea Girl (Verve, 1967) [B+]
- Townes Van Zandt: For the Sake of the Song (Poppy, 1968)
- The Monks: Black Monk Time (International Polydor Production, 1965) [-]
- Ray Barretto: Acid (Fania, 1968) []
- Terry Riley: A Rainbow in Curved Air (CBS, 1969) [A-]
- The Watts Prophets: The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts (FFRR, 1969) [-]
- Rotary Connection: Rotary Connection (Cadet Concept, 1968) []
- Françoise Hardy: Françoise Hardy (Disques Vogue, 1962) [-]
- The Mothers of Invention: We're Only in It for the Money (Verve, 1968) [B-]
- Scott Walker: Scott 2 (Smash, 1968) []
- The Incredible String Band: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (Elektra, 1968) [C]
- AMM: AMMMusic (Elektra, 1966) [B]
- Perrey-Kingsley: The In Sound From Way Out! (Vanguard, 1966) [-]
- Morton Subotnick: Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967) []
- The Red Crayola: The Parable of Arable Land (International Artists, 1967) [-]
- The BBC Radiophonic Workshop: BBC Radiophonic Music (BBC, 1968) [-]
- Pierre Henry: Messe Pour Le Temps Présent (Philips, 1967) [-]
- Pauline Oliveros: Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970 (Important, 2012) [-]
- Pharoah Sanders: Tauhid (Impulse!, 1967) [+(A-)]
- Dick Hyman: MOOG: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman (Command, 1969) []
- Moondog: Moondog (Columbia Masterworks, 1969) []
- David Axelrod: Songs of Innocence (Capitol, 1968) [] [**:B-]
- The Spontaneous Music Ensemble: Karyobin (Island, 1968) [B+]
- The Balinese Gamelan: Music From the Morning of the World (Nonesuch, 1967) [-]
- Caetano Veloso: Caetano Veloso (Philips, 1969) []
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gruppen/Carré (Deutsche Grammophon, 1968) [-]
- The Roland Kirk Quartet: Rip, Rig & Panic (Limelight, 1965) [A]
- Karen Dalton: It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (Capitol, 1969) [+(B-)]
- Eric Dolphy: Out to Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964) [A-]
- The Seeds: The Seeds (GNP Crescendo, 1966) []
- Amon Düül II: Phallus Dei (Liberty, 1969) []
- Pentangle: Basket of Light (Transatlantic, 1969) []
- Brigitte Bardot et Serge Gainsbourg: Bonnie and Clyde (Fontana, 1968) [-]
- Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Gorilla (Liberty, 1967) [-+(B+)]
- Back From the Grave Volume One: Raw 'n' Crude Mid-60s Garage Punk! (Crypt, 1983) [-]
- Nihilist Spasm Band: No Record (Allied Record Corporation, 1968) [-]
- Tod Dockstader: Eight Electronic Pieces (Folkways, 1961) [-]
- Cecil Taylor: Unit Structures (Blue Note, 1966) [B+]
- The United States of America: The United States of America (Columbia, 1968) [B]
- The Electric Prunes: Release of an Oath (Reprise, 1968) [-]
- The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble: Congliptious (Nessa, 1968) []
- Kim Fowley: Outrageous (Imperial, 1968) [-]
- Joe Cuba Sextet: Wanted Dead or Alive (Bang! Bang! Push, Push, Push) (Fania, 1967) [-]
- Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra: Other Planes of There (Saturn, 1966) [B+]
- John Lennon and Yoko Ono: Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions (Zapple, 1969) []
- Ornette Coleman: Town Hall 1962 (ESP-Disk, 1965) [B+]
- Babatunde Olatunji: Drums of Passion (Columbia, 1960) [B+]
- Harry Partch: The World of Harry Partch (Columbia, 1969) [A]
- Os Mutantes: Os Mutantes (Polydor, 1968) [B+]
- The Monkees: Head (Colgems, 1968) [-]
- Pearls Before Swine: One Nation Underground (ESP-Disk) [-] [**:B+]
- Pärson Sound: Pärson Sound (Subliminal Sounds, 2001) [A-]
- Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano (Columbia Masterworks, 1969) [-]
- Alan Watts: OM: The Sound of Hinduism (Warner Bros., 1967) [-]
- Brigitte Fontaine: Comme ŕ la Radio (Saravah, 1969) [-]
- Mulatu Astatke: Afro-Latin Soul Vol. 1 (Worthy, 1966) [-] [**:A-,A-]
- Cromagnon: Orgasm (ESP-Disk, 1969) [-]
- Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage (Columbia, 1968) [-]
Grade tabulations:
A+ 3
A 7
A- 9 = 19
B+ 14
B 4
B- 3 = 40
C+ 0
C 1
C- 0 = 41
D+ 0
D 1
D- 0 = 42
U 1 = 43
[] 26 = 69
[-] 31 = 100
Entries by Jason Gubbels:
#80 Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures (Blue Note, 1966)
No reason to mince words: Pianist Cecil Taylor remains the most
uncompromising performer in jazz. When his ferocious genius was
compared to Boulez or Messiaen, he'd angrily ask what was wrong with
Duke Ellington. If adherents praised his percussive keyboard
technique, he'd retort, "technique is a weapon to do whatever must be
done." And he paid dearly for such prickliness, washing dishes to pay
the rent between gigs. But on Unit Structures, recorded during his
brief Blue Note tenure, he managed to articulate how jazz performance
might internalize the European academy while remaining resolutely
suspicious of notation and composition. Guiding long-time
collaborators Jimmy Lyons, Henry Grimes, and Andrew Cyrille by ear,
Taylor cast himself as "catalyst" rather than band leader, shrinking
an orchestra's power down to a sextet, wondering aloud why chord
changes need dictate improvisational direction even while proving
swing is so much more than tapping one's foot. He wouldn't enter
another recording studio until 1978.
#36 The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968)
A mustachioed Wuppertal autodidact assembles an international octet in
May of 1968, the year of the Paris strikes and the peak of Vietnam,
and detonates the strongest blast of "energy music" yet unleashed upon
a bewildered jazz audience. This three-track political statement --
boasting the leader's own silkscreen artwork, barely rising above
bootleg sound quality, printed in small numbers and mostly sold at
Brötzmann's gigs -- would serve as ground zero for European free
jazz. The lineup came to define the continental underground: Evan
Parker, Willem Breuker, Han Bennink, Peter Kowald, Fred Van Hove. And
as music, the title track was unrelenting in ways that rock bands
couldn't manage: 18 minutes of continual sound blasts, lung-collapsing
massed skronk that avoids any semblance of melodic content until the
15-minute mark, when a merciful leader briefly let his cavalry indulge
in some bar-band-from-hell swing. Possibly the most raging piece of
jazz to this day.
#19 Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk, 1964)
At least Coltrane and his post-bop jazz peers were given the benefit
of pulling a Picasso after they tired of playing it straight. Albert
Ayler's roots were in R&B, meaning charges of charlatanism
dominated the critical discourse around him. The reactionaries had a
point, for Ayler sounded like no other horn player, rarely explaining
his methods and encouraging listeners to focus on "feelings" rather
than "notes." The second release from the only label in town willing
to cut him a check found Ayler's unsettling tenor sax screaming atop a
rhythm section so unmoored from traditional meter that casual
listeners heard only chaos. Yet Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray knew how
to keep time as surely as Ayler himself loved a good melody -- why
else would the maestro cover his best tune ("Ghosts") twice on a
four-cut album? Soon, the quartet would expand into an ensemble,
quoting brass bands and Irish jigs. But here Ayler speaks in tongues
the way few of his rivals ever dared.
#8 Terry Riley - In C (Columbia, 1968)
At the height of New York serialism's chilly grip on contemporary
composition, Terry Riley cheerfully spoke out of turn with pure West
Coast optimism. If other composers paid lip service to jazz
improvisation or Indian drones, Riley integrated non-Western
techniques into his proto-hippie philosophy, throwing out the
classical script via a disarmingly simplistic one-page score, first
unveiled in 1964 and put down for posterity on this transcendent,
spellbinding recording. With a wit reminiscent of fellow Californian
John Cage, the piece called for "about 35 people" to cycle through 53
"cells" at no fixed tempo for any length of time until a satisfactory
conclusion, anchored by a steady eighth-note piano pulse, preferably
played by a "beautiful girl." Cerebral yet democratic, Riley's magic
formula allowed great flexibility between performances while remaining
immediately identifiable, a hypnotic pile-up full of accidental
melodies and brief epiphanies. That pulse would help light the spark
of American minimalism, while serialism languishes in dusty academia.
#7 Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960)
There was always more bop and blues within Ornette Coleman's early
quartet dates than scandalized traditionalists would admit. But when
the alto saxophonist summoned a double quartet to New York's A&R
Studios for a single 37-minute track of frenetic improv (the longest
continuous cut in jazz history at the time), he was venturing into
uncharted territory. Careful listening revealed a collectivist ethos
straight out of Dixieland, two drummers swinging like crazy, and a
thematic phrase anybody could whistle, provided you were still
listening when it surfaced deep inside the performance. But at the
time, nobody was talking about Dixieland or swing or melody -- they
were either fleeing the cacophony or seeing the light. Five decades
and many variations later, the shock tactics of Free Jazz have become
part of our DNA: If you think head-solo-head arrangements are passé,
you just tipped your hat to the master.
I commented:
I've rated 42 albums (of 100) on Spin's list, plus have "Forever
Changes" in the long-term unrated pile -- 19 A- or better, 14 B+, 9
lower down to D ("For Alto," a smart and gutsy choice, just one I've
never been able to stand listening to). Probably have more/less good
compilations intersecting another 5-10. Have owned at some point a
couple more that I never graded ("Rotary Connection" for one). I read
the McLuhan book, and saw the film, but never listened to the
album. Read several books by Watts without even knowing he had an
album.
Not sure what "alt" means from all this: the electronica is pretty
high-brow, world mostly means French, the jazz is avant but spotty
(and more Brit/European than usual, while the rock is less). Six
ESP-Disk records, including the wrong Sun Ra.
Jason Gubbels:
I heard my ears ringing, so I'd better chime in quick. My role on
this SPIN project (sorry, the all-caps is habit by now) was small -- I
just asked to write about a few that were offered on a large list (one
that was not featured was Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way," which I
suggested be added, and which I didn't see on the final list).
My main quibble with the project is the use of the word
"alternative," which seems a little meaningless in this context. But
SPIN has a lot invested in that term (they might own the patent on it,
for all I know). A far more accurate term might have been
"avant-garde," in the original sense of the word, namely, challenging
shocks of the new that have since become internalized within the pop
framework (one might even say normalized and familiarized). If you're
the type of critic who thinks everything popular is suspect, then,
yes, this sort of a project can be a way to re-write history. But
that's not how I approached the list in general, and certainly not the
little blurbs I turned in. I'm more fascinated by the way yesterday's
avant-garde becomes today's daily soundtrack. To me, it speaks to the
power of a marketplace and the appetites of a consumer base so
voracious for new sounds that everything eventually becomes fair
game.
I agree with Ham that trying to determine whether Pharaoh Sanders
was "more alternative" than Wayne Shorter is a fool's
errand. Certainly more people were buying Shorter than Sanders
records. Yet Shorter's sales were eclipsed by, say, the Byrds'
sales. But if you want to talk about which of the two saxophonists
were directly challenging accepted modes of jazz communication,
Sanders becomes your man.
But again, this gets tricky. Sanders can blow your mind the first
time you hear him really venturing into the realms of Out. But Shorter
was doing equally amazing things on his solo albums and within the
Davis Quintet at the same time -- more academic, perhaps, than Sanders'
sanctified energy music, but in its own way, equally radical. And
that's the big problem with lists like these, because they posit that
radicalism always sounds radical. [**EDIT: I see Bradley summarized
this effortlessly while I was blathering on and on]
Last thing I'll say here is that even though the point of this
project was to highlight how far-out and challenging these artists
were, I did my best in the tiny space allotted (150 words max) to also
note how much Ayler and Ornette were beholden to melody and swing. So,
yeah, a deeply imperfect list. But I don't know -- does the world need
another Greatest Albums of the 1960s list that isn't qualified in some
sort of limiting way?
Bradley Sroka (comment Gubbels refers to above):
Also, concerning Pharaoh Sanders, he was the guy on those wild
Coltrane records -- Shorter was on those cerebral Miles records. Big
difference. Plus he made Karma, which sounds more "alternative" to me,
so I'm surprised they chose Tauhid. Speak No Evil and
Juju make sense as jazz albums. Sanders' are a little odder --
less virtuosic, more into capturing the world outside of jazz than
Shorter. No? (EDIT: The Impulse Story, while only 4 tracks
long, sums him up pretty well.)
Christopher Monsen:
Re: Sun Ra: go for the early stuff first. Super Sonic Jazz
is a good'un, and Jazz In Silhouette swings like a mother, and
is a real classic. The Futuristic Sounds of . . . also has its
moments. For the later stuff, Lanquidity is really good. I
don't mind Other Planes . . . , but I'm wary of the second
Heliocentric disc. There's also The Singles (on
Evidence), which is much loved by many, and well worth checking
out.
I pulled out the jazz subset of the list (16 albums): Ornette
Coleman (2), Sun Ra (2), Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Peter Brötzmann,
Sonny Sharrock, Anthony Braxton, AMM, Pharoah Sanders, Spontaneous
Music Ensemble, Roland Kirk, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell.
Five of those records got Penguin Guide crowns (Ayler, Coltrane,
Brötzmann, Braxton, Dolphy). The two most obvious mistakes were on
ESP-Disk: Coleman's Town Hall 1962 (look for At the Golden
Circle, Stockholm), and Sun Ra's Heliocentric Worlds (I'm
also not so keen on Other Planes of There, but it's much better;
my top-rated 1960s Sun Ra is Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Art
Forms for Dimensions Tomorrow, two 1961-63 albums reissued on one
CD in 1992). He did better stuff both before and after the 1960s.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
A Downloader's Diary (28): March 2013
Insert text from here.
This is the 28th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010,
totalling 695 albums. All columns are indexed and archived
here. You can follow A Downloader's
Diary on
Facebook, and on
Twitter.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Music Week/Jazz Prospecting
Music: Current count 21188 [21164] rated (+24), 595 [586] unrated (+9).
Relatively light week, or maybe just a lot of distractions. One
of my cousins, George Edward Hull, died so I attended to various
family matters. Finished my project to add some wing shelves around
the medicine cabinet in the downstairs half-bath. Listened to the
Machito Properbox and wrote it up for April's Recycled Goods. Spent
some time fleshing out the Rhapsody Streamnotes March file, which
I'll post later this week.
Not really enough Jazz Prospecting below to bother with, but I
might as well get it out of the way. Jazz Prospecting from Feb. 2012
up to this week now has its own
archive section. (Before that, Jazz
Prospecting was collected with the
Jazz Consumer Guide, so there was
one prospecting file per finished column.)
Michael Blanco: No Time Like the Present (2012 [2013],
Cognitive Dissonance): Bassist, based in New York, has a previous album
on FSNT. New one is a sleek postbop quintet, with John Ellis on tenor
and soprano sax, Jonathan Kreisberg on guitar, David Cook on piano, and
Mark Ferber on drums. Ellis does a nice job rifling through the changes.
Blanco composed all the tunes, reserving one for his solo spot.
B+(*)
Stan Bock & the New Tradition: Feelin' It (2012
[2013], OA2): Plays trombone and euphonium, studied music at Fort Hays
State and University of Northern Iowa, spent 19 years in the USAF band;
moved to Portland, OR, and has three albums since 2003. Sextet, with
two saxes (Renato Caranto and John Nastos), keybs (Clay Giberson),
electric bass (Tim Gilson) and drums (Christopher Brown, also credited
with alto sax). Bock wrote 4 of 13 songs, Nastos adding 3, Giberson 1,
with covers from Cole Porter to Joe Zawinul to Leonard Bernstein. First
cut is engagingly slippery, but much of the rest is more conventional.
B+(*)
Hungry Cowboy: Dance (2010 [2013], Prom Night):
Quartet led by Jacob Wick (trumpet, compositions), with Briggan
Krauss (sax), Jonathan Goldberger (guitar), and Mike Pride (drums) --
Krauss you know from Sex Mob, and Pride shows up lots of places.
First group album; Wick seems to have a couple other albums (duo
with Andrew Greenwald, trio with Jeff Kimmel and David Moré, group
Tres Hongos and another, White Rocket). Avant horn split, loses a
bit when they slow down.
[bandcamp]
B+(**) [advance]
Jack Mouse Group: Range of Motion (2012 [2013], Origin):
Drummer, did a tour with the USAF's Falconaires. First album; has a
handful of side credits, half behind singer Janice Borla. He wrote
all the pieces here (sharing one), for a typical postbop group:
Scott Robinson (saxes, flute), Art Davis (trumpet), John McLean
(guitar), Bob Bowman or Kelly Sill (bass). Some nice passages,
especially for the horns.
B+(*)
Dick Reynolds: Music & Friends (2012 [2013], Origin):
Pianist, based in Chicago, seems to be his first album although he's an
old-timer, a professional musician at least since the 1960s. He wrote all
the pieces here, several explicitly tributes (Ruben Alvarez, Johnny Frigo,
Nancy Wilson, Carol Ettman, Ben Mocini, Stan Getz), and his friends list
is extensive. The four big band cuts are crackling, the piano solo at the
end a sweet coda.
B+(*)
Twins of El Dorado: Portend the End (2012 [2013],
Prom Night): Art song duo, Kristin Slipp on voice (singing is a stretch)
and Joe Moffett on trumpet, with a guest lyric from Emily Dickinson.
Slipp's previous credits include three albums with Cuddle Magic. This
is pretty arch, although the trumpet helps.
[bandcamp]
B-
Mark Weinstein: Todo Corazon: The Tango Album (2012
[2013], Jazzheads): Flute player, sixteen albums since 1996, figured
out early that Latin music suits his instrument, and has delved most
deeply into Cuban music, with forays into Brazil and now Argentina.
Can't fault his planning: Raul Jaurena is the real thing on bandoneon,
and he hired bassist Pablo Aslan to arrange the classic tunes. Still
comes off awfully flat. Maybe it's the flute?
B
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Berserk! (Rare Noise): advance, May 6
- Will Calhoun: Life in This World (Motéma): advance, May 14
- David's Angels: What It Seems (Kopasetic)
- The Engines w/John Tchicai: Other Violets (Not Two)
- The Bill Horvitz Expanded Band: The Long Walk (Big Door Prize)
- Billy Lester: Storytime (JKA): May 7
- Chuck Owen & the Jazz Surge: River Runs (Summit)
- Ivo Perelman: Serendipity (Leo)
- Ivo Perelman: The Edge (Leo)
- Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of the Duet, Volume One (Leo)
- Reg Schwager/Michel Lambert: Trio Improvisations (Jazz From Rant)
- Craig Taborn Trio: Chants (ECM): advance, April 16
- The Verve Jazz Ensemble: It's About Time (self-released)
Purchases:
- Ashley Monroe: Like a Rose (Warner Brothers)
- Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park (Mercury Nashville)
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Weekend Roundup
Some scattered links I squirreled away during the previous week:
John Cassidy: Whither the GOP? A Republican Report Worth Reading:
Well, not really. Focus groups show the Party to be "scary," "narrow-minded,"
and "out of touch," and some of the Party apparatchiki think they'd
like to change it, but what they offer is cosmetic -- "we need a Party
whose brand of conservatism invites and inspires new people to visit
us." Problem is, the Republicans made most of their gains when people
didn't realize where the party is going, and now that the party is, as
even the report puts it, "driving around in circles on an ideological
cul-de-sac," it's become all too clear what the Party stands for.
It remains to be seen how these strictures go down with the billionaires
that increasingly fund the Republican Party. But in this report, there
is a definite recognition that the party's image as a tool of the one
per cent is doing it great damage. Interestingly, this skepticism towards
being tied to the ultra-rich extends to the activities of the Super PACs,
such as those controlled by Karl Rove and the Koch brothers, which last
year spent about a billion dollars in advertising in swing states, and all
to no avail. Unless the activities of "lone wolf groups" are coördinated
with the activities of the party, the report warns, they are "more likely
to waste their donors' money and act in a redundant, unhelpful manner."
Noura Erakat: Rethinking Israel-Palestine: Beyond Bantustans, Beyond
Reservations: Lots of things here, including some points on Israeli
citizens who happen not to be Chosen People:
In 2011, Israel passed the State Budget Law Amendment. Popularly known
as the Nakba Law, it penalizes, by revoking state funding, any institution
that either challenges Israel's founding as a Jewish and democratic state
or commemorates Israel's Independence Day as one of mourning or loss. The
threat any such commemoration poses is a challenge to Israel's narrative
of righteous conception.
The Prawer Plan, named after its author, former deputy chair of the
National Security Council Ehud Prawer, seeks to forcibly displace up to
70,000 Palestinian Bedouins from their homes and communities in the Negev
Desert to urban townships to make room for Jewish-only settlements and a
forest. The plan, approved in September 2011, has no demographic impact,
as these Palestinians are already Israeli citizens. It does, however,
violently sever these Bedouin communities from their agricultural
livelihoods and centuries-long association with that particular land.
Similarly, in 2001 the High Court of Justice rejected an appeal from
internally displaced Palestinians to return to the villages of Ikrit and
Kafr Bir'im, near the Lebanon border, from which they were forcibly
displaced in 1948. Like the Negev-based Palestinians, these Palestinians
are Israeli citizens and therefore pose no demographic threat. In fact,
they currently live only miles away from their demolished villages. Their
return to them only threatens a Zionist narrative that Palestine was a
land without a people for a people without a land. To further the erasure,
Israel plans on building Jewish settlements where these communities once
lived.
Israel's land and housing planning policies in the Galilee demonstrate
that the threat is not just about demographics and memory but the cohesion
of Palestinians within the state, and the potential for Palestinian
nationalism. In Nazareth, home to 80,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel,
bidding rights for public building opportunities are reserved for citizens
who have completed military service. This excludes nearly all of Nazareth's
Palestinian population, who do not serve in the Israeli military for
historical and political reasons. In other Galilee cities, "Admissions
Committees" can legally exclude Palestinians from their residential
communities for being "socially unsuitable" based on their race or national
origin alone. Together with its policy of Jewish settlement expansion
within Israel as well as a matrix of similarly discriminatory urban
planning laws, Israel forces its Palestinian citizens to live in
noncontiguous ghettos throughout the state.
Until 1967, Palestinian "citizens of Israel" were second class, subject
to military rule. Later in 1967, Israel invaded Egypt, Jordan, and Syria,
seizing chunks of land and established military control over anyone who
failed to flee, much like their earlier exercise but even more repressive.
At the time, it was widely assumed that Israel would realize that the
occupied territories didn't fit with the model of a democratic Jewish
state, so would be swapped out for peace guarantees -- as happened with
Egypt, although only after a further round of war. However, there were
powerful groups within Israel who hated the idea of ever giving up land,
and they worked hard to make "land-for-peace" and "two-state solution"
impossible. Erakat explains that they succeeded:
Nevertheless, Israel has obliterated the two-state option since the
signing of Oslo in 1993. It sanctioned, funded and encouraged, as a
matter of national policy, the growth of the settler population in the
West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, from 200,000 to nearly
600,000. It built 85 percent of the separation barrier on occupied
West Bank land, circumscribing its largest settlement blocs and
effectively confiscating 13 percent of the territory. Rather than
prepare Area C (62 percent of the West Bank, now under interim Israeli
civil and military jurisdiction) for Palestinian control, it has
entrenched its settlement-colonial enterprise. Israel's siege has
exacerbated the cultural, social and national distance between the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank. And its intense Judaization campaign
in East Jerusalem has accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
there, hardly preparing it to become the independent capital of the
future Palestinian state.
As the settlements chopped up the West Bank, some people on both
sides started advocating a "one-state solution" whereby Israel would
keep its settlements but grant citizenship to the remaining people
living in the seized territories. Many Zionists treat this proposal
as such a non-starter that even mention of it gets you tossed from
the room. In a two-state scenario based on 1967 borders with return
of the 1947-49 refugees barred, Jews would enjoy a large majority,
but adding in the occupied territories changes the balance to 5.9
million Jews vs. 6.1 million non-Jews, threatening the Jewish State's
democratic trappings. Netanyahu and his cohort are unwilling either
to part with land or to unify its people, so they pretend they can
keep their current two-caste system working indefinitely. And the
more Jews appear as overlords in the occupied territories, the more
they target Israel's "Palestinian citizens" -- it's hard to check
the racism, the brutality, the paranoia at the Green Line, so it's
no surprise that Israel's occupation mentality corrupts the whole
country.
Paul Krugman: Marches of Folly: Noting the tenth anniversary of
Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq:
There were, it turned out, no weapons of mass destruction; it was obvious
in retrospect that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation
into war. And the war -- having cost thousands of American lives and scores
of thousands of Iraqi lives, having imposed financial costs vastly higher
than the war's boosters predicted -- left America weaker, not stronger,
and ended up creating an Iraqi regime that is closer to Tehran than it is
to Washington.
So did our political elite and our news media learn from this experience?
It sure doesn't look like it.
The really striking thing, during the run-up to the war, was the illusion
of consensus. To this day, pundits who got it wrong excuse themselves on
the grounds that "everyone" thought that there was a solid case for war.
Of course, they acknowledge, there were war opponents -- but they were out
of the mainstream.
The trouble with this argument is that it was and is circular: support
for the war became part of the definition of what it meant to hold a
mainstream opinion. Anyone who dissented, no matter how qualified, was
ipso facto labeled as unworthy of consideration. This was true in political
circles; it was equally true of much of the press, which effectively took
sides and joined the war party.
CNN's Howard Kurtz, who was at The Washington Post at the time, recently
wrote about how this process worked, how skeptical reporting, no matter how
solid, was discouraged and rejected. "Pieces questioning the evidence or
rationale for war," he wrote, "were frequently buried, minimized or
spiked."
Closely associated with this taking of sides was an exaggerated and
inappropriate reverence for authority. Only people in positions of power
were considered worthy of respect. Mr. Kurtz tells us, for example, that
The Post killed a piece on war doubts by its own senior defense reporter
on the grounds that it relied on retired military officials and outside
experts -- "in other words, those with sufficient independence to question
the rationale for war."
As I recall, at the time it was not difficult to find dissenting views,
but they were always hard pressed to keep up with the avalanche of pro-war
propaganda, disadvantaged by lack of access to sources, and by being shut
out of the limited media sources that seem to sway Washington, as opposed
to public, opinion. But more than media complicity, the one thing that
stands out in my mind as allowing Bush to get away with all the lies and
nonsense was the administration's ability to steer the entire cast of
Democratic Part 2004 presidential aspirants to vote for the war: Kerry,
Gephardt, Edwards, Daschle, Clinton, Schumer, Biden, Dodd, Lieberman.
None wanted to be caught up opposing a successful war -- as had happened
to some Democrats opposed to the first Iraq war in 1990, the definition
of success being rather murky there -- and none had the foresight to
see how this war would turn out differently.
Krugman likens this group-think to the current nonsense he struggles
with daily on the mass misunderstanding of Very Serious Persons of basic
macroeconomics. Valid complaint, perhaps even clearer here how moneyed
interests have corrupted even basic science for their own purposes, and
how successfully the elite media has wrapped itself around Washington's
fickle brains.
MJ Rosenberg: The Times Eviscerates the Occupation: Use this
link as an introduction to the long New York Times piece by
Ben Ehrenreich: Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?:
The best news about the Ehrenreich piece is that he simply describes
the occupation in all its ugliness, forcing the reader to forget for
a time all the propaganda about Palestinians and instead focus on the
conditions Palestinians are subjected to simply because the settlers
(and the Israeli government that supports them) wants their land. And,
beyond that, he defends non-violent resistance to the occupation as
the one means that can end it. (He quotes one Israeli army official
saying that he prefers dealing with resisters who shoot, "you have the
enemy, he shoots at you, you have to kill him." But he is confounded
by non-violent resistance. Another is quoted as saying, "We don't do
Gandhi very well." In short, Ehrenreich eviscerates the occupation
and describes how it can be ended.
Also see Rosenberg for his review of Obama's Israel-Palestine trip,
No Big Surprises but He Accomplished His Goal. The key point here
was when Obama "compared the Palestinian struggle to the civil rights
movement in America, invoking his own daughters as beneficiaries of
that struggle." This doesn't inspire me with much confidence, but it
does clearly focus on equal rights, as opposed to the caste regime
that Israel has constructed.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
The Apocalypse
In my books research, I came across a new anti-Obama hate book,
David Harsanyi's Obama's Four Horsemen: The Disasters Unleashed
by Obama's Reelection (2013, Regnery). The book description (at
Amazon) reads:
Conquest, Famine, War, Death -- the four horsemen are coming, in
the form of the national debt, widespread dependence on government,
turmoil in the Middle East, and the expansion of the bureaucratic
state. . . .
Under Obama, America has become a land of more dependence, more
hand-outs, more federal programs, and more government agencies. The
great danger is that Americans have gotten used to it. Many people
today expect, as a matter of fact, that the government will hand them
health insurance, student loans, birth control, and anything else they
might need or desire -- while they are increasingly numb to the
pernicious creep of the bureaucratic state and the alarming escalation
of unsustainable spending and debt.
Meanwhile, powerful forces abroad seek to destroy American and
Western culture while Obama has sat on his thumbs and looked the other
way, tossing out politically correct platitudes when asked about his
response to their open threats and aggression.
I don't really feel like arguing these points, even though they are
pretty severely disconnected from reality. The national debt, for example,
is a problem -- and even then not much of one -- only if its growth isn't
matched by growth of the economy, so attempts to "solve the debt crisis"
by austerity, forcibly slowing down the economy, are counterproductive
and irresponsible. One worries here that Obama and the Democrats, having
bought into long-term national debt problem, will shy away from policies
that would actually provide the necessary growth.
As for all those "takers" -- you know, the 47% who pay no income tax
but live high on government hog -- that shouldn't be something one can
argue about. If all those people consciously depend so much on government
largesse, they should be aware enough to vote to protect their interest,
since their votes and the national conscience are the only things that
keep the dole coming. But do they vote? Most don't: because they aren't
all that impressed by the federal bounty and/or because they regard the
politicians of both parties are crooked.
The Inside Flap explains the four horsemen somewhat differently, with
debt and dependency followed by "surrender" -- "the Obama administration
kowtows to dictators, apologizes to those who hate us, refuses to defend
American ideals, and is actively working to undo our superpower status" --
and "death" -- abortion, of course, which under Obama "is a positive good,
to be subsidized and even exported at taxpayer expense." One only wishes,
but that's another story.
As I've explained before, the whole mantra that "Obama hates America"
is ridiculous from the start. America elected Obama president, twice, by
substantial margins. How could someone with the ego to run for president
have so little self-regard to hate a country that honors him so? You
have to wonder if the real enemies of the real America -- the one that
twice voted Obama president -- aren't the ones who hate Obama, and who
have graduated from hating the leader to loathing all who voted for him.
The right-wing may still love their idea of America -- it's just the
folks who live and work here they can't stand.
Consider this: one of Amazon's reviewers quotes the book (p. 54):
Big government makes us poorer; it does so by making us less
moral. It undermines our work ethic; it rewards irresponsibility
(through everything from mortgage bailouts to subsidized
contraception); it promotes envy and greed; it creates enemy classes
or groups (like the wealthy) and encourages us all to demonize them
and take from them.
Aside from the nonsensical evidence -- those mortgage bailouts
never happened (unless, of course, you owned a bank), and "subsidized
contraception" is a cost-savings measure for the still private health
insurance racket; what's subsidized is health insurance for people
who can't afford it, which is equally a subsidy for the whole health
care industry -- the striking thing here is the complete inversion of
common sense.
Harsanyi seems to believe that there is a state of nature without
government where "we" are richer and more moral (ignoring the fact
that much of western culture has been very suspicious of the morality
of the rich). Let's be generous and call this state Eden, inasmuch
as he seems to view government as Original Sin. Needless to say, his
view is at odds with the traditional conservative position, which is
that we need the state, both with its monopoly of force within the
army and police and with its administrative bureaucracy, in order to
force the masses to be more moral, to support the established social
order, and to make (at least the leaders of that order) richer.
As for his fear of robbing the rich for the benefit of the poor,
that classic trope (at least as "Robin Hood") dates back to the Middle
Ages, way before liberalism and the modern bureaucratic state -- but
alas not before the rich learned how to use state force and laws to
exploit the poor. Throughout history, it's been the downtrodden, the
poor, and those who imagined a more equitable order, who had most
reason to fear the state. Only with the invention of democracy did
it become possible for the masses to imagine using nonviolent votes
to get a fairer shake. What Harsanyi and his ilk fear is that too
many people -- especially young people -- have discovered how to do
just that.
So they rail against the people's choice, damning all government,
decrying any hint of redistributing the nation's wealth, declaring
the very thought to be immoral, and damning those who dare think it
to their long-winded, deeply paranoid wrath. In effect, what they
are saying is that the people made the wrong choice, so to hell with
the people. They're admitting that democracy worked against them, so
they aim to subvert democracy. (Examples abound, from voter ID laws
to unlimited campaign spending to Scalia's campaign to void civil
rights law.) And most ominously, they insist on taking absolutist
positions: their opposition to abortion becomes a defense of rapists,
their absolute defense of gun rights becomes cover for criminals and
license for crackpots, their "line in the sand" on taxes bankrupts
the country and denies even themselves real services of government.
They're nuts, divorced from reality, estranged from their neighbors,
and spiteful, willing to cut off their own legs to make sure you
immoral sluts can't catch a break.
A couple years ago John Amato and David Neiwert wrote a short book:
Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane
(paperback, 2010, Polipoint Press). They barely scratched the surface,
and never quite got to the heart of the problem. That seems to be here,
in Harsanyi's delusions.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Expert Comments
Greg Morton asked about Proper Boxes (having bought Wardell Gray).
I wrote:
My experience with Proper Boxes, sorted by grade:
A+: |
Coleman Hawkins: The Bebop Years (1939-49) |
A: |
Mildred Bailey: Mrs. Swing (1929-42)
Johnny Hodges: The Jeep Is Jumpin' (1937-52)
Illinois Jacquet: The Illinois Jacquet Story (1944-51)
Louis Jordan: Jivin' With Jordan (1939-51)
Bob Wills: Take Me Back to Tulsa (1932-50)
VA: Hillbilly Boogie (1939-51) |
A-: |
Benny Carter: The Music Master (1931-52)
Slim Gaillard: Laughing in Rhythm (1937-52)
Ben Webster: Big Ben (1931-51)
VA: Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys (1932-47)
VA: Larkin's Jazz (1925-59)
VA: The Big Horn (1942-52) |
B+: |
Ernest Tubb: The Texas Troubadour (1936-52)
VA: Gettin' Funky: The Birth of New Orleans R&B (1941-50) |
B-: |
VA: Swing Tanzen Verboten! (1933-44) |
U: |
Wynonie Harris: Rockin' the Blues (1944-50)
Machito: Ritmo Caliente (1941-51) |
Playing Machito at the moment. First two discs don't break above
B+, but the third disc is heating up. I like the 1951-57 Columbia
Masters, Mambo Mucho Mambo. I'll have to dig Harris out;
unlikely he has 4CD of top-notch material, but Rhino's King best-of
(Bloodshot Eyes) is tops, and there's an earlier set on Delmark
(Everybody Boogie!) that I like a lot.
They sent me stuff for a short while, but stopped after I panned
the Nazi Swing thing. It has some historical interest, and they seem
to have been very smitten with the idea, but the music -- mostly not
by Nazis, by the way -- isn't very special.
They also have a 2-CD Proper Pairs series, necessarily more
marginal, but I figure Memphis Minnie (Me and My Chauffeur),
Willie Nelson (Broken Promises), Stuff Smith (Time and
Again), and Merle Travis (Hot Pickin') for A-.
And they have a 1-CD Proper Introduction series: Maddox Brothers
& Rose is an A; Julia Lee an A-; Rosco Gordon, Dodo Marmarosa, and
Maxine Sullivan down at B+.
Would like to have been able to cover more, but since they stopped
servicing me what I've picked up has been pretty arbitrary.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Expert Comments
Wrote this on facebook to announce the post below:
Ten years ago George W. Bush ordered the destruction of Iraq,
resulting in the deaths of over 4,500 US soldiers and countless
Iraqis, leaving unfathomable hurt everywhere. I've collected some of
the things I wrote mostly around March 2003. Those writings have
proven more accurate than most. Maybe even prescient.
Within seconds, Bill Phillips liked and shared.
By the way, I had to hack some software to get this to work. In
particular, I changed the hack_notebook
Also had to fiddle with make-lfiles in the books
section. Don't know why, but the single quotes stopped appearing
in the awk output. Must have something to do with charset encoding.
Good chance other scripts are broken, since it's a pain to print
out quotes from within shell/awk scripts, but it's necessary if
you're creating PHP files. I suppose I'd be better off in the long
run switching over to UTF, but it's such a daunting task.
Wrote the following in a letter to Tatum, ŕ propos de George
Edward's funeral:
Missed the funeral (too early); had a bad heartburn attack at the
lunch, which was cramped and uncomfortable. Didn't see Uncle James,
nor did anyone else. Don't know if my sister made it to the funeral,
but she wasn't at the lunch. All in all, rather weird, and while I'll
make an effort to stay in better touch, I'm rather glad it's done for
now.
Finally read Uncle James' memoir. Notably, it's almost totally
lacking anything on his family -- couple mentions of his folks, none
of his brothers or sister by name, not one word on his son Gary, two
brief mentions that his son Jimmy had "problems" (he was retarded,
terrorized, and died at 21), four (I think) brief mentions of his wife
(met and got married, she liked to shop at pbx, he loved her, and he
took care of her 24/7 for last five years of her life, but nothing on
what her illnesses were). Lots of stuff on his paper routes, air force
service, engineering college, and Boeing job, plus political opinions
and an appendix on his own health problems. Have only thumbed through
his poetry (and some of his mother's), letters to the editor, and
death penalty research (which I learned started as a college
paper). Cliches, barely literate (mistakes like "personal" for
"personnel"). You might contrast to
what I wrote
after his wife died (not that I shouldn't revise a few minor points):
Ten Years of Infamy
Ten years ago this week George W. Bush launched his war against Iraq.
He was almost solely responsible for the act, at least in the sense that
had he decided not to go to war he would have met virtually no resistance.
Yet he also had little real choice: he was a mental slave to the logic
that had led his father to attack Iraq in 1991, and that had prevented
either Bush or Clinton from making any serious effort to normalize Iraq.
Moreover, he was still smitten by the political euphoria his father had
briefly enjoyed when the 1991 war had initially seemed so successful,
and he was convinced that his own "tougher resolve" would lock in the
same political euphoria, allowing him to build up "political capital"
for ever greater feats, like war with Iran, or wrecking social security.
Invading Iraq turned out to be a surprisingly difficult political
play, especially compared to the utter ease with which Bush was able
to sink the US military into a hopeless quagmire in Afghanistan --
one that, needless to say, still saps US forces while remaining as
far as ever from resolution. Many figures came forth declaring Iraq
"a war of choice," "the wrong war" (as compared to Afghanistan), but
for me the real wrong choice was Afghanistan, especially following
Bush's wholehearted support of Ariel Sharon's destruction of the
Oslo Peace Process in Israel/Palestine. In an unguarded moment,
Bush himself referred to his efforts to bend the Middle East to
his will as a new "crusade": his "born again" certainty reinforcing
the hubris of America's anti-communist triumphalism.
This was all clear at the time. And while I wrote little about
Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11 -- my website barely
existed then, I spent the month following 9/11 away from home,
and I had yet to grasp the event's political importance -- by
2003 I was writing regularly. When I grep "Iraq" in my notebook
file, I fish up more than 4000 lines. I thought I'd quote a few
of them, mostly from March-April 2003, a few earlier (including
one from Sept. 11, 2001), ending with a couple from August 2003.
Reading through them, I see that I'm missing a lot of detail,
especially the whole WMD controversy (a bogus argument if ever
I've heard one).
Of course, much more happened after August 2003, and at least
some of that shows up in subsequent posts. Then there are the
books: I've read at least thirty specifically on Afghanistan and
Iraq, another twenty on the Bush administration and the more
general War on Terror. Of those, the Bremer administration is
pretty well documented, except for the decision to put an idiot
like Bremer in charge in the first place -- that's one thing
I've never even seen a plausible denial on. After that, from
mid-2004 to 2007, the history gets much harder to come by --
the US, especially with Khalilzad, becomes very secretive, and
the whole country becomes dangerously inhospitable to reporters.
From 2007 on, you get a lot of pro-military hype, especially
from the platoon of Petraeus sycophants -- one of the few
exceptions here is Nir Rosen's Aftermath: Following the
Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World (2011).
Many of the books are commented on (and some extensively
quoted) in the
books section, but it will take another post to properly index
and annotate them.
More (much more) after the break . . .
September 11, 2001: actually written Oct. 28, but accurate
for the day:
We look out window and could see, I think, one tower burning: smoke
black from tower, but white as it wafted over Brooklyn.
We turn TV on; now both towers are burning. We watch TV, hear of up
to eight hijackings, watch the towers fall, the Pentagon
burn. "America Under Attack" was emblazoned on TV, an instant
reduction that only fueled the growing war talk. I spent much of the
morning thumbing through a photo book called Century -- a
graphic reminder of how grisly the 20th century had been, of what
modern war really looked like, on scales both large and small. With so
much history in front of me, it was easy to imagine scenes of real
war, and identify why today is different. . . .
Later we see a grainy broadcast from Kabul, a rocket flare and
explosion. Speculation was that America was striking back --
temporarily forgetting that Afghanistan already had more war than it
would ever need. I commented that if indeed the US attacked
Afghanistan, it would mark the second time that Afghanistan destroys
an empire.
December 3, 2001: I quote Hendrik Hertzberg:
"Apart from traditional pacifists, who oppose any use of force on
principle, and a handful of reflexive Rip Van Winkles, almost no
one objects, in broad outline, to the aims and methods of the
antiterrorism campaign."
I'm not sure which one of these diminutive and deprecated groups I
belong to, but it isn't hard or unreasonable to find objections to
either aims or methods in the US's "antiterrorism campaign." The aim
is clearly to contain terrorism by repression. More basically, this
means that the aim is to reassert the inevitability and indomitability
of US global power. The campaign we're witnessing is the reflex of
power provoked. But the methods do little more than remind us that the
US's real power doesn't amount to much more than the ability to
indiscriminately bomb and wreak havoc, to unleash terror at a pitch
that Al Qaeda can only dream about.
In this, the US leadership has managed to reverse the plain truth
of the 9/11 attacks, which is that the victims had no relationship to
any plausible complaint about the US or how the US power has damaged
any other part of the world, and that the terrorists had shown
themselves to be utterly immoral in their slaughter of
innocents. Hertzberg is right that no one disagrees with this judgment
of the terrorists. Where he misses the boat is in not realizing that
the same logic that lets the US leaders justify their bombing in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and other quarters of the Islamic world, is the
selfsame logic that leads terrorists, with their relatively crude
weapons, to target US innocents.
I ended the post with a paragraph beginning, "I never thought of
myself as a pacifist." Actually, I've rarely not thought of myself as
a pacifist ever since then. I must have been looking for rhetorical
high ground, a position that would straddle the spectrum, but the
right instinct was once again the pacifist one. And I did end the
post: "And when that becomes ridiculously obvious, we'll need all
the pacifists we can find."
December 5, 2001: This is the one thing I wrote about
"weapons of mass destruction" -- may explain why I paid little
attention to the pre-Iraq-War WMD stampede:
Old news, but it looks like the anthrax threat which so effectively
pushed up US paranoia to grease the skids for Bush's Afghan adventure
was done with US government-made anthrax. Without getting into the
question of who mailed the anthrax, or why, one conclusion is obvious:
the terror would not exist had the US military not developed the
weapon. Which is to say that at least in this case terrorism could
have been prevented by the simple, sensible policy of governments not
developing terrorist weapons.
It is insane that anyone could justify development of biological
weapons as a valid military (let alone "defense" -- they do call it
the Department of Defense) weapon. The obvious problem is that is that
it is impossible to aim or time-limit disease organisms. (Not that the
US is able to aim its bombs all that accurately, but at least they
only go off once, and somewhere in the neighborhood of their intended
target.) On the other hand, as we've seen, anthrax can be an effective
terrorist weapon. Maybe that's why the US developed it?
I hate the "weapons of mass destruction" euphemism. Three things:
1) It conflates nuclear weapons (which are the real standard by which
we measure mass destruction) with chemical and biological weapons that
effect their destruction in incomparable ways, which makes it all the
harder to see the differences. 2) It amplifies people's fears of
chem/bio attacks, which in turn makes their threat more effective and
attractive to terrorists. 3) It sanitizes the weapons, making them
seem legitimate for the US to have while only illegitimate for
terrorists. A much more appropriate grouping phrase would be "weapons
of criminal irresponsibility." What all these weapons have in common
that they are indiscriminate and have potentially longlasting
effects. The inability to properly target them makes it crazy to
deploy them.
Kurt Eichenwald provides a reasonably plausible history of the
anthrax scare in his 2012 book, 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in
the Terror Wars, but at the time it didn't seem too far-fetched
that the anthrax attacks, combined with a lot of propaganda about
Al Qaeda's alleged interest in WMD, might be part of a right-wing
conspiracy to pump up the public's hysteria level and thereby grow
support for the War on Terror. That certainly was the effect, and
it was curious that it stopped just before the Post Office started
to demand a truly ridiculous level of safeguards, and it also set
the language framework for the Iraq War push. Even now, although
Eichenwald is credible on who did it, his explanation of why is
far from persuasive, and the "who" conveniently died before his
story could be aired in court.
February 14, 2002: More than a year before invading Iraq,
this appears to have been a PR slip: the "product release" -- Andrew
Card's term for the propaganda offensive behind attacking Iraq --
didn't happen until September.
The main headline in yesterday's paper anounced that Bush has
decided to go to war against Iraq: that the US would commit 200,000
ground troops, and that Cheney was out of his foxhole and touring the
Middle East to tell whoever needs to know what the US is going to
do. Today there was not a single mention of it, no follow-up, no
comments. Of course, part of the reason has to be that the farm bill
passed, which is obviously much more important out here in Kansas, not
to mention the sports page dedicated to the American who came in 2nd
in some skiing event (gee, wonder who won?). I don't know which is
more striking: the casualness with which one nation decides to destroy
another, or the indifference of the people presumably represented by
the first party.
February 22, 2002:
First dead Americans in Todd Tiahrt's Filipino adventure. The
Burnhams get their stock photos in the Eagle for the 600th time or so,
looking exceptionally forlorn.
In other news, there seems to be a new wave of Afghan refugees,
perhaps because the US keeps finding themselves shooting at ordinary
Afghans thinking they might be Taliban or Al Qaida, perhaps because
the parties of the warlord alliance are warlords first, allies second
(if at all).
In other news, Sharon has a plan to solve his crisis by building
bigger barriers between the Israelis and the Palestinians; i.e., to
isolate the effect by making the underlying problem worse.
All told, the denial and self-delusion is pretty staggering. Back
in November I wrote that those were the "feel good" days of the
war. Those days are pretty much over now, but worse days than this
seem certain to come.
The Burnhams were Kansas missionaries kidnapped by an Islamist
group in the southern Philippines, a long-running story in these
parts. Tiahrt was Wichita's congressman, and he made a huge push
for sending US troops to the Philippines under cloak of the War
on Terror. He succeeded, and soon a helicopter of them crashed.
Gracia Burnham was eventually rescued, but was shot and Martin
Burnham was killed. Tiahrt managed to get his picture taken a lot
with Burnham (the one that survived, that is). She wrote a book.
I tried to talk the Voice into letting me review it, but
they balked.
Sharon's "barrier" grew up to be the "apartheid wall."
December 9, 2002: On George Packer's piece, "The Liberal
Quandry Over Iraq," which is to say a feature on liberal-leftists --
David Rieff, Leon Wieseltier, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman,
Christopher Hitchens -- who (like Packer) are itching to jump on
Bush's war bandwagon.
The pro-war argument is little more than a series of conceits --
that democracy is better than despotism, that democracy leads to
liberalism, the U.S. is in this to promote liberalism throughout the
benighted Arab world. Packer makes the point that many liberal hawks
cut their talons in the Yugoslav wars, where they saw American air
power as the only alternative to genocide on the
ground. . . .
The ultimate problem that liberals have in being hawks is not
merely that their ideas are ill conceived but that they depend on
people who are not liberals to carry them out. The Kosovo bombing
program, in particular, may have been dressed up with liberal ideals,
but to a large extent it was just NATO's way of making work for
itself. The same self-promotion is clearly at work in Iraq, but
whereas Clinton could be counted on to provide a liberal shine to
Kosovo, Bush's program to invade Iraq does not offer a shred of hope
that anything positive might come out of it for the Iraqi people. It
seems clear that Bush could care less; that for him this is just about
the U.S.'s prerogatives as the last great world power, and that it
would be nifty if he could strut into his reëlection campaign with
Saddam's shrunken head on his spear.
January 23, 2003: Bob Getz wrote a column in the Wichita
Eagle against the war. This is an extract from a letter that I
wrote to Getz:
But the thing that worries me most has nothing to do with the
Iraqis: I'm worried about what war, even in victory, will do to us. An
old Kansas named Dwight Eisenhower warned about the growing threat of
a "military-industrial complex," but rather than heeding that warning
John F. Kennedy concocted his "missile gap" and Lyndon Johnson plunged
us hopeless into Vietnam. And while Johnson and his liberal ideologues
may have thought that they were bringing American democracy to
Vietnam, their methods so undermined them that they became lost,
unable to fathom that it's impossible to save a village by destroying
it. On the other hand, Nixon and his conservative realpolitiker saw
that defeat in Vietnam was inevitable, but tragically escalated the
war to remind the world to respect American power. Since then we've
been in denial about what the war did not only to Vietnam and Cambodia
(millions of dead) but what it did to America, which was to strip away
the innocence of our good intentions and to cultivate a cynical,
power-craving military/CIA establishment.
We had an opportunity to cut back with the collapse of the Soviet
Union, but the hawks were saved by Iraq, and propelled forward by Al
Qaeda. While the rest of the world has steadfastly moved away from war
as a solution to anything, Bush seems to be intoxicated with America's
status as the world's sole superpower and the military prowess that
dubious claim rests on. But that power is hollow: the power to
destroy, but not to build, nor even to protect. And it's harder than
ever to clothe that power with anything resembling good
intentions. And this seems to be pretty clear to the whole world now,
even if some politicians and media moguls opt to play along.
But on the war crimes front, Bush has at least done due dilligence:
refusing to sign up for the World Court, in fact demanding a free pass
for all Americans. In doing so the U.S. is missing a critical
opportunity to put its behavior above board, and more importantly, to
provide a venue where aggrieved peoples can make a case against
injustice without having to kill people. The notion that conflicts and
injustices can be solved peacably is still as radical as it was when
Tojo was executed for retroactively violating it.
January 27, 2003:
John W. Dower, in Embracing Defeat (p. 461) has a quote
which sounds like an early iteration of the Bush Doctrine: "Peoples of
all the nations of the world absolutely should not abandon the right
to initiate wars of self-defense." The person quoted was Tojo, the
prime minister of wartime Japan, while he was facing war crime
charges, for which he was found guilty and executed. Dower doesn't go
into this, but my recollection is that Japan almost always justified
its wars on self-defense grounds, most obviously on the fear that
European and American imperialism was carving up Asia in a way that
would leave Japan isolated, without access to Asian markets and raw
materials.
The Tojo Doctrine is fatally flawed: it turns out that as long as
Japan has fair access to the world market they don't need (and are far
better off without) war as an instrument of defensive policy. It's
hard to know what to say about the Bush Doctrine, other than that it's
just a sloppy piece of theorizing evidently intended as a fig leaf for
attacking Iraq, but like the "Axis of Evil" speech it bites off a bit
more than anyone wants to chew. (Like North Korea.)
Searching for a happy ending in Iraq, the neocons were reading up
not on Vietnam or the numerous quisling dictators the US propped up
in Latin America but on the "successful" post-WWII occupations of
Germany and Japan. That made Dower an expert, but soon he pointed out
not only that Iraq is far from similar to Japan but also that America
now is far removed from America then. For more comments on Dower, see
here.
March 10, 2003:
It's worth remembering that it wasn't the terrorists who brought
down the World Trade Center: it was gravity. Gravity has always been
the mortal enemy of tall buildings, a perpetual challenge to
engineering ingenuity. All the terrorists did, or had to do, was to
nudge the equations a bit. Gravity took care of the rest.
The notion that the U.S. is the world's one superpower is similarly
predicated on fair weather. The reason that the U.S. emerged from WWII
so powerfully was economic: that the U.S. built up a powerful economy
which combined natural resources, labor, ingenuity, and distance from
the widespread destruction of the war. But that advantage has been
eroding ever since 1945, to the point where now it is no advantage at
all; if anything, the U.S. has been borrowing on its past reputation,
running up trade deficits and exporting manufacturing jobs in ways
that have been barely covered up by capital flows. One of the things
that the U.S. risks in its bellicosity is that someone will call its
bluff, which is just what's happening with the Iraq debacle: first
France learns to say no, then finds it likes it; now Turkey. Whether
the U.S. can still twist the arms of Angola and Guinea to give it the
barest fig leaf of U.N. legitimacy isn't even clear. But what is clear
is that in going its own way, the U.S. has lost command of the
parade. This is the beginning of the end of the notion that there even
is an American empire anymore: rather, what we are seeing is a rogue
nation puffed into self-importance by its possession of weapons of
mass destruction.
March 18, 2003: And then it happened.
Yesterday, March 17, 2003, is another date that will live in
infamy. On this date, U.S. President George W. Bush rejected the
efforts and council of the United Nations, and the expressed concerns
of overwhelming numbers of people throughout the U.S. and all around
the world, and committed the U.S. to attack, invade, and occupy Iraq,
to prosecute or kill Iraq's government leaders, and to install a new
government favorable to U.S. interests.
That Bush has given Iraq's Saddam Hussein 48 hours to surrender in
order to spare Iraq inestimable destruction is clearly intended to
shift blame for this war to Saddam. While this particular ploy may
have been intended cynically, we must be clear that this war would not
be looming were it not for numerous acts that Saddam and Iraq have
committed, including aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait, use of
poison gas both against Iran and against the Kurdish minority within
Iraq, and long-term efforts to obtain horrific weapons. We should also
be clear that after a broad U.N. coalition drove Iraq out of Kuwait
and brokered a cease-fire that left Saddam in power, his government
failed to show good faith in implementing the disarmament specified in
the cease-fire and U.N. mandates. Even now, Saddam's character is put
to severe test, where he has within his power one last chance to put
his country's welfare about his own. If he fails to do so, we must
conclude not only that he is a long-standing war criminal, but that he
is the essential cause for this war.
However, the proximate cause for this war lies squarely with the
Bush administration, aided and abetted by the so-called "coalition of
the willing." They are the ones who rejected concerted efforts by Iraq
and the U.N. to complete and verify Iraq's mandated disarmament, who
pushed the new agenda of regime change, and who locked this agenda
into a final ultimatum. In pushing for regime change, Bush continued
and escalated policies of previous U.S. presidents, especially Bill
Clinton, during whose administration the U.S. worked deliberately to
sabotage the inspections process, to promote Iraqi opposition to
Saddam Hussein, to prolong sanctions which inflicted great hardships
on the Iraqi people, to engender much ill will. Especially complicit
in this war is the Republican-led U.S. Congress, which passed a law in
1998 directing that U.S. policy toward Iraq work toward regime change,
and Democrat President Bill Clinton, who signed that law, and who
repeatedly ordered air strikes against Iraq. But the actual push to
war, the setting of the time table and the issuing of the ultimatum,
was squarely the responsibility of George W. Bush. In this act, which
he was completely free not to do, Bush has placed his name high on the
list of notable war criminals of the last century.
As I write this, we cannot even remotely predict how this war will
play out, how many people will die or have their lives tragically
transfigured, how much property will be destroyed, how much damage
will be done to the environment, what the long-term effects of this
war will be on the economy and civilization, both regionally and
throughout the world. In lauching his war, Bush is marching blithely
into the unknown, and dragging the world with him. It is generally
believed that U.S. military might is such that it will quickly be able
to subdue resistance from Iraq's depleted and mostly disarmed
military, and that the U.S. will quickly dispose of Saddam Hussein and
his top people. However, it is widely speculated that over the course
of U.S. occupation there will be continuing resistance and guerrilla
warfare to burden the expense of occupation, in the hope of sending an
exasperated occupation army packing. It is expected that the fury over
the war will lead to new acts of terrorism directed against
U.S. citizens and interests elsewhere in the world, possibly including
the U.S. homeland. It is already the case that Bush's insistence on
going to war, along with many other aspects of his foreign policy, has
soured relations between the U.S. and a great many nations and people
of the world, including many traditional allies, and that this
situation will get progressively worse the longer and nastier the war
and occupation goes on.
There is, I think, one hope to minimize the damage that inevitably
comes with this war. This is for the Iraqi people, at least those who
survive the initial onslaught, to roll over and play dead, to not
oppose or resist invasion and occupation, and to play on the U.S.'s
much bruited "good intentions" -- the dubious argument that the
U.S. is invading Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. To do this they
must not only not resist, they must collaborate to prevent others from
resisting. Moreover, they must adopt the highest principles of their
occupiers: embrace democracy and respect the civil rights of
minorities. They should in fact go further: to denounce war, to refuse
to support a military, to depend on the U.N. for secure borders, and
not to engage in any hostile foreign relations. The reasons for this
are twofold: in the long-run, these are all good things to do; in the
short-run, they remove any real excuse for the U.S. to continue its
occupation, and will hasten the exit of U.S. forces.
It is, of course, possible that the U.S.'s "good intentions" are
cynical and fraudulent. Over the last fifty years, the U.S. has a very
poor record of promoting democracy, and has a very aggressive record
of promoting U.S. business interests. (And in this regard, Bush has
proven to run the most right-wing administration in U.S. history.)
Many of the same people who in the U.S. government promoted war on
Iraq clearly have further names on their lists of enemies -- Syria,
Iran, even Saudi Arabia -- and a number of fantastic scenarios have
been talked up. But the aggressive projection of U.S. military force
depends on having enemies that can only be kept at bay by such
force. An Iraq, with no Saddam Hussein, with no military, with no way
to threaten its neighbors, with its own people organized into a
stable, respectful democracy, provides no excuse for occupation. If
those conditions prevail, which is within the power of the Iraqi
people to make happen, even the Bush administration would have to pull
out.
There are, of course, other things that will be necessary to
overcome the inevitable damage of this war. Presumably the war and
occupation will at least get rid of one set of war criminals: Saddam
Hussein and his crew. The other set of war criminals, the Bush
administration in particular, need to be voted out of office. The
consequences of Bush's foreign policy, even if they luck out and yield
a democratic Iraq, bear extraordinary costs and engender international
distrust at the same time Bush's tax policy bankrupts the
U.S. government and undermines the U.S. dollar while Bush's domestic
policies lay workers off and degrade the environment. But also the
world community needs to come to grips with conflicts in ways that
look beyond self-interest to provide systematic means to peacefully
resolve conflicts that might otherwise turn into injustice and
war. That Saddam Hussein was allowed to turn into a monster, the
essential cause of Bush's Iraq war, was the consequence of a great
many failures along the way -- serious mistakes on the part of
nations, including the U.S., who promoted him politically, who armed
him, who encouraged him to wage war with Iran, and so forth. The
U.S. must recognize that it cannot alone solve conflicts such as
these; the many nations of the world must in turn step up to the
responsibility.
I believe that this is in fact the way the world is, unfortunately
too slowly, moving: despite the immense amount of terrorism and war of
the past few years, people all around the world are, in their hearts,
actually moving to a much firmer realization of the need for peace,
order, respect, fairness, and opportunity for all. The worldwide
reaction of shock and horror at the toppling of the World Trade Center
was one expression of this; the worldwide protest against Bush's Iraq
war was another. The only way to have peace is to be peaceable.
March 19, 2003: The next day.
Where yesterday I suggested that Iraq should roll over and play
dead, and that Saddam should abdicate, it is easy to imagine how
difficult and how unlikely that is by reversing the roles, by asking
what we as Americans would do if some alien power (from outer space,
no doubt; at least there are a lot of movies that we can reference as
case examples) were to issue such an ultimatum to us.
Consider this, though: in rejecting the ultimatum, Saddam Hussein
passed up a golden opportunity to remake himself as Neville
Chamberlain, to assure "peace for our time" by caving in. Chamberlain
is, of course, reviled for capitulating to Hitler at Munich, which was
no doubt easier for him to do given that all he gave up was
Czechoslovakia. Saddam would have had to put his own hide onto the
silver platter. . . . .
It should be obvious that the main point of yesterday's writing is
that both Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush are enemies of peace, that
they are and should be viewed as criminals, and that neither one in
any way justifies the other. It is, of course, Bush's view that his
actions are justified by Saddam Hussein's past and present behavior,
and it is important that we reject this claim.
The second point is that the best way out of this mess is still
peace, and the more firmly and resolutely the people involved practice
peace, the better. Unfortunately, with the U.S. on the warpath, the
brunt of this responsibility falls on the Iraqi people. Admittedly,
there is little reason to be optimistic at this stage. We know for
certain that there will be resistance. We know that Saddam Hussein and
his party do not believe in or practice peace. We know that jihadists
like Osama Bin Laden do not believe in or practice peace. We also know
that when faced with danger, military forces all the world over, all
throughout history, kill and destroy unnecessarily, often
deliberately, sometimes just inadvertently, which feeds a vicious
cycle of resistance and retribution. We also know that alien
occupation armies misunderstand things, communicate poorly, grow
impatient and resentful, get spooked easily, and often with little
provocation resort to force, sometimes viciously. Even if we accept
the proposition that the U.S. has nothing but good intentions toward
the Iraqi people, remaining peaceable is going to be a tall order. So
while it's what I prescribe, it's not what I expect to
happen. . . .
One thing we really have no idea about is what the true feelings of
the Iraqi people, but even if we did, the real question is more like
how will they break when the effects of the war and invasion become
manifest. In the case of Japan, the Japanese people up to the day of
surrender would, if polled, no doubt have remained resolute, but once
the Emperor surrendered, their exhaustion and resignation became
manifest, as did their assignation of fault for the debacle to Japan's
militarists. It is likely that some such effect will appear in Iraq as
well -- eight years of war with Iran, followed by defeat in Kuwait and
twelve years of crippling sanctions, the Iraqi people have much to
blame on Saddam Hussein. Whether they in fact do so is the short-term
question; not clear that they will do so, given that the U.S. is also
responsible. Then there is the longer-term question, whether
U.S. occupation will itself generate resentment to the extent of
lengthy guerrilla resistance, and the answer there may largely depend
on how the short-term question is answered.
In retrospect, the big difference was that the Japanese had a sense
of themselves as one people, whereas deep fissures already existed
between Kurd and Arab, Sunni and Shiite, and other smaller fractions
such that it was foolish to speak of an "Iraqi people." Moreover, the
US had already chosen sides, triggering not just resistance but a
brutal civil war which remains simmering a decade later, even after
the last American soldier left.
March 22, 2003:
Finished reading the "Letter from Bagdad" piece in The New
Yorker, which only reinforces the point that the U.S. invasion of
Iraq is going to be resisted and resisted and resisted, and that
eventually the U.S. will get tired of it and leave. At least unless it
provokes terrorism elsewhere, which gives the U.S. excuse to make war
on Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and whoever else is on Ariel Sharon's
(err, George W. Bush's) enemies list.
Another thing that occurs to me is that in all this talk about how
the U.S. is liberating Iraq, the nicely posed pictures of happy
Iraqis, etc., we're entering a wormhole where the other end is rooted
in Vietnam. At least through the Johnson administration, all we heard
about was how we had to stand by our friends in Vietnam, save them
from communism, etc. Nothing but moral high ground, when in fact -- a
fact that became naked with Henry Kissinger -- the war was about
projecting American power. That's exactly what the war against Iraq is
about too, and trying to wrap it up and palm it off as something else
is disingenuous to say the least. More important, it's a trap: all
these friends the U.S. is recruiting now are going to be liabilities
in the future, people who will wind up wondering why the U.S. double
crossed them when the U.S. never really gives a shit about them
anyway.
March 25, 2003:
The war grinds on. The fantasy that expected the Iraqis to roll out
the red carpet for their American liberators has been dashed. Nobody
expects that Iraq will be able to repulse the U.S. invasion, but the
level and form of resistance pretty much guarantees that eventually
the U.S. will leave Iraq without having accomplished anything more
notable than the perverse satisfaction of serving up Saddam's head on
some platter.
As I said earlier, the level of resistance will be telling. If you
want a rule of thumb for neocolonialist wars of occupation, it's that
once you can't tell your friends from your enemies in the native
population, you're fucked. At its simplest level, that's because the
occupiers get nervous and make mistakes. The mistakes, in turn,
compound, pushing more and more people from the friendly side to the
hostile side. That in turn reinforces the nervousness, the mistakes,
the alienation. In turn, the resistance gets bolder; as this happens,
the occupation digs in, becoming more brutal, vicious, capricious. The
high-minded rhetoric is exposed as pure hypocrisy, and the occupation
becomes more nakedly about nothing more than
power. . . .
So, let's face it, the U.S. war against Iraq is a colossal
failure. The only question remaining is how long it will take the
U.S. to give up and get out, and how much destruction the U.S. will
leave in its wake. So remember this: This war did not have to
happen. No one who has died, been injured, been captured, been
terrorized by this war had to suffer. This only happened because of
one mad tyrant: George W. Bush. Even today, if sanity were to suddenly
overcome him, all he'd have to do is seize fire and order the troops
home. Every day, every minute that he does not do this just adds to
the grossness of his crime.
March 28, 2003:
I don't have any idea how many Iraqis will flock to support their
new U.S. masters. The latter is especially important, because without
significant active Iraqi cooperation U.S. occupation will be a
nightmare. And even then, such cooperation will force a schism within
the Iraqi populace that will long tear at Iraq's social fabric, and
which, if/when Iraq reverts to form, may result in many of our Iraqi
"friends" seeking asylum in the U.S. (Which is where most of our
Vietnamese and Cuban "friends" wound up living.)
Pretty much everyone agrees that one of the side-effects of the
Iraq war will be more terrorism in the U.S. Few people take the time
to recall that, until 2001-09-11, the most destructive terrorist to
come out of the Gulf War was Timothy McVeigh. (Now, of course, the
answer to that quiz is George W. Bush.) I've often said that I think
the threat of Al Qaeda/Arab terrorism is much overrated -- not that
there is no risk, but that the real risk doesn't warrant such
desperate measures as the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that
in fact the risk could be significantly lessened if the U.S. were to
start to act decently, especially regarding Israel/Palestine. But one
thing I do worry about is how these wars work to generate domestic
right-wing terrorists, and even more so how they reinforce right-wing
tendencies toward racism, militarism, and plain old viciousness. One
thing we see throughout U.S. history is one war leading to another,
often with pronounced swings to the right in the postwar period, such
as the Red Scare after WWI and McCarthyism after WWII. (It took a few
years for the sting of defeat in Vietnam to wear off and let Reagan
in, but in many ways that was the worst.)
Indeed, the war did drive domestic politics to the right, notably
in allowing George W. Bush to secure a second term in 2004. That was
somewhat diminished by the war becoming such a bust, but arguably
the tilt still exists. The Republicans nominated super-hawk John
McCain in 2008. He lost, but ran stronger than he should have, and
Romney in 2012, in another losing campaign, didn't make the slightest
effort to distance himself from Bush's war policies.
April 2, 2003: Jessica Lynch gets lost and found, giving the
press something happier to talk about than the mass murder of
Iraqis and the wholesale destruction of their country.
How interesting it is that the top front page story in the paper
this morning was the one about the cute U.S. Private turned POW --
although she was actually just MIA, since Iraq had in her case failed
to violate the Geneva Conventions and show her picture on TV where her
POW status might be verified -- who was liberated by US Special
Forces, who found her in a building with no other POWs. Ditto for TV
last night, where retired Generals who probably couldn't name a
Private for their lives (in any case they couldn't get her name
straight) were praising the story. What interests me about this is not
that they couldn't find any better news to talk about, let alone
anything more important, but that in putting this story so heavily
into play they're humanizing the war -- they're putting faces and
stories of real people into harm's way, instead of consigning them to
the realm of impersonal statistics. . . .
So what makes us think that a country which finds itself doting
over dear Private Lynch has the stomach to pacify Iraq?
The dimness to deceive themselves about what their soldiers are
actually doing, well, that's another matter.
April 7, 2003: More on the Cold War than on Iraq, with a postscript
on the neocons (evidently a novel term at the time, but they all grew
up in the Cold War):
The biggest difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that in Vietnam
we were defending a fraud, whereas now we're attacking a phantom. The
latter, of course, is easier: it's much easier to demonize Saddam
Hussein than it was to make Ngo Dinh Diem, trained and deployed and
propped up by the CIA, look like a patriot. . . .
Resistance in Iraq is less focused -- at least some of it is
squarely anti-Saddam -- but the U.S. has a few strikes against it: our
coalition partners in the U.K., who ruled Iraq from 1918 to 1932 (or
1956, depending on who you ask), our good friends in Israel, and 12
years of bombing and sanctions that the U.S. was largely responsible
for. Every little good deed that so impresses the U.S. press will be
judged in Iraq against this backdrop.
Not sure if I wrote about this, but one thing I found fittingly
ironic was that not only was the UK part of the "coalition of the
willing," so was Mongolia -- a trivial power now, but no army ever
stomped Baghdad harder than the Mongols did in 1258. Sensibly, the
Turks -- who had also "been there, done that" -- chose not to join
in. By the way, the Mongol sack of Baghdad can now be viewed as a
tragic turn of events for Islam: only after 1258 the Salafist creed
emerge as important in Islamic thought, arguing that "the gate of
ijtihad" had closed. This cast a pall over science, learning, and
modernity under Islam, and also led to a permanent war mentality:
the theological underpinnings of Osama Bin Laden are Salafi, the
fruit of the first sack of Baghdad. And now Bush is responsible
for another.
April 9, 2003: The US seizes Baghdad and stages what turns
out to be a vivid PR stunt at Firdos Square.
I have to admit that I found myself enjoying the video of Iraqis
dancing on Saddam Hussein's statues. The rest of the day's news is
harder to evaluate, and nothing that's happened gives me any second
thoughts about the fundamental evilness of the Bush War. In
particular, I don't think that any American opponent of this war
expected Saddam Hussein's government to hold out against the American
war machine. Nor do we feel any sympathy or remorse for Saddam Hussein
himself or his government. On the other hand, the practice and effects
of this war have proven to be as horrible as expected -- of course, it
feels even worse, since no matter how well you may have conceived of
it, the actual events hit you far more viscerally.
April 11, 2003:
There was a period back in the Afghanistan war when the Northern
Alliance started reeling off a quick series of victories -- not so
much that they were defeating the Taliban in confrontations as that
the Taliban was high-tailing it out of the cities, allowing Herat,
Kabul, and Kandahar to fall in quick succession. The hawks then made
haste to trumpet their victory and to dump on anyone who had doubted
the US in this war. Back then, I referred to those few weeks as "the
feel good days of the war." Well, we had something like that in Iraq,
too, except that use of the plural now seems unwarranted. So mark it
on your calendar, Wednesday, April 9, 2003, was the feel good day of
the Iraq war. The collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime has proceeded
apace, but there seems to be much less to feel good about. One big
thing was the killing of the bigwig shia collaborators that the US
started to promote, combined with the unwillingness of other shia
bigwigs to collaborate. One of the problems with this is that it
suggests that the US, as always, is looking for religious leaders to
control the people -- which in turn threatens to roll back the one
thing Saddam had going for his regime, which was that it was strongly
secular. The fact is, you want to introduce something resembling
liberal democracy in Iraq, you have to promote secularism. (Of course,
given the contempt that Bush has for liberal democracy in the US, it's
hard to believe that he really wants that.)
Bigger still is the whole looting thing, as well as mob reprisals
against Baath leaders, which threaten to turn into the much predicted
Iraqi-on-Iraqi warfare. The looting itself basically means that what
infrastructure the US somehow managed not to destroy will be taken
down by Iraqi mobs. The likelihood that those mobs are anything other
than just isolated hoodlums is small, but collectively the damage that
they inflict is likely to be huge. And given how unlikely it is that
the US, its allies, and the rest of the world who were so blatantly
disregarded in this whole affair, are to actually pay for anything
resembling real reconstruction, this is just digging an ever deeper
hole. While right now, given that their is still armed (if not
necessarily organized) resistance to the US, it's hard to see how the
US could keep order even if it wants to (which is to say the least a
mixed proposition), but failure to do so is already setting the US up
as responsible for the looting, and adding to the already huge
responsibility that the US bears for the current and future misery of
the Iraqi people. And when the US does start to enforce order, what is
bound to happen? More dead Iraqis. And who's responsible for that? The
US. If this had just happened out of the blue, I might be a bit
sympathetic, but this is exactly what we had predicted as the
inevitable given the US course of action.
So happy last Wednesday. That's very likely to be the last one for
a long time now.
On April 14, I wrote about the looting and revenge killings. On
April 15, the burning library in Baghdad. On April 16, I quoted
several veterans from the 1991 Iraq War. (Gabe Hudson: "I think
it's worth our time to consider John Allen Muhammad, the sniper
who terrorized the Washington, D.C. area, and the guy who shot
his three professors at the University of Arizona [Robert Stewart
Flores], and Timothy McVeigh, when we consider the potential
psychological toll of serving in modern war.") On April 19, I
quoted a letter from uncle, a career USAF NCO, dismissing the
looting as "dividing up the 'spoils of war.'" On April 29, I
quoted Paul Krugman, which was probably the first time I wrote
or cited anything about "weapons of mass destruction": I never
believed that Iraq had them, but more importantly I didn't accept
their possible (even proven) existence as justification for war.
A real history of the war would have spent time on the matter,
mostly because it proved the extent to which Bush was willing
to lie to get his war.
Indeed, there are lots of things I didn't cover; meanwhile,
the blog is full of little music notes and various other items
of interest. On
May 23,
I note an "fierce exchange of gunfire"
in Fallujah, plans to "destabilize" Iran, Bush caving in to
Israel on a "U.S.-backed peace plan," and Gen. Franks asking
to retire early ("I mean, do you think Afghanistan and/or Iraq
are going to get any better?").
Not much more on Iraq until
August 19, when
the UN compound in Baghdad was blown up.
I haven't written much about Iraq recently, because most of what I
have to say boils down to a bunch of told-you-so's. What you seen now
are the consequences of the decision to go to war. That decision was
not necessary in any sense that can be reasonably articulated. The
people who sold and implemented that war did so by denying the facts
and what could logically be inferred from them, and by deluding
themselves as to their motives and intentions. This is what they've
gotten from those decisions and acts, and this is what those who
believed them have gotten in return. And the prospects for the future
range from more of the same to a whole lot worse. I don't have any
bright ideas for fixing what has been broken, other than to remove
from power the criminals who set this war in order. But even that
won't solve the problem; it is merely the prerequisite to starting to
redress the damage.
Next day I added:
The bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad came as a surprise, but
the post facto comments by Bush and Ashcroft couldn't have been more
rote. We are hopelessly mired in ruts of rhetoric, and nothing is
likely to change unless one can start to recognize real changes in the
world around us. That the UN bombing came as a surprise may just be an
illusion based on the recent war debate, where Bush and Powell failed
to secure UN blessing for the US invasion of Iraq. From that, and the
fact that the US and UK went ahead and invaded anyway, we tend to
think that the UN is a different, broader, fairer, more reasonable
force than the US/UK "coalition" -- and we tend to see it as a much
better alternative: that handing the occupation over to the UN would
be more welcome to the Iraqis, and would permit a more stable, less
poisoned reconstruction effort. Still, try to imagine how the UN is
viewed by Iraqis: the UN supported the 1991 war; the UN imposed the
sanctions that have gone so far to strangle the Iraqi economy; the UN
weapons inspection teams never certified that Iraq had eliminated its
WMD, thereby prolonging the sanctions and providing excuses for the US
to further punish and ultimately to invade and occupy Iraq. How wrong
might ordinary Iraqis be to view the UN as US stooges? In the US, we
find it easy to dismiss this argument because we're aware of the
long-running right-wing political critique of the UN, which has
basically become dominant with the ascendancy of the neocon hawks.
The story doesn't end there -- the rebellion was in fact just
beginning -- but I need to take a break. The rest of the notebook,
including drafts of posts once I started using blog software, is
online -- just continue the links from the pages I've already
linked to.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Music Week/Jazz Prospecting
Music: Current count 21164 [21131] rated (+33), 586 [602] unrated (-16).
Healthy rated count, split between Jazz Prospecting below and Rhapsody
Streamnotes, which may come out late this week or early next -- it's still
pretty thin, both quantity and quality, with the only real find more than
a presidential term old. Didn't come up with an A- record this week --
closest was Mikrokolektyw, which took about five plays before I decided
the droney start should weigh in. (Similar complaint about Blaser starting
slow, but that would be the runner up.) So I figured I'd rerun the Lovano
pic: I wrote that album up as an A- in last month's Rhapsody Streamnotes,
and a copy showed up in this week's mail.
A Downloader's Diary is coming in slow again, but I'd like to note that
I got Tatum's review of David Greenberger/Paul Cebar's They Like Me
Around Here before Christgau reviewed it in Expert Witness. (My own
Jazz Prospecting A- note came out back on Feb. 18, so we'll call it a
hat trick for an otherwise very obscure record.) He's also complained
about the dearth of good new records. By my count, Christgau has only
five new A- records in 2013 (Yo La Tengo, Parquet Courts, Ashley Monroe,
David Greenberger/Paul Cebar, J Cole [EP]). I have 15, but 10 are jazz
(or 11 if you count Greenberger/Cebar, or 12 of 16 if you count Miles
Davis). Actually, I think good jazz releases have been coming along at
a healthy clip. I'm just not so sure about everything else, but also
I haven't been scouring the zines as closely as last year.
|
Neil Alexander: Darn That Dream: Solo Piano Vol. 1
(2011 [2013], P-Dog): Pianist, looks like his second album, solo,
mostly originals (obviously not the title song, here in two takes).
Plays for dramatic impact, not unimpressive but leaves me cold.
B-
Amikaeyla & Trelawny Rose: To Eva, With Love: A Celebration
of Eva Cassidy Live! (2011, Patois): Two San Francisco singers
on the make, backed by trombonist Wayne Wallace and his band. Songbook
is from Evan Cassidy, who died at 33 of melanoma, had her records issue
posthumously, and became something of a cult item -- I've only heard one
of them, nothing there inspiring me to search further. This doesn't make
me want to go back either, partly because the chances of her fronting
a band this good are nil. The singers aquit themselves well, too.
B+(*)
Amikaeyla: Being in Love (2012, Roots Jazz): Singer,
based in Oakland, third album, wrote (or co-wrote) about half of these
pieces, with covers from Jobim, Bill Withers, trad., and others -- an
eclectic mix. Lots of guest spots, Weber Iago strings, a duet with
"singing percussionist" Linda Tillery, flutes, pretty much the whole
kitchen sink. Good singer overdoes it.
B
Arnaoudov/Szymanski/Stefens/Pärt/Xenakis/Minchev: Sonograms
(1974-97 [2013], Labor): Those are the composers as their names appear
on the cover and spine. They are postmodern/postclassical, and their
pieces are performed by several Bulgarian musicians, usually solo,
especially Benedikta Bonitz (recorders: 7 pieces) and Angela Tosheva
(piano: also 7 pieces). There is one piece for string quartet (Steffens),
one of the recorder pieces adds cello and Khandjari, another triangles,
and one scales up to four recorders. Not quite minimalist nor merely
abstract, the piano pieces have some teeth to them, and the recorders
provide a nice contrast. I don't get much music like this these days,
so it's hard to judge.
B+(***)
Carlos Barbosa-Lima & the Havana String Quartet: Leo Brouwer:
Beatlerianas (2012 [2013], Zoho): Brouwer doesn't play here. He
is a Cuban classical composer and guitarist, b. 1939, and he composed or
arranged for guitar and/or string quartet the various pieces here, one
quintet as early as 1957. Barbosa-Lima, b. 1944 in Brazil, plays guitar.
The title piece is a string of seven Beatles songs, starting unimaginatively
(for a string arranger) with "Eleanor Rigby" and ending (equally blah!) on
"Penny Lane," with such obvious stops as "Yesterday" along the way. Even
understood as kitsch it's hard to convey how awful it is. The later pieces
do have some interest: Brouwer evidently had a modernist streak and he
works some tough abstractions into the string mix.
C+
Samuel Blaser Quartet: As the Sea (2011 [2013],
Hatology): Trombonist, from Switzerland, has a handful of albums
since 2007. Quartet includes Marc Ducret on guitar, Bänz Oester
on bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. One title, four parts, 51:14
total. Starts slow and tentative, but builds up in interesting
ways, especially when the guitarist works up a sweat, giving the
trombone something to bounce off. Second album I've heard by him,
but looks like he has a fair sampling on Bandcamp, including a
solo: someone to explore further.
B+(***) [advance,
bandcamp]
Robb Cappelletto Group: !!! (2012 [2013], self-released):
Guitarist, from Canada, studied at York University, "grew up listening
to prog metal as much as Wes Montgomery and Buddy Guy." First album,
trio with John Maharaj on electric bass and Ahmed Mitchell on drums.
B+(**)
Ken Hatfield Sextet: For Langston (2012 [2013],
Arthur Circle Music): Guitarist, close to ten albums since 1998.
Langston, of course, is Hughes (1902-67), poet, essayist, activist,
an icon of the Harlem Renaissance, and the lyricist for fourteen
songs here. The singer is Hilary Gardner, possessing one of those
soprano voices I often have trouble with, and her voice is smoothed
out by Jamie Baum's flute -- a combination that gives this an arty
flair. On the other hand, Hatfield's guitar is as tasty as ever,
and I suppose people should know more about Hughes.
B+(*)
Miho Hazama: Journey to Journey (2012 [2013],
Sunnyside): Pianist, from Tokyo, Japan; studied with Jim McNeely
at Manhattan School of Music. First album, can't read the credits
(microscopic pink-type-on-beige) but roughly speaking a big band
(probably short in the brass section) plus a string quartet (Mark
Feldman takes a solo). Half a dozen truly arresting passages pop
out.
B+(*)
Justin Horn: Hornology (2009 [2012], Rotato):
Singer-songwriter, studied at University of Idaho, based in
Auckland, New Zealand. Qualifies for the jazz niche with his
arrangements, notably a robust horn section.
[bandcamp]
B+(*)
Robert Hurst: Bob: A Palindrome (2001 [2013], Bebob):
Bassist, b. 1964 in Detroit, six albums since 1992 including two
Unrehurst compilations, side credits include Wynton Marsalis.
Draws in some big names here: Branford Marsalis (tenor/soprano sax),
Bennie Maupin (alto flute, bass clarinet, tenor/soprano sax), Marcus
Belgrave (trumpet/flugelhorn), Robert Glasper (piano/rhodes), Jeff
"Tain" Watts (drums), Adam Rudolph (percussion). No track credits,
not that it's hard to sort out the saxophonists. Liner notes mentions
almost in passing that this was "originally recorded" in 2001: makes
me wonder: (a) typo? (b) is this a newer recording? Everyone else
goes way back, but Glasper would have been 23, two years shy of his
debut. All Hurst pieces, at least one dating to 1985. No edge to
the opening flute, but this picks up strength as its many facets
emerge, even a thrilling bit of free thrash.
B+(***)
Matt and the City Limits: Crash (2012, Island/Def Jam,
EP): Singer-songwriter Matt Berman, debut, seven songs, 27:45, which
combined with the major label made me think EP. Not really jazz, but
he plays alto sax, keeps a tenor player at his side, and the drummer
(Amir Williams) does more than keep time, and the guitarist picks out
a solo rather than power through it. Intelligent songs and pretty good
voice. Closes with an instrumental: "Bring It On Home to Me."
B+(**)
Mikrokolektyw: Absent Minded (2012 [2013], Delmark):
Duo, from Wroclaw, Poland: Artur Majewski (trumpet, cornet) and Kuba
Suchar (drums, percussion), both with electronics, which is to say
pretty comparable to Chicago Underground Duo (Rob Mazurek and Chad
Taylor). Second album, at least on Delmark. Starts slow, agonizing
drones mostly, but the pieces work out various rhythmic ideas, and
in the end it depends on what the trumpet can do with, and beyond,
them -- a lesson from Miles Davis' funk period, applies here too.
B+(***)
Nicole Mitchell's Ice Crystal: Aquarius (2012 [2013],
Delmark): Flute player, b. 1967, based in Chicago where she's tapped
into the AACM, intent on pursuing the avant-garde, but also for lack
of flute specialists -- Frank Wess has dominated Downbeat's
category poll for close to forty years, and he's main axe is the alto
sax -- she's something of a mainstream star. I'm tempted to argue that
the lack of good jazz flautists is no accident: the instrument has a
limited expressive range and a high register distant from most harmony
instruments; also that most jazz flautists are too rooted in classical,
where they were at best pretty marginal (exceptions tend to be in Latin
and other third world musics). I don't hate it all -- Sam Most's bebop
is amusing enough, Robert Dick's bass flute is in its own world, James
Newton and those Guadalupeans sure polished up David Murray's Creole --
but sometimes it seems that way. Credit Mitchell for steadfastly trying
to make it work, as in this quartet where she finds a suitable partner
in Jason Adasiewicz's vibes, or her rawest work with just bass and drums.
B+(**)
Giovanni Moltoni: Tomorrow's Past (2012 [2013], C#2
Music Productions): Guitarist, b. in Turin, Italy; has tought at
Berklee since 1998. Fifth album, effectively a nice showcase for
trumpeter Greg Hopkins, with Fernando Huergo on bass and Bob Tamagni
on drums. Moltoni wrote 6 (of 9) songs, the others coming from the
band (Hopkins 2, Huergo 1), his guitar weaving tastefully in and out.
B+(**)
Dawn Oberg: Rye (2012 [2013], Blossom Theory
Music): Piano-playing singer-songwriter from San Francisco --
where "poets go to retox" -- second album, publicist tried to
pass her off as the next Amy Rigby but her voice reminds me
more of Dory Previn, and maybe the words as well. Literate --
lead song is "Girl Who Sleeps With Books" and she manages to
rhyme Thucydides (and not just with Euripides) and name drop
Fats Waller.
B+(*)
Ron Oswanski: December's Moon (2012 [2013],
Palmetto): Organ player, also accordion and piano; studied at
Manhattan School of Music; first album, with Tim Ries on sax,
Jay Azzolina or John Abercrombie on guitar, John Patitucci on
electric as well as acoustic bass. Stays away from soul jazz
clichés.
B+(*)
RJ and the Assignment: Deceiving Eyes (2012,
self-released): Born in Chicago, based in Las Vegas, no indication
of any other name pianist RJ is known by. His group, the Assignment,
rotates three bassists and three drummers -- not sure I'd call that
a group -- and slips in a saxophonist on two cuts, a singer on
another. Half originals, with Herbie Hancock and Cedar Walton
among the covers. Fine technique, moves along nicely.
B+(*)
Troy Roberts: Nu-Jive 5 (2012 [2013], XenDen):
Saxophonist (probably alto), from Perth, Australia, fifth album
(although only the second named Nu-Jive). Leads a quintet
with guitar-bass-drums-keys, keeping up a steady funk beat which
Roberts riffs over. Like many pop jazz saxophonists, he can
stretch out, and unlike most he's willing to get a bit dirty.
B+(*)
Dylan Ryan/Sand: Sky Bleached (2012 [2013], Cuneiform):
Rand is a drummer, hitherto mostly associated with the group Herculaneum
although he has another dozen side-credits, the only one I recognize
Rainbow Arabia (a good 2011 electropop album). This is a guitar trio,
with Timothy Young the driving force, Devin Hoff on bass. Ryan wrote
most of the pieces. Mostly keeps rockish time, so you can count this
as fusion, but sometimes you sense they'd like to move beyond.
B+(**)
Donna Singer: Take the Day Off: Escape With Jazz
(2012, Emerald Baby): Singer, has this first album and an Xmas set
from last year -- haven't gotten to the latter yet. Cover suggests
the artist name should be "Donna and Doug" or "D&D" or "Donna
Singer & Doug Richards" but the spine is more economical. She
is married to Roy Singer, who produced and has some of the writing
credits. Richards plays bass and leads the piano trio, which here
and there is augmented by trumpet, alto sax, trombone, guitar,
and/or extra drums. Some standards -- e.g., Richard Rodgers --
some by Richards, four by Patricia T. Morris.
B+(*)
Tomasz Stanko NY Quartet: Wislawa (2012 [2013], ECM,
2CD): Another set by the great Polish trumpeter, who started out on
the avant-garde and moderated by age (70) and label still remains one
of the world's most distinctive. A few years back he came up with a
"young Polish quartet" who continue to work as a piano trio. Here he
is traveling alone, picking up a band of locals, which in New York
nets him Gerald Cleaver, Thomas Morgan, and a new pianist everyone
seems to want to play with these days, David Virelles. Talented as
they are, they tend to be deferential, but then it's the trumpet you
want to hear anyway. By the way, "Wislawa" is Nobel Prize-winning
poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012).
B+(***)
Eli Yamin/Evan Christopher: Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz
Heroes (2012 [2013], Yamin Music): Pianist, b. 1968 in
Long Island, has a handful of records since 1998's Pushin'
30, teams up with the clarinetist for salutes to Armstrong,
Bechet, Ellington, Bigard, Mary Lou Williams, Mahalia Jackson,
John Coltrane, and Amiri Baraka, plus a couple pieces recycled
from Yamin's Holding the Torch for Liberty.
B+(***)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Giovanni Guidi Trio: City of Broken Dreams (ECM): advance, April 16
- Joe Lovano Us Five: Cross Culture (Blue Note)
- Nicolas Masson/Roberto Pianca/Emanuele Maniscalco: Third Reel (ECM): advance, April 16
- Charnett Moffett: The Bridge (Motéma)
- Aaron Neville: My True Story (Blue Note)
- Tomasz Stanko NY Quartet: Wislawa (ECM, 2CD)
- June Tabor/Iain Bellamy/Huw Warren: Quercus (ECM): advance, April 16
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Weekend Roundup
Some scattered links I squirreled away during the previous week:
John Cassidy: Paul Ryan in Wonderland: Chapter Six: Loosely following
Brad DeLong's quote:
Having wandered back into writing about U.S. politics for the past
eighteen months or so, I sometime wonder how the full-time Washington
correspondents, the lifers, do it: cover the same old junk year after
year. The key to career longevity and job satisfaction, I suppose, is
to buy into the notion, assiduously promoted by the politicians and
their flacks, that what they are doing is serious. Budgets, national
security, energy policy, health policy -- these things
matter. . . . .
Sorry folks. After watching Representative Paul Ryan launch his
much-anticipated budget for the fiscal year 2014, I can't keep up the
pretense. The plan is a joke . . . and nobody should
pay much attention to it, except as another exhibit in the indictment
of latter-day Republicanism. Ryan's numbers don't add up. His proposals --
cutting domestic programs, converting Medicare to a voucher program,
returning Medicaid to the states, reducing the top rate of income tax
to twenty-five per cent -- were roundly rejected by the voters just
five months ago. And the philosophy his plan is based upon -- trickle-down
economics combined with an unbridled hostility toward government programs
designed to correct market failures -- is tattered and shop
worn. . . .
In a more just world, Ryan and his visionary shtick would have been
jeered off the stage after last year's Presidential campaign, when,
apart from ensuring that Mitt Romney didn't face any blowback from the
right at the Convention in Tampa, his presence added virtually nothing
to the G.O.P. ticket, and, arguably, handicapped
it. . . .
I can't let a few things pass without comment. Ryan's proposal to
reduce the top rate of income tax to twenty five per cent would be a
huge giveaway to the rich. How big? . . . people earning
more than a million dollars a year would each gain, on average, $264,970.
DeLong also links to
Ezra Klein on the budget proposed by House Progressives, which
has no chance but would actually do some good for the economy (and
not just the people who own it). Also, DeLong catches
Tyler Cowen going 0-for-4 on "standard stuff" economics. Cowen
is arguing against public spending on public goods and basically
trying to run up the perceived costs so you don't do anything like
that. DeLong knocks those costs down, rightly, but doesn't go near
the main point, which is the value of public goods.
DeLong also quotes
Paul Krugman, on the stock market (and other things):
Stocks are high, in part, because bond yields are so low, and investors
have to put their money somewhere. It's also true . . .
that . . . corporate profits have staged a strong
recovery . . . workers [are] failing to share in the
fruits of their own rising productivity [and] hundreds of billions of
dollars are piling up in the treasuries of corporations that, facing
weak consumer demand, see no reason to put those dollars to
work. . . . What the markets are clearly saying, however,
is that the fears and prejudices that have dominated Washington discussion
for years are entirely misguided. And they're also telling us that the
people who have been feeding those fears and peddling those prejudices
don't have a clue about how the economy actually works.
Ed Kilgore: The Anti-Choice Olympics: Somehow he missed Kansas.
Ever since the 2010 elections, Republican legislators and governors
have been in a competition to see who can enact the most blatantly
unconstitutional -- at least according to existing precedents -- laws
on abortion in the country. The first batch, typically banning abortions
after around 20 weeks of pregnancy, were keyed to dubious claims that
this is the stage when a fetus could experience pain. Earlier this month
the Arkansas legislature picked up the pace with a bill banning abortions
after 12 weeks of pregnancy, this time making the alleged earlier point
of detection of a fetal heartbeat the rationale. That bill was passed
over Gov. Mike Beebe's veto.
Now North Dakota -- a state with just one abortion clinic -- is
springing into action with a bill (just sent to Republican Gov. Jack
Dalrymple) banning abortions after just 6 weeks of pregnancy, based on
an even earlier assumption about the advent of a fetal heartbeat. Also
under consideration in one chamber of the legislature is a bill emulating
Mississippi's efforts (temporarily held up in the courts) to harrass
abortion providers out of the state via bogus medical certification
requirements, and a couple of bills adopting the "personhood" principle
(giving a fertilized ovum the full protections of the law). So I guess
Dalrymple will have the opportunity to sign the 6-week bill as a
"compromise."
With Republican-controlled legislatures all over the South talking
about emulating Arkansas' law (which may already be behind the times if
North Dakota trumps it), the rather transparent purpose of this trend
(other than bragging rights) is to force a fresh Supreme Court review
of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the
decisions banning state prohibitions on pre-viability abortions.
Ed Kilgore: Costs of a "War of Choice":
Most Americans are vaguely familiar with the number of U.S. combat troops
killed in Iraq: 4,488. Less well-known is that another 3,418 U.S. contractors
were killed, plus 318 troops from other allied countries, and 10,819 Iraqi
government troops. Maybe Americans don't care about the 36,400 Iraqi
insurgents killed, but we should care about the 134,000 Iraqi civilians
who perished, which doesn't count the hundreds of thousands who died of
war-related diseases. All told the direct human costs of the war are
estimated at 189,000.
The Brown study predicted the ultimate cost of the war to U.S. taxpayers
at $2.2 trillion dollars -- a bit higher than the initial U.S. government
estimates of $50 to $60 billion issued in 2002 -- and that doesn't count
another $1.7 trillion in interest costs associated with borrowing to cover
war spending.
It would appear that the conclusions in Joseph E. Stiglitz/Linda J.
Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq
Conflict (2008, WW Norton) were in fact too conservative.
Paul Krugman: Ten Years Later:
And there's a very big [tenth] anniversary coming up next week -- the
start of the Iraq war. So why does there seem to be so little coverage?
Well, it's not hard to think of a reason: a lot of people behaved badly
in the runup to that war, and many though not all people in the news media
behaved especially badly.
It's hard now to recall the atmosphere of the time, but there was both
an overpowering force of conventional wisdom -- all the Very Serious People
were for war, don't you know, and if you were against you were by definition
flaky -- and a strong current of fear. To come out against the war, let
alone to suggest that the Bush administration was deliberately misleading
the nation into war, looked all too likely to be a career-ending stance.
And there were all too few profiles in courage.
The war, then, was a big test -- a test of your ability to cut through
a fog of propaganda, but also a test of your moral and to some extent
personal courage. And a lot of people in the media failed.
This remind me that I should go back to March 2003 and check what I
wrote at the time (may be good for a mid-week post). Meanwhile, see
Corey Robin: Bush Did Not Simply Lie in the Run-up to the Iraq War.
Also, a few links for further study:
Michael Hudson: The Big Threat to the Economy Is Private Debt and Interest
Owed on It, Not Government Debt: From 1980 on, Americans have built
ignored stagnant wages and built the illusion of an improving lifestyle
on credit, which reached a peak just before the 2008 crash and is unlikely
to ever recover. For other reasons, businesses have accumulated ever more
debt -- here, tax deductability of interest has rewarded owners, especially
private equity scavengers, for converting equity to debt. All this debt
overhang is dead weight dragging down the economy. On the other hand, as
long as government debt can be financed at low rates, it is no problem
at all [emphasis below in original]:
The problem is that "fiscal responsibility" is economically irresponsible,
as far as full employment and economic recovery are concerned. less
government spending shrinks the circular flow between the private sector's
producers and consumers. [ . . . ] What really is
responsible is for the government to spend enough money into the economy
to keep employment and production thriving.
Instead, the government is creating new debt mainly to bail out the
banks and keep the existing debt overhead in place -- instead of writing
down the debts.
So governments from the United States to Europe face a choice: to save
the economy, or to save the banks and bondholders from taking a loss by
keeping the debt overhead in place and re-inflating real estate prices
to a level high enough to cover the debts attached to the property whose
underwater mortgages are weighing down the banking system.
[ . . . ]
Second, on that flow chart, you will see that for every half a trillion
in federal deficit spending since the 2008 crisis, the Federal Reserve and
Treasury have spent twice as much -- $1 trillion -- in providing new credit
to the banks.
President Obama announced that he hoped the banks would lend it out.
So the solution by his advisors, including some here today, is for the
economy to "borrow its way out of debt." The aim of the Fed and Treasury
subsidies of the commercial banks is to re-inflate housing prices, stock
and bond prices -- on credit. That means on debt.
This obviously will make matters worse. But what will make them worse
of all is the demand that the government "cure" the public-sector deficit
by spending less generally, and specifically by cutting Social Security
and Medicare. As in the case of the recent FICA withholding ostensibly to
fund Social Security, the effect of less public spending into the
economy is to force the private sector more deeply into debt.
Phillip Longman: The Republican Case for Waste in Health Care:
Fearful that knowledge might make government programs more effective,
the health care industry (helped by Republicans) "slipped language
into Obamacare banning cost-effectiveness research." (As I recall,
there is a similar prohibition against research that might prove
troublesome for the gun industry.)
In its final language, the ACA specifically bars policymakers from
using cost-effectiveness as a basis for even recommending different
drugs and treatments to patients. In practical effect, the ACA ensures
that such research won't even be done, let alone be used as a criterion
for guiding how the nearly $2.6 trillion the U.S. spends on health care
each year might be put to best use. Here's what you need to know to
understand how the fix was put in behind the scenes and why correcting
it must become a high priority for health care reformers.
Of course, cost-effectiveness research is fallible, especially at the
level of the individual, who may be unstudied or simply the exception.
Doctors and patients should be able to carve out space for exceptions,
but they should do so on the basis of the best available information,
not the least. Moreover, one needs to look at the expense side of the
ledger. Major cost differences are often the result of patents or other
forms of rent-seeking. Take those rents away and the costs will matter
much less, making it easier to evaluate results on their merits.
Dylan Matthews: Washington Hates Deficits. Why It Hates Them Is Less
Clear: Several charts, including a scatter of "Debt vs Interest
Rates, 2008-2011" which shows that highly indebted Eurozone countries
are indeed in trouble, but hardly anyone else is. We're told we should
fear a high debt/GDP ratio because such a thing would bring high interest
rates, but Japan's ratio is 218 percent and its interest rate is 0.67%,
so? James Galbraith offers a scenario where government debt could keep
growing indefinitely with no real adverse effects.
MJ Rosenberg: My Position on a Fair Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
It's time Israel read the handwriting on the wall. It should stop any
expansion of settlements and fully end the blockade of Gaza, as first
step towards acknowledging its new situation. Those actions alone would
restore its friendship with Turkey. And it should acknowledge through
words and deed that it is ready for negotiations based on the Arab League
Initiative.
Negotiations won't start now, in the midst of the current turbulence
in Syria and elsewhere. But Israel needs to be ready as soon as the dust
settles. Additionally, it should end its threats toward Iran and let the
Obama administration know that it favors lifting sanctions in return for
tangible steps by Iran toward ensuring that its nuclear program is a
civilian program and will remain one. Currently it supports "crippling
sanctions" until Iran give up its right to any form of nuclear development.
That simply won't fly.
All those who care about the survival and security of Israel should
encourage it to take these steps. It is no act of friendship to encourage
Israel to dig in when the tides of history are running against it.
I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately. My bottom line is
that I'm agreeable to anything Israel might conceivably agree to that
ultimately provides for equal rights for everyone somewhere. That could
be the Arab League plan, and there is good reason adopting it because
most of the concessions Israel could reasonably ask for have already
been included. Or it could be something else, maybe something way out
of the box. But it isn't going to happen, because Israel doesn't feel
the need to agree to anything, because they feel like they're in charge,
and they're convinced time is working for them. (Richard Ben Cramer had
a story about a rabbi who promised to teach a dog to talk, who keeps
begging for more time even though he knows he can't do it. Why, in the
face of such a hopeless task, do you stall for time, he is asked? The
answer: well, maybe the dog will die.)
You can imagine Israel as being split between two types of Jews. One
follows only their own counsel, convinced that the world is ultimately
against them, and that "only what the Jews do matters." Such people are
condemned to fight forever, and they see any attempt to accommodate the
rest of the world as letting their guard down, inviting destruction.
The other feels that Israel can be part of a world at peace, at least
with the support of critical allies. Indeed, Israel has depended on
foreign support throughout the history of the Zionist movement: first
from Britain, then Russia, France, and finally the United States. That
group of Jews can be pressed into concessions if the world, especially
the US, applies enough pressure. (Of course, there is also a third
group of Jews -- those with a conscience -- but they don't seem to
have any practical influence within Israel, even though the number of
people who would like to think of themselves as in this group may be
substantial.)
What's happened, at least since Bush came to power in 2001, is that
the second group hasn't experienced any pressure to come around, so
they've naturally deferred to the first group. Nor has Clinton or
Obama been able or willing to apply any real pressure -- the fact that
both primarily operated through an Israeli flack name of Dennis Ross
attests to their lack of seriousness, erudition, and even self-respect.
Meanwhile, first group leaders like Sharon and Netanyahu learned to
feign enough flexibility to deflect half-hearted US efforts, all the
while digging in deeper.
It is clear that world public opinion is turning against Israel.
What isn't clear is whether as opinion turns there will be a moment
when the US and Europe resolve to put effective pressure on Israel
to make peace, nor is it clear that the second group of Israeli Jews
can coalesce and take charge of Israel to do what needs to be done.
If either fails the long run will be bleak indeed, with the first
group controlling an Israel that is estranged from the world and
locked in mortal combat with those it tramples, and the world as
a whole will be a far nastier place.
Rosenberg has the right idea here -- not so much the details as
the notion that it is urgent for constructive groups both in Israel
and the US to come forward, otherwise they're likely to perish
under the hawks that currently dominate both. (I also think it is
fair to say that the Palestinians have never been more accomodating
in their search for peace -- unless you insist on inequal treatment
and denying their human rights, they are not at present the
problem.)
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Book Roundup, Part Deux
This is the second collection of forty of my little book blurbs
in several days. Scratch file currently has 84 more, so I could
very well dump two more of these next week. Not as important as
the ones in Thursday's post -- in particular, no books that I've
already managed to read -- but still noteworthy.
Anat Admati/Martin Hellwig: The Bankers' New Clothes: What's
Wrong With Banking and What to Do About It (2013, Princeton
University Press): Presumably covers Dodd-Frank and still finds it
wanting, which seems right. I'm inclined to go back to the "banking
is boring" days, but I doubt if they go that far.
Eric Alterman/Kevin Mattson: The Cause: The Fight for
American Liberalism From Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama
(2012, Viking): One of the few political writers who remains an
unapologetic, unreconstructed, proud liberal -- cf. his 2009
book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's
Most Important Ideals. One problem is that so many of his
exemplars, not least the current president but also his first,
have a checkered history, sometimes a mix of illiberal beliefs,
sometimes just a willingness to chuck principle for political
opportunism.
Ariella Azoulay: From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic
Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950 (paperback,
2011, Pluto Press): On 200 photographs from the war when Israel not
only achieved independence but reduced the Arab population of the
nation from 70% to 15%. She also wrote The Civil Contract of
Photography (2012, Zone Books) and Civil Imagination: A
Political Ontology of Photography (2012, Verso).
Max Boot: Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla
Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present (2013, Liveright):
Notorious war lover, back to his favorite subject. But while The
Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power
(2002) was written to advance an argument -- that the US shouldn't
think twice about getting into small wars because they always work
out just fine -- it's not clear what the point is here (indeed,
Boot's traditional fans tend to be on the COIN side (but not always,
and results there haven't been so cheery).
Angus Burgin: The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets
Since the Depression (2012, Harvard University Press): On
economic theory, so markets are not so much reinvented -- they had
never been banned -- as reideologized by various economists, from
FA Hayek to Milton Friedman, especially through the Mont Pélerin
Society.
John Burt: Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism: Lincoln, Douglas, and
Moral Conflict (2012, Belknap Press): Big book (832 pp.) to
just cover the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, compared favorably to
Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided (1959), long regarded
as the standard work on the subject.
Jeff Connaughton: The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always
Wins (2012, Prospecta): Ever wonder why banks are too
big to fail? Why they're too influential even to be reorganized
under bankruptcy law when they're tottering? What about why
Jamie Dimon still has his job? One big part is their lobby,
which is the author's main target here. Another is the incest
which has allowed them to capture the Treasury Dept., the SEC,
other regulatory agencies, and most importantly the Fed. Of
course they win. They personify the greed Washington aspires
to.
Fawaz A Gerges: Obama and the Middle East: The End of
America's Moment? (2012, Palgrave Macmillan): Moment to
do what? The US hasn't had a moment to do anything constructive
in the Middle East since 1991, when defeating Saddam Hussein
led to the Madrid talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
but even then Bush was too hamstrung by the Saudis on one side
and the Israelis on the other, with festering wounds in Iraq
and Iran unsettled. Obama made some concessions to Arab Spring,
but ultimately couldn't support it, because the goal there would
not just be to make the Arab world more democratic and prosperous
but also more independent of the US.
Al Gore: The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change
(2013, Random House): Smarter than he ever let on as a politician,
but still . . . The six, more or less: "ever-increasing economic
globalization" ("Earth Inc."); "worldwide digital communications"
("the Global Mind"); "the balance of power is shifting from a
US-centered system to one with multiple emerging centers of power";
"unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion
of strategic resources"; "sciences revolutions are putting control
of evolution in human hands"; "a radical disruption of the relationship
between human beings and the earth's ecosystems, along with the
beginning of a revolutionary transformation of energy systems,
agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide" -- no
idea what that last one means, either.
Amy S Greenberg: A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and
the 1846 US Invasion of Mexico (2012, Knopf): Certainly a
war of naked aggression by the US, aimed at removing Mexico if
not yet the more numerous native population from the slice of
North America from Texas west to California. Polk was president
and orchestrated it. Clay was his most prominent Whig opponent,
and Lincoln was a virtual unknown, but not for long.
David Harsanyi: Obama's Four Horsemen: The Disasters Unleashed
by Obama's Reelection (2013, Regnery): The paranoid hate lit
moves into its post-apocalyptic phase, oblivious to the fact that not
much happened under Obama's first term and that even less is likely
under the second. The "four horsemen" are "national debt, widespread
dependence on government, turmoil in the Middle East, and expansion
of the bureaucratic state" -- makes me think of GW Bush, but, well,
you know. Also competing for the paranoid bigot's dollars: John R
Lott Jr: At the Brink: Will Obama Push Us Over the Edge?
(2013, Regnery); Wayne Allyn Root: The Ultimate Obama Survival
Guide: Secrets to Protecting Your Family, Your Finances, and Your
Freedom (2013, Regnery); Ken Cuccinelli: The Last Line of
Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty (2013, Crown).
Dilip Hiro: Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural
History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tadjikistan, Turkey and Iran (2009; paperback, 2011, Overlook):
Author of the encyclopedic The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive
Guide (2nd ed, paperback, 2003, Carroll & Graf), various books
on Iran, Iraq, and oil, provides an overview to the ex-Soviet "-stans,"
which in addition to their continuing Russian (and Chinese) interests
are also affected by Turkey and Iran. And yes, there's oil there, also
Islamist militants, corrupt leaders, etc., everything you need for
another round of "great games." Also available: Ahmed Rashid: Jihad:
The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (2002, paperback, Penguin
Books); Olivier Roy: The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations
(updated ed, paperback, 2007, NYU Press).
Michael Hudson: The Bubble and Beyond: Fictitious Capital,
Debt Deflation and Global Crisis (paperback, 2012, Islet):
Economist, has a bunch of books but is perhaps best known for his
2006 essay predicting "the coming real estate collapse." He has
ahead of the curve back then, and likely still is.
Louis Hyman: Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red
Ink (2011; paperback, 2012, Princeton University Press):
On the expansion of consumer credit in America. Also has another
book, Borrow: The American Way of Debt (paperback, 2012,
Vintage), which appears to cover the same ground. Don't know what
his angle is, but one way to think of the expansion of consumer
debt is as an ersatz wage substitute: it allows people to buy
more without being worth more. As median incomes have stagnated
over the last 30 years, consumer debt allowed the illusion that
the wage progress of previous generations has continued. As that
seems unlikely to be sustainable, one would expect some sort of
crisis to follow.
Susan Jacoby: The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and
American Freethought (2012, Yale University Press): A
prominent anti-religious speaker from the golden age of Jacoby's
previous Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.
Robert D Kaplan: The Revenge of Geography: What the Map
Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
(2012, Random House): Good writer, interesting journalist, someone
who tries to think deep and invariably fails, mostly because his
mind is locked in ancient struggles for domination. How confused
can he get? Try this: "Afghanistan's porous borders will keep it
the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for
Pakistan, India's main enemy." That hasn't been true since Babur:
the Brits came in boats, the Americans wired in dollars, Pakistan
(for better or, mostly, worse) has a direct border, and Afghanistan
doesn't.
Matt Kennard: Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited
Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror
(2012, Verso): Hard to tell how big a problem this is, given that no
respectable US reporter would make a point of describing US soldiers
as psychos, although you do have all those suicides, the occasional
mass shooter, and it doesn't stretch the imagination much to wonder
how many militia nuts got their basic training in overkill at public
expense.
Daniel Klaidman: Kill or Capture: The War on Terror
and the Soul of the Obama Presidency (2012, Houghton
Mifflin): A look at the politics behind Obama's retreat from
his initial promises to close Guantanamo and prosecute terror
suspects in the legal system, his use of drones to assassinate
supposed enemies, leading up to the preference for killing
over capturing Bin Laden.
Timothy W Luke/Ben Agger, eds: A Journal of No Illusions:
Telos, Paul Piccone, and the Americanization of Critical Theory
(paperback, 2011, Telos Press): I knew Piccone very well, joining
him (and Telos) when he moved from Buffalo to St. Louis,
and he had a deep impact on my thinking, mostly forcing me to be
more critical of everything, not least of him and his volcanic
eruptions of deep thoughts and profanity. A dozen essays, Russell
Jacoby and Robert D'Amico the only names familiar from my days,
figure this to be the authorized story. Also: Confronting the
Crisis: Writings of Paul Piccone (2008, Telos Press), which
at 396 pp. is probably far short of his collected works, but I
always wondered why such a know-it-all never bothered to pull it
all together into a signature book.
Edward N Luttwak: The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy
(2012, Belknap Press): Security strategist, best known for writing the
manual on how to stage a Coup D'Etat, engages in the favorite
parlor game of US security strategists: imagining China's out to top
the US as the world's most bloated military power. Needless to say, he
focuses much on Sun Tsu.
Greg Muttitt: Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in
Occupied Iraq (2012, Free Press): The invasion and
occupation of Iraq may or may not have been about oil -- like
many things, depends on who you ask, and how candid they are --
but the oil is there, and the demand to book it, produce it,
and market it is here. We know, for instance, from Steve Coll's
Private Empire, that Exxon expected it would take ten
years before they could move in and book oil properties, and
that has proven about right, and that's just one example of
what should be many.
Ralph Nader: The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our
American Future (paperback, 2012, Harper): Laundry list
includes: reforming the tax system, making out communities more
self-reliant, reclaiming science and technology for the people,
protecting the family, getting corporations off welfare, creating
national charters for corporations, reducing our bloated military
budget, organizing congressional watchdog groups, enlisting the
enlightened super-rich. I think I could do better than that, but
probably wouldn't have thought of that last one. Previously wrote
The Seventeen Traditions (2007), so has something about
that number.
Greg Palast: Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to
Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (paperback, 2012, Seven
Stories Press): Leftist journalist/pundit, someone I've never
bothered with because his past books -- The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse, Vultures' Picnic --
seemed to offer a slightly sensationalized gloss on the obvious,
but this year's election pretty much comes down to his targets:
unlimited campaign spending and the efforts to suppress the vote
as much as possible.
Kevin Phillips: 1775: A Good Year for Revolution
(2012, Viking): Returning to his theses originally outlined in
The Cousins' Wars (1999) -- before he spent his last few
books dissecting the catastrophe the Bush family brought to
America -- this focuses more narrowly on the first year of the
American Revolution.
Lawrence N Powell: The Accidental City: Improvising New
Orleans (2012, Harvard University Press): A history of the
Crescent City, especially its first century-plus, up to statehood
in 1812. During that time it passed from France to Spain to the
US, engaged in slavery and commerce, perched on some of the most
marginal land in the country. The latter is also the subject of
Richard Campanella: Bienville's Dilemma: A Historical Geography
of New Orleans (paperback, 2008, University of Louisiana Press).
David Quammen: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next
Human Pandemic (2012, WW Norton): Natural science writer,
has written a couple essential books (e.g., The Song of the
Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction). Bacterial
and viral infectious don't just appear. They evolve within host
species, and occasionally jump to other species, sometimes with
deadly consequences. This is likely to be the book that finally
makes all that make sense.
Robert B Reich: Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong With
Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It (paperback,
2012, Vintage): Cover says "Expanded Edition" but I'm not sure to
what. Three essays: one on how the "game" has been rigged, one on
"The Rise of the Regressive Right," a third on "What You Need to
Do." Pretty basic stuff: Reich is becoming more focused as the
obvious problems keep boxing him in ever tighter.
Carne Ross: The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary
People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century
(2012, Blue Rider Press): Well, that sounds pretty optimistic. Ross
was a British diplomat, envoy to the UN, worked to mediate crises
in the Balkans and the Middle East, previously wrote Independent
Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite (2007, Cornell
University Press).
David E Sanger: Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars
and Surprising Use of American Power (2012, Crown): As
Obama was taking office in 2009, Sanger threw down a challenge
in the form of a book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts
and the Challenges to American Power. An unabashed, unrepentant
fan of American power, Sanger was worried that Bush's ineptness had
squandered and poisoned it, so now he's delighted that competency
has been restored, and the nation is bigger and bullier than ever.
I'm afraid I'm less pleased by all this: I've long said that things
not worth doing are not worth doing well, and this is one of them.
(The drug war, which many people think Obama realizes is a crock,
is another of them.)
Landon RY Storrs: The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of
the New Deal Left (2013, Princeton University Press): The
McCarthy period, like the original 1919 "red scare" a piece of
postwar nostalgia aimed at preserving the nation's martial spirit
by starting another war, and ultimately a far worse one in that
it succeeded in not only establishing the nation's cold war stance
but in purging the post-New Deal government of its leftist rank
and file. The effect was not only to militate the nation against
the Soviet Union but to turn the US against the working class
everywhere, including in the US.
William J Stuntz: The Collapse of American Criminal
Justice (2011, Harvard University Press): Famous legal
scholar, died shortly before this was released, offering a
broad rethinking of the entire criminal justice system as it
exists in the US. Much reviewed and commented upon, some things
that make sense to me and some that don't.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Antifragile: Things That Gain
From Disorder (2012, Random House): Author's day job is
Professor of Risk Engineering, but he has built a reputation in
mathematics and economics by writing books that cut against the
grain of expectations (e.g., The Black Swan, Fooled
by Randomness). This looks like another.
Göran Therborn: The World: A Beginner's Guide
(paperback, 2011, Polity): Swedish sociologist, one of the New
Left Review Marxists, offers a short primer on everything.
Evan Thomas: Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret
Battle to Save the World (2012, Little Brown): Portrait of
the president as a sly peacemaker, which is a bit of a stretch,
but as Thomas points out, when Eisenhower took office many top
military strategists were advocating a first strike against the
Soviet Union, China too, and use of nuclear bombs in the still
hot but stalemated Korea War. He's onto something there, but I
wouldn't push it too far, given what the CIA did during those
years (Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, the U-2 incident), and given what
a rabid hawk Eisenhower turned into when advising Johnson on
Vietnam. Previously wrote The War Lovers, about 1898.
Jeffrey Toobin: The Oath: The Obama White House and the
Supreme Court (2012, Doubleday): Journalist, specialist in
the Supreme Court -- previously wrote: The Nine: Inside the
Secret World of the Supreme Court -- a subject of perpetual
interest given how the right has taken over and radicalized the
Court.
Nick Turse: The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones,
Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare (paperback,
Haymarket, 2012): Short (107 pp) essay on the latest changes in US tactics,
which keep the old imperial interface intact while reducing exposure and
public consciousness of what the military is up to.
Craig Unger: Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove's Secret Kingdom
of Power (2012, Scribner): Author has written a couple books
on Bush, the first on his Saudi connections, the second on the Iraq
war and other misdeeds, so he's been turning over rocks to see what
he might find, and finally he's discovered Turd Blossom. Rove has
spent his post-Bush days building a modern political machine, which
is to say money laundering and propagandizing. Not clear to me that
he's had a whole lot of success, but that's mostly because the
crazies have out-crazied him. But he'll be back, not least because
no one's more opportunist, nor corrupt.
Mark K Updegrove: Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency
(2012, Crown): I reckon one reason Johnson's legislative record seems
more impressive these days is that Obama's seems so thin.
Craig Whitney: Living With Guns: A Liberal's Case for the
Second Amendment (2012, Public Affairs): Rationalization
for accepting a compromise with the gun industry in America, not
that any are forthcoming. Like many on the left, I decided that
this wasn't an issue worth the political fight: one better step
would be to disengage from war and reduce the military, another
would be economic justice (equalizing incomes and putting a floor
under the impoverished areas), another would be to reduce crime
by ending drug prohibition, another would be more realistic study
and public information of the risks and benefits to gun ownership.
This book may be useful, especially for historical background and
insight into the constitutional issue. Related books: Adam Winkler:
Gun Fight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America
(2011, WW Norton); Mark V Tushnet: Out of Range: Why the Constitution
Can't End the Battle Over Guns (2007, Oxford University Press);
Brian Doherty: Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court
Battle Over the Second Amendment (2009, Cato Institute); Saul
Cornell: A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the
Origins of Gun Control in America (paperback, 2008, Oxford
University Press); Stephen P Halbrook: The Founders' Second
Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (2012, Ivan R Dee);
David Hemenway: Private Guns, Public Health (2004; paperback,
2006, University of Michigan Press); Robert J Spitzer: The Politics
of Gun Control (5th ed, paperback, Paradigm). Of course, lots
of books by John R Lott Jr, too (e.g., More Guns, Less Crime:
Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws).
Richard Wolff: Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
(paperback, 2012, Haymarket Books): Marxist economist, his previous
book about the 2008 meltdown was titled, Capitalism Hits the Fan,
so he's not afraid to use the C-word derogatorily. As for that D-word,
for over 200 years now the right has fretted that common folk would
use their votes in support of their own interests.
As I said, paperback reissues later.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Expert Comments
Joe Yanosik asked about Wardell Gray, specifically a 1975 2LP set
that Christgau had commented on favorably. I wrote:
What I have by Wardell Gray: Memorial, Vol. 1 and
Memorial, Vol. 2 -- both OJC CDs issued in 1992. Looks like
they reproduce every song on the 1975 Central Avenue 2LP,
possibly plus some alternate takes, but slightly reordered. I have
both listed as A-. Looks like Vol. 2 is out of print, and I
don't see any convenient compilations, even on bootleg labels, unless
you want to spring for the 4-CD Proper Box, which actually isn't a bad
idea -- it will, among other things, get you "The Chase."
Chris Monsen wrote (while I was writing):
Wardell Gray Memorial vol. 1 and 2 cover much of the same material,
but the CD versions are marred by several takes of the same
compositions.
Like, I think, Vol. 1 starts with five takes of "Twisted."
Greg Morton found the Proper Box on Amazon for $12 -- yes, the title
is The Wardell Gray Story.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Book Roundup
Again, way too long since the last 40-deep book prospecting post --
September 27 -- possibly because over the last couple months this
has degenerated into a music blog (and a grumpy one at that). I'll
try to catch up here in a hurry. Since I only do 40 books at a time,
I should run about four of these in rapid succession. For the first
helping, I've cherry picked the most important books in history,
politics, and economics. I'll hold up on doing paperback reissues
until I get that section sorted better.
Some of this stuff is so old I've managed to get it through my
reading list, hence the illustrations. Chandrasekaran I even have
notes on. Most likely the notes were written before I read the books --
Azoulay is the exception, and I added a line on Economix. The
Avi Raz and Daniel Kurtzer books are in the queue.
Elliott Abrams: Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and
the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2013, Cambridge University
Press): A self-serving memoir in the manner of Dennis Ross and so
many other failures, but Abrams didn't fail -- he was pure evil,
and was remarkably successful not just at wrecking any prospects
for peace in Israel's neighborhood but in making everyone involved,
including the US, much meaner and crazier. No idea how much of this
he admits to -- such creatures usually prefer to dwell in the dark.
Stanley Aronowitz: Taking It Big: C Wright Mills and the
Making of Political Intellectuals (2012, Columbia University
Press): Mills was the most influential sociologist of his generation,
at least on left-oriented students of my generation, so Aronowitz is
well positioned to look both at what Mills did and what we made of
him.
Ariella Azoulay/Adi Ophir: The One-State Condition: Occupation
and Democracy in Israel/Palestine (paperback, 2012, Stanford
University Press): Abridged from a much larger book in Hebrew, this
is a theory-heavy structural analysis of Israel's occupation -- how
various legal and military regimes have been evolved to repress revolt
and manage the Palestinian population both within the Green Zone and
in the occupied territories. They make no bones that the key is violence,
sometimes naked (their term is "eruptive"), more often implicit (what
they call "withheld"). Moreover, this violence is so much a part of
Israeli rule that the only way to make peace is to replace the Israeli
regime.
Bernard Bailyn: The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British
North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 (2012,
Knopf): Should as much be the story of the de-peopling of North America,
as the native population died off while surrendering land to European
(and African) newcomers. Especially in the early years, the population
balance was treacherous.
Sheila Bair: Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main
Street From Wall Street and Wall Street From Itself
(2012, Free Press): A Kansas Republican, appointed by Bush to
head the FDIC in 2006, Bair distinguished herself as damn near
the only government official who attempted to do something about
the financial collapse before the bottom fell out.
Antony Beevor: The Second World War: The Definitive
History (2012, Little Brown): Big book (880 pp.), but
the subject has been so exhaustively explored that this promises
to be a primer, a reduction to bare essentials, which probably
means one battle after another. Beevor himself has written whole
(and pretty large) books on Stalingrad, D-Day, and
The Fall of Berlin 1945, as well as his other "definitive"
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939.
Peter L Bergen: Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden:
From 9/11 to Abbottabad (2012, Crown): Author interviewed Bin
Laden back when he was nobody, and managed to ply that association
into a lengthy career -- Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of
Osama Bin Laden (2001); The Osama bin Laden I Know (2006),
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and
al-Qaeda (2011) -- so this book was pretty much inevitable. Also
inevitable was the deluge, some specific to Bin Laden, some more
general: Mark Bowden: The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin
Laden; Mark Owen: No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the
Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden; Aki Peritz/Eric Rosenbach:
Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns That
Killed Bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda; Chuck Pfarrer: SEAL
Target Geronomo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin
Laden; Eric Schmitt/Thom Shanker: Counterstrike: The Untold
Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.
Alan S Blinder: After the Music Stopped: The Financial
Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead (2013, Penguin
Press): Clinton economist, spent some time (1994-96) as vice chair
of the Fed, reviews the 2008 meltdown and the various steps the
Fed and Treasury took to save the big banks. He defends those
unprecedented steps, but also finds need for further reform.
Breaking the Silence, ed.: Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers'
Testimonies From the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010 (2012,
Metropolitan Books): Oral history, interviews with Israeli soldiers,
witnesses to occupation from the top down.
Naomi Cahn/June Carbone: Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal
Polarization and the Creation of Culture (2010; paperback,
Oxford University Press, 2011): A look at how American families have
been polarized by the red-blue culture divide.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Little America: The War Within the
War for Afghanistan (2012, Knopf): Mild-mannered journalist,
laid back then wrote a damning chronicle of US incompetence in Iraq,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone,
moves on to Afghanistan. There, he focuses on Helmand, home of
America's prewar "Little America" hydro-project, watching wave
after wave of American power unable to do anything constructive.
[link].
Joseph Crespino: Strom Thurmond's America (2012,
Hill & Wang): The Dixiecrat's presidential candidate lived a
full 100 years, and did something unspeakably vile in nearly every
one of them. He was the first southern Democrat to switch parties,
starting a trend that brought the GOP the likes of Jesse Helms,
Trent Lott, Richard Shelby, and Phil Gramm.
Michael Dobbs: Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill,
and Truman, From World War to Cold War (2012, Knopf): The
death of Franklin Roosevelt and the succession of Harry Truman was
probably the key event in turning the US-Soviet alliance sour, even
if most Cold War histories push the dates out a bit, all the easier
to blame the Soviets. Trying to cram this transformation into the
last six months of WWII -- from Yalta to Hiroshima, which as Gar
Alperowitz argued was a diplomatic gesture aimed as much as Moscow
as at Tokyo -- forces the issue, but I'm not sure it doesn't fit.
Robert Draper: Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the US
House of Representatives (2012, Free Press): Previously
wrote Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2007),
one of the better books on that sorry subject. This goes deep inside
the 112th House, which the Republicans took over following the 2010
elections. At this point I'd say wait for the paperback, out in May
hopefully with some extras, also with a new title: When the Tea
Party Came to Town: Inside the US House of Representatives' Most
Combative, Dysfunctional, and Infuriating Term in Modern History
(paperback, 2013, Simon & Schuster) -- not that the 113th won't
give it a run for the money.
Jesse Ferris: Nasser's Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen
Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power
(2012, Princeton University Press): Nasser referred to his five-year
intervention in Yemen as "my Vietnam": no doubt it both weakened
and unfocused Egypt's military, which only added to the confidence
Israel's generals felt in launching their 1967 blitzkrieg. Still,
while everyone acknowledges that it aided Israel's win, it is rare
to see anyone argue that it caused Israel's aggression, not least
because it calls into question Nasser's motives and priorities.
Michael Goodwin/Dan E Burr: Economix: How and Why Our
Economy Works (and Doesn't Work), in Words and Pictures
(paperback, 2012, Abrams Comic Arts): Comix-style, more history
than theory, which probably helps both the illustrator and the
reader. For many years Larry Gonick had a corner on scholarly
(or at least nerdy) comix, but others are appearing: aside from
this one on, Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein have two volumes of
The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, one micro, the
other macro. I've just finished reading this one, and it is a
remarkably concise primer on nearly everything you need to know
about politics and the economy since Adam Smith (plus it's a
big help on Smith).
Michael R Gordon/General Bernard E Trainor: Endgame: The
Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq From George W Bush to Barack
Obama (2012, Pantheon; paperback, 2013, Vintage): Authors
of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of
Iraq, back when they were embedded in high command, their
typical viewpoint for all things military. Once again, they claim
the inside story, backed by "still-classified documents" their
sources don't trust to the public.
Michael Grunwald: The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of
Change in the Obama Era (2012, Simon & Schuster):
Mostly on Obama's stimulus bill, now widely understood to have
been way too small, not to mention oversold. Not sure what more
has been hidden about the story, other than Obama's penchant
for negotiating himself down while imagining that he's working
up a bipartisan deal. There were no meaningful bipartisan deals
during his watch -- only more or less egregious capitulations,
which showed how little he was willing to stand up for the very
people who elected him, even so much as speaking out in defense
of their (and supposedly his) principles. Grunwald previously
wrote The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics
of Paradise (paperback, 2007, Simon & Schuster), which
I bought long ago but never got around to reading.
James Inhofe: The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming
Conspiracy Threatens Your Future (2012, WND Books): Cover
introduces Inhofe as "US Senator"; actually he's just a Republican
from Oklahoma, but since the opposition to the science of climate
change is overwhelmingly political, why not let a real politician (as
opposed to a hack like Roy Spencer) do the talking: "Americans are
over-regulated and over-taxed. When regulation escalates, the result
is an increase in regulators. In other words, bigger government is
required to enforce the greater degree of regulation. Bigger
government means bigger budgets and higher taxes. 'More' simply
doesn't mean 'better.' A perfect example is the entire global warming,
climate-change issue, which is an effort to dramatically and hugely
increase regulation of each of our lives and business, and to raise
our cost of living and taxes." Nothing here about whether the science
is true. Nothing about future effects. Nothing about whether it can be
mitigated or controlled. The whole case for opposition is that it runs
against Inhofe's political agenda, which is itself nonsense. There are
many other books that oppose the supposed political agenda riding on
top of climate science, and even a few that try to "debunk" that
science. I published a long list in 2010; some more recent ones
include: Larry Bell: Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power
Behind the Global Warming Hoax (2011, Greenleaf); Patrick J
Michaels: Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of Our Government
and Our Lives (2011, Cato Institute); Brian Sussman:
Eco-Tyranny: How the Left's Green Agenda Will Dismantle America
(2012, WND Books); Robert Zubrin: Merchants of Despair: Radical
Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of
Antihumanism (2012, Encounter Books).
Robert Kagan: The World America Made (2012, Knopf):
A right-wing view of America as the world's indispensible nation,
without which the whole world declines into war and chaos -- as
opposed, I suppose, to the universe where the US causes all that
war and chaos, i.e., the one we live in today.
Fred Kaplan: The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot
to Change the American Way of War (2013, Simon & Schuster):
Kaplan wrote an important book a few years back on the "revolution in
military affairs" which was put to the test when Bush invaded Iraq --
Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power --
so he should be fairly critical at reporting the military's latest
theoretical hubris, COIN (counterinsurgency theory and practice).
Petraeus was the marquis star of COIN: he wrote the book, which got
him back in the game, not that he ever practiced what he preached.
The guy suckered into that was Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whose memoir
is also newly available (My Share of the Task: A Memoir). No
word from Petraeus yet, but Paula Broadwell: All In: The Education
of General David Petraeus turns out to be more authorized than
was initially imagined.
Ira Katznelson: Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of
Our Time (2013, Liveright): A substantial history of the New
Deal. Previously wrote When Affirmative Action Was White,
which showed how the New Deal shortchanged blacks, so I don't expect
him to pull his punches on race.
Ian Kershaw: The End: The Defiance and Destruction of
Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 (2011, Penguin Books): He's
written a lot of books about the Third Reich -- I have one on
the shelf unread called Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That
Changed the World, 1940-1941 -- so it seems he's focusing
now on hypotheticals. In this case: what held the Nazis together
until Berlin was overrun, allowing no thought of trying to
negotiate surrender terms. Looks like the publisher already
has a sequel prepared: Gerald Steinacher: Nazis on the Run:
How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice (2011, Penguin Books).
Daniel C Kurtzer/Scott B Lasensky/William B Quandt/Steven
L Spiegel/Shibley Z Telhami: The Peace Puzzle: America's Quest
for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011 (2013, Cornell University
Press): Could be sub-subtitled "An Autopsy" -- that at least is
what the subject calls for, with some additional pieces on how
Israel inspired the neocons, how Israel's flagrantly illegal
counterterrorism tactics were adopted by the Americans, and how
Israel played the Iran atomic issue to distract Bush and especially
Obama from the real gaping sore in the Middle East. The authors
shouldn't be uncritical, but Kurtzer (in particular) may have
been too close to the process to call it the sham it has been.
Flynt Leverett/Hillary Mann Leverett: Going to Tehran:
Why the United States Must Come to Terms With the Islamic Republic
(2013, Metropolitan Books): Sensible appeal from diplomats and
analysts who know more than a little about Iran. They've been
arguing this for some time: lost some credibility when they told
us to deal with Iran back when there were massive demonstrations
against Ahmadinejad's reëlection, but they were right, and hoping
for regime change has yielded nothing.
Richard Lingeman: The Noir Forties: The American People
From Victory to Cold War (2012, Nation Books): The selling
of the cold war is one of the most important, least debated topics
in American history, undoing and reversing 160 years of isolation
and anti-militarism in American culture and politics, undermining
significant gains by workers and the poor, many of whom could aspire
to "middle class" status, and leading to the calculated insanity of
the new right. I'm sceptical of trying to argue politics through
culture, but it is a puzzle. Otherwise, this is just a guide to
the period's film noir.
Fredrik Logevall: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire
and the Making of America's Vietnam (2012, Random House):
Huge (864 pp.) history of the French war, ending in defeat in 1954,
to reassert imperialist control over Vietnam, a war the US supported
and continued for another 21 years. Author has written about Vietnam
before: Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation
of War in Vietnam (1999; paperback, 2001, University of California
Press), and The Origins of the Vietnam War (paperback, 2001,
Longman). In the former, Logevall argues that the war could have
been negotiated away in 1963-65, but that US leaders chose to bet
on war instead. We all know how that worked out (or should: the
right has veered toward senescence here, as elsewhere).
Ami Pedhazur: The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right
(2012, Oxford University Press): By "radical right" he means the
followers of Meir Kahane, who were marginal (illegal even) a few
decades ago, but following martyred mass murder Baruch Goldstein
have wedged themselves into a stranglehold position over Israeli
politics, making it impossible to dismantle the settlements,
ensuring that the conflict will never end, and (in their minds)
ultimately leading to an Israeli state purged of Palestinians.
Netanyahu and Lieberman are pikers compared to them -- useful
idiots, as Stalins liked to say. Author previously wrote The
Israeli Secret Services & the Struggle Against Terrorism
(paperback, 2010, Columbia University Press).
Harvey Pekar/JT Waldman: Not the Israel My Parents Promised
Me (2012, Hill and Wang): Comic-style book, traces Pekar's
coming to terms with his parents' embrace of Zionism -- his mother
"by way of politics," his father "by way of faith," neither preparing
him for the reality of the state, its belligerence, its paranoia,
its domination and occupation.
Eyal Press: Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks,
and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times (2012,
Farrar Straus and Giroux): A book on conscience-driven acts of
disobedience, including a Swiss police captain allowing Jewish
refugees to enter "neutral" Switzerland in 1938, and Israeli
soldiers refusing to participate in the Occupation. Turns out
to be a slim book (208 pp).
Avi Raz: The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and
the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War
(2012, Yale University Press): Focuses on the first two years of
postwar occupation, when Israeli thinking about the future was in
great flux yet notably rigid: they had, after all, conquered the
land of their dreams (well, excepting the East Bank, and South
Lebanon up to the Litani), and as neocolonial settlers were
reluctant to part with any of it.
Thomas E Ricks: The Generals: American Military Command
From World War II to Today (2012, Penguin Press): Military
journalist, wrote two books on being embedded with the high command
that invaded and occupied Iraq (the first appropriately called
Fiasco), extends his historical ruminations back to WWII,
hoping he can finally find some generals worth flattering.
Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Land of Israel: From
Holy Land to Homeland (2012, Verso): A logical successor
to the author's The Invention of the Jewish People (2009),
which questioned whether the Jews returning to Zion were in fact
descendents of the Jews who left Palestine in Roman times.
Amity Shlaes: Coolidge (2013, Harper): Partisan hack
historian as "revisionist," took on Franklin Roosevelt in The Forgotten
Man: A New History of the Great Depression (2007), goes one step
further in attempting to lionize "Silent Cal" -- US president during
the fat years of the roaring 1920s then got out before his bubble burst.
Also new: Charles C Johnson: Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons
From America's Most Underrated President (2013, Encounter Books).
One reason Coolidge matters is as that he's an icon against public
sector unions. Another is how steadfastly he served the rich under
Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.
Nate Silver: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many
Predictions Fail -- But Some Don't (2012, Penguin Press):
Author writes an influential blog about election polling, useful
to consult in season, in part because he has an uncanny track
record of getting those things correct, no matter how unpleasant
the results. This promises to offer more method, and the title
issue is the crux of the matter. Most folks have a lot of trouble
with statistics, so this promises to be helpful.
Oliver Stone/Peter Kuznick: The Untold History of the United
States (2013, Gallery Books): The footnotes, a mere 784 pp,
behind Stone's documentary series. Aside from some glances at the
notion of "American exceptionalism," this starts with the imperialist
grab of the Spanish-American War, the advent of "gunboat diplomacy,"
and Woodrow Wilson's World War as viewed through Smedley Butler's
notion that "war is a racket" -- a truth that no amount of Cold War
propaganda could ever erase. Also available: On History: Tariq
Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation (paperback, 2011, Haymarket),
after Ali collaborated with Stone on the documentary South of the
Border.
Nick Turse: Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War
in Vietnam (2013, Metropolitan): Author has written several
books on how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed the US
military. Here he reexamines the grandaddy of those wars, Vietnam,
reminding us how brutal and morally debilitating that war was.
Christian Appy: "Nick Turse has done more than anyone to demonstrate --
and document -- what should finally be incontrovertible: American
atrocities in Vietnam were not infrequent and inadvertent, but the
commonplace and inevitable result of official U.S. military policy."
Marilyn Young: "Until this history is acknowledged it will be repeated,
one way or another, in the wars the U.S. continues to fight."
Joan Walsh: What's the Matter With White People: Why We
Long for a Golden Age That Never Was (2012, Wiley): Well,
you know, they let themselves be manipulated by rich people they
have nothing but race in common with, to shaft dark people who
they have more in common with than they recognize. In short,
dumb.
Michael Walzer: In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew
Bible (2012, Yale University Press): Political scientist,
best known for writing the book on "just war" theory -- Just
and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations
(1977, revised 1992, 2000, 2006) -- then renting out his blessings
for the "war on terror." Most likely he'll prove equal ingenious
in his support for Israel.
Eli Zaretsky: Why American Needs a Left: A Historical
Argument (2012, Polity): Brief survey of the many things
the American left has fought for and, in many cases, achieved --
the end of slavery, progressivism, the New Deal, civil rights.
Don't know how well he covers the New Left, which I'd argue was
substantially successful on all front except that our distrust
of power kept us from establishing a base for defending those
gains. Needless to add, even in times when such successes are
few the need for a left continues -- in many ways, more than
ever.
As I said, paperback reissues later.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Music Week/Jazz Prospecting
Music: Current count 21131 [21103] rated (+28), 602 [605] unrated (-3).
Working erratically, but the days come and go and when the week's done
I wind up close to average -- a bit short in Jazz Prospecting this week,
but trying to make some headway on Rhapsody Streamnotes in a year that
thus far is short of obvious prospects. Meanwhile, very little incoming
jazz, although the previous week's haul was above average, so maybe that
means nothing.
I don't tend to pay much attention to release dates, but I've been
vaguely aware that despite receiving finished copies the two A- records
this week are officially schedule in the future. Turns out the Steve
Coleman drops on March 26, and the Peter Evans release date is March
15. The latter was most perplexing because for the first time since
I've been running cover scans I wasn't able to find one on the net
somewhere. Had to made my own, and I'm pleased to note that wasn't
too hard. One of those computer skills I should be much better at
than I am.
Lot of high-B+ records too. I've taken Hamilton and Kuhn out in
the car just for pleasure listening, and even further down, Alpiar
and Zinn will turn some heads. But it looks like MOPDTK's year,
with their flagship Slippery Rock on top of my current
2013 list, and Evans and Jon
Irabagon (for Barry Altschul and soon for Dave Douglas) scoring
strong.
Christopher Alpiar Quartet: The Jazz Expression
(1995 [2012], Behip): Tenor/soprano saxophonist, studied at
Miami-Dade and Berklee, based in Atlanta. First album, quartet
with piano-bass-drums, has been sitting on the shelf for quite
some time. Alpiar wrote all five songs, ranging from 7-15 minutes.
The long first cut is hugely evocative of Coltrane, and the rest
of the pieces remain in that vein.
B+(**)
Masha Campagne: Like Water, Like Air (2012, Impetus):
Singer, b. in Moscow, moved to San Francisco in 1991. Second album,
produced by pianist Weber Iago, one of several Brazilian connections.
She write four songs, picks up a couple more from guitarist Guinga,
one from Iago, a Jobim, "It Could Happen to You," a couple more. The
Brazilian vibe runs deep.
B+(*)
Ian Carey Quintet + 1: Roads & Codes (2012 [2013],
Kabocha): Trumpet player, based in San Francisco, looks like his third
album. Figure alto saxophonist Kasey Knudsen for the "+1" since the
others -- Evan Francis (flute, tenor sax), Adam Shulman (piano), Fred
Randolph (bass), and Jon Arkin (drums) -- repeat from the previous
quintet album. Mostly originals, plus Neil Young, Charles Ives, and
Igor Stravinsky. Nice comic book packaging, until you read the fine
print and see he's mostly grouching about critics.
B+(*)
Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Functional Arrhythmias
(2012 [2013], Pi): Alto saxophonist, b. 1956, has used Five Elements
as his primary group name since 1986, thirteen albums in all. Many
explore funk/fusion beats, some are muddied up with vocals, the last
couple I didn't care for at all. But this one is stripped way down:
two wavering horns (Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet), bass and drums
that fully implement the title, a little extra guitar (Miles Okazaki)
on 5 of 14 tracks. Maybe too simple, but rarely has the continuous
shifting of time come through so clearly -- one could say, functional.
A-
Tom Dempsey/Tim Ferguson Quartet: Beautiful Friendship
(2010 [2012], Planet Arts): The leader play guitar and bass. Third
group album, although Ferguson also played on Dempsey's 1998 debut.
Rounding out the quartet are Eliot Zigmund on drums and Joel Frahm
on tenor and soprano sax. The latter has long been a superb accompanist
and is the main reason to tune in here, but the leaders move it along
nicely.
B+(***)
The Kahil El'Zabar Quartet: What It Is! (2012 [2013],
Delmark): Chicago drummer, has twenty-some albums since 1982, many
as Ethnic Heritage Ensemble; always interesting, but his best albums
were lifted by bigger names -- David Murray on Love Outside of
Dreams (1997), Billy Bang on Spirits Entering (2001).
This time he goes with players I'm only barely familiar with --
Kevin Nabors (tenor sax), Justin Dillard (keybs), Junius Paul
(bass) -- they have some side credits with Ernest Dawkins and
Corey Wilkes. Nabors, in particular, has a strong voice, one
you'll be hearing more from.
B+(***)
Peter Evans: Zebulon (2012 [2013], More Is More):
Trumpet player, best known as one of the terrorists in Mostly Other
People Do the Killing, but has a handful of records on his own,
mostly more avant than the band's. Trio, with the ever-dependable
John Hébert on bass and Kassa Overall on drums. Trumpet stabs, zips,
kicks it up a notch, then another one.
A-
Danny Green: A Thousand Ways Home (2012, Tapestry):
Pianist, from San Diego, debuted with a solo in 2009, returns here
with a trio expanded with sax (Tripp Sprague on 6 of 13 cuts),
guitar/mandolin (various, again 6 cuts, one of those both), and
voice (Claudia Villela, one cut). All originals, looks to Latin
and Brazilian models and favors soprano sax so this has a slick
breeziness.
B+(*)
Scott Hamilton: Remembering Billie (2012 [2013],
Blue Duchess): Tenor saxophonist, once a "young fogey" but getting
on now. His connection to Billie Holiday is through Lester Young --
I vaguely recall that he actually plays one of Young's old saxes.
Songs Holiday recorded, half-a-dozen titles I can recall perfectly
well but only the exquisite "God Bless the Child" makes me think
of Holiday (as opposed to Hamilton) while playing. Duke Robillard
plays guitar on two cuts, and "I'll Never Be the Same" is a gem.
B+(***)
Stan Killian: Evoke (2012 [2013], Sunnyside):
Tenor saxophonist, b. 1978 in Texas, based in New York; second
album. postbop quintet with both piano (Benito Gonzalez) and
guitar (Mike Moreno), the latter softening the tone of the sax.
B+(**)
Steve Kuhn: The Vanguard Date (1986 [2013],
Sunnyside): Pianist, b. 1938, cut his first album in 1963; AMG
lists 47 albums. This trio with Ron Carter and Al Foster was
originally released on Owl, with the liner notes now buried
somewhere in the data tracks. A fine set, about half originals,
ending with a lovely solo "Lullaby."
B+(***)
Joshua Kwassman: Songs of the Brother Spirit (2011
[2013], Truth Revolution): Saxophonist (alto, soprano, clarinet, flute,
melodica, piano one cut), studied at New School, first album, composed
through. Only musician I recognize is guitarist Gilad Hekselman, but
the most significant seems to be vocalist Arielle Feinman, not that I
hear her enunciating any words. The notion that the voice is the most
versatile forge of sounds is venerable but has yet to be proved.
B-
Beata Pater: Red (2011 [2013], B&B): Singer,
also plays violin (5 of 12 cuts); from Poland, has six albums, this
the third in her "color series"; 9 of 12 cuts were written by Pater
and/or keyboardist Mark Little, the covers including fusion pieces
by Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard.
B
Antonio Sanchez: New Life (2012 [2013], CAM Jazz):
Drummer, b. 1971 in Mexico City, fourth album since 2007, also has
tons of side work. Super postbop band with Dave Binney on alto sax,
Donny McCaslin on tenor sax, John Escreet on piano/fender rhodes,
and Matt Brewer on acoustic and electric bass. I'm impressed when
it's just them although I rarely get into such fanciness. Sanchez
is also credited with vocals and additional keybs, definitely too
much, even more so when Thana Alexa throws her voice into the mix.
B
John Stein: Bing Bang Boom (2012 [2013], Whaling City
Sound): Guitarist, has more than ten records since 1995, usually tight
groove pieces with a characteristic grain of metal, ups his game a bit
with this quartet -- Jake Sherman keybs, John Lockwood bass, Zé Eduardo
Nazario drums -- making me think of John Scofield.
B+(***)
The Dann Zinn 4: Grace's Song (2012 [2013], Z
Music): Tenor saxophonist, based near San Francisco, third album
since 1996. Quartet, with Taylor Eigsti (piano), John Shifflett
(bass), and Adam Hall (drums). Wrote 6 (of 8) songs, attractive
tone and dynamics. Covers are "House of Pain" and "Stardust" --
both appealing.
B+(**)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Anthony Branker & Word Play: Uppity (Origin)
- Edward Simon Trio: Live in New York at Jazz Standard (Sunnyside)
- Dayna Stephens: That Nephenthetic Place (Sunnyside)
- Rich Thompson: Less Is More (Origin)
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Weekend Roundup
Some scattered links I squirreled away during the previous week, but
first, today's Crowson:
Paul Krugman: What the Malaysians Know: Quotes several cases where
right-wingers, including the Heritage Foundation, have switched tunes
and started praising Malaysia -- after money changed hands:
It seems that some years ago Malaysia's ruling party took a good look
at leading pundits and policy intellectuals in the conservative movement,
reached a judgment about their personal and intellectual integrity or
lack thereof, and acted in accordance with that judgment.
Funny how Malaysia gets who these people are and what motivates them --
while our own press corps doesn't.
Matthew Yglesias: Ben Bernanke Has a Terrible Record on Inflation:
Testifying before Congress recently, Ben Bernanke bragged, "my inflation
record is the best of any Federal Reserve chairman in the postwar period,
or at least one of the best, about 2 percent average inflation."
Catherine Rampell's numbers show that Bernanke has, in fact, delivered
the lowest inflation of any postwar Fed chair, coming in at an average of
2 percent. On the other hand, Floyd Norris notes that unemployment under
Bernanke has been second-highest of any postwar Federal Reserve chairman.
Now if you ignore the "postwar" qualifier, the picture looks different.
Several Depression-era Fed chairs had less inflation and more unemployment
than Bernanke. And putting those Depression-era bankers into the mix serves
to highlight how absurd Bernanke's bust is. No sensible person would look
at America's economic performance in the 1929-1933 period and say "man,
they did a great job of fighting inflation."
I've often remarked on how dumb I thought it was for Obama to nominate
Bernanke for a second term as Fed Chairman: if he's going to be blamed
for a depressed economy, and he was, Obama should at least insist on
putting his own man in charge of the one government job that has the
most day-to-day impact on the economy, but he succumbed to a wave of
hype and renominated Bush's man, and got Bush's economy in the bargain.
Seems unlikely that Bernanke will get a third term, not so much because
Obama's finally decided to appoint people who will help but because the
Republicans have developed a huge grudge against Bernanke for trying
to do anything at all to expand the economy. Bottom line, though, is
that he didn't try much, it didn't work very well, and he has yet to
show any visible displeasure with the results.
Also take a gander at
Businessweek Warns That Minorities May Be Buying Houses Again.
Isn't the real story here in the fine print: "Flips. No-look bids. 300
percent returns. What could possibly go wrong?" That says much more about
the failure of Dodd-Frank to end the practices that caused the housing
bubble and recession in the first place.
Also, a few links for further study:
Steven Brill: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us:
Extensive reporting on how hospitals, doctors, etc., rack up charges
to individuals far in excess of what they charge insurance companies
and Medicare; e.g.:
Dozens of midpriced items were embedded with similarly aggressive markups,
like $283.00 for a "CHEST, PA AND LAT 71020." That's a simple chest X-ray,
for which MD Anderson is routinely paid $20.44 when it treats a patient on
Medicare, the government health care program for the elderly.
Also see Paul Krugman
here and
here for a sanity check on the conclusions. From the latter:
So why does Obamacare run through the private sector? Raw political
necessity: this was the only way that it could get past the insurance
industry's power. OK, that was how it had to be.
But you should really be outraged at the efforts of some states to
ensure that the Medicaid expansion is done not via direct government
insurance but run through the insurance industry. What you need to
understand is that this is a double giveaway, both to the insurers
and to the health care industry, because private insurers don't have
the government's bargaining power. It is, bluntly, purely a matter
of corporate welfare for the medical-industrial complex.
Tim Dickinson: The Gun Industry's Deadly Addiction: Hook the kids,
seduce the ladies, turn shooting ranges into live-action video games,
prep the preppers, supply cartels and criminals.
Henry Farrell: Slaves of Defunct Economists: Review of Mark Blyth:
Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2013, Oxford University
Press). Normally we like to believe that growth is good for all, even if
its promotion is lavished on business (the job creators get profits, the
jobs trickle down). In other words, the growth paradigm is to suck profits
up the class scale. What austerity does is push losses down, making sure
they are suffered as much or more by the masses as by the rich. Sharing
the misery seems to comfort the rich, probably because it isn't shared
equally.
John Quiggin: Open Thread on Hugo Chavez: The comments here are often
as good or better than the pieces. PlutoniumKun seems to have a good start:
The problem with Chavez is that it was so hard to see past his charisma
and ego. His anti-Americanism was justified in many ways, but the manner
in which this extended to supporting the likes of Ahmadinejad and Assad
was less endearing, although I suppose its no worse than considering the
house of al Saud to be a friend. He was good at the broad brush, but it
seems that he wasn't particularly good at building up the internal
structures which Venezuela so badly needed to ensure his reforms had
long term benefits. I fear that he has not left a lasting legacy of
deep structural reform in governance in Venezuela, something which it
desperately needs. Although arguably the problems are so deep rooted
that they are unfixable. But it is absolutely unquestionable for anyone
who has looked at the recent history of Venezuela that his policies
greatly benefited the poor and dispossessed and that he gave great
pride to many South Americans.
Amir-Hussein Firouz Radjy: A Forgotten Anniversary: Iran's First
Revolution and Constitution: December 1906, when the Qajar
monarchy gave way to a first effort at democracy in Iran.
Dennis B Ross: To Achieve Mideast Peace, Suspend Disbelief:
Proposes 14 steps, evenly divided as if the obstacles to peace are
evenly distributed. For the Palestinians, these tasks reduce to
wait patiently and pretend this is working. For Israel, he wants
to step down from further settlement expansion -- a non-starter
with the current government not that he says so nor suggests any
remedy to -- and tread a bit lighter. The silliest proposal is to
"commit to an exchange of classrooms or regular youth exchanges
starting as early as third grade" to mitigate against "children
on each side are being . . . being socialized to
demonize and dehumanize the other." This is typical Ross: a nice
liberal idea that will take forever and accomplish nothing. He
forgets that the main attraction of the "two state" plan is that
it doesn't require either side to like or even forgive the other,
and that it's tolerable now only because the separation it assumes
has been accomplished, for the most part long ago. Otherwise, if
Israelis accepted Palestinians they could implement a "one state"
equal-rights solution on their own, immediately. That they don't --
that they won't even consider the possibility -- shows that they
won't: that they are too wrapped up in their insistence on ethnic
rule and the violent suppression of others to conceive of living
in an equitable society.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Expert Comments
Milo Miles:
Ah, more matters of interpretation . . .
I had no idea that Cam Patterson was a Xgau fan of more than 30
years standing. And far as I can tell, all Bob is referring to with
the "less striking" remark is Cam's blog, his accomplishments outside
of music and so forth. I don't feel slighted in the least.
This, from Tom Hull's site, is more disturbing:
He's referring to the Nieman interview . . .
"Christgau talks more about careers, professionalism, and what he
sees as the alternative -- and future, given the way the market for
professional rock critics is collapsing, which is almost the same as
the enemy -- what he calls the "gentleman amateur" (i.e., folks like
me)."
Wow -- really? The Tom Hull model is not what I thought of at all
when I read this.
Looked back and can't find whatever triggered the comment about
Cam. Then Bradley Sroka added:
I agree with Milo--I interpreted "gentleman amateurs" to be people
employed in other fields (lawyers, cardiology) who moonlight as rock
critics for fun and fulfillment. I have a few friends that do this,
and I've heard that it's hard to get paid well as a critic in some
publications because gentleman amateurs don't require nearly as much
financial support. Perhaps those with trust funds (or who otherwise
come from money) could also be these amateurs. Why is this bad? I
assume there's less pressure to be an expert since the role doesn't
require such expertise to get published. I'm willing to accept
arguments countering this. Obviously not the case in every case, but a
worrisome trend nonetheless. (I also suspect Bob is referring to
critics and scholars of the past whose work was largely a hobby and
therefore not as commanding concerning facts and logic. A lot of early
work in musicology, ethnomusicology, and jazz studies started out this
way.)
Concerning Tom, I wouldn't call him a gentleman amateur since he
certainly was paid for much of his life to write criticism. He's
obviously earned the title of professional critic :)
Obviously, Sroka has never audited my books. Milo again:
"Why is this bad?"
Though the tiresome claim is always made that writing about the
arts is somehow different, it's bad for the same reason you would
rather take your car to be repaired by a professional mechanic rather
than the guy down the street who works on cars in his garage (no
matter how dedicated he is).
"A lot of early work in musicology, ethnomusicology, and jazz
studies started out this way."
Don't know about musicology, but with the other two, this is true,
but a lot of such folks were just fanatic collectors who were a lot
stronger on information than analysis. There are scattered exceptions,
but jazz criticism took a great leap forward when it became at least
minimally professional.
Actually, I'd rather take my car to a friend I trust than to the
money-gouging "professional" down the street, although that's becoming
more difficult as cars become more computerized so the capital needed
to repair them becomes more prohibitive. Music writing is
different, because with all due respect to "professionalism" --
especially expertise and communications skills -- so much of the
aesthetic experience is subjective, and the chances of writing
something worthwhile is rather blurred across the line separating
paid and unpaid critics.
Christgau:
Tom is a gentleman amateur and always has been--that is, he's never
made his living as a writer. He's a good one--they're not all bad, how
could they be, and there've been many others. I edited a bunch of them
back in the day (my sometime collaborator John Piccarella, for
one). But most of the people I edited in the '70s were fulltime
writers, for a variety of socioeconomic reasons, most of them having
to do with the fading positive fallout of the New Deal and its postwar
ramifications. I can't go into all the angles here, but that the loss
of those days is bad for criticism I have no doubt, just as I have
considerable doubt that the proliferation of online opinionating is
good for it--although once again there are always exceptions, I really
should not have to say that every time I generalize. Speaking of
which, I wonder what Tom means when he generalizes about my "almost
unique" ability to carve out a fulltime career as a critic. I'm far
from unique There are many fewer of us than there used to be, but
there still plenty, at least 100 is my guess, and many of those pretty
damn good. Powers? Pareles? Frere-Jones? C'mon--you may not agree with
them, but they do the work and advance our understanding.
Michael Tatum:
The thing about gentlemen amateurs (and I'm flattered to be called
a gentleman, of course) is that they need a great deal of discipline
to create superlative work that can stand against -- or be ranked
better than -- the professionals. This is not easy: it takes a great
deal of work. In the case of the rock scribe, it takes a great deal
of listening, writing, editing, writing, editing, and editing, and
editing. Having rooted around the web for good rock writing, I know
how rare excellent work in this vein can be. One of the reasons I
gravitate toward my gentlemen amateur friends (Tom and Jason are prime
examples of this) is that they walk and talk like professionals, which
is always the goal. And for what it's worth, I didn't take the phrase
"gentlemen amateurs" as an insult, though I appreciate Tom's response.
In an era where the word has been devalued, we need people who can
fight for its sanctity. Isn't that one of the reasons we wound up
here in the first place?
Then, I wrote:
I learned to set type in college and made my living at it until
1980. Then I read a few books on software, hacked out some programs,
and wrangled a job as a software engineer, and that's how I made my
living until I became retired -- easiest work I ever did, and I made
good money doing it. On the other hand, I don't think I ever made more
than $1000 in my best year writing in the 1970s, or $3000 any year in
the last decade. I backed into it, never would have pursued it except
for the advocacy of friends, and certainly never had a clue how to
make a living off it. And never thought I was much good at it -- only
subjects I was weaker in than English was music and athletics (guess
that's a case of those who can do, those who can't heckle from the
bleachers). Still, I've written about four million words in the last
decade, so practice may count for something -- but it doesn't make me
a professional: even if they assume a minimal level of competency,
getting paid often depends on a different skill set, and attitude.
I have been fortunate in that I've almost never been in a position
where I had to do things that I didn't want to, and in fact I've
usually been able to plot my own course -- sometimes completely
oblivious to the economic considerations (as when I developed free
software). By "almost unique" I was thinking timespan (which I wrote
about in the Festschrift) but also that in many ways Bob had managed
the same thing cultivating his autonomy at the Voice and later. But
he's always fretted more about money, and as he gets squeezed (not
just) by the internet, it's like he's circling the wagons -- probably
why he's more conscious of colleagues like Powers and Pareles -- and
aiming his barbs at outsiders. I'm not offended by "gentleman
amateurs" -- I knew what he meant and appreciated that (Darwin, Marx,
etc.). And I'm thankful that long before I retired to gentleman status
he saw in me an amateur worth cultivating. (And let me cite a couple
more of my colleagues in addition to Piccarella: Tom Smucker and
Georgia Christgau.)
Jason Gubbels (posted while I was writing the above):
The major problem with blogs isn't the writing, although the
writing is quite often dreadful. It's the lack of oversight and
accountability. Paul Krugman has a blog, and a pretty great one,
subsidiary to his more polished and longer essays. It allows him to
ramble a bit more, to pursue flights of fancy, to have some fun, to
get riled up -- all the things one can't always necessarily find a way
to do within the confines of a commissioned piece. But he's Paul
Krugman -- he already has a reputation and a general track record of
excellence. The problem with blog form is that it allows writers to
work outside parameters they haven't necessarily proven they can work
within. So it's not the informal nature of blogging that's the problem
-- it's the fact that so many prefer the informal because they lack the
discipline necessary to be formal.
And, yes, every writer needs and benefits from an editor.
Robert Christgau corrects me:
Just for the record, Georgia was a professional journalist for
close to 20 years, working at Creem, The Voice, High Fidelity, an
ecology mag I've forgotten the name of, and editing a union
newspaper. When you make your living editing and write some, you're no
longer an amateur--it's a very common combo. I myself was an editor
for the last 32 years I wrote at The Voice, and even when I was no
longer responsible for a section (did that for just 10 years) you can
believe it ate into my time.
I thought she started out in production at Creem, then wrote movie
reviews, then on to records. Her writing there was outstanding. Also
at the Voice she mostly worked in production, although she also wrote
occasional reviews for Bob. The later jobs were more editorial, and
she was/is a fine editor. After she gave up "journalism" (if that's
what you call it) she went on to teach high school English.
I wrote privately to Christgau, and he replied:
Far as I'm concerned. being night editor at the Voice--that was her
title--or odd jobs of various sorts at Creem counts as journalism
because it's only when publications become much bigger that that sort
of printer's union division of labor signifies. At small places
everyone's involved, and production involvement in editorial content
is more common than not. Almost everyone on Georgia's Voice crew wrote
for the paper.
Obviously, "journalist" is an important identity for Christgau.
I doubt if Georgia would have made the same claim.
Ham340:
It is needless to say, but I'll go ahead and say I'm here because
of Xgau, which I only mention because this is a very interesting
thread, and Tom Hull's
he's always fretted more about money, and as he gets squeezed (not
just) by the internet, it's like he's circling the wagons -- probably
why he's more conscious of colleagues like Powers and Pareles -- and
aiming his barbs at outsiders
is, to this thirty-year Xgau reader, a spot-on analysis. How could
any fan (and as for me, former low-level professional) of rock
criticism be happy that 100 professionals anymore exist in the field?
That is paltry, given the literary achievement we're dealing with.
Xgau's premise (to pick up Hull's trope), in the Nieman interview and
elsewhere, that he's among the few lone guns on an impoverished
terrain with only a few favored professionals among the fellow posse,
warrants his own survivalist instincts but is not why we love him.
Failing some editorial collective of music fans, the editorial work we
all know rock writing needs evaporates right along with major
publishing houses (did anyone see that piece of crap job Michelle
Mercer did for Simon & Schuster on Joni MItchell?) and newspapers.
Get your amateurism on, I say.
Christgau wrote further:
One more note about the original gentlemen amateurs of criticism
(there were plenty in music--"classical," of course): they were really
gentlemen. Of noble blood or wealthy parentage. Usually rentiers, as
the French put it: they had An Income. So Hull and Piccarella don't
qualify by that standard, and neither does almost anyone else working
today (although there are a few, including low earners propped up by
their usually female spouses). For them it's an avocation. There are
all kinds of avocations, from hobbies to art forms.
Still, doing any of them for a (good) editor makes a world of
difference. For one thing, it lowers the expertise requirements,
because an expert has your back. And it's 11:40 and I have a cold and
I'm trying to finish a piece so I can back back to the book and/or
blog tomorrow, and it's nice work if you can get it but it's for damn
sure work.
Christgau again:
Only I gotta say one more thing. In the good old days, sigh, I
thought the mix of professionals and amateurs was cool. Great that
there were public interest lawyers and social workers and, let's face
it, college professors chipping in from their useful and insightful
perspectives.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Recycled Goods (106): March 2013
New Recycled Goods: pick up text
here.
Total review count: 3604 (3168 + 436).
Monday, March 04, 2013
Music Week/Jazz Prospecting
Music: Current count 21103 [21073] rated (+30), 605 [600] unrated (+5).
Rather minimal week of Jazz Prospecting, but what I did listen to
came from the top of the deck and is well above average. (In fact, I
held back an A- record for lack of a cover scan. Not sure of the release
date, but I seem to be way out front on it. I'll also note that the two
Clean Feed releases aren't official until March 18, but I've been
listening to an advance of the Ches Smith for quite a while, and if
I held them back I wouldn't have much left.) That leaves about twenty
rated records unaccounted for, so figure most of them will show up
in the March Recycled Goods later this week.
I'm not sure how useful this will be for people, but I've rolled
up all of the Jazz Prospecting from 2012
here, with everything collected in
monthly files, and indexing similar to what I do for
Recycled Goods and
Rhapsody Streamnotes. I started in
January 2012 because that was roughly when Jazz Consumer Guide
ended. Jazz Prospecting started back in 2005, so there is a lot
more that can be rolled up similarly, but the pre-2012 entries
are already rolled up in the
Jazz Consumer Guide directory
(one file per column, no indexing, no album covers). I plan on
carrying the new format forward, but can't guarantee that I'll
update it weekly.
The snapshot does show that I wrote 574 Jazz Prospecting entries
in 2012. (If I folded in Rhapsody Streamnotes on jazz the total
should hit 600; the RS total for 2012 was 605 records.) Not sure
whether to be proud or depressed by that. The listening ranges from
spotty to in-depth, and the writing leans toward get-it-out-of-the-way
although there are some decent-and-better bits in there. But I would
never, as Robert Christgau does in a recent
interview, dwell on the merits of these squibs as fine writing --
not just because I'm not that fine a writer but because the intent
is so basically utilitarian. For what it's worth -- and count it as
rationalization if you will -- I still prefer the brash and personal
early CG style, which Christgau now disparages, to his longer and
more artful recent work.
Christgau talks more about careers, professionalism, and what he
sees as the alternative -- and future, given the way the market for
professional rock critics is collapsing, which is almost the same
as the enemy -- what he calls the "gentleman amateur" (i.e., folks
like me). No doubt he is right about the value of having an editor --
a good one, anyway, and I can attest that he is one. But a structure
and format imposed by the market is less of a blessing. I doubt he
is a believer in efficient markets theory. Nor, even without theory
or math, should it be hard to demonstrate the myriad ways in which
the market for rock crit is inefficient. One might even be able to
fight, or even exploit, those inefficiencies to carve out a career,
as Christgau has almost uniquely done. But there is another path,
a far more liberating one, which is to ignore the market and just
do what you understand needs to be done -- which is more or less
what I've been doing.
Christgau wrote about 294 records in his Expert Witness column
in 2012 -- 16 "Odds and Ends" totalling 128 records + 166 paragraph
reviews. I wrote about 1588 records (574 JP + 605 RS + 409 RG). He
got paid and I didn't, and he no doubt got a premium for his greater
experience, superior skills, and reputation, but also for withholding
some of his writing, creating a market for its (relative) scarcity.
We both spent about 15 hours a day listening -- that's about anyone's
limit. Assuming he played the records he wrote about an average of
two more times than I did -- I think that's about right from comparing
notes -- that still leaves him with about a 700 record deficit, made
up of records he played but didn't write about. That's plausible,
possibly even an underestimate if you count records he rejects well
before finishing them. (I almost always play uninteresting records to
the end, since I figure on writing something about them anyway.) So
the main difference my bucking the market provides is transparency:
it's clear what I've heard, and implicit what I haven't, and each
reaction -- even ones not fully formed and articulated -- is mapped
out along the way.
"Gentleman amateur" harkens back to 19th century England, where
a number of the idle gentry came to dabble especially in science.
Most were crackpots, but you could count Charles Darwin among their
number, and I'll add Karl Marx, who managed a similar disinterest
from the market. Such amateurs were crowded out over the course of
the 20th century, partly as science became more capital-intensive,
partly because academia expanded, and largely because work came to
take such a big bite from our lives. The Republicans want to see
the latter continue, and that's one big reason why working hours
keep expanding in the US even as they shrink as other countries
become more prosperous. (That most of us are losing ground is part
of the plan; working harder lets you hang on a bit longer, but
doesn't solve the problem.)
Until recently (again, cf. the Republicans), it seemed more
likely that rock crit would wind up settling in some dehydrated
state into academia. But "amateurs" -- Clay Shirky must have a
better term for us -- have a chance collaborating over the internet
to do things no professional rock critic could do, like break that
15-hour limit. I have no reason to doubt that what I do is useful
for the dozens or hundreds of people who are aware of it. Maybe
it can be scaled up, but if so it won't just be me. I'm tapped
out, except of ideas.
Mario Adnet: Amazonia: On the Forest Trail (2012 [2013],
Adventure Music): Guitarist, from Brazil, arranges this tribute to the
rain forest for string orchestra and special guests, including several
vocalists (Mónica Salmaso, Vicente Nucci, Antonioa Adnet, Lenine,
Roberta Sá). My first reaction to the strings was horrible, but
something settled them out -- probably the vocals, which still seem
more at home on the beach.
B+(*)
Ehud Asherie with Harry Allen: Lower East Side
(2009 [2013], Posi-Tone): Mainstream pianist, from Israel, based
in New York, playing standards with tenor sax -- in fact, about
the closest thing you can get these days to Coleman Hawkins.
They did this last year on Upper West Side, and these
are basically the leftovers, probably from the same session --
less famous, and less obvious, songs, although they saved "When
I Grow Too Old to Dream" for a closer. For me, this is what jazz
sounds like, and although I rated other albums higher than I did
Upper West Side, I didn't play any of them more often.
More is more.
A-
Kris Davis: Capricorn Climber (2012 [2013], Clean Feed):
Pianist, from Canada, has put together a strong discography since 2004 --
especially the records with Tony Malaby, like Rye Eclipse. This
is a quintet, with Ingrid Laubrock (alto sax, also in Paradoxical Frog
with Davis), Mat Maneri (viola), Trevor Dunn (bass), and Tom Rainey
(drums). Laubrock doesn't drive an album like Malaby, and Davis tends
to lie back here, leaving the viola as the signature sound -- interesting
as far as it goes.
B+(**)
Food: Mercurial Balm (2010-11 [2013], ECM): Named on
the cover: Thomas Strřnen (drums, electronics), Iain Ballamy (sax,
electronics). Fifth group album since 2002, although Ballamy recorded
the album Food back in 1998. First half-plus adds Christian
Fennesz (guitar, even more electronics) for some pleasant ambient
groove. The rest replaces Fennesz with Eivind Aarset, adding Prakash
Sontakke (slide guitar, vocals) for a little exotica, plus trumpet
(Nils Petter Molvaer) on one track.
B+(*) [advance]
Keith Jarrett: Hymns/Spheres (1976 [2013], ECM,
2CD): An exercise in baroque pipe organ played at Benedictine Abbey
in Ottobeuren, Germany, the hymns sound appropriately (even stuffily)
churchy, the 9-movement "Spheres" more new agey and more appealing
for that -- you weren't expecting B3 funk moves, were you?
B+(*)
Anders Nilsson/Joe Fonda/Peter Nilsson: Powers
(2012, Konnex): Guitar-bass-drums trio. Anders Nilson has several
excellent albums -- Blood, Aorta Ensemble, his
Kalabalik meet up with Raoul Björkenheim -- and makes a
strong impression as a sideman, but loses a bit of edge here,
probably because the bassist tries to steer this into open improv
waters, finding an interesting balance.
B+(***)
Ben Sidran: Don't Cry for No Hipster (2012 [2013],
Unlimited Media): Pianist-singer-songwriter, b. 1943, started out
in rock, especially with the Steve Miller Band, before eventually
evolving into an "existential jazz rapper." Two dozen albums since
1971, first I've heard, first impression is that he's following
Mose Allison, his "Hipster" skilled at getting gone, but sheltering
a "Rich Interior Life." One cover: always good to hear "Sixteen
Tons."
B+(***)
Ches Smith & These Arches: Hammered (2012 [2013],
Clean Feed): Drummer, has a couple albums under his own name, a lot of
side credits since 2001 on various avant and left-field projects --
Ben Goldberg, Mary Halvorson, Darius Jones, Marc Ribot, Jason Robinson.
Wrote all the pieces here for two roughhousing saxes (Tim Berne and
Tony Malaby), with Halvorson (guitar) and Andrea Parkins (accordion,
electronics) supporting, sometimes as cross purposes, but this percolates
madly.
B+(***)
Eberhard Weber: Résumé (2012 [2013], ECM): Bassist,
b. 1940 in Stuttgart, Germany; 15th album since 1973, all on ECM,
where he's long been the most pastoral of the label's artists. He
had a stroke in 2007 and hasn't been able to play bass since, so
for this album he started with previously recorded solos -- mostly
bass but also some keyboards -- and brought in Jan Garbarek (soprano
and tenor sax) and Michael DiPasqua (percussion) to dress them up
a bit. The percussion tracks break out of the pastoral mode, and
Garbarek is as lovely as ever.
B+(**)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- The Stephen Anderson Trio: Believe (Summit)
- Michael Blanco: No Time Like the Present (Cognitive Dissonance)
- Jaimeo Brown: Transcendence (Motema): advance, April 9
- Joe Burgstaller: License to Thrill (Summit)
- The Kahil El'Zabar Quartet: What It Is! (Delmark)
- Olivia Foschi: Perennial Dreamer (self-released)
- Robert Hurst: Bob: A Palindrome (Bebob)
- Steve Kuhn: The Vanguard Date (1986, Sunnyside)
- Mikrokolektyw: Absent Minded (Delmark)
- Nicole Mitchell's Ice Crystal: Aquarius (Delmark)
- Ron Oswanski: December's Moon (self-released)
- Jacky Terrasson: Gouache (Sunnyside)
- Bruce Torff: Look Again (Summit)
- Renée Yoxon/Mark Ferguson: Here We Go Again (self-released)
Miscellaneous notes:
- Art Ensemble of Chicago: Message to Our Folks (1969,
BYG):
B+(***) [rhapsody]
- Art Ensemble of Chicago: Reese and the Smooth Ones
(1969, BYG):
B+(***) [rhapsody]
- Art Ensemble of Chicago: A Jackson in Your House
(1969, BYG):
B+(**) [rhapsody]
Sunday, March 03, 2013
Troubles in Paradise
In case you're wondering what it's like to live in a Republican
Paradise, look to Kansas where Republicans -- and none of those wussy
RINOs anymore; we're talking the real thing here -- control every
facet of government. The Wichita Eagle chose to dedicate its lead
article today to celebrate "Kansas legislators' decisions so far in
the session." So for all you blue-staters out there, see what you're
missing, read and weep:
DRUG TESTING
Senators have agreed to require drug tests of welfare and
unemployment recipients suspected of using illegal substances, sending
those who fail to treatment and job training. Democrats forced
successful vote to include lawmakers in such tests. The bill now goes
to the House.
GUNS
A House committee has endorsed a plan to shield Kansas-made guns
and ammunition from federal gun-control measures. Federal officers who
tried to intervene could be arrested. A proposal to let licensed
Kansans carry concealed guns into more public buildings is also still
alive.
EDUCATION
The Senate has approved a proposal to let voters decide on a
constitutional amendment preventing courts from ordering lawmakers to
spend more on schools; it still must go to the House. Gov. Sam
Brownback's plan to hold back third-graders who can't pass reading
tests failed in committee.
The article notes that more bills are pending: on further tax
cuts (or increases, if you're poor enough); abortion (banning if
done to select the sex of the child -- either will do); alcohol
(allow more stores to sell); judicial appointments (let Brownback
pick 'em); labor (no payroll deductions for unions); immigration
(they probably mean Kris Kobach's nonsense, but the Chamber of
Commerce is all for undocumented workers); and "more" (under the
circumstances, the most ominous word in the English language --
the west Kansas feedlot and packing industries depend on them).
Only good news coming out of Topeka these days is that they
make Richard Crowson's life easier. Here's his cartoon today (the
subject is evidently part of that "more"):
The big item above is the education amendment, as this generation of
Kansas Republicans renege on the commitment of a previous generation to
provide all Kansans with a quality education. I suspect this has much
less to do with education per sé than with the prerogatives of power.
The courts have repeatedly ruled against the legislature's failure to
appropriate adequate funds, and the lege can't stand the notion that
they have to operate within a framework of law -- they were, after all,
elected to make law, and they'll damn well make any kind of law they
like, even if (as is increasingly often the case) what they want to do
is contrary to the US constitution.
It's not hard to see where they got this attitude: from owning and
running businesses, where they feel entitled to dictate every moment,
and throw a fit at the slightest inconvenience -- laws, workers, even
customers (although they still try to put on a better face there).
Michael Kinsley has a critique of American politics as a collection
of "big babies," but the biggest babies of all are those who feel
entitled to make (and break) the rules. The Republicans are still
inconvenienced by shreds of democracy in the political sphere, but
in their businesses they've made major steps toward dictatorship.
If they can force drug tests on their workers, why not require the
same of the wards of the state? The object, after all, isn't drug
control but humiliation. The old saw about "absolute power corrupting
absolutely" is evident once again.
On the Eagle's editorial page, consider this Opinion Line item:
Rep. Mike Pompeo blasts Obama every chance he gets. Kansas Sens. Pat
Roberts and Jerry Moran voted against Chuck Hagel's confirmation while
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson voted for him. Beechcraft lost the Air Force
job to Florida, and it doesn't look good for McConnell Air Force Base
to get the new tankers.
Beechcraft's failed bid was for small prop planes for the Afghan
Air Force, a pretty large contract ($450 million, if memory serves).
They lost the bid more than a year ago, pulled some strings to get
it rebid, and lost it again. The tankers are an old subject in these
pages. Boeing eventually prevailed in convincing the Air Force to
waste $35 billion for a fleet of obsolete airliners -- at least,
unlike the state-of-the-art 787, they're likely to fly -- dressed
up as portable filling stations. Then, having won the bid, they
shut down their Wichita plant, which had been promised the work --
a "no brainer" considering that Wichita had done the work on the
"obsolete" tanker fleet, primarily based at McConnell AFB, also
here in Wichita. Having used all their political assets in Kansas
(which unlike the workers are still on the payroll), Boeing then
decided to move the work elsewhere -- to whichever state will pay
them the most (preferably one with fewer or no union workers).
This whole scam has been unfolding for more than a decade, and
one thing you could count on is an editorial (and often a guest
column) in the Eagle every month or so extolling the virtues of
Boeing as the best company to build those desparately needed
tankers. Back in January, I wrote two letters to the Eagle -- a
longer "rough draft" and a proper letter paired down to their
size requirements. They ran neither, nor anything remotely like
it. The occasion was a series of articles on the Air Force's
process for deciding where to base the new tankers. The longer
letter follows:
If Boeing had not reneged on its promises to build the new tanker
fleet in Wichita, with all its promises of 1,000 more jobs, the Air
Force wouldn't even be examining other places to base the new planes:
the obvious place to put them would be at McConnell, just as it has
been with the KC-135 fleet.
Instead, Boeing pulled out of Wichita, taking 1,000 real jobs
along with the promised ones, so when the new fleet phases in, the
Air Force will have no reason to keep McConnell open -- costing the
area what? another 1,000 jobs? Make no mistake about it: the more
successful the Republicans are at "starving the beast" in Washington,
the more military bases will be closed, and the new tankers make
McConnell as obsolete as the KC-135s.
If Senators Roberts and Moran had any sense, they'd use whatever
influence they have to save the Air Force $35 billion by scuttling
the tanker deal and keep McConnell open. And they'd have more clout
if they weren't wasting their time opposing the nomination of Chuck
Hagel, who will very likely call the shots about which bases get
closed in the next few years.
New tankers never were a good idea. At most they make it easier
and quicker to get into foreign wars, but even there the strategic
bombers they were originally built to serve have long given way,
most lately to drones that don't need them at all. But now even
the Keynesian jobs argument has proven hollow. Makes one wonder
whether the senators will ever decide to represent us rather than
Boeing?
McConnell AFB, which is to say the dreaded federal government,
which is to say "your tax dollars," injects about $500 million
into the Wichita economy each year. It was built not because the
Air Force had an urgent need to station its aircraft as far as
possible away from the nation's borders, but because it was just
across the street from a very large Boeing plant -- one, by the
way, built by the US government during WWII and used to build
the majority of B-17 and B-29 bombers used during the war, and
B-47 and B-52 bombers built during the heyday of the Strategic
Air Command. It was also where Boeing turned its 707 airlines
into KC-135 tankers. Those new planes stopped production around
1960, but Boeing continued to provide mods to update the B-52s
and KC-135s still used by the Air Force. Again, without Boeing
it's hard to see any reason for McConnell. The AFB's survival
will depend on nothing more than political favor and inertia,
neither of which are likely to save it from future rounds of
defense spending cuts.
Personally, it wouldn't bother me if McConnell closed. No
doubt it would hurt the local economy, but the facilities would
be recycled and new business would emerge. Plus you'd get rid of
those dreadful planes flying over east Wichita every few minutes.
(I didn't even consider buying a house in the area because of the
noise factor, not to mention memory of what happens when one of
those loaded tankers drops from the sky and razes a neighborhood.)
But we need the new tankers even less than the AFB, and the cost
there is pure waste and corruption. Their role is to help move
and project massive US firepower anywhere in the world, and the
more difficult that task becomes, the better for the world (and
for that matter for us).
This is a good time to talk about cutting back from the insane
defense spending levels of recent years. Sequestration is probably
the dumbest way to implement cuts, except to a military budget which
produces much harm and virtually no tangible good. The only way you
would ever notice even far greater cuts than the ones in effect
would be if you yourself were on the dole. And while the loss of
spending destimulates the economy, the multipliers for military
expense are exceptionally low -- especially where spent abroad,
or simply blown up.
On the other hand, if/when the tanker is cut from the defense
budget, it will probably be in recognition of its obsolescence.
The military is moving more and more to drones, which are vastly
more fuel-efficient than fighters or bombers. So like everything
with the military, there's not much point because what passes
for thought in those circles is so far removed from real life --
except, of course, when it kills.
|
Feb 2013 |
|