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Thursday, November 29, 2007
The Putz of Peace
Wichita Eagle editorial cartoonist Richard Crowson weighed in on
Bush at Annapolis today:
I don't really get the "Wanted: Abominable snow monster" title,
but one thing is becoming clear: Bush has entered his endgame now.
He is thinking not just about how history will view him, which is
a sort of vanity many public figures share, but how to lock in and
make permanent the changes he has attained. He has, for instance,
announced that he is working on an "enduring relationship" deal
with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, even though most of the Democrat
contenders likely to replace him, and a big majority of the American
people, want nothing of the sort. The announced schedule for his
Annapolis initiative envisions an Israeli-Palestinian pact by the
end of his term -- another little present to bestow on whoever wins
the opportunity to clean up his messes. He's long campaigned for
making his tax cuts permanent. His numerous executive orders are
often intended to outlive his administration, and we can expect
many more in his waning days -- not to mention a raft of pardons
for all involved in an administration that wallows in criminality.
It's been clear all along that whoever followed Bush would have
to wind up reversing almost everything he's done. There's certainly
never been an administration that's so consistently, so persistently,
taken wrong turns into blind alleys. Still, the waning months of his
administration present still more terrifying opportunities for further
misadventure -- not least because Bush appears to be going down to
defeat, he's likely to see this as the last chance for quite a while
to make use of presidential power.
The Crowson cartoon is a propos not only in that Bush's legacy
has been one of belligerence run amok but also in the sense that
he only ever conceives of peace as the fruit of victory. For him,
peace only occurs when your enemies submit to your overwhelming
force. That may be what he intends for Annapolis, but Israel has
always enjoyed overwhelming force against Palestinians and never
gotten their desired measure of submission and acquiescence from
it. The dominance Bush seeks may achieve a truce here or there,
but it's no substitute for justice, which can only be achieved
by acknowledging equal rights for all. That is the one thing the
hard core right can never concede, and that is why Bush always
finds himself dumbfounded, staring up blind alleys.
But the other thing about Crowson's cartoon is how puny and
inept Bush looks in comparison to the mountain of belligerence
he has created. Even if he manages to cut his deals with Maliki
in Iraq and Olmert and Abbas in Israel/Palestine he will have
bargained with people who barely represent their constituencies,
who have limited flexibility in what they can agree to and most
of all in what they can deliver. Bush is in no better shape: he
is not only a lame duck, he has lost Congress and has the worst
popular approval ratings in history. That's not enough to keep
him from being dangerous, but it's a weak hand for dealing with
his problems.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Music: Current count 13831 [13813] rated (+18), 809 [826] unrated (-16).
Last week was almost a total wash out. Worked on the basement Monday and
Tuesday, building a platform for a new washing machine. Thursday was
Thanksgiving, the start of a long weekend, full of various functions.
Recycled Goods is due, so what little time I had was spent on it. And
there I'm trying to get the big boxes out in time for Xmas, so the body
count really slipped. Also had a big chunk of website work to do for
Christgau, so I've been super-bogged down, with little to show for it.
Feel lousy, too. Also I got essentially none of my incoming paperwork
done, so the unrated dip is temporary.
- Bob Dylan: Dylan (1962-2006 [2007], Columbia/Legacy,
3CD): Having grown up with Dylan, following his albums one by one
as they appeared, watching his stock rise and fall and rise again,
noting how my own interest waxed and waned, I've never had much use
for his frequent compilations. His early style evolved so furiously
that the 1967 Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, each song including
the bait exclusive "Positively 4th Street" individually brilliant,
was jarringly at odds with itself. He has a dozen or so key albums
best owned whole, each coherent and richly detailed. Compilations
try to compete by rescuing the better songs from the weaker albums.
Dylan had a slack period, roughly from 1975-90, but even there choice
pickings like "Precious Angel" rarely stand up to the competition.
Still, this isn't a bad time for a career-spanning retrospective.
His three latest albums, from 1997's Time Out of Mind, are
as accomplished, albeit far less prophetic, as those from his 1960s
prime. And we can trace his renewal back further -- I figure the
icebreaker was 1988's The Traveling Wilburys, a masquerade
that fooled no one. Moreover, most folks have a lot of catching up
to do. I suppose they are who this is for. The three discs break
out reasonably: 1962-67, 1969-85, 1986-2006. They pull 51 songs
from 33 albums, including several compilations and two soundtracks.
It's a fair sampling, missing much, trying to make a modest case
for the slack period -- but note that when they cut the set down
to a single disc they jump from 1976 to 1997. When I saw Dylan a
few years ago, I noted that the crowd was evenly divided between
folks more/less my age and the teenaged children they dragged with
them. This is for the kids.
A-
- Bob Dylan: Dylan (1963-2006 [2007], Columbia/Legacy):
This single-disc not-so-cheapie is for the little kids, or if you want
to hedge your gift-giving bets; it skips everything from "Hurricane"
in 1976 to "Make You Feel My Love" in 1997, and saves "Forever Young"
for the closer, as if it sums anything up -- it was more like the
start of several decades of confusion, but the little kids don't
need to know that much yet.
A [estimate based on 3-CD superset]
- Van Morrison: The Best of Van Morrison: Volume 3
(1992-2005 [2007], Exile/Manhattan, 2CD):
The first volume suffered
from an embarrassment of riches (if you call that suffering), and
the second one worked too hard to redeem the weaker albums at the
end of Morrison's Polydor string, or perhaps didn't mind throwing
some cold water on an artist who had taken his business elsewhere.
This sums up a decade-plus of self-proclaimed exile. He turned out
solid-plus albums -- only Down the Road stands with his
greatest work, but few if any disappointed -- and he worked hard,
networking with old Brit stars (Lonnie Donegan, Georgie Fame, Tom
Jones), blues legends (John Lee Hooker, Junior Wells, BB King),
and other voices almost as singular as his own (Carl Perkins, Ray
Charles, Bobby Bland). It's hard to imagine anyone else fitting
in yet standing out so effortlessly. Picking obscure tracks from
tributes and soundtracks, unveiling two previously unreleaseds
that make you wonder how'd they been missed, and documenting each
detail faithfully, this is a rare compilation that resolves any
doubts about the period.
A
- Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends: Solos, Sessions &
Encores (1978-88 [2007], Epic/Legacy): I.e., the sort of
thing you find at the bottom of the barrell; sessions with Marcia
Ball and (especially) David Bowie, while producing good songs,
seem especially pointless; more true to form are the live jousts
with black bluesmen, where Vaughan tried to show he belonged and
often brought down the house.
B
Jazz Prospecting (CG #15, Part 9)
OK, let's forget about last week. I wasn't able to work on jazz
prospecting at all. I knew it was going to be bad with Thanksgiving,
the long weekend, and the impending Recycled Goods deadline. On top
of that, I had to spend a couple of days doing emergency carpentry,
plumbing, etc., so I barely got a chance to listen. And I figure it's
do-or-die time for the big Recycled box sets, so a lot of the time I
did manage to spend hasn't shown up in my counts yet. The biggest
by far is Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune, 36-CDs of vintage
jazz history, replete with a 312-page book that I'm only about 1/3
of the way through. I'm having trouble getting off the fence on the
Miles Davis box too. And there are other non-jazz things pending --
as I'm writing this I'm playing the Luther Vandross box. I thought
about just punting this week, but don't see any point in holding
the Blue Note reissues back. Next week will be better, but first
I have to decide what to do with Recycled Goods. December's column
will be the 50th, with more than 2100 records covered. It takes a
lot of time and I'm not getting much out of it any more -- even
the records have been drying up, although I really haven't had the
time to put much effort into digging them up. Maybe a change of
venue would help? I've thought about something more blog-like, in
shorter, more frequent chunks. Also been thinking about building
a reference-oriented site, which is what the consumer guiding has
always been aiming at. In any case, I should get through this tight
spot sooner or later next week. Not that far away from closing out
this Jazz Consumer Guide. Just have to get to the beginning of the
end.
Grant Green: The Latin Bit (1961 [2007], Blue Note):
The latin percussion is professional enough -- Johnny Acea on piano,
Willie Bobo on drums, Carlos "Patato" Valdes on congas, Garvin
Masseaux on chekere -- but they can't inspire Green to break out
of his usual groove. Two later cuts with Ike Quebec on tenor sax
and Sonny Clark on piano work better, with the chekere gone and
the congas reduced to atmosphere.
B
Ike Quebec: Bossa Nova Soul Samba (1962 [2007],
Blue Note): Or something sorta like that, although Soul is the
only part of that title Quebec's all that conversant with; the
rhythm team leans Hispanic rather than Brazilian, and may have
meant the lazy riddims as satire, but the tenor saxophonist
took them as an excuse for a shmoozy ballads album, which is
his forté.
B+(**)
Walter Davis Jr.: Davis Cup (1959 [2007], Blue Note):
A minor hard bop pianist, worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Donald Byrd,
Jackie McLean, Art Blakey, Archie Shepp, Bobby Watson, a few others.
This quintet was his only album on Blue Note, or for that matter
under his own name until 1977. He wrote all the pieces, but he
doesn't get much piano space. The album is dominated by Byrd, with
McLean present but usually laying back.
B
Lee Morgan: Indeed! (1956 [2007], Blue Note):
The 18-year-old trumpet whiz's first studio experience, cut one
day before the Hank Mobley session that Savoy rushed into print
as Introducing Lee Morgan, this is as interesting for
the presence of rarely-recorded Clarence Sharpe on alto sax
and the way Horace Silver's piano jumps out at you; Morgan
still had a ways to go, but the excitement around him was
already palpable.
B+(***)
Lee Morgan: Volume 2: Sextet (1956 [2007], Blue
Note): Less than a month after Indeed!, Morgan is sounding
even more confident in a larger, more daunting group featuring
Hank Mobley on tenor sax and little known Kenny Rodgers on alto
sax, with Horace Silver again providing his inexorable bounce.
B+(***)
Lee Morgan: Volume 3 (1957 [2007], Blue Note):
Still 18, at the helm of a subtler, more sophisticated sextet,
and even more clearly the star, despite the estimable talent
around him -- saxophonists Benny Golson and Gigi Gryce, pianist
Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Charlie Persip.
Golson wrote the whole program, spreading out the complexity,
while Kelly holds it all together.
B+(**)
Lee Morgan: Candy (1957 [2007], Blue Note):
Still in his teens, but at last out front alone, leading a
quartet with the redoubtable Sonny Clark on piano, running
through a mix of standards, including a couple he reclaims
from the pop/r&b charts -- "Candy" and "Personality";
he's bursting with energy and ideas, still finding himself,
but completely in control.
A-
Baby Face Willette: Face to Face (1961 [2007],
Blue Note): Organ man, church schooled, natch, cut two albums in
1961 with guitarist Grant Green and drummer Ben Dixon, then for
all intents and purposes disappeared; this one adds Fred Jackson
on tenor sax, whose skill set is summed up in the title of his
one album, Hootin' 'N Tootin'; still, it's hard not to
enjoy their gutbucket soul jazz.
B+(***)
Paul Chambers: Bass on Top (1957 [2007], Blue
Note): One of the top bassists of the era -- AMG's credits run
to seven pages, all the more amazing given that he was just 33
when he died, although I figure 1/2 to 2/3 of those are dupes
for compilations. Although he did a handful of albums as a leader,
this is exceptional in its focus on the bass -- or at least it
starts that way, as guitarist Kenny Burrell later moves to the
fore.
B
Lou Donaldson: Gravy Train (1961 [2007], Blue Note):
An alto saxophonist, Donaldson got a reputation early in the 1950s
as a Charlie Parker imitator, but it's hard to hear the influence,
especially by the early 1960s when his easy-flowing blues style fit
snugly into the soul jazz milieu. The temptation to put him down as
derivative may be because he never showed any big ambitions. He was
content to knock off dozens of clean toned, easy grooving albums,
popular enough that Blue Note kept him employed from 1952 to 1974.
This one makes the most of his limits. Two originals are small
ideas worked out comfortably. The covers carry stronger melodies,
which he renders with little elaboration but uncommon elegance.
Herman Foster's piano is crisper than the usual organs, while
Alec Dorsey's congas lighten and loosen the beat.
A-
Count Basie: Basie at Birdland (1961 [2007],
Roulette Jazz): This is about where Basie's "Second Testament"
(as they put it here) band starts to slip, but they can still
kick the old songbook into high orbit, the section work is
atomic, a key tenor sax solo (Budd Johnson?) is much further
out than expected, and Jon Hendricks mumbles his Clark Terry
impression on "Whirly Bird." Nearly double the length of the
original LP, the extra weight suits them.
A-
Thad Jones: The Magnificent Thad Jones (1956
[2007], Blue Note): The title strikes me as a play on Jones'
debut album on Debut, The Fabulous Thad Jones -- among
other things it implies continued growth. The slowest great
trumpet player of his generation, Jones never dazzled you with
his chops, but he had an uncanny knack for finding right places
for his notes, and at his moderate pace you get to savor the
full beauty of the instrument. Ends with a graceful non-LP
duet with guitarist Kenny Burrell.
A-
No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.
Unpacking:
Got some things, but didn't get them logged this week.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Weekend Roundup
The notion that the Surge has succeeded in securing Iraq seems to
have become dogma. The NY Times had a note on how Clinton and Obama
are falling in line -- they seem to be as adept at falling for the
party line as the media. Still, the "good news" is full of caveats.
In particular, the political reforms Washington favors, ostensibly
aimed at reconciling Sunnis and Shiites (not to mention Iraqis and
multinational oil companies) have gone nowhere. Of course, security
is a relative matter. We're still not seeing US reporters wandering
the markets unguarded like they could in the early months of the
occupation in 2003. Quite simply, Iraq is still the most dangerous
place in the world. If it's quieter now, that's most likely because
it's in everyone's interest to cool it and bide one's time. Bush's
days are counting down, and the best he can hope for is to hang on
long enough to pin the defeat on his successors, presumably the
Democrats. As for the Iraqis, well, who wants to be the last to
die when there's light at the end of the tunnel?
Joseph E. Stiglitz: The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush.
While this seems like a fair summary of what Bush's policies have done
to the economy, it doesn't have the rigor of Stiglitz's estimates of
Iraq war costs -- which he pegged at between $1-2 billion a year-plus
before Congress came up with a $1.5 billion tab. Although the slumping
economy was still a big issue in the 2004 elections, the post-election
growth spurt has sufficed to get Bush off the hook, at least as far as
one can tell from the media. Stiglitz touches most of the bases, but
I think we can simplify what's happened a bit. Three points sum up the
Bushwacked economy: 1) there has been a major transfer of wealth to
the rich, who increasingly are non-Americans -- e.g., weakened labor,
oil prices, tax shifts, trade deficits, sinking dollar; 2) there has
been major increases in risk, starting with massive growth both of
public and private debt; 3) in the long term we will come to see
huge opportunity costs as Bush has spent money for the wrong things,
starting with the ruinous Global War on Terror. Another thing to
look into is how these effects have been masked, which has thus
far largely kept them out of sight and mind. The longer tensions
go unnoticed in geologic faults, the more severe the eventual
earthquake becomes.
Tony Karon: The Problem in Pakistan.
The Bush administration is still trying to fix up its mess in Pakistan,
but most of its problems are of its own making:
But what's missing in most of the media reports is a clear sense of
why Musharraf is unpopular. It's not because of his emergency rule, or
because he has denied power to the established politicians who
represent a feudal elite comprised of 22 families (including Bhutto's)
who own 60% of the land in Pakistan -- many of the reports coming from
Pakistan's cities suggest that the majority of the population remains
largely unmoved by the showdown between Musharraf and the political
opposition.
No, the most important reason for Musharraf's poor standing in the
eyes of his population -- as the Washington Post has finally let on --
is because of his willingness to support the U.S. "war on terror." As
the post reported it, "Musharraf and the troops he commands have lost
support among many Pakistanis. The president has been criticized for
undermining national interests in favor of the Bush administration's
in counterterrorism operations. Public approval of the military sank
after soldiers launched a deadly raid at a pro-Taliban mosque in
Islamabad, with troops facing off against religious students."
Karon also quotes Anatol Lieven:
As far as the Pakistani masses are concerned, however, by far the
most important reason for the steep fall in his popularity has been
his subservience to the demands of the U.S. in the "war on terror,"
which most Pakistanis detest.
Karon again: "The bottom line in Pakistan, where all opinion polls
find Osama bin Laden an overwhelmingly more popular figure than
President Bush, is that even the urban middle class opposes Pakistan's
frontline role in fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It is a war that
most Pakistanis see as benefiting a hostile U.S. agenda -- even those
Pakistanis who want no truck with Shariah law themselves." This goes
back to Bush's original imperious diktat: either you're with us or
you're against us. It turns out that being "with us" means biting
off a lot more than is palatable to anyone outside the GOP focus
groups.
This may be a good point to note the elections in Australia,
which disposed of Bush GWOT ally John Howard.
Chris Floyd: Killers and Extremists in the Pay of Petraeus.
This spells out in more detail what I've suspected about the
"improved security" in Iraq. It looks like the troop surge had
nothing to do with it. Indeed, as long as more troops contested
more territory, US and Iraqi casualties kept rising. Only after
the Surge failed Petraeus came up with the scheme to cede Anbar
to Sunnis willing to take American dollars and guns and quell
al-Qaeda. We've known all along that the Sunni leaders would
turn on al-Qaeda as soon as the latter ceased to be useful in
attacking the Americans. We've also known that the key to any
sort of peace in Iraq is the disengagement of US troops. The
converse is no doubt true as well: put US troops in Kurdistan
and you'll see violence there too.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Ira Katznelson: When Affirmative Action Was White
Ira Katznelson: When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold
History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
(2005; paperback, 2006, WW Norton)
I picked out this book after reading Paul Krugman's The
Conscience of a Liberal. Krugman's theme is how the New Deal,
in response to the Great Depression and World War II, led to a
significant degree of income equalization in the US, both lifting
many working class people out of poverty and reducing the after-tax
income of the very rich. Of course, it didn't always work out like
that, and this is another side of the story. Katznelson details how
New Deal programs were designed to exclude blacks and how those
programs that built a politically significant middle class also
had the effect of increasing the economic disparity between whites
and blacks. The other piece of this story, which Krugman alludes
to and Katznelson describes in more detail without drawing much
in the way of conclusions is how white racism, starting with the
strategies southern Democrats developed to preserve segregation
in face of federal "affirmative action" programs, enabled the
conservative Republic ascendency that has dominated Washington
from Reagan to Bush, persistently eating away at New Deal and
Great Society programs while restoring income inequities to
levels not seen since the Gilded Ages. The key event there was
the support of southern Democrats for Taft-Hartley, undermining
an organized labor movement that threatened to organize low-wage
southern blacks, and ultimately damaging the Democratic party
by marginalizing its labor supporters. Of course, by then the
white southern Democrats had mostly switched to the Republican
party.
(pp. 22-23):
The South's representatives built ramparts within the policy
initiatives of the New Deal and the Fair Deal to safeguard their
region's social organization. They accomplished this aim by making the
most of their disproportionate numbers on committees, by their close
acquaintance with legislative rules and procedures, and by exploiting
the gap between the intensity of their feeling and the relative
indifference of their fellow members of Congress.
They used three mechanisms. First, whenever the nature of the
legislation permitted, they sought to leave out as many African
Americans as they could. They achieved this not by inscribing race
into law but by writing provisions that, in Robert Lieberman's
language, were racially laden. The most important instances concerned
categories of work in which blacks were heavily overrepresented,
notably farmworkers and maids. These groups -- constituting more than
60 percent of the black labor force int he 1930s and nearly 75 percent
of those who were employed in the South -- were excluded from the
legislation that created modern unions, from laws that set minimum
wages and regulated the hours of work, and from Social Security until
the 1950s.
Second, they successfully insisted that the administration of these
and other laws, including assistance to the poor and support for
veterans, be placed in the hands of local officials who were deeply
hostile to black aspirations. Over and over, the bureaucrats who were
handed authority by Congress used their capacity to shield the
southern system from challenge and disruption.
Third, they prevented Congress from attaching any sort of
anti-discrimination provisions to a wide array of social welfare
programs such as community health services, school lunches, and
hospital construction grants, indeed all the programs that distributed
monies to their region.
As a consequence, at the very moment when a wide array of public
policies was providing most white Americans with valuable tools to
advance their social welfare -- insure their old age, get good jobs,
acquire economic security, build assets, and gain middle-class status
-- most black Americans were left behind or left out.
(p. 40):
The South's political leaders thus had to find a tolerable balance
between two sources of tension. The region's poverty impelled them to
pursue fresh and significant sources of federal help, especially
because their states were unable to add much on their own. But they
had to keep payments low and racially differentiated so as not to
upset their low-wage economy, anger employers, or unsettle race
relations. The key decision was an agreement by the southern
supporters of the New Deal not to pay relief at a level higher than
prevailing local standards. They also secured such accommodations as
excluding agricultural workers from relief rolls at planting and
harvesting times. Furthermore, they had to manage the strain that
potentially might be placed on local practices by investing authority
in federal bureaucracies. "With our local policies dictated by
Washington," the Charleston News and Courier editorialized in
1934, "we shall not long have the civilization to which we are
accustomed." To guard against this outcome, the key mechanism deployed
was a separation of the source of funding from decisions about how to
spend the new monies.
(p. 57):
An explicit legislative exclusion of agricultural and domestic
workers from New Deal labor legislation first appeared in the National
Labor Relations Act. To be sure, the original draft of the bill
introduced by Senator Wagner contained no such exclusion. In the
course of examining a witness in the Senate hearing, Senator David
Walsh, a Massachusetts Democrat, observed that as the bill was
drafted, "it would permit an organization of employees who work on a
farm, and would require the farmer to actually recognize their
representatives, and deal with them in the matter of collective
bargaining."
This possibility triggered discussion of the issue when the bill
was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor. Senators Hugo
Black of Alabama, who later would change his views about race and
segregation, and Park Trammell of Florida worked closely with three
non-southern Democrats representing rural states to report a bill
containing the exemption of agricultural and domestic labor in
precisely the form that would be included in the final passage of the
bill.
(p. 61):
During the Second World War, even this arrangement proved
unsettling to the southern wing of the party. Pressed by wartime
social change, southern Democrats shifted positions, moving to limit
the effect of the labor regime they had helped install. With
unemployment eliminated by wartime production, and with many blacks
entering the industrial labor force at a time when many white workers
were overseas, unions began to organize southern workers, including
many blacks. In this context, southern representatives feared that the
New Deal rules for labor and work they had helped create would
undermine the region's traditional racial order. As a result, they
shifted their votes from the pro-labor column to join with Republicans
during and after the war to make it more difficult for workers to join
unions and to limit their rights at the workplace. The country's
system for regulating unions and the labor market took on an even more
decidedly racial tilt. Politically, this shift by southern Democrats
would radically transform American politics, as well as labor
legislation, for decades to come.
(p. 69):
The tight labor market induced by wartime industrial expansion was
fueled by large federal investments, by urbanization, and by the
substantial development of military bases; this in turn facilitated
aggressive union efforts to take advantage of the legal climate that
had been created by the Wagner Act but previously had had little
effect in the South. In just two years, from Pearl Harbor to late
1943, industrial employment in the South grew from 1.6 million to 2.3
million workers. And many farmers and sharecroppers who experienced
military service or worked at war centers were not prepared to
tolerate a return to prewar conditions (during the war, one in four
farmworkers left the land).
(pp. 77-78):
The changes that the Portal to Portal Act wrought to the FLSA also
diminished the ability of organized labor to utilize legal resources
to protect workers' rights. The rules it fashioned are an object
lesson in the considerable difference that seemingly modest procedural
changes to public policy can make. The year 1947, the last before
Portal to Portal regulations came into effect, stands out for the high
number of enforcement suits filed in federal court (3,772) demanding
compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act, the most in any single
year before or since. This peak reflected a steady rise in such
judicial interventionism in the labor market under the aegis of FLSA
during the prior three years. Once Congress enacted its amendments
making such proceedings more difficult, the number of enforcement
actions plummeted, in 1948, by 72 percent, to 1,062. During the decade
following enactment the average annual number of suits filed was 754,
representing a decline of some 80 percent from the high-water mark of
1947. Further, as the overall legal climate for labor altered and FLSA
enforcement declined, the cooperation offered by many states in
enforcing minimum wages and maximum hours waned, especially in the
South.
When the impact of more limited possibilities became clear to the
leaders of organized labor, they opted to make three fateful moves,
all rational in this new context and all successful in the short
term. First, they reined in their once ambitious efforts, focused on
the South, to make the labor movement a genuinely national force. This
strategy now had become prohibitively costly. Instead, they opted to
focus attention where their strength already was considerable. Second,
they concentrated on making collective bargaining a settled, orderly,
and productive process, trading off management prerogatives for
generous, secure wage settlements indexed to inflation. In so doing,
they experimented with long-term contracts (such as the UAW-General
Motors five-year agreement in 1950), while limiting their scope of
attention almost exclusively to the workplace. Third, rather than
continue to fight for a more advanced national welfare state for all
Americans, they concentrated on securing private pension and health
insurance provisions for their members that would be financed mainly
by employers.
Under these circumstances, the South's political, social, and
economic structure remained largely unchallenged by organized labor,
the one national force that had seemed best poised to do so in the
1940s. In consequence, the emerging judicial strategy and mass
movement to secure black enfranchisement and challenge Jim Crow
developed independently of a labor movement that looked increasingly
inward and minimized its priority of incorporating black workers
within its ranks. Two effects stand out. First, the incipient civil
rights impulse rarely tackled the economic conundrums of southern
black society directly, focusing instead mainly on civic and
political, rather than economic, inclusion. Second, the unions'
potential to alter the status of the majority of black working people
profoundly failed to take hold.
(p. 101):
The 1940 Census had revealed that some 10 million Americans had not
been schooled past the fourth grade, and that one in eight could not
read or write. This, primarily, was a southern problem. A higher
proportion of blacks living in the North had completed grade school
than whites in the South.
(pp. 101-102):
Thus, in the midst of a war defined in large measure as an epochal
battle between liberal democracy and Nazi and Fascist totalitarianism,
one that distinguished between people on the basis of blood and race,
the U.S. military not only engaged in sorting Americans by race but in
policing the boundary separating white from black. Because the draft
selected individuals to fill quotas to meet the test of a racially
proportionate military and because they were assigned to units based
on a simple dual racial system,the notion of selective service
extended to the assignment of definitive racial tags. The Selective
Service system soon found this often was not a simple task. The issue
of classification proved particularly vexing in Puerto Rico, where the
population was so various racially and where the island's National
Guard units had been integrated. Even here, registrants were sorted by
race and the National Guard was divided into two sections. The large
number of mixed race individuals in the border states, the Creole
population of Louisiana, and American Indians offered other
challenges, as did ambiguous individual cases almost
everywhere. Embarrassingly, the Selective Service fell on blood
percentages, using racial guidelines not unlike the country's European
enemy, Nazi Germany. Ordinarily, the rule it used was "that 25 percent
Negro blood made a person a Negro." Nonetheless, Hershey made clear
that it would be unwise for the local board to disrupt "the mode of
life which has become so well established" when a draftee in question
had been passing as white. After August 1944, the system was
sufficiently overwhelmed that he took the decision, at first resisted
by Secretary Stimson, to accept the classification an individual
claimed for himself when a dispute over racial assignment came to
pass.
(pp. 102-103):
For Jews, in particular, the Second World War produced a shift in
standing that was quite radical. On its eve, "Jews were not so
confident of their prospects in America." During the period of
economic hardship, resurgent anti-Semitism, and grim news from
Palestine and above all from the heartland of Europe in the 1930s,
American Jews faced quotas on admission to leading universities,
markedly to professional schools, and a more widespread restrictive
system of anti-Semitic practices that impelled the creation of
parallel networks of hotels, country clubs, and other social
institutions. Before the First World War, most Jews had not sought to
enter crowded labor markets outside their areas of economic
specialization, notably in the garment trades. But in the interwar
period, as the children of immigrants sought to move beyond these
niches, they discovered high walls barring many types of employment,
in particular in banking, insurance, and engineering. Public opinion
polls revealed a great deal of skepticism and many popular myths about
Jews. Anti-Jewish expression often was unguarded and
unashamed. Enhanced Jewish visibility in economic and civic life often
went hand in hand with heightened apprehension and nervous efforts to
limits Jewish prominence, as in the case of the unsuccessful effort in
1938 by the Jewish secretary of the treasury and the Jewish publisher
of the New York Times to persuade President Roosevelt not to
appoint a second Jew to the Supreme Court.
In contrast, by the 1950s, Jewish Americans had achieved remarkable
social mobility, high measures of participation in American life, and
impressive political incorporation. Anti-Semitism had become
unfashionable, at least its open expression. University barriers to
entry became more permeable. Mobility from one generation to the next
accelerated as access to formerly closed occupations
quickened. Housing choices multiplied. Jews entered mass culture on
vastly more favorable terms. The war, in short, proved a great engine
of group integration and incorporation. Under arms, American Jews
became citizens in a full sense at just the moment that Jews virtually
everywhere in Europe were being extruded from citizenship. Jews served
as officers in the U.S. military as well as enlisted men in higher
proportions than their share of the population. After the First World
War, they often were classified with blacks as a racial minority. By
the 1940s, they were linked with predominantly Catholic groups to
compose the category of white ethnics -- a grouping that signified the
extension of American pluralism and tolerance.
(pp. 108-109):
The decision to take and educate these individuals with marginal
education was the result primarily of immense pressures from the field
for more soldiers, but it also had another source. Across the South,
white leaders, including some of its most vociferous racists like
Mississippi's Senator Bilbo, were insisting that black men be removed
from communities from which so many white men were absent but white
women were still present. "In my state," he told a Senate committee in
the fall 1942, "with a population one-half Negro and one half white
. . . the system that you are using has resulted in taking
all the whites to meet the quota and leaving the great majority of
Negroes at home." In these circumstances, he advised the Department of
War: "I [am] anxious that you develop the reservoir of the illiterate
class . . . so that there would be an equal distribution."
Leading civil rights advocates promoted this view because they were
keen to reverse the policy that had kept so many blacks who wished to
serve out of the military.
The Army's response was to create a massive crash schooling program
of Special Training Units. At the military reception centers,
organized into segregated classrooms, two out of every three of their
students were black. Once in place starting in June 1943, more than
300,000 inductees passed through this program. Half came from the
Fourth Service Command that recruited in the deep South. A high
proportion, 11 percent, of the new white recruits were classified as
illiterate, but fully 45 percent of the black newcomers lacked basic
reading skills. Schooling lasted twelve weeks. "Specially prepared
textbooks, such as The Army Reader, describing in simple words
a day with Private Pete, were used. Bootie Mack, a sailor, enlivened
the pages of The Navy Reader" The level of training was modest
(the ability tow rite letters, read signs, use a clock, deploy basic
arithmetic), but remarkably the great majority, some 250,000, were
lifted out of illiteracy in this brief period. Of the black members of
these Special Training Units in the first six months of operation,
fully 90 percent were assigned to regular units at the conclusion of
their schooling, a higher proportion than the 85 percent of
whites.
(p. 134):
The gap in educational attainment between blacks and whites widened
rather than closed. Of veterans born between 1923 and 1928, 28 per
cent of whites but only 12 percent of blacks enrolled in college-level
programs. Furthermore, blacks spent fewer months than whites in GI
Bill schooling. The most careful and sophisticated recent study of the
impact of the bill's educational provisions demonstrated no difference
in attendance or attainment that set apart southern from non-southern
whites. All on average gained quite a lot. But for blacks, the
analysis revealed a marked difference between the small minority in
northern colleges and those students who attended educational
institutions in the South. For the latter group, GI Bill higher
education had little effect on their educational attainment or their
life prospects. White incomes tended to increase quite a bit more than
black earnings as a result of gaining an advanced education. As a
result, the authors concluded, at the collegiate level, "the G.I. Bill
exacerbated rather than narrowed the economic and educational
differences between blacks and whites."
(pp. 142-143):
But most blacks were left out. The damage to racial equity caused
by each program was immense. Taken together, the effects of these
public laws were devastating. Social Security, from which the majority
of blacks were excluded until well into the 1950s, quickly became the
country's most important social legislation. The labor laws of the New
Deal and Fair Deal created a framework of protection for tens of
millions of workers who secured minimum wages, maximum hours, and the
right to join industrial as well as craft unions. African Americans
who worked on the land or as domestics, the great majority, lacked
these protections. When unions made inroads in the South, where most
blacks lived, moreover, Congress changed the rules of the game to make
organizing much more difficult. Perhaps most surprising and most
important, the treatment of veterans after the war, despite the
universal eligibility for the benefits offered by the GI Bill,
perpetuated the blatant racism that had marked military affairs during
the war itself. At no other time in American history have so much
money and so many resources been put at the service of the generation
completing education, entering the workforce, and forming
families. Yet comparatively little of this largesse was available to
black veterans. With these policies, the Gordian knot binding race to
class tightened.
(p. 145):
As part of the quest for civil rights in the Kennedy years,
affirmative action did not yet connote compensatory treatment or
special preferences. Rather, it simply implied positive deeds to
combat racial discrimination. Yet even int he early 1960s the idiom of
affirmation suggested more far-reaching possibilities. From the start
of the decade, Johnson seemed to understand what he would later say
aloud at Howard. Civil rights alone would not be sufficient. The
growing gap between white and black Americans demanded more. When
Johnson was designated in early 1961 to chair the Committee on Equal
Employment Opportunity, he privately advised the president that the
Eisenhower administration's non-discrimination clause for governmental
contracts should "be revised to impose not merely the negative
obligation of avoiding discrimination but the affirmative duty
to employ applicants.
(p. 147):
The Nixon administration, far from opposing these new measures,
expanded the policy by further applying the doctrine of "disparate
impact" (rather than "disparate treatment"). Seeking to embarrass
organized labor, and enlarge a growing schism between the civil rights
movement and white members of unions who might be persuaded to shift
their votes to the Republican Party, Nixon enforced the Philadelphia
Plan first drafted by Johnson's Department of Labor in 1967, which
required that minority workers in the notoriously discriminatory
construction trades be hired in rough proportion to their per centage
in the local labor force. Soon, one or another form of the
Philadelphia Plan -- a plan Nixon called "that little extra start" --
was adopted in fifty-five cities. When the U.S. Comptroller General
argued that this program violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,
Attorney General John Mitchell rejoined that the "obligation of
nondiscrimination" entails taking into account the racial implications
of "outwardly neutral criteria" that might, nonetheless, produce
deeply unequal outcomes by race.
(p. 164):
The consequences proved profound. By 1984, when GI Bill mortgages
had mainly matured, the median white household had a net worth of
$39,135; the comparable figure for black households was only $3,397,
or just 9 percent of the white holdings. Most of this difference was
accounted for by the absence of homeownership. Nearly seven in ten
whites owned homes worth an average of $52,000. By comparison, only
four in ten blacks were homeowners, and their houses had an average
value of less than $30,000. African Americans who were not homeowners
possessed virtually no wealth at all.
(pp. 168-169):
Curiously, a series of forgotten early experiments in affirmative
action by the military just after the Second World War can help point
the way. Affirmative action for blacks began well before the term
existed. With millions of soldiers coming home but security needs
still pressing, the Department of War conducted a sober assessment of
the campaigns in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. The way race had been
handled, it concluded, had diminished the fighting capability of the
armed forces. Responding to the study, the military decided to raise
the educational level of black troops to improve their readiness and
create a deeper pool from which to recruit black officers. The Far
East Command established such a program, aimed principally at blacks,
to bring every soldier to a fifth-grade standard. Elsewhere, race was
used more explicitly to define eligibility. At Georgia's Fort Benning,
the Army initiated an educational program for members of the all-black
25th Combat Regiment who had secured less than an eighth-grade
education. But the most far-reaching program took place in occupied
Germany. Starting in 1947, thousands of black soldiers undergoing
basic military training at the Grafenwohr Training Center received
daily instruction for three months in academic subjects up to the
level of the twelfth grade.
Soon, the training center moved to larger quarters at Mannheim
Koafestal. By the close of the year, the results had been so positive
that a larger, remarkably comprehensive program exclusively for black
soldiers was launched at Germany's Kitzingen Air Base. All African
American troops arriving from the United States passed through the
program. Black units stationed in Europe were required to rotate
through Kitzingen for refresher courses. Once this on-site instruction
was completed, Army instructors traveled with the soldiers to continue
their schooling in the field. The participants were required to stick
with the course until they reached a high school equivalency level or
demonstrated they could make no further gains. By 1950, two thirds of
the 2,900 black soldiers in Europe were enrolled.
Military affirmative action worked. These men made striking
advances in Army classification tests. That year, the European Command
estimated that the program "was producing some of the finest trained
black troops in the Army." Soon, the number of qualified black
officers increased considerably. Breaking with the masked white
affirmative action of the 1930s and 1940s, race counted positively and
explicitly to improve the circumstances of African Americans.
(p. 170):
Beneficiaries must be targeted with clarity and care. The
colorblind critique argues that race, as a group category, is morally
unacceptable even when it is used to counter discrimination. But this
view misses an important distinction. African American individuals
have been discriminated against because they were black, and for no
other reason. Obviously, this violates basic norms of fairness. Under
affirmative action, they are compensated not for being black but only
because they were subject to unfair treatment at an earlier moment
because they were black. If, for others, the policies also were
unjust, they, too, must be included in the remedies. When national
policy kept out farmworkers and maids, the injury was not limited to
African Americans. Nor should the remedy be.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Juan Cole: Napoleon's Egypt
Juan Cole: Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (2007,
Palgrave Macmillan)
Juan Cole is a professor of history at the University of Michigan,
specializing in the political history of Shi'ism in the Middle East,
especially Iraq. Over the last few years he has written a prolific
blog called "Informed Comment" which focuses mostly on Bush's Iraq
War debacle, during which time he's established himself as the single
most useful source of information on the war. Given this, it might be
reasonable to expect him to draw analogies between the latest Western
invasion of the Middle East and the first modern (post-Crusades) one,
but he shies away from doing so. Actually, the book seems designed to
reinforce Cole's credentials as a serious historian. But he did draw
some conclusions in a piece at
TomDispatch:
"This first Western invasion of the Middle East in modern times had
ended in serial disasters that Bonaparte would misrepresent to the
French public as a series of glorious triumphs." More:
For both Bush and Bonaparte, the genteel diction of liberation,
rights, and prosperity served to obscure or justify a major invasion
and occupation of a Middle Eastern land, involving the unleashing of
slaughter and terror against its people. Military action would leave
towns destroyed, families displaced, and countless dead. Given the
ongoing carnage in Iraq, President Bush's boast that, with "new
tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives
without directing violence against civilians," now seems not just
hollow but macabre. The equation of a foreign military occupation with
liberty and prosperity is, in the cold light of day, no less bizarre
than the promise of war with virtually no civilian casualties.
It is no accident that many of the rhetorical strategies employed
by George W. Bush originated with Napoleon Bonaparte, a notorious
spinmeister and confidence man. At least Bonaparte looked to the
future, seeing clearly the coming breakup of the Ottoman Empire and
the likelihood that European Powers would be able to colonize its
provinces. Bonaparte's failure in Egypt did not forestall decades of
French colonial success in Algeria and Indochina, even if that era of
imperial triumph could not, in the end, be sustained in the face of
the political and social awakening of the colonized. Bush's
neocolonialism, on the other hand, swam against the tide of history,
and its failure is all the more criminal for having been so
predictable.
A selection of quotes from the book. One similarity between
Napoleon in Egypt and Bush in Iraq is that the invading armies
were invincible in direct military confrontations, but both were
harried from the start by irregular fighters -- in Napoleon's case
mostly by Bedouin. Small acts of rebellion were consistent and
pervasive, took a slow toll of attrition, and were haphazardly
met by brutal repression, which might seem to work but not for
long. Both made flamboyant use of propaganda to sway hearts and
minds, but both made stupid mistakes in doing so, their efforts
ringing hollow. One difference is that the French faced a serious
external threat, especially from Britain's dominant naval position.
Britain's ability to blockade Egypt made the Egyptians' war of
attrition all the more damaging. It also meant that Napoleon had
to fend for himself in Egypt, which made his occupation much more
predatory. By contrast, Bush is able to pump huge amounts of
money into Iraq -- a drain which hurts public opinion in the US,
but which makes the occupation much more self-sustaining.
(pp. 12-14):
The genesis of Bonaparte's plan to invade Egypt is complex. A few
French intellectuals and merchants had entertained the idea of such a
project over the previous century, given the indisputable centrality
of Egypt to French commerce in the Mediterranean and points
east. Bonaparte himself appears to have begun seriously considering it
in the summer of 1797 as a result of his Italian campaign. The
principalities of Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea had long had
interets in Adriatic islands and in Croatia and Ottoman
Albania. Venice and the Adriatic city of Ragusa provided the leading
foreign element among merchant communities in the Egyptian port of
Alexandria. And revolutionary France, now established as an Italian
power, had more inteests in the Levant than ever before -- something
of which Bonaparte, as the virtual viceroy of the Italian territories,
would be well aware.
A prominent politician, revolutionary, and former priest, Charles
Maurice de Talleyrand, had argued just the previous summer in a speech
to the National Institute that Republican France needed colonies in
order to prosper. (Canada, Louisiana, and many of its Caribbean and
Indian possessions had been lost to it decades before.) He rooted this
demand in the revolutionary ethos of the new Republic, saying, "The
necessary effect of a free Constitution is to tend without cessation
to set everything in order, within itself and without, in the interest
of the human species." He related that he had been struck, during his
brief exile to the United States during the Terror, at how their
postrevolutionary situation differed from that of France in lacking
intense internal hatreds and conflicts, and he attributed this
relative social peace to the way in which settling a vast continent
drew the energies of restless former revolutionaries. Talleyrand
recalled earlier plans for a French colony in Egypt and pointed to
British sugar cultivation in Bengal, implying that such imperial
commodity production strengthened this rival and that France should
also seek profits through colonial possessions that would produce
lucrative cash crops. He also suggested that the days of slavery were
numbered, and implied that colonies that generated wealth through
slave plantations should be replaced with satellite French-style
republics dominated by Paris.
Throughout the 1790s, British naval superiority had confined the
expansionist French to the Continent and thwarted any attempt to
overthrow the British enemy. Talleyrand argued that a renewed
colonialism offered "the advantage of not in any way allowing
ourselves to be forestalled by a rival nation, for which every one of
our lapses, every one of our delays along these lines is a triumph."
The French had lost their toehold in South India at Pondicherry to the
British, but were attempting to ally with local anti-British Indian
rulers in hopes of expelling the British East India Company from the
subcontinent. Taking Egypt would give France control over other
valuable commodities, especially sugar, and might provide a means of
blocking the growth of a British empire in the East.
[ . . . ]
Victorious in Italy, Bonaparte began corresponding with Talleyrand
and other leaders about the possibilities of a French Mediterranean
policy as a means of hurting the British. On 16 August 1797, he wrote,
"The time is not far away that we will feel that, in order truly to
destroy England, we must take Egypt. The vast Ottoman Empire, which
dies every day, lays an obligation on us to exercise some forethought
about the means whereby we can protect our commerce with the Levant."
The Old Regime and the early Republic had supported the Ottoman Empire
as a way of denying the eastern Mediterranean to its powerful
continental rivals. Bonaparte and Talleyrand, in contrast, became
convinced that the Ottoman decline was accelerating, producing a
dangerous impetus for Britain and Russia to attempt to usurp former
Ottoman territories. If the European might soon begin capturing
provinces of Sultan Selim III, then Bonaparte and Talleyrand wanted
the Republic of France to be the first in line. Excluded by the
British navy from the North Atlantic and lacking possessions near the
Cape of Good Hope, they dreamed of making the Mediterranean a French
lake and of opening a route to India via the Red Sea, and recovering
Pondicherry and other French possessions on the Coromandel and Malabar
coasts.
(p. 29):
The theme of the degeneration of what had once been the classical
world was well established by the eighteenth century, having been
elaborated early in the century by French travelers to and writers
about Greece. Degeneration allowed the French to appropriate classical
civilization for their own, displacing its splendor into the distant
past and positioning its present heirs as unworthy, such that the
mantle of those glories fell on the French instead. Still, it should
be underlined that despite the racist overtones of the phrase,
degeneration did not refer, for these Directory-era Frenchmen, to a
hereditary condition of the blood. Rather, they believed that the
climatic and social conditions of Egypt had produced tyranny and
excess, which were amenable to being reversed. This attempt at
restoring the Egyptians to greatness and curing their degeneracy
through liberty and modernity was central to the rhetoric of the
invasion.
(p. 30):
Bonaparte, having secured Alexandria, issued a proclamation setting
forth to the Egyptians the reasons for the invasion and what the
French government expected from them. The French Orientalist Jean
Michel de Venture de Paradis, perhaps with the help of Maltese aides,
translated the document into very strange and very bad Arabic. The
Maltese, Catholic Christians, speak a dialect of Arabic distantly
related to that of North Africa, but they were seldom schooled in
writing classical Arabic, which differs with regard to grammar,
vocabulary, and idiom from the various spoken forms. Venture de
Paradis, who had lived in Tunis, knew Arabic grammar and vocabulary
but not how to use them idiomatically. The French thus first appeared
to the small elite of literate Egyptians through the filter of a
barbarous accent and writing style, making them seem rather
ridiculous, despite Bonaparte's imperial pretensions. It would be
rather as though they had conquered England and sent forth their first
proclamation in Cockney. But ungrammaticality and awkward wording were
not the worst of the statement's difficulties. Much of it simply could
not be understood by most Egyptians, since it sought to express
concepts for which there were no Arabic equivalents.
(p. 45):
As they approached Rahmaniya, the troops finally neared the sweet
water of the Nile, though for strangers in unfamiliar territory its
charms were attended with danger. The grenadier François
Vigo-Roussillon recalled, "The entire army -- men, horses and donkeys
-- threw themselves into that sought-after river. How delicious these
healthful waters seemed to us! Nevertheless, many men were mutilated
or carried away by crocodiles." He said that his unit proceeded up the
left bank for about a league, then bivouacked in squares (no doubt
keeping as much an eye out for the crocs as for enemy soldiers).
(pp. 54-55):
In the 1600s and 1700s Egypt emerged as the center of a vast and
lucrative coffee trade. Coffee trees probably came to Yemen from
Ethiopia, and in the 1500s the people of Cairo first learned that
brewing the beans and drinking the hot juice had become popular in
Sanaa, especially among Sufi mystics seeking to stay up late for
prayer and meditation. By the 1600s, the custom of coffee-drinking had
spread beyond the mystics to the general public, and coffeehouses
opened all over the Ottoman Empire, often to the dismay of
authoritarian sultans and governors who feared them as places where
sedition might brew in heated conversations as easily as a thick mocha
blend. Ottoman attempts to ban coffee or coffeehouses, however, failed
miserably. In the mid-to-late 1600s, a few coffeehouses began to be
opened in Europe. European monarchs initially dreaded them as much as
had the sultans. The first was founded in Paris in 1671. The Café Le
Procope, set up in the French capital in 1689, later became a center
for intellectual discussion and revolutionary ideas. Cairo was among
the major entrepôts for marketing coffee in the Ottoman Empire and to
Europe. It is tempting to observe in jest that, if indeed the rise of
the coffeehouse had anything to do with the coming of the French
Revolution, it may be that Egyptian coffee merchants inadvertently set
in train the caffeinated, fevered discussions that overthrew the Old
Regime and ultimately sent a French fleet on its way to
Alexandria.
Some more general background on the Mamluks and Ottomans
(pp. 53-56):
Egypt was a largely Arabic-speaking society, but it was at that
time [1798] under the nominal rule of the Ottoman Empire, with its
capital in Istanbul (which had been Constantinople under the Romans
and Byzantines). When the Ottomans conquered Egyptin 1517, they
displaced a ruling caste of slave soldiers called the Mamluks, most of
them initially Christian youths from Circassia in the Caucasus, where
they were taken as slaves when defeated on local
battlegrounds. Medieval Muslim rulers often feared that if they
depended too heavily on local tribal warriors or on an army recruited
from a pastoral population with strong clan ties, then these kinship
groups would retain their own regional interests and would set the
rulers aside in a coup. Rulers had often depended on imported slave
soldiers, because slavery is a form of social death in which the
individual is cut off from his family and place of origin. Slaves,
they thought, would lack such thick networks of kinship and so would
be more loyal to the sovereign. They were converted to Islam, and most
lost close contact with their families abroad. Mamluks, despite
starting as slaves, were often paid very handsomely and had the
opportunity to rise high in the military, the bureaucracy, or the
court. On reaching adulthood, they were awarded their freedom but
remained loyal to their former master. Ironically, barracks full of
slave soldiers often established new networks of friendship and
professional contacts that allowed them in some instances to make
successful revolts against their sultans. The Ayyubid dynasty in
Egypt, the most famous member of which was Saladin, the nemesis of the
crusaders, maintained a large number of Mamluks. In 1250, when their
Ayyubid monarch died, and as Egypt faced a potential onslaught from
invading Mongol hordes, the Mamluk soldiers made a military coup and
took over the country and then ruled it for themselves for two and a
half centuries.
When, on 24 January 1517, Sultan Selim I of the Ottoman Empire
swept into Cairo, he reduced it to an appendage of Istanbul. The
Ottomans incorporated Egypt into one of the largest empires in the
history of the world, a flourishing trade emporium that linked India
in the east with Istanbul via Iraq and then Istanbul with Marseilles
in the west across the Mediterranean. The empire at its height had
thirty-two provinces, of which thirteen were Arabic-speaking, and
Egypt, among the more populous and the most agriculturally productive,
became its granary. The Ottomans subordinated the Circassian slave
soldiers in Egypt to their own bureaucracy and their own system of
military slavery. Istanbul famously established seven long-lasting
regiments in Egypt. Five of them were cavalry regiments, and two were
infantry. These regiments were staffed by a multicultural and polyglot
elite, held together only by their loyalty to the sultan and Islam,
their mastery of the Ottoman language (an aristocratic,
Persian-inflected form of Turkish), and Ottoman military and
bureaucratic techniques. They comprised Anatolian Turks, Bosnians,
Albanians, converted Jews, Armenians, Georgians, and
Circassians. Within the military, a strong divide existed between
those soldiers originally recruited as slaves, who remained at the top
of the hierarchy, and the free volunteers from the poor villages of
Anatolia. [ . . . ]
During the 18th century, the Georgian houses of slave soldiers in
Egypt grew in importance, proving able to subordinate the seven
Ottoman regiments and establishing control over the lucrative coffee
trade. An Ottoman-Egyptian slave soldier, Ali Bey al-Kabir, rebelled
in the 1760s and 1770s, attempting to undermine the sultan's authority
by asserting power in the Red Sea and opening it to European commerce,
as well as by invading Syria. His rebellion ended, but after a while
the beys of Cairo again ceased paying tribute to the Ottoman sultan,
provoking an Ottoman invasion in 1786 that halted the province's slide
toward autonomy. Although in earlier decades we historians tended to
write off the eighteenth century as a time of the resurgence of Mamluk
government in Egypt, as though the old state of the 1200s through the
1400s had been revived, we now know that this way of speaking is
inaccurate. The Ottomans had endowed Egypt, however, independent it
sometimes became, with their own institutions, including their
distinctive form of slave soldiery. For this reason, it is more
accurate to call the eighteenth-century ruling elite "Ottoman
Egyptians." Arabic chronicles of the time often called them "ghuz," a
reference to the Oghuz Turkic tribe, which also implied that they were
best seen as Ottomans (a Turkic dynasty). Most gained fluency in both
Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, while retaining their knowledge of
Caucasian languages such as Georgian and Circassian. Not all of the
emirs had a slave-soldier background, and some were Arabic-speaking
Egyptians.
The eighteenth century was not kind to Egypt. Between 1740 and
1798, Egyptian society went into a tailspin, its economy generally
bad; droughts were prolonged, the Nile floods low, and outbreaks of
plague and other diseases frequent. The slave-soldier houses fought
fierce and constant battles with one another, and consequently raised
urban taxes to levels that produced misery. Now a new catastrophe had
struck, in the form of Bonaparte's plans to bestow liberty on
Egypt.
(pp. 93-96):
As Ibrahim Bey disappeared into the sands of the Sinai, his
departure drew a curtain over nearly a quarter century of Egyptian
history. He, along with his partner Murad Bey, had ruled Egypt since
the mid-1770s. Now he fled east even as Murad headed south, their
palatial mansions suddenly become the homes of foreign officers, their
wives taxpayers to the Republic of France or mistresses to her
generals, their entourages and slave soldiers scattered, killed, or
suborned to new loyalties. [ . . . ]
Ibrahim Bey had been in the political wilderness before and
survived to return to power. Mehmet Ebu Zahab, who had been Ibrahim's
owner, died in 1775 while campaigning in Syria on behalf of the
Ottoman sultan to repress a rebellious sheikh of the Galilee at
Acre. In the subsequent decade, Ibrahim and Murad established
themselves as the paramoutn beys in Egypt. The Georgian Mamluks
retained ties to their homeland, which was increasingly in
St. Petersburg's sphere of influence as Russia expanded into the
Caucasus, and they began to explore a Russian alliance. Facing
difficulties in recruiting enough Mamluks to replenish their ranks,
the Mamluk leaders even brought in a brigade of five hundred Russian
troops in 1786. In the early 1780s, the Ottoman government, or Sublime
Porte, became concerned about the loyalty of the Qazdaghlis, and in a
1783 communiqué to the governor os Syria, it warned him that the
dalliance of these "tumultuous beys" with Russia could prove injurious
to the empire. [ . . . ]
In July 1786, the Ottoman commodore Hasan Pasha, arrived in
Alexandria with a small contingent of troops. After his envoy
conducted inconclusive negotiations with Ibrahim Bey, he marched on
Rosetta. He sent couriers to the villages of the Delta announcing that
the Ottoman sultan had decided to much reduce their taxes.
Hasan Pasha was able to take Cairo and restore Ottoman power, but
only temporarily (pp. 99-100):
In August 1786, Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey had headed to Upper
Egypt, where they drew to themselves a remnant of the beys and made
alliances with the local Bedouin. An expedition south by the
commodore, aimed at decisively defeating them, faltered in the fall
when the imperial troops lost their cannon in battle with the rebels
and had to retreat to the safety of Cairo. Hasan Pasha left Egypt in
1787 as the prospect of a new Ottoman war with Russia built. Before he
departed, he pardoned Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey but stipulated that
they should remain in Upper Egypt. By 1791, the attention of Istanbul
had turned elsewhere. In that year, an outbreak of plague in Cairo
carried off members of the ruling elite as well as their supporters
among the commoners and much weakened the fabric of urban society.
Plagues are urban phenomena. They are spread in conditions of urban
crowding and carried by such vectors as fleas that infest rats. The
clean, harsh desert and the thin population of pastoral nomads
preserve them from outbreaks. One implication of this different
susceptibility to epidemics in Middle Eastern societies is that the
cycle of plagues weakened cities and opened them to periodic Bedouin
conquest. Ibrahim Bey, Murad Bey, and their troops and Bedouin allies
in Upper Egypt were left unscathed by the epidemic, while the leading
pro-Ottoman bey in charge of the country was killed. They were able to
march at full strength back into Cairo, reestablishing their beylicate
and returning to their old ways, taxing French and other merchants
into penury and defying Sultan Selim III's demand for tribute.
(p. 112):
Among Bonaparte's chief difficulties in attempting to rule Egypt
was his lack of legitimacy: he was a foreign general of European,
Catholic Christian extraction. Many Egyptians feared he would
constrain them to convert. The biologist Saint-hilaire wrote that
August, "The women are much more afraid. They never stop weeping and
crying that we will force them to change their religion." Medieval
Islamic law and traditions taught Muslims that they should attempt to
avoid living under the rule of non-Muslims if at all possible, even if
it meant emigrating. Some jurists did allow an exception where the
non-Muslim ruler was not hostile to Islam and allowed the religion
freely to be practiced. This loophole was Bonaparte's one chance, and
he pursued it as though he were a shyster lawyer with a make-or-break
case.
(pp. 120-121):
On 9 August at 8:00 A.M. an armed crowd gathered to attack the
French post [in Mansura]. The insurgents were said to number 4,000
men. The soldiers retreated to their barracks, but the crowd pursued
them there. They tried to set fire to the barracks, but were driven
off by French musket fire. Then the troops began running low on
cartridges. They decided they would eventually be overrun if they
remained in the barracks, and so they charged out, losing several men
to the townsmen's musket balls. They attempted to board some boats on
the Nile, but villagers on the other bank began firing at them,
killing some and driving away the rest. They therefore headed south,
toward Cairo, facing attrition as they weathered further sniping on
the way. Reduced to a band of thirty, they had to abandon their
wounded, whom the villagers immediately dispatched. Out of ammunition,
they finally were set upon by their pursuers and decapitated. One
survivor escaped and was given refuge in the village of Shubra, where
he was later picked up by a French officer. Another, a French woman
accompanying her husband, was captured and married off to an Abu Qawra
Arab sheikh.
That night in Damietta, General Vial tried to send some troops
southwest to Mansura on the Nile, but they found their path blocked by
an armed village allied with some Bedouin, and were forced to abandon
their skiffs and return by land to their Mediterranean port. They lost
a man killed and six wounded, according to Capt. Pierre-François
Gerbaud. Niello Sargy, who was at Rosetta, reported the Mansura
rebellion as a Bedouin attack. The careful report submitted by
Lieutenant Colonel Théviotte, apparently gleaned from the surviving
male eyewitness, does not actually mention Bedouin, and in light of
Turk's comments, it is likely that a mixture of townspeople and the
Bedouin and peasants who had arrived for market day participated in
the uprising.
(p. 157):
Defense of the Muslim community against attack was considered in
classical Islamic law a "group obligation." That is, not every single
member of the community had an individual duty to fight. When and how
to fight was a decision that could not be made by vigilantes, but had
to be made by the duly constituted authorities, in this case the
sultan. The laws governing holy war, or jihad, required a public
declaration of war, a warning to the enemy forces that they would be
attacked, the provision of an opportunity for conversion to Islam by
the enemy (thus obviating the need for a war), and Muslim adherence to
a code of conduct that forbade the killing of noncombatants or women
and children. Selim III, by declaring defensive war, said it had now
become an individual duty to fight the French, and he thereby
authorized guerrilla action by Egyptian subjects. Nothing could have
been more dangerous to the French. He combined Islamic and
international law by both invoking the duty of defensive jihad and and
simultaneously citing international norms of state behavior. How
little the sultan viewed the conflict as a clash of civilizations is
demonstrated by his immediate alliance with Russia and Britain,
Christian powers, against the secular republic he had once
befriended.
(p. 172):
These officers saw no contradiction between the demands of force
and the enjoyment of liberty. After all, their political achievement
had come about through revolution, which is to say through
violence. Otherwise the Old Regime would never have been overthrown,
or it would have managed to reassert itself. Clearly, "liberty" could
not be an entirely voluntary affair in late Ottoman Egypt. It had to
be imposed and bolstered by a free metropole. The intertwining of
reason, nation, liberty, and terror was an important discourse in the
period after the execution of the king, and despite the end of the
Terror, this coupling of the Enlightenment to violence continued among
some Directory-era thinkers in the context of the wars against
Austria, in Italy and Germany, and the need to fight the external
enemies of the Revolution. Therefore, the devotees of liberty and
reason in Egypt would not have disagreed substantially with
Robespierre's dictum, that terror is merely an aspect of justice,
delivered swiftly and inflexibly, so that it is actually a virtue, or
with his instruction to "break the enemies of liberty with terror, and
you will be justified as founders of the Republic." Thus, when Julien,
an aide-de-camp of the general, and fifteen Frenchmen who navigated
the Nile were killed in August by the inhabitants of the village of
Alkam, Say remarked, "The General, severe as he was just, ordained
that this village be burned. This order was executed with all possible
rigor. It was necessary to prevent such crimes by the bridle of
terror."
Faced with continued Egyptian resistance to the occupation, Say
acknowledged the necessity of accustoming "these fanatical
inhabitants" to the "domination" of "those whom they call infidels."
He again admitted French domination, but he hoped that Egyptians could
be taught to love it. He concluded, "We must believe that a Government
that guarantees to each liberty and equality, as well as the
well-being that naturally follows from it, will insensibly lead to
this desirable revolution." The revolution alluded to here is not a
political event but the spiritual overthrow of an Old Regime of
Ottoman-Egyptian dominance and religious "fanaticism." It is this
revolution of ideals that so requires the arts as its propagandists,
insofar as they are held to speak to the heart as well as the
mind.
(pp. 174-175):
The French employed public celebrations and spectacle both to
commemorate Republican values and to instill a sense of unity with
regard to revolutionary victories. Such "festivals reminded
participants that they were the mythic heroes of their own
revolutionary epic." The universal wearing of the cockade, the flying
of the tricolor, the intricate symbology of columns and banners, the
impressive military parades and cannonades, all were intended to
invoke fervor for the Revolution and the remaking of society as
republic. That some of the French appear seriously to have expected
the conquered Egyptians to join them in these festivities demonstrates
how little they could conceive of their own enterprise on the Nile as
a colonial venture. The greatest use of Republican ideology appears to
have been precisely to hide that fact from themselves.
A major revolt broke out in Cairo in October 1798, which the French
at last put down brutally (pp. 210-211):
A cavalryman, summoned with his unit from Bilbeis, approached the
capital. "The spectacle that the unfortunate city presented caused me
to tremble again. Many houses had fallen prey to blazing fires,"
Desvernois recalled. "The repression was terrible. We killed more than
3,000 insurgents without ourselves losing more than a hundred men."
The merchant Grandjean, in contrast, estimated that the revolt took
the lives of 800 Frenchmen. Detroye estimated 250 French dead,
including a general, the head of a brigade, some subalterns, and
several engineers and medical personnel. Bonaparte put forward for
propaganda purposes the incredibly small number of 21 French soldiers
killed. Grandjean felt that the uprising could have been fatal to the
entire enterprise in Egypt if it had been better generaled and if the
Egyptians had been better armed. Most, he said, had had no more than
staves of hard wood, which were effective enough, but only at close
quarters. Their muskets were "bad," and in the end they simply could
not overcome the advantage that artillery bestowed on the French. The
zoologist Saint-Hilaire actually boasted of how repressive French
governance could be, writing back to France: "An insurrection broke
out on 30 Vendémiaire and lasted until yesterday evening. The
miserable inhabitants of Cairo do not not know that the French are the
tutors of the world in how to organize to combat insurgencies. That is
what they learned to their cost." In the aftermath, Desvernois was
convinced, the spirit of the Egyptians was struck with a salutary
terror. The chastisement inflicted on them established that the French
had some sort of celestial protection and that it was futile to resist
them. It might have been comforting to him to think so.
(p. 224):
It is probably to this campaign that Bourrienne referred when he
spoke of a French attack on "tribes" near Cairo who had surprised and
slit the throats of "many French." The French not only killed 900 of
the rural insurgents, but decapitated them. The troops who had ridden
out from Cairo brought many of their severed heads back to stage a
macabre public spectacle at Azbakiya Square. They gathered a crowd,
and then "the sacks were opened and the heads rolled out before the
assembled populace." Bourrienne was convined that the demonstration
terrified the Cairenes into submission. François was equally convinced
that the sacking of the twenty-three villages had quelled their
rebellion. He said that word reached the surrounding villages that
Bonaparte had decisively put down the revolt in Cairo, and village
headmen of Sharqiya came in delegations to General Reynier at Bilbeis
to ask for mercy. They said, François reported, that they had repented
and "only went to Cairo to respond to the orders of Ibrahim Bey."
François' further narrative makes it clear that despite this temporary
victory, the garrison at Bilbeis continued to face attacks and
remained under virtual siege.
Bonaparte's aide-de-camp Lavalette recalled, "The revolt of Cairo
spread down the two arms of the Nile, especially that of Damietta."
The key Mediterranean port fell into danger again, as did its supply
lines with Cairo. The commander in chief wrote General Lanusse in
alarm on 27 October that the stagecoach and wagon drivers coming from
Damietta up to the capital "had had their throats slit by the
villagers of Ramla and Banha al-'Asal in the province of Qalyub, and
by those of Bata and Mishrif in that of Minuf. Try to seize their
headmen and cut off their heads. I assure you that there will be money
coming from Damietta."
The commander in chief urgently wrote General Berthier on 1
November, ordering him to send General Lannes with four hundred men to
the village of al-Qata, near Rosetta, "to punish the inhabitants for
having confiscated this morning two skiffs bearing artillery." He was
to arrest the village headman, or, failing that, a dozen prominent
villagers, and "do everything he could to restore to us the bayonets,
cannons, firearms, etc., which were pillaged." Gerbaud heard that they
also captured 4,000 muskets, and that a week later Bonaparte had
dispatched General Murat with 1,300 men to join up with Lannes in
recovering the guns. This account suggests that the Delta villagers
were preparing for further resistance and knew where they could find
the means for it. In late October, Bonaparte was also cut off from
news of Alexandria by disturbances around Rahmaniya.
Bonaparte mounted an attack on Syria, which moved up the coast,
taking El Arish, Gaza, and Jaffa, before failing at the old crusader
fort at Acre. He returned to Cairo as the occupation continued to
fall apart, facing attacks from within and without (pp. 243-244):
In late July, the British navy landed an Ottoman expeditionary
force of 15,000 men at Abuqir, near Alexandria. General Murat's
cavalry fought it off, but at the cost of several hundred French
lives. The Abuqir campaign clearly pointed toward the future, in which
the French, boxed up in Egypt, would face repeated attempts to
dislodge them by joint British and Ottoman forces, and would suffer
from steady attrition. The Army of the Orient had already lost nearly
6,000 fighting men sine the campaign began. In France that summer,
however, the victory at Abuqir played as another token of military
glory.
Bonaparte knew a dead end when he saw one. He secretly slipped out
of the country in August, leaving behind a note for the surprised
General Kléber informing him that he was henceforth in charge of
Egypt. Equally surprised to be left behind was Pauline Fourès, his
paramour. The Corsican arrived in France on October 9 and went
straight to Paris, where he began to intrigue. In November of 1799 he
came to power as First Consul through a coup. He reconciled with
Josephine.
Back in Egypt, Kléber finally convinced Murad Bey to ally with the
French, but soon thereafter the old Georgian died of plague. Kléber
was assassinated by a disgruntled Egyptian in the summer of 1800, and
succeeded by the inept and brutal Abdullah Menou. The Ottoman and
British military alliance forced the Army of the Orient out of Egyptin
1801, and the remaining French troops were given safe passage back to
France on British vessels. Many of our memoirists came back home in
that humiliating way, including Captain Moiret (who thereby lost his
Zulayma), Captain Desvernois, and the Jacobin designer of uniforms,
François Bernoyer. Pauline Fourès had slipped out of Egypt in 1800
after an earlier attempt failed, and after an alleged dalliance with
General Kléber. She remarried, divorced again in 1816, and then went
off to Brazil to start a lumber business. Returning to France in 1837,
she lived to an advanced age.
Ibrahim Bey lived to see the old beylicate in Egypt replaced by the
rule of an Albanian Ottoman officer and later the sultan's viceroy,
Mehmet Ali Pasha. Mehmet Ali wiped out most of the remaining Mamluks
in an 1811 massacre at the Citadel and embarked on new policies of
modern authoritarian rule, some of which imitated Bonaparte's. Ibrahim
died in irrelevancy in 1818.
Bonaparte's Egyptian experience shaped his own subsequent policies
more than European historians generally admit. In 1804, he crowned
himself emperor, an office more customary in the Middle East than in
revolutionary France. The habits of sexual prerogative for the great
Sultan, which he first acquired in Egypt, continued to roil his
marriage with Josephine, though she became his empress (until he
divorced her in 1810). Through the Concordat, Napoleon sought the same
sort of accord with the Catholic Church as he had had with the Muslim
clerics of al-Azhar, for the sake of social peace. In creating
Bonaparte as the Great Sultan, the grand emperor, over the Nile
Valley, the Directory had accustomed him to a station in life that he
proved unwilling to relinquish. France itself, and much of Europe, met
the fate that the Directors and Talleyrand had intended for Egypt.
(pp. 245-246):
The French invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798-1801 have
served as a litmus test for sentiments about the enterprise of empire
among historians and their publics. Bonaparte, having become Emperor
Napoleon I, was among the first to recognize that the fiasco along the
Nile had the potential for undermining his reputation, and he ordered
many of the state papers for the French Republic of Egypt burned. Some
military records and dispatches have survived, and a great many have
been published(notably at the turn of the twentieth century by the
invaluable Clément de la Jonquière), but it seems clear that Napoleon
intended his own memoir of the invasion and occupation to substitute
for the suppressed archive. His hope proved forlorn, inasmuch as
scholars have strangely neglected Bonaparte as Orientalist. As it
happened, his account has had to compete with the narratives of a
cloud of other witnesses, Egyptian and French, which often have the
virtue of contradicting Bonaparte's propaganda.
In the first half of the twentieth century, French historians such
as François Charles-Roux read the occupation as a prologue to what
they saw as the glories of French Algeria. They depicted Egyptian
peasants as overjoyed at the French invasion and they downplayed its
brutality and cupidity. Early twentieth-century Egyptian nationalists
often, ironically enough, also viewed Bonaparte's expedition as the
irruption into a traditional society of dynamic modernity, bringing
with it printing, the press, modern commerce, hospitals, and science,
including the archeology that eventually allowed the recovery of
Egypt's Pharoanic past through the decipherment of the Rosetta
Stone.
Subsequent historians pointed out that Egypt had been in intense
economic and diplomatic interaction with Europe and the Greater
Mediterranean in the eighteenth century and was hardly virgin
wilderness to be "discovered" or introducted to modernity by
Bonaparte. They argued that, moreover, most of the specific
innovations imported by the Army of the Orient did not survive the
French departure in 1801, and that on the ground there was little
long-term impact, save perhaps for the killing of tens of thousands
and the disruption of Ottoman Egyptian society. Decolonization int he
1950s and 1960s caused historians to view the incursion with greater
skepticism. The earlier Egyptian romantic nationalist view of the
French period gave way after the officers' coup of 1952 to a depiction
of it as a mere colonial occupation.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Movies
Movie: We Own the Night. A movie about New York
cops, family guilt trips, and drug dealing Russian emigré gangsters.
The most striking thing about it is that there are no more than 2 or
3 scenes in the whole film where anyone appears to be having a good
time. They involve drug use, but are hardly limited to it. Rather,
drugs are just one part of a free and open enjoyment of life. You
sure don't find any pleasure among the cops, nor are the gangsters
much better, but at least they aren't as stuck up as the cops. The
latter don't even appear to have a bad apple on the take, less an
avoidance of a cliché than an escape from reality. Mark Wahlberg
plays the most rigidly hectoring cop in memory, at least until he
gets shot and starts to smell the roses. By then his club manager
brother [Joaquin Phoenix] has turned around to fill the breach.
We're supposed to be inspired, but we can tell he's going to be
a miserable prick for the rest of his probably short life, and
he deserves it. (Robert Duvall, in a thankless role, plays the
father who put these two basket cases together.) Some scenes are
sharply drawn and a pleasure to watch. But if I had to draw a
lesson from the film, it's that the worst two groups of people
to allow anywhere near the drug trade are gangsters and cops.
It would be so much better just to legalize the shit, treat
those who can't handle them, and let everybody else enjoy their
freedom.
B-
Movie: Michael Clayton. I hate guys with gambling
problems, not to mention movies about them, so that's one strike
against the lawyer George Clooney plays here. That's about the
only one. He has a sense of place, an understanding of what he's
good at and when he's in over his head, that is refreshing, and
put to good use. That's a skill that the corporate lawyer played
by Tilda Swinton doesn't have, and she winds up paying for it in
a deeply satisfying ending. Tom Wilkinson's unbalanced litigator
doesn't have that skill either, but he has occasional moments of
magnificence, and will get an Oscar nomination for them.
A-
Movie: Gone Baby Gone. Boston crime movie, with
private detectives [Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan] called
in to augment the police investigation of a child abduction. The
ultimate ending strikes me as much too pat, although it raises a
real question about what Affleck should do and what it costs him
to do that. Meanwhile, the characters, excepting the head cop
[Morgan Freeman], are finely drawn, the local color is so bright
you gotta wear shades, and the pacing has a couple of interesting
twists. Affleck's gumshoe is an interesting mix of soft speak and
quick moves -- Monaghan explains that he only looks young.
A-
Movie: The Darjeeling Limited. Wes Anderson movie,
follows three well-heeled brothers on a trek across India trying
to put their relationships in order after their father died, their
mother ran off to a convent in the Himalayas, and the dominant,
presumably elder one [Owen Wilson] cracked his face in a motorcycle
accident. The other two [Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman] are
reticent, outwardly submissive, inwardly fraught. It doesn't make
for much of a story, but sets up various skits. Meanwhile, the
scene and its people take over the movie. India is so overwhelming
it's hard to tell when or if it's being satirized. A stupid scene
with a snake ends smartly. A funeral turns touching, in contrast
to the father's flashbacked funeral. An encounter with the mother
[Anjelica Huston] is anticlimactic.
B+
Movie: Into the Wild. I read Jon Krakauer's book a
few years ago, so for once I have that reference point. The book is
far more ambivalent about its subject than the movie is, partly due
to Krakauer's own troubled identification with Alexander Supertramp,
partly because he's looking backwards for clues, whereas the movie's
camera always has a clear shot of the story -- after all, no matter
how skeptical we are about what we read, seeing is believing. The
puzzle quality is retained in interleaving the fatal Alaska venture
with the mostly good fortunes that preceded it. It's hard to draw
any conclusions about either: each episode strikes me as arbitrary
and meaningless, which is the way real life works but unknown in
fiction. Given this, it's hard to derive any satisfaction from the
story, but the film is something else. It shows you things you
rarely if ever see, and gives you slices of lives that rarely if
ever get shown. Numerous small performances are notable, especially
Catherine Keener's.
A-
Movie: Lions for Lambs. Supposedly, three legs will
stand without wobbling even on uneven terrain. This story is built
from three such sticks, but each is so flimsy they collapse of their
own weight. In one, two Special Forces soldiers -- one Afro-American,
one Mexican-American -- are sent on a "forward point" mission to the
top of a mountain in Afghanistan. Their helicopter is shot up, they
fall or jump onto an ice field, and are finished off by Taliban while
their commanding officers watch helpless from some sort of satellite
feed. Mission unaccomplished, FUBAR actually. Meanwhile, a Senator
in DC, played by Tom Cruise, is trying to plant a story about how
this new strategy will bring victory in the GWOT, lecturing and
cajoling a skeptical reporter played by Meryl Streep. Cruise gets
a phone call near the end of the interview which may be news of the
mission's debacle, but that's not part of the story he's leaking.
Streep then goes to her editor, who's eager to be spooned whatever
the government wants to feed him, but rejects Streep's suspicions
as not newsworthy. Meanwhile, a Stanford poli-sci professor, played
by director Robert Redford, is chewing out a cynical, smart-alecky,
rich kid student for not giving a damn and making a commitment --
unlike two underprivileged students he had who were so engaged by
the professor they joined the army to prove themselves, and wound
up in Afghanistan, dead in the ice high on a remote mountain -- an
ending presumably unknown by Redford, although he's so full of shit
it's hard to be sure. There's enough in these angles to yield some
powerful lessons -- the impotence of the military, the callousness
of the politicians, the callowness of the media, the fatuousness of
academia, the futile hopes of the lower class and the withdrawal of
the upper class -- but that would take more skill and brains than
fit the budget here. (Aside from the name actors, the budget must
have been pretty skimpy: the Afghanistan sequence looks crappy, and
the rest, aside from a cab ride, was shot in interiors, mostly in
two offices.) The best critique comes from the otherwise dislikable
student when he observes that the only science in politics these
days is the study of manipulation, and that in turn dismissed any
interest he initially had in Redford's class. The Cruise-Streep
thread has some interest for that reason alone -- he handles the
word "victory" like a chef's knife, eviscerating Streep's instinct
to resist. But Cruise's manipulations are slicker but not far from
standard issue neocon propaganda: the willingness to say whatever
it takes to get whatever one wants is the ethical norm. Redford's
thread is hamstrung from the start, not least because he's bought
the notion that process -- commitment, engagement, etc. -- is all
that's needed to balance off the right. This asymmetry is indeed
a big part of what's wrong: if I'm willing to share and you want
it all, even a compromise favors you. The trap that Cruise and his
ilk prey on is the concession that there's any justification for
war. Give them an inch and they'll slip their favorite war through
it, because even a little war compounds ferociously. Redford and
Cruise both share blame for getting those soldiers killed: the
former by getting them committed without giving them principles,
and the latter by abusing their commitment.
C+
Some movies that came to Wichita that we thought about seeing but
didn't make it to:
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford;
Eastern Promises;
Elizabeth: The Golden Age;
The Kingdom;
Rendition;
Things We Lost in the Fire.
Curiously, we saw trailers to two after they left town.
Movies still here that we might get to:
American Gangster;
No Country for Old Men.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Music: Current count 13813 [13787] rated (+26), 826 [829] unrated (-3).
It's been a pretty inconclusive week. Did some jazz prospecting, even
writing one review and a couple of honorable mentions, although the
backlog has if anything grown. Took a day off and drove to Independence
for Yona Julian's funeral. Got there too late for service, but was still
good to see the people I saw. Washing machine died and that killed a
day, plus still have work to do to get new one installed. Thanksgiving
coming up this week, which will take its toll. Probably need to pay
some attention to Recycled Goods next week too. I don't see much of a
way to keep going like I've been.
- PJ Harvey: White Chalk (2007, Island): She goes for
ethereal here, which she doesn't do as well as Kate Bush or others
I don't care enough about to recall. This doesn't rub me the wrong
way like Dry or Rid of Me -- isn't hysterical, for one
thing. But it also doesn't pack much weight, like the few albums I
do like.
B
- Bettye LaVette: The Scene of the Crime (2007, Anti-):
Strong singer -- Laura asked if it was Tina Turner. Cut in Muscle
Shoals, a scene she's been in before. Patterson Hood and the Drive-By
Truckers had something to do with this. Got it from the library, and
it's not impossible that it could rise with more exposure.
B+(***)
- Musiq Soulchild: Luvanmusiq (2007, Atlantic):
Soft soul crooner, from Philadelphia, born Taalib Johnson, first
appeared as Musiq. Not bad, but nothing quite pushes over the top.
B
- Brad Paisley: 5th Gear (2007, Arista): Country
singer, has the big twangy voice, works out of the neotrad form,
has the sound and some zip on it. I'd like it fine if I thought
"Ticks" or "I'm Still a Guy" or "Mr. Policeman" were funnier.
B
Jazz Prospecting (CG #15, Part 8)
Didn't listen to much but jazz this past week, at least when I
was here and could focus. But I did lose a couple of days to one
thing or another. Still made reasonable progress prospecting, and
actually added some words to the column draft. I'd say I've turned
the corner, but this coming week looks to be full of distractions,
and I'm likely to have to shift to Recycled Goods by the end of
the week. So I'm hard pressed to make predictions.
Among the highlights below: I finally got to the Smalls advances,
and took a first bite out of some Stomp Offs I've long been begging
for.
Joe Friedman: Cup O' Joe (2006, NAS Music):
Guitarist, from St. Louis, now in New York. First album. Wrote
two of ten pieces, claiming arrangements on a couple more, so not
a big composer. Other pieces include two from Monk, one each from
Horace Silver and George Benson. He's a good but unremarkable
mainstream guitarist. What lifts the album above par is a band
that includes George Colligan on piano and Peter Washington on
bass.
B+(*)
Zaid Nasser: Escape From New York (2007, Smalls):
Alto saxophonist, on his first album, but evidently he's played
around Smalls for quite a while. Father is bassist Jamil Nasser
(né George Joyner), who played with BB King and numerous beboppers
from the 1950s forward. The father provides the context for Zaid
working with such old timers as Bill Doggett and Panama Francis,
although I have to wonder about: "As a young saxophonist, he often
spent his days with Papa Jo Jones, getting lessons in jazz and
life from Father Time himself." Very young, I figure -- Jones died
in 1985, when Nasser was unlikely to be more than 17. In any case,
Nasser's references are bebop, which he plays with a freshness and
eloquence that was rare in its heyday. The quartet, with Sacha Perry
on piano, Ari Roland on bass, and Phil Stewart on drums, is more
conventional, setting a pace that keeps things interesting.
[B+(***)] [advance]
Charles Davis: Land of Dreams (2006 [2007], Smalls):
Saxophonist, plays tenor a lot here, soprano a little, but best known
for his baritone. Born 1933, Goodman MI. Early on (1954-61) played
with Sun Ra, Dinah Washington, Kenny Dorham, Steve Lacy, Cecil Taylor,
and a fairly steady stream thereafter -- often in large groups, like
Muhal Richard Abrams' Hearinga Suite, where his role isn't all
that clear. Has very little under his own name -- a 1979 album is
called Dedicated to Tadd, and he plays a Dameron piece here.
Reminds me of Clifford Jordan with his leonine tone and foursquare
phrasing. Quartet includes Tardo Hammer (piano), Lee Hudson (bass),
Jimmy Wormworth (drums), but the sax is constantly front and center.
Even his soprano sounds heavy, which may be why he built his career
on baritone.
B+(**) [advance]
Ari Roland: And So I Lived in Old New York . . .
(2007, Smalls): Bassist. Can't find any bio that goes any deeper
than: "Bassist Ari Roland grew up inside the New York underground
bop scene." That amounts to about ten years at Smalls, starting
with his first appearance on Impulse's Jazz Underground: Live
at Smalls. This is his second album as a leader. Other credits
include Chris Byars, Frank Hewitt, Zaid Nasser, Sacha Perry, and
Nellie McKay -- the only non-Smalls artist. This is a quartet with
Byars (tenor/alto sax), Perry (piano), and Phil Stewart (drums).
The idea of an "underground bop scene" is worth dwelling on for
a bit. Bebop has been jazz orthodoxy ever since Charlie Parker
routed the dancehalls and juke joints and made heroin king. Today,
minus the scag, it's respectable enough for Lincoln Center. But
Parker also started an undergrounding trend that led to discovery
of numerous new things far beyond his revelations -- the 1960s
avant-garde and all that's flowed out of it, about as uncommercial
as music can get. So "bop underground" strikes me as an oxymoron.
Smalls label mogul Luke Kaven has tried to explain this to me: in
technical terms way over my head, but I know that it is possible
to make new music out of old forms -- for example, there are still
people making brilliant new contributions to trad jazz -- and I
can hear a freshness in the best of these records despite knowing
that they're breaking no bounds. Underground also seems to be a
self-fulfilling commercial prophecy for Kaven, but that strikes
me as contingent. Whereas many avant-garde artists can never break
out of their narrow commercial niche, the Smalls records should be
much more broadly accessible. This is one of the better ones, in
large part due to Byars, but I'm also partial to the fat bass mix
that's the leader's prerogative. Still need to go back and compare
it against Byars' own Photos in Black, White and Gray --
slated for the next JCG, but still unwritten, even though it's one
of my favorites this year.
[A-] [advance]
Gil Coggins: Better Late Than Never (2001-02 [2007],
Smalls): Pianist, born 1924 in New York, died 2004. Played with Miles
Davis, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, and Ray Draper
back in the 1950s. Cut an album called Gil's Mood in 1990;
otherwise this is it, hence the title. Sounds like a piano trio --
two drummers are credited, probably two sessions. Nice work, but hard
for me to place this.
B+(**) [advance]
Harry Whitaker: Thoughts (Past and Present) (2007,
Smalls): Pianist, born 1942 Pensacola FL, played in early '70s with
Roy Ayers, Eugene McDaniels, Bobbi Humphrey, Roberta Flack, Alphonse
Mouzon; has scattered credits since then -- Randy Crawford, Carmen
Lundy, John Stubblefield. This seems to be the second album under
his name, after The Sound of Harry Whitaker (2002, Blue Moon),
with the possible exception of a 1976 recording Black Renaissance:
Body, Mind & Spirit, issued (or reissued?) in 2002 by Luv N'
Haight and given 5 stars by AMG. (Haven't heard it.) This is a piano
trio with Omer Avital on bass, Dan Aran on drums. The songs are listed
with dates from 1970-93, but these appear to be new recordings. Seems
like a strong mainstream piano trio date; certainly doesn't live up
to the hype, but nice enough.
B+(*) [advance]
Sacha Perry: Not Brand X (2006 [2007], Smalls):
Pianist. Don't have any bio, but he's obviously based in New York,
regularly featured on Smalls albums. This is his second trio album
with Ari Roland on bass and Phil Stewart on drums. Underground bop,
or postbop, or something like that: thoughtful, well organized,
pleasant, not all that memorable.
B+(*) [advance]
The Skip Heller Trio: Mean Things Happening in This Land
(2006, Ropeadope): One of those advance copies that got lost in my pile,
in this case for a year or more. No big deal. Heller is a guitarist,
born in Philadelphia, based in Los Angeles. Has a dozen-plus albums
since 1992, drawing on blues, swing, pop, and if AMG is to be believed,
Bakersfield country. The mean things include at least two obvious
references to New Orleans: "Katrina, Mon Amour" and "Heckuvajob."
Maybe three, given that another title is "President Nero?" There's
also a song for Ani DiFranco, "The Kind of Beauty that Moves," and
he follows that up with the Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl." I wish
the music lived up to these titles, but it's mostly mild-mannered
organ funk. Last song has a vocal, but no credit for who sang it.
It's called "Aragon Mill," about the closing thereof, and is the
best thing here, probably because words are sharper than guitar.
B [advance]
Meinrad Kneer/Albert van Veenendaal: The Munderkingen
Sessions: Part 1 (2004 [2007], Evil Rabbit): This predates
Predictable Point of Impact, a trio with percussionist Yonga
Sun that made my last Jazz CG column. The drums keep things moving,
or at least provide a welcome distraction. Cutting back to just
bass and piano inevitably slows things down, and this is no
exception. Kneer is the bassist. Van Veenendaal plays more or
less prepared piano, which offers some surprises, but more often
than not the pair get bogged down in minute abstractions. I find
this somewhat fascinating, but don't expect many others will.
B+(*)
Albert van Veenendaal/Fabrizio Puglisi: Duets for Prepared,
Unprepared and Toy Pianos (2004 [2007], Evil Rabbit): Van
Veenendaal is a Dutch avant-garde pianist, likes to work with
prepared piano, has an interesting body of work over the last
decade, including one album (Predictable Point of Impact,
on Evil Rabbit) that I especially like. Puglisi is an Italian
pianist I've never run into before. He was born 1969, describes
himself as "self-taught" but workshops with Franco D'Andrea and
Enrico Rava, a course with George Russell and Mike Gibbs, and a
study of Cecil Taylor. His Dutch connections include work with
Ernst Reijseger and Han Bennink. I'm hard pressed to think of
any piano duet albums I've liked, but this one is interesting,
with its odd prepared sounds, rhythmic machinations, and the
contrasting timbre of Puglisi's toy.
B+(**)
Solar Fire Trio: Rise Up (2006 [2007], Foreign
Frequency): English group, based in Liverpool, with two saxophones --
Ray Dickat on tenor, Dave Jackson on alto -- plus Steve Belger on
drums. Website describes their "mission to combine the no-holds-barred
improvisational ethos of free jazz with the exuberance and rebellious
spirit of rock music." Dickaty has played in Spiritualized, and all
three have more rock bands in their resumes thay jazz -- Jackson is
the most likely to list an Eddie Prevost or Paul Rutherford or Lol
Coxhill among his references. The saxophonist play unreconstructed
'60s avant-noise, mostly on top of rock beats. It's fairly limited,
and not pleasant. I'm not sure whether I've gotten immune to it, or
there's something interesting buried in the mix, but it's probably
not cost-effective to try to find out.
B
Howard Wiley: The Angola Project (2006 [2007],
CDBaby): Young tenor saxophonist. Second album, a rather ambitious
one that takes its prison setting and old-time gospel graces and
tries to turn them into something magnificent. I'm impressed, but
can't say as I like it -- especially the vocals, which raise the
rafters when they're not trying to paint the pearly gates. Many
cuts also have a pair of violins, another obvious angelic effect.
David Murray guests on one song, an overly complicated original
called "Angola." While Murray's the superior saxophonist, Wiley
holds his own.
B
Bobby Gordon: Plays Joe Marsala: Lower Register
(2007, Arbors): Marsala was a clarinetist from Chicago, 1907-78,
with most of his recordings on two Classics volumes from 1936-46,
plus appearances with Wingo Manone, Eddie Condon, Adrian Rollini,
and many other trad jazz artists -- although Dizzy Gillespie and
Charlie Parker also pop up. Marsala wrote or co-wrote all of the
songs in this tribute. Gordon was born in 1941, first saw Marsala
when he was 5, and wound up not only playing clarinet but taking
lessons from Marsala. Gordon has a dozen or so albums starting
in 1963, including a similar Pee Wee Russell tribute. This one
is a delight, with a first rate band including Randy Reinhart
on trumpet and James Chirillo on guitar, with pianist Keith
Ingham contributing arrangements.
B+(***)
Ruby Braff and the Flying Pizzarellis: C'est Magnifique
(2002 [2007], Arbors): Recorded June 2002. Braff took ill in August
and died the following February, so this turns out to have been his
final recording. Beats me why it took so long to get released, other
than that Braff had so much in the pipeline the label was just pacing
themselves. Title comes from a Cole Porter song, included here. The
record isn't quite magnifique, and in some respects feels unfinished,
but it's hard not to cut them some slack. Braff's cornet doesn't swing
as hard as in days of yore, but it's clear and poignant. The guitars
chug along amiably, with Bucky's rhythm a particularly nice foil for
the cornet. John Pizzarelli gets credit for his trio, with Ray Kennedy
on piano and brother Martin Pizzarelli on bass. John has a couple of
nice guitar leads and sings two songs -- not necessary but nothing
wrong with them. Ambles a bit at the end.
B+(**)
John McLean: Better Angels (2004 [2007], Origin):
Guitarist, based in Chicago, with Berklee and University of Miami
in his background, a 25-year career, three records under his own
name, a couple dozen more working with others. Like many people
who record infrequently, this record has a kitchen sink quality.
Pop songs with vocals, original pieces with little song structure,
covers that are interesting in their own right but which scarcely
fit or flow, a septet that obscures the leader more often than
not. That lets McLean's guitar appear multi-faceted, but also
leaves you wondering why not develop it one way or another --
like the electric squawk on "Airmail Special," or completely
different, the quiet, organ-backed "I'm Confessin' (That I Love
You)." Grazyna Auguscik's two song vocals -- Janis Ian's "Ready
for the War" and you-know-who's "Blackbird" -- are OK, but her
vocal texturing elsewhere is unappealing, unnecessary whitewash.
B
Herbie Hancock: River: The Joni Letters (2007,
Verve): Joni Mitchell songs, plus "Solitude" and "Nefertiti" --
I'm not enough of a Mitchell scholar to explain why, but they are
two of four songs done as instrumentals. The rest have vocals, a
smattering of guests who get one shot each. Norah Jones leads off
with "Court and Spark," affecting Joni tics and sounding like a
pale imitation. Same for Corinna Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza, even
Tina Turner. Mitchell sings an obscure one, allowing herself the
amusement of hiding among the poseurs. Only Leonard Cohen avoids
that game. One result of all these shaded stylings is to remind
us that Mitchell's voice and songs were necessarily one. Tribute
albums succeed or fail depending on whether they offer convincing
reasons for the bother. The vocals fail that test here, and take
down with them some very nice instrumental work. Hancock himself
does a lovely if risk-free job tucking the melodies in. Better
still is Wayne Shorter, especially his little bits on soprano.
B-
Bob DeVos: Playing for Keeps (2007, Savant):
Guitarist-led organ trio, with tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander
an added attraction on four of ten songs. Don't have much bio
on DeVos: four records since 1999, three on Savant, but he looks
older, and has credits Richard "Groove" Holmes albums in 1977,
then very little until he pops up with Charles Earland in 1997.
Dan Kostelnik plays a relatively reserved and supportive organ
here, letting DeVos run his long, grooveful leads. I haven't
had much nice to say about Alexander lately, but he's back in
full tone here, powering through the leadoff cut, and mixing
it up with DeVos in the later cuts.
B+(**)
Barbara Rosene and Her New Yorkers: It Was Only a Sun
Shower (2007, Stomp Off): Singer, from Ohio, specializes
in pop songs from the 1920s/1930s. Has three previous albums on
Stomp Off, each with 20+ songs, and one normal-sized album on
Azica. She's been appearing lately with the Harry James ghost
band, as well as Kevin Dorn's Traditional Jazz Collective and
Mike Hashim -- both Dorn and Hashim appear here. One of the
Stomp Offs was a tribute to Ruth Etting and Annette Hanshaw.
She picks more songs from that era here, few I recognize --
one from Etting, one from Clarence Williams, one rescued from
Tiny Tim. The band is superb, with old-timey banjo and tuba,
cornet, and deftly deployed fiddle. Long at 76:35, but only
two of the 23 songs top 4 minutes. Two are instrumentals, but
they slip by rather than stand out. Rosene gets two credits
for whistling, and they do stand out.
[B+(***)]
Yerba Buena Stompers: Duff Campbell's Revenge
(2005, Diamondstick): A little background here: Stomp Off is
a modern day trad jazz label run out of a post office box in
Pennsylvania by Bob Erdos. I like a little trad jazz, and the
dozen or so Stomp Off albums I'd picked up over the years --
not the easiest things to find -- generally impressed me. So
when I started Jazz CG, I figured it would be good to mix in
some trad jazz but I never managed to make contact. Closest
I came was a dealer near St. Louis who runs a website in their
name but doesn't do any press publicity. On occasion, when I
found out about a new release, I'd try to track the artist
down. Most proved as elusive as the label, but when I wrote
to the Yerba Buena Stompers, Michael Custer offered to send
me everything. I keep a huge shopping list including pretty
much everything recommended by the Penguin Guide, and it had
all of the Stompers' Stomp Off records, so I welcomed him.
So now I have a bunch of them. I'll work through them in the
next few weeks. The main risk, I suspect, is that they'll all
wind up sounding much the same. If so, it may be hard to pick,
but also hard to go wrong. This is a live record tossed off
on the side of their main line of albums on Stomp Off. It
caught the band at a 90th birthday bash for Charles Campbell,
an art gallery owner who was a longtime patron of the trad
jazz scene in San Francisco. The title comes from a piece
that Turk Murphy wrote in Campbell's honor. The Yerba Buena
Stompers are an 8-piece band led by John Gill, who plays
banjo and sings on occasion. Gill is a New Yorker, b. 1951,
started out in dixieland bands, moved to San Francisco to
play with Murphy, then on to New Orleans, back to SF, and
finally back to Brooklyn. The band name invokes Lu Watters'
Yerba Buena Jazz Band, formed in 1939 as one of the first
bands to consciously attempt to revive traditional jazz up
to King Oliver's Original Creole Jazz Band -- tight ensemble
work, a deep brassy sound with tuba instead of bass. Watters
was early enough that he was able to work with folks like
Bunk Johnson who pre-dated Louis Armstrong. Murphy played in
Watters' band and carried on the flame, passing it on to Gill.
(Who, by the way, should not be confused with another John
Gill, an English pianist who also plays old timey jazz. AMG
is careful to make the distinction, then totally messes up
their discographies.) The live record is probably as good a
place to start as any: the intros provide some context, and
the selection tends to repeat their signature tunes where
they're more likely to seek out obscurities for the studio
albums. A lot of classics, broken in like old leather --
"Gut Bucket Blues," "Tiger Rag," "Milenburg Joys," "Maple
Leaf Rag," "Hesitating Blues." Their one concession to the
postwar period is "Blue Moon of Kentucky," which they frame
as a tribute to Elvis Presley, probably less of a reach for
Gill's gruff voice than Bill Monroe would have been. Grades
are more provisional than usual, subject to change as I
sort through the pile. But if I don't start tacking them
down I won't feel like I'm getting anything done.
B+(***)
Yerba Buena Stompers: Dawn Club Favorites
(2001, Stomp Off): This is the first of five albums John Gill's
group has done on Stomp Off, and it starts off on square one,
reviving and revitalizing Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band
with the same spirit Watters took on King Oliver's Original
Creole Jazz Band. San Francisco's Dawn Club was home base to
Watters from the band's formation in 1939 until the leader
got drafted in 1942. The lineup features two trumpets (Leon
Oakley and Duke Heitger), trombone (Tom Bartlett), clarinet
(Larry Wright), piano (Pete Clute), banjo (Gill), tuba (Ray
Cadd), and drums (Clint Baker). The album is dedicated to
Clute, a ragtime specialist, mainstay of Turk Murphy's bands,
and a direct connection to Watters, who died at 67 a month
after this was recorded. The most striking thing about the
album is the tremendous uplift of the soaring trumpets and
clarinet, pulling away from a rhythm that sometimes still
slips into step with ancestral marches and rags. One vocal,
by Bartlett, on "St. James Infirmary."
A-
Yerba Buena Stompers: Barbary Coast Favorites
(2001 [2002], Stomp Off): Second album, with Marty Eggers taking
over the piano bench for the late Pete Clute, which means a small
step away from ragtime and into the early 20th century. I expect
that the whole series match up pretty evenly, so the distinctions
will be marginal. The liner notes don't explain where this title
came from, but Barbary Coast is a neighborhood in San Francisco,
and could very well be another Lu Watters watering hole. The
artwork is almost the same as Dawn Club Favorites. The
songs are similar but with a few exceptions ("St. Louis Blues,"
"Jelly Roll Blues") a shade more obscure. Two vocals this time:
one each by Tom Bartlett and John Gill, with the latter's "Waiting
for the Robert E. Lee" a choice cut. Otherwise, it doesn't pick
me up the way the first one did, although it goes through the
same motions with comparable aplomb.
B+(**)
And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.
Wallace Roney: Jazz (2007, High Note): If jazz
were a popular music, this would be a hit record. The brothers,
including the invaluable Antoine on saxes and bass clarinet, offer
the same mix of bold moves and accessibility that the Adderleys
offered back when real jazz still had the public's ear, Geri
Allen's piano insinuates a subtle edge (alternatively, Robert
Irving III's Fender Rhodes fattens the funk), while turntablists
DJ Axum and Val Jeanty contribute something fashionably novel.
On the other hand, with jazz so thoroughly consigned to margins,
one wonders why work so hard to make it easy, especially when
they can't heat "Stand" up much past tepid.
B+(**)
Houston Person: Thinking of You (2007, High Note):
Lovely, as usual. He gets a little more help this time than usual,
with James Chirillo's guitar on ten of eleven tracks and Eddie
Allen's trumpet on four. He certainly doesn't need the extra horn,
although it does little damage.
B+(**)
Josh Roseman: New Constellations: Live in Vienna
(2005 [2007], Accurate): Funk bent severely enough to qualify as
avant-garde, mostly generated from the Jamaican crucible of Don
Drummond and "Satta Massaganna."
B+(***)
Chris Potter Underground: Follow the Red Line: Live at
the Village Vanguard (2007, Sunnyside): Adam Rogers' guitar
snaking over Craig Taborn's blippy Fender Rhodes and Nate Smith's
drums makes for a fresh update on the old organ trio -- especially
when the pace slows, Taborn looks to be as far ahead of the field
as Jimmy Smith was in 1958. Potter can play soul jazz, but he's
most impressive when he kicks out the jams, raising r&b honking
to a higher plane, or maybe bringing Pharoah Sanders down to the
grease.
A-
Unpacking:
- Jimmy Blythe: Messin' Around Blues (Delmark)
- Ari Brown: Live at the Green Mill (Delmark)
- Ari Brown: Live at the Green Mill (Delmark, DVD)
- Joe Fielder Trio: The Crab (Clean Feed)
- Free Form Funky Freqs: Urban Mythology: Volume One (Thirsty Ear)
- Hans Glawischnig: Panorama (Sunnyside): Jan. 15
- Dennis González NY Quartet: At Tonic: Dance of the Soothsayer's Tongue (Clean Feed)
- Brad Goode: Nature Boy (Delmark)
- Jentsch Group Large: Brooklyn Suite (Fleur de Son)
- Jon Larsen: Strange News From Mars (Zonic Entertainment)
- Steve Lehman Quintet: On Meaning (Pi)
- Jamie Leonhart: The Truth About Suffering (Sunnyside): Jan. 29
- Tony Malaby: Tamarindo (Clean Feed): advance: Nov. 29
- Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble: Black Unstoppable (Delmark)
- Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble: Black Unstoppable: Live at the Velvet Lounge (Delmark, DVD)
- Yoko Miwa Trio: Canopy of Stars (P.J.L)
- Alípio C Neto Quartet: The Perfume Comes Before the Flower (Clean Feed)
- Mark O'Leary: On the Shore (Clean Feed)
- Júlio Resende: Da Alma (Clean Feed)
- Herb Robertson NY Downtown Allstars: Real Aberration (Clean Feed, 2CD)
- 3 Cohens: Braid (Anzic): advance, Nov. 20
- Horace Silver: Live at Newport '58 (1958, Blue Note): advance: Feb. 5
- Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends: Solos, Sessions & Encores (1978-88, Epic/Legacy)
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Weekend Roundup
WarInContext: Is War Talk Just Talk?.
Post cites an Financial Times article by Daniel Dombey, Demetri Sevastopulo
and Andrew Ward, "'And then what? A strike on Iran may be one problem too
many for Bush," and adds an editor's comment which among other things posits
a number of questions for presidential candidates to think about. This got
me to writing, so I submitted the following comment:
One thing no one talks about regarding Iran's nuclear program is
whether Iran should have what they say they really want: nuclear power
plants. In many ways, the scariest thing about Iranian nuclear power
isn't that they could produce bombs; it's that they could create
another Chernobyl. That's a tough issue for Bush to raise because he's
pro-nuclear power -- wants to sell US nuclear technology abroad, e.g.,
to India. It probably also figures into the French position, since a
self-sufficient Iranian nuclear power industry would cut into France's
leading position. It's also tough for Bush because it raises the Peak
Oil issue: if Iran is worried about making the transition to a world
with declining petroleum output, shouldn't net oil importers like the
US be worried too? Once you accept that Peak Oil is a real problem,
then nuclear power has to be taken seriously because, like it or not,
it's an option on people's minds -- for that matter, it also comes up
in the context of Global Warming, another problematic issue for
Bush. So it seems likely that to some extent the US (and France) are
opposing the proliferation of nuclear power, permitted under the NPT,
under the guise of opposing bombs. A more sensible, more realistic
approach would be to look to extend the NPT to ensure better safety
standards, but US failure to disarm under the NPT and Bush's
commitment to building even more bombs are once again in the way. So
add all that to your list of aspiring presidential issues.
Robert Dreyfuss: Who's the Enemy?.
Subtitled: "In Iraq, It's Getting Harder to Find Any Bad Guys."
This seems like a reasonable summary of the so-called good news
coming out of Iraq -- the reduction in US and probably Iraqi
casualties over three consecutive months. This seems to be the
result of two things: US-armed Sunni tribal leaders turning on
Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the truce with the Mahdi Army. Neither of
these things have much to do with the Surge, which had produced
markedly higher casualty rates for all sides over the past year.
Indeed, I suspect that much of the improvement is the result of
US forces stepping back -- i.e., that the level of violence is
primarily determined by how aggressive US forces are in Iraq.
The corollary is that the US could have reduced casualties at
any point by acting less aggressively.
Dreyfus may be right that the lull could be used to establish
a more viable political settlement, but that will only work if
the Bush administration gets realistic about what it can and
cannot accomplish in Iraq. Whether that can happen is something
that can be debated, but there's no precedent for it: there have
been times when things got so bad that Bush temporarily backed
down (e.g., the first siege of Fallujah), but every time things
looked up Bush escalated his ambitions back to impossible levels.
Even now, we see the administration's instinct for the wild side
in its escalating Iran war rhetoric. Bush's new friends among
the Sunnis and Sadrists aren't likely to stick with him over the
long haul. They've basically improved their position vs. Bush's
old friends and bought some time, maybe until saner heads take
over in Washington.
Tom Engelhardt: As the World Burns.
Occasioned by the drought that is threatening to turn Atlanta dry,
or is it Australia? or Albania? Actually, it's all over the map.
While Peak Oil seems to me to be the most inexorable crisis that's
heading down the pike, it's not inconceivable that we could run
into a severe water crunch even sooner. Drought-induced water
shortages are only part of the story. Increasing demand, often
in locations that are poorly planned and marginally served, is
another, as is depletion, whether in the form of aquifers being
pumped dry, reservoirs silting up, or salinization making fresh
water supplies unusable. All these things raise big and difficult
questions, which as Engelhardt points out, are rarely given much
recognition let alone public thought:
Honestly, I don't demand answers. Just a little investigation, some
thought, and a glimpse or two over that precipice as the world
turns. . . . and bakes and burns.
Jonathan Cohn: Creative Destruction.
Subtitle is "The best case against universal health care," by which
Cohn means the argument that private sector investment in the US leads
to major innovations in health care that we'd lose if we adopted a
more economical (e.g., better managed) system. Cohn works through an
example, then points out that most innovation in the US is actually
publicly funded before the private profiteers take over:
The single biggest source of medical research funding, not just in
the United States but in the entire world, is the National Institutes
of Health (NIH): Last year, it spent more than $28 billion on
research, accounting for about one-third of the total dollars spent on
medical research and development in this country (and half the money
spent at universities). The majority of that money pays for the kind
of basic research that might someday unlock cures for killer diseases
like Alzheimer's, aids, and cancer. No other country has an
institution that matches the NIH in scale. And that is probably the
primary explanation for why so many of the intellectual breakthroughs
in medical science happen here.
There's no reason why this has to change under universal health
insurance. NIH has its own independent funding stream. And, during the
late 1990s, thanks to bipartisan agreement between President Clinton
and the Republican Congress, its funding actually increased
substantially--giving a tremendous boost to research. With or without
universal coverage, subsequent presidents and Congress could ramp up
funding again--although, if they did so, they would be breaking with
the present course. It so happens that, starting in 2003, President
Bush and his congressional allies let NIH funding stagnate, even
though the cost of medical research (like the cost of medicine
overall) was increasing faster than inflation. The reason? They needed
room in the budget for other priorities, like tax cuts for the
wealthy. In this sense, the greatest threat to future medical
breakthroughs may not be universal health care but the people who are
trying so hard to fight it.
Cohn is the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health
Care Crisis -- And the People Who Pay the Price (Harper Collins).
Tony Karon: Benazir vs. Musharraf is Punch vs. Judy.
Meaning they're both controlled by the same pupeteer. Seems about
right, especially the part about how proxies have their own less
than predictable interests. One of the letters points out that
corruption is so endemic in Pakistan that even the Supreme Court
is tainted. However, you got to start somewhere. Throughout most
history the state has acted as a self-interested racket. The key
idea to democracy is to flip the state, to turn it into a public
servant. This rarely if ever happens in a single change. Indeed,
even in well established democracies politics manages to attract
the corrupt, and it takes a good deal more vigilance than America
seems capable of to keep them at bay.
Frederick W. Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon: Pakinstan's Collapse,
Our Problem.
OK, it turns out that the real men don't just want to go to Tehran
anymore. They also want to invade Islamabad. And in this case the
WMD are undoubtedly real, so the stakes are far higher. So, for
that matter, are the risks. The ones these geniuses concede are:
With 160 million people, Pakistan is more than five times the size
of Iraq. It would take a long time to move large numbers of American
forces halfway across the world. And unless we had precise information
about the location of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials,
we could not rely on bombing or using Special Forces to destroy
them.
The task of stabilizing a collapsed Pakistan is beyond the means of
the United States and its allies. Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that
a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country
of this size. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to
act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the
cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces.
One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the
limited goal of preventing Pakistan's nuclear materials and warheads
from getting into the wrong hands. Given the degree to which Pakistani
nationalists cherish these assets, it is unlikely the United States
would get permission to destroy them. Somehow, American forces would
have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to
move the material to a safer place.
They propose New Mexico, but figure their Pakistani friends will
insist on keeping the WMDs in some safe redoubt, "guarded by elite
Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international
troops." (Maybe they can store them in Osama bin Laden's cave?) They
go on to propose sending troops to help "pro-American moderates" in
"the military and security forces hold the country's center --
primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous
areas like Punjab Province to its south."
This is way beyond nutty. It's like guys who have painted themselves
into a corner, then deciding the only way out is to blow a hole in the
wall, having no idea what's on the other side, what's likely to come
down on them, or how they'll even take cover from the initial blast.
It's what you get from people whose intellectual toykit only has guns
and bombs. It never occurs them that the only sane option is to not
get into such stupid predicaments in the first place. Indeed, why
should they? If we avoided the problem, they wouldn't get to use all
those guns and bombs, and how much fun would that be?
But even worse than their juvenile war fantasies is their presumption
that even "pro-American moderate" Pakistanis will happily let us barge
in and make a mockery of their sovereignty and wreck their country,
with all the "collateral damage" we inevitably produce. Arrogance
doesn't even begin to describe this sort of madness.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The following is allegedly a quote from Ronald Reagan's recently
published diaries, the entry dated May 17, 1986:
A moment I've been dreading. George [Vice President George
H.W. Bush] brought his ne'er-do-well son around this morning and asked
me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida
[future Gov. Jeb Bush]. The one who hangs around here all the time
looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has
never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic
and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or
something. That looks like easy work.
According to
Snopes.com
it was actually Kinsley who wrote that. He always was desperate to get
his name in high places.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Funeral Day
Went to a funeral today, in Independence KS for Yona Julian, 36,
the daughter of a cousin. I was especially close to her father when
we were growing up. He was (still is) seven years older than me, the
closest person I ever had to a role model, although it seemed like
he specialized in high standards I could never live up to -- one
example is that he was an Eagle Scout, whereas I topped out at Life.
He's the reason I grew up as a New York Yankees fan. But he also,
no doubt inadvertently, taught me to hate tennis. I recall visiting
him in the first few days after he moved to Independence, fresh out
of college with a job teaching political science at the local juco.
I figure five people (could be a couple more, certainly fewer than
ten) of the 200 or so present today knew him then. Almost everyone
else came as the result of the life he built there. He married a
local girl, changed his religion, raised four children, finally
retiring from the same job that brought him there. I moved away
from Kansas, hardly ever saw him, barely know (or knew) his kids,
least of all his eldest, Yona. She was a star athlete, stayed
close to home, married a local boy, was diagnosed with cancer a
few months after giving birth to her fourth child. She valiantly
fought the cancer for 16 months.
All this happened slightly out of sight and reach. The rich
set of interfamilial relationships of my mother's generation have
split into separate cocooned nodes, a nuclearization explained or
perhaps just excused by pressing time and divisive space. So I've
been aware of Yona's ordeal from near the start, getting regular
reports about someone familiar but barely known, me keeping what
seemed to be a respectful distance. I guess the funeral today at
last seemed like an opportunity for respectful presence. Still,
I don't think I did any good except for the tiny number of people
who knew me. I didn't talk to Yona's husband, but what could a
stranger say? I could have mentioned that I was about his age
when my wife died after a horrible protracted illness, but it's
hard to say that the two cases offer any insight or comfort for
each other. For one thing, with no children I felt strangely like
my life was being restarted with a clean slate, whereas with four
children he must feel completely different.
I just heard that another cousin suffered a stroke over a month
ago. It was severe enough that she's still in a rehab hospital,
and she and her husband will be moving into an assisted living
facility when she gets back -- a move from Arizona to California
that is dictated by another of those nuclear family nodes. My
mother had seven siblings. All together they had 23 children.
When my mother died in 2000 all 23 of her children, nieces and
nephews were still known to be alive, with the oldest ones up
around 75, and my immediate family by far the youngest. One is
known to have died since then, but with my mother's generation
gone we hear little of the far-flung cousins, let alone of their
progeny, by now too numerous to keep track of. (I visited an aunt
ten or more years ago. She assembled her whole clan to meet the
nephew from Kansas, incomprehensible dozens of people, bragging
that she had five generations present.)
I can't help but feel a sense that we've lost something here.
Maybe you can chalk that up to jealousy -- that having no node of
my own that I can look down on, I look up and around at others.
But you lose something when you slough off cousins to focus on
your own nuclear family. When I think of my 20 cousins I see a
wide range of options and variations that are still rooted close
enough to my life that I can relate to them, and that expand my
understanding of who I am and where I come from. Those options
and variations narrow considerably looking down. Maybe also the
skills to deal with them. Jane Jacobs, in Dark Ages Ahead,
saw the decay of family relationships as one sign of losing our
ability to understand the world.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Paul Krugman: The Conscience of a Liberal
Paul Krugman: The Conscience of a Liberal (2007, WW
Norton)
The title consciously refers to Barry Goldwater's The Conscience
of a Conservative, widely (although not necessarily accurately)
regarded as an opening salvo in conservatism's march to political
power. This is not a collection of columns. Rather, it is a narrowly
focused piece of large scale economic history with a clear political
agenda: to show that liberalism promotes economic equality, bringing
the whole nation broader prosperity, security, and happiness, and
to show that conservatism does exactly the opposite. The focus on
equality may be a result of Krugman's consciousness first and foremost
as an economist. He doesn't spend enough effort proving the virtues
and linkages of equality, making his tract seem rather materialist.
My own take is that it has to do mostly with one's sense of common
purpose with the people around you, extending as far as the limits
of the nation (and conceivably further). If those people seem to be
only out for themselves, their greed undermines our unity. Krugman
refers to how the shared sacrifices of both world wars brought about
greater economic equality. In those cases policies consciously aimed
at promoting unity also worked to reduce inequality; conversely,
politics aimed at reducing inequality result in greater unity by
giving us more in common.
Krugman also doesn't go far into why this matters. My own belief
is that we are approaching, if not already sucked into, a vortex
of crises occasioned largely by mankind butting up against limits
in worldwide resources. Such crises can best be met by pulling us
together to work cooperatively; failure to do so will make them
far more intractable, as unwillingness to share sacrifices only
compounds the crises.
One thing that Krugman mentions that I didn't pull a quote on
is his belief that the key to the Republicans' success has been
their ability to pick up white southern voters by coding issues
in terms of race. It's one of those points that is obvious but
rarely spoken of, especially in terms of its full ramifications,
which basically involve the willingness of whites to undermine
their own welfare in order to spite blacks. That conservative
elites should be a party to this shouldn't surprise anyone. As
long as they see any gains by the poor, either black or white,
as coming at the expense of the rich, they'll stand up for the
latter. Promoting the advantages of the rich what conservatism
has always been about. All else is detail, subject to change to
support their real purpose.
Chapter 1: The Way We Were (pp. 3-4):
I was born in 1953. Like the rest of my generation, I took the
America I grew up in for granted -- in fact, like many in my
generation, I railed against the very real injustices of our society,
marched against the bombing of Cambodia, went door to door for liberal
political candidates. It's only in retrospect that the political and
economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost,
an exceptional episode in our nation's history.
Postwar America was, above all, a middle-class society. The great
boom in wages that began with World War II had lifted tens of millions
of Americans -- my parents among them - from urban slums and rural
poverty to a life of home ownership and unprecedented comfort. The
rich, on the other hand, had lost ground: They were few in number and,
relative to the prosperous middle, not all that rich. The poor were
more numerous than the rich, but they were still a relatively small
minority. As a result, there was a striking sense of economic
commonality: Most people in America lived recognizably similar and
remarkably decent material lives.
I was born in 1950 and can attest to much of that. My parents
both came off Depression-era farms that couldn't support their
families and worked during the war in aircraft factories -- my
father working his whole life in that factory, my mother becoming
a housewife when I was born. They worked hard and saved, buying
a small house which they later built onto, a series of new Fords
(one in 1949, another in 1961, a lemon in 1973). We had a fairly
complete set of appliances: stove, refrigerator, freezer, washing
machine, dryer, telephone, television, window air conditioner,
with infrequent replacements and occasional upgrades. I had no
sense of ethnic or class divisions, and had little sense of what
the fact that my neighborhood and schools were all white meant.
I was religious, patriotic, one of the most successful kids in
my class. I had a sense of unlimited opportunity, which due to
various reasons fell apart completely in the mid-'60s, shattered
by uncovering many hypocrisies -- the Vietnam war above all, but
also by the realization that America's middle class concept was
mostly romantic delusion. I'm less harsh about it now, no doubt
because it's only gotten worse. So there were many exceptions
to Krugman's outline, but there was also truth to it, and that
truth certainly extended to my parents, who started pretty low
down on the totem pole.
Chapter 2: The Long Gilded Age -- Krugman's term for the period
in US history from 1870-1930 (pp. 15-16):
Pre-New Deal America, like America in the early twenty-first
century, was a land of vast inequality in wealth and power, in which a
nominally democratic political system failed to represent the economic
interests of the majority. Moreover the factors that let a wealthy
elite dominate political life have recognizable counterparts today:
the overwhelming financial disadvantage at which populist political
candidates operated; the division of Americans with common economic
interests along racial, ethnic, and religious lines, the uncritical
acceptance of a conservative ideology that warned that any attempt to
help the less fortunate would head to economic disaster.
Chapter 3: The Great Compression -- Krugman's term for the set
of economic policies starting with the New Deal and the economic
controls in force during World War II which led to significant
narrowing of economic inequality and the formation of a middle
class America (pp. 42-44):
On one side the majority of Americans were able, for the first
time, to afford a decent standard of living. I know that "decent"
isn't a well-defined term, but here's what I mean: In the twenties the
technology to provide the major comforts and conveniences of modern
life already existed. A modern American transported back to, say, the
time of Abraham Lincoln would be horrified at the roughness of life,
no matter how much money he had. But a modern American transported
back to the late 1920s and given a high enough income would find life
by and large tolerable. The problem was that most Americans in the
twenties couldn't afford to live that tolerable life. To take the most
basic comfort: Most rural Americans still didn't have indoor plumbing,
and many urban Americans had to share facilities with other
families. Washing machines existed, but weren't standard in the
home. Private automobiles and private telephones existed, but most
families didn't have them. In 1936 the Gallup organization predicted a
landslide victory for Alf Landon, the Republican presidential
candidate. How did Gallup get it so wrong? Well, the poll was based on
a telephone survey, but at the time only about a third of
U.S. residences had a home phone -- and those people who didn't have
phones tended to be Roosevelt supporters. And so on down the line.
But by the fifties, although there were still rural Americans who
relied on outhouses, and urban families living in tenements with
toilets down the hall, they were a distinct minority. By 1955 a
majority of American families owned a car. And 70 percent of
residences had telephones.
On the other side F. Scott Fitzgerald's remark that the rich "are
different from you and me" has never, before or since, been less true
than it was in the generation that followed World War II. By the
fifties, very few Americans were able to afford a lifestyle that put
them in a different material universe from that occupied by the middle
class. The rich might have had bigger houses than most people, but
they could no longer afford to live in vast mansions -- in particular,
they couldn't afford the servants necessary to maintain those
mansions. The traditional differences in dress between the rich and
everyone else had largely vanished, partly because ordinary workers
could now afford to wear (and clean) good clothes, partly because the
rich could no longer afford to dress in a style that required legions
of servants to help them get into and out of their wardrobes. Even the
traditional rich man's advantage in mobility -- to this day high-end
stores are said to cater to the "carriage trade" -- had vanished now
that most people had cars.
I don't think it's romanticizing to say that all this contributed
to a new sense of dignity among ordinary Americans. Everything we know
about America during the Long Gilded Age makes it clear that it was,
despite the nation's democratic ideology, a very class-conscious
society -- a place where the rich considered themselves the workers'
"betters," and where workers lived in fear (and resentment) of the
"bosses." But in postwar America -- and here I can speak from my
personal memory of the society in which I grew up, as well as what we
can learn from what people said and wrote -- much of that class
consciousness was gone. Postwar American society had its poor, but the
truly rich were rare and made little impact on society. A worker
protected by a good union, as many were, had as secure a job and often
nearly as high an income as a highly trained professional. And we all
lived material lives that were no more different from one another than
a Cadillac was from a Chevy: One life might be more luxurious than
another, but there were no big differences in where people could go
and what they could do.
(p. 48):
And one more thing: Not only did those who depended on income from
capital find much of that income taxed away, they found it
increasingly difficult to pass their wealth on to their children. The
top estate tax rate rose from 20 percent to 45, then 60, then 70, and
finally 77 percent. Partly as a result the ownership of wealth became
significantly less concentrated: The richest 0.1 percent of Americans
owned more than 20 percent of the nation's wealth in 1929, but only
around 10 percent in the mid-1950s.
So what happened to the rich? Basically the New Deal taxed away
much, perhaps most, of their income. No wonder FDR was viewed as a
traitor to his class.
(pp. 55-56):
During the postwar boom the real income of the typical family
roughly doubled, from about $22,000 in today's prices to
$44,000. That's a growth rate of 2.7 percent per year. And incomes all
through the income distribution grew at about the same rate,
preserving the relatively equal distribution created by the Great
Compression.
Chapter 4: The Politics of the Welfare State (pp. 61-62):
Once in power -- and less inclined to dismiss radical ideas -- FDR
was faced with the task of persuading the public to reject
conventional wisdom and accept radically new policies. He was able to
overcome voters' natural conservatism thanks largely to accidents of
history. First, the economic catastrophe of 1929-33 shattered the
credibility of the old elite and its ideology, and the recovery that
began in 1933, incomplete though it was, lent credibility to New Deal
reforms. "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad
morals; now we know that it is bad economics," declared FDR in his
second inaugural address. Second, World War II created conditions
under which large-scale government intervention in the economy was
clearly necessary, sweeping aside skepticism about radical
measures. So by the time Eisenhower wrote that letter to his brother,
the New Deal institutions were no longer considered radical
innovations; they were part of the normal fabric of American life.
Of course it wouldn't have played out that way if the pre-New Deal
conventional wisdom had been right -- if taxing the rich, providing
Social Security and unemployment benefits, and enhancing worker
bargaining power had been disastrous for the economy. But the Great
Compression was, in fact, followed by the greatest sustained economic
boom in U.S. history. Moreover, the Roosevelt administration
demonstrated that one of the standard arguments against large-scale
intervention in the economy -- that it would inevitably lead to
equally large-scale corruption -- wasn't true. In retrospect it's
startling just how clean the New Deal's record was. FDR presided over
a huge expansion of federal spending, including highly discretionary
spending by the Works Progress Administration. Yet the popular image
of public relief, widely regarded as corrupt before the New Deal,
actually improved markedly.
The New Deal's probity wasn't an accident. New Deal officials made
almost a fetish out of policing their programs against potential
corruption. In particular FDR created a powerful "division of progress
investigation" to investigate complaints of malfeasance in the
WPA. This division proved so effective that a later congressional
investigation couldn't find a single serious irregularity it had
overlooked.
This dedication to honest government wasn't a sign of Roosevelt's
personal virtue; rather it reflected a political imperative. FDR's
mission in office was to show that government activism works. To
maintain that mission's credibility he needed to keep his
administration's record clean. And he did.
This is in marked contrast to the expansion of government spending
under the Reagan and second Bush administrations, where much of the
rationale for spending has evidently been to create opportunities
for corruption.
Chapter 5: The Sixties: A Troubled Prosperity (pp. 79-80):
It was an economy that seemingly provided jobs for everyone. What's
more those abundant jobs came with wages that were higher than ever,
and rising every year. At the bottom end, workers were much better off
than they would ever be again: The minimum wage in 1966, at $1.25 an
hour, was equivalent of more than $8.00 in today's dollars, far higher
than today's minimum wage of $5.15. By 1966 the typical man in his
thirties was earning as much as his modern equivalent; by the time the
great boom ended, in the early seventies, men would be earning about
14 percent more than they do now. It's true that family incomes
were a bit less than they are today, because fewer women worked and
the gap between women's wages and men's wages was larger. And because
incomes were a bit lower than they are now, middle-class families
lived in smaller houses, were less likely to have two cars, and in
general had a somewhat lower material standard of living than their
counterparts today. Yet the standard of living felt high to most
Americans, both because it was far higher than it had been for the
previous generation, and because a more equal society offered fewer
occasions to feel left out. As MIT economists Frank Levy and Peter
Temin have pointed out, the broad-based rise in income meant that a
blue-collar machine operator earned more, in real terms, than most
managers had earned a generation earlier. As a result more Americans
than ever before considered themselves middle class.
Economic security was also unprecedented. By 1966, 80 percent of
the population had health insurance, up from only 30 percent at the
end of World War II, and by 1970 the fraction of the population with
health insurance surpassed today's 85 percent level. Workers who lost
their jobs despite the low unemployment rate were much more likely to
receive unemployment insurance than laid-off workers are today, and
that insurance covered a larger fraction of their lost wages than does
today's. And as Levy and Temin point out, rising wages across the
board meant that even laid-off workers whose next job paid less than
the one they lost found that within a few years they had recovered
their previous standard of living.
Chapter 6: Movement Conservatism (pp. 101-102):
It's worth looking at early issues of the National Review,
to get a sense of what movement conservatives sounded like before they
learned to speak in code. Today leading figures on the American right
are masters of what the British call "dog-whistle politics": They say
things that appeal to certain groups in a way that only the targeted
groups can hear -- and thereby avoid having the extremism of their
positions become generally obvious. As we'll see later in this
chapter, Ronald Reagan was able to signal sympathy for racism without
ever saying anything overtly racist. As we'll see later in this book,
George W. Bush consistently uses language that sounds at worst
slightly stilted to most Americans, but is fraught with meaning to the
most extreme, end-of-days religious extremists. But in the early days
of the National Review positions were stated more openly.
This is followed by samples favoring segregation and disenfranchisement
of blacks in the South and touting General Franco as "an authentic national
hero."
(p. 107):
Ironically, one problem with being a superpower is that it's hard
to explain to its citizens the limits of that power. Canadians don't
wonder why their government is unable to impose its will on the
world. Americans, however, are all too easily convinced that those who
threaten the nation can simply be eliminated by force -- and that
anyone who urges restraint is weak at best, treasonous at worst.
(p. 121):
It's almost impossible to overstate Nixon's impact on the way
American politics is conducted. Nixon, after all, showed how you could
exploit racial divisions, anxiety about social change, and paranoia
about foreign threats to peel working-class whites away from the New
Deal coalition. He introduced the art of media manipulation: Roger
Ailes, the president of Fox News, was Nixon's media consultant, and is
a central figure in Joe McGinniss's 1969 book The Selling of the
President. Later, Nixon pioneered the media intimidation that so
successfully suppressed dissent for much of the Bush administration,
as well as the tactic of blaming the news media for reporting bad
news.
It was during the Nixon years that the successful execution of
dirty tricks became a passport to advancement in the Republican
Party. In 1970 a young Karl Rove printed fake leaflets advertising
free beer on campaign stationery stolen from a Democratic candidate,
disrupting a campaign rally; the next year Rove dropped out of college
to become the paid executive director of the College Republican
National Committee. Two years later, when Rove ran for chairman of the
College Republicans, he cheated his way to victory -- with the
blessing of the then chairman of the Republican National Committee,
one George H.W. Bush.
Movement conservatives applauded these tactics. What they didn't
like were Nixon's policies. When Rick Perlstein, the author of
Before the Storm, gave a talk (to a group of conservatives)
about the conservative role in the Nixon administration's dirty
tricks, one of the other panelists protested that Nixon hadn't been a
conservative, adding, "I didn't like Nixon until Watergate."
Chapter 7: The Great Divergence (p. 125):
Yet average income -- the total income of the nation,
divided by the number of people -- has gone up substantially since
1973, the last year of the great boom. We are, after all, a much more
productive nation than we were when the boom ended, and hence a richer
nation as well. Think of all the technological advances in our lives
since 1973: personal computers and fax machines, cell phones and
bar-code scanners. Other major productivity-enhancing technologies,
like freight containers that can be lifted directly from ship decks
onto trucks and trains, existed in 1973 but weren't yet in widespread
use. All these changes have greatly increased the amount the average
worker produces in a normal working day, and correspondingly raised
U.S. average income substantially.
He then follows with a lesson on the difference between average
income and median. Average income is up; median isn't (pp. 125-126):
Average income has risen substantially, but that's mainly because a
few people have gotten much, much richer. Median income, depending on
which definition you use, has either risen modestly or actually
declined.
This not just because blue collar workers have taken a hit (p. 136):
For example, the median college-educated man has seen his real
income rise only 17 percent since 1973.
That's because the big gains in income have gone not to a broad
group of well-paid workers but a narrow group of extremely well-paid
people. In general those who receive enormous incomes are also well
educated, but their gains aren't representative of the gains of
educated workers as a whole. CEOs and schoolteachers both typically
have master's degrees, but schoolteachers have seen only modest gains
since 1973, while CEOs have seen their income rise from about thirty
times that of the average worker in 1970 to more than 300 hundred
times as much today.
(p. 163):
The nature of the hold movement conservatism has on the Republican
Party may be summed up very simply: Yes, Virginia, there is a vast
right-wing conspiracy. That is, there is an interlocking set of
institutions ultimately answering to a small group of people that
collectively reward loyalists and punish dissenters. These
institutions provide obedient politicians with the resources to win
elections, safe havens in the event of defeat, and lucrative career
opportunities after they leave office. They guarantee favorable news
coverage to politicians who follow the party line, while harassing and
undermining opponents. And they support a large standing army of party
intellectuals and activists.
Chapter 9: Weapons of Mass Distraction (p. 189):
What's more, movement conservatism and major war efforts don't
mix. Any major military mobilization prompts calls for equal
sacrifice, which means tax increases, a crackdown on perceived
profiteering, and more. Both world wars led to a rise in union
membership, an increase in tax progressivity, and a reduction in
income inequality -- all anathema to conservatives. Much has been
written about the disastrous lack of planning for post-invasion
Iraq. What isn't emphasized enough is that the Bush administration
had to believe that the war could be waged on the cheap,
because a realistic assessment of the war's cost and requirements
would have posed a direct challenge to the administration's
tax-cutting agenda. Add to this the closed-mindedness and
inflexibility that come from the bubble in which movement
conservatives live, the cronyism and corruption inherent in movement
conservative governance, and the Iraq venture was doomed from the
start.
Chapter 10: The New Politics of Equality (pp. 205-206):
Ideally the public will conclude from the debacle that if you want
to win a war, don't hire a movement conservative. Hire a liberal, or
at least an Eisenhower-type Republican. Failure in Iraq may have been
inevitable, but whatever slim chances of success the United States
might have had were dissipated by errors that were inherent to
movement conservatism. In particular the Bush administration's
overoptimism and its attempt to fight a war on the cheap, with minimal
numbers of ground troops, flowed naturally from its commitment to
cutting taxes. A frank admission that war is a risky, expensive
business would have prompted calls for shared sacrifice; remember,
taxes on the rich went up and inequality declined during both world
wars. But the Bush administration planned to use the war to further
its inequality-enhancing domestic agenda. The script called for a
blitzkrieg, a victory parade, and then another round of tax cuts. This
required assuming that everything would be easy, and dismissing
warnings from military experts that it probably wouldn't work out that
way.
Beyond that,t he cronyism that is an essential part of movement
conservatism played a key role in the failure of Iraqi
reconstruction. Key jobs were given to inexperienced partisan
loyalists. Shoddy work by politically connected contractors, like the
construction of a new police training center in which excrement drips
from the ceiling, went unpunished. And outright corruption
flourished. These failures weren't accidental: The systematic use of
political power to hand out favors to partisan allies is part of the
glue holding movement conservatism together. To have run the Iraq War
with efficiency and honesty, the way FDR ran World War II, would have
meant behaving at least a little bit like the New Deal -- and that
would have been anathema to the people in charge.
Chapter 11: The Health Care Imperative (p. 232):
But in the end HMOs failed to deliver sustained savings for one
simple reason: People don't trust them. Patients in Britain's National
Health Service are, on the whole, willing to accept some rationing of
health care because they understand that the national health system
has a limited budget and is run by doctors trying to make the most of
that budget. American HMO members are much less willing to accept
rationing because they know it's driven by accountants who are trying
to maximize a corporate bottom line. Because of this distrust and
dissatisfaction, HMO enrollment as a share of the total peaked in the
mid-1990s, although other, milder forms of managed care continued to
grow. Moreover, a public outcry and congressional hearings have forced
insurers to back away from aggressive attempts to hold down costs. As
a result U.S. medical costs are once again rising rapidly, and
employer-based insurance is again in decline.
(pp. 242-243):
The principal reason to reform American health care is simply that
it would improve the quality of life for most Americans. Under our
current system tens of millions lack adequate health care, millions
more have had their lives destroyed by the financial burden of medical
costs, and many more who haven't yet gone without insurance or been
bankrupted by health costs live in fear that they may be next. And
it's all unnecessary: Every other wealthy country has universal
coverage. Reducing the risks Americans face would be worth it even if
it had a substantial cost -- but in this case there would be no cost
at all. Universal health care would be cheaper and better than our
current fragmented system.
There is, however, another important reason for health care
reform. It's the same reason movement conservatives were so anxious to
kill Clinton's plan. That plan's success, said Kristol, "would signal
the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy" -- by which he really
meant that universal health care would give new life to the New Deal
idea that society should help its less fortunate members. Indeed it
would -- and that's a big argument in its favor.
Chapter 12: Confronting Inequality (p. 247):
Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School expert in bankruptcy, and
Amelia Warren Tyagi, a business consultant, have studied the rise of
bankruptcy in the United States. By 2005, just before a new law making
it much harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy took effect, the
number of families filing for bankruptcy each year was five times its
level in the early 1980s. The proximate reason for this surge in
bankruptcies was that families were taking on more debt -- and this
led to moralistic pronouncements about people spending too much on
luxuries they can't afford. What Warren and Tyagi found, however, was
that middle-class families were actually spending less on
luxuries than they had in the 1970s. Instead the rise in debt mainly
reflected increased spending on housing, largely driven by competition
to get into good school districts. Middle-class Americans have been
caught up in a rat race not because they're greedy or foolish but
because they're trying to give their children a chance in an
increasingly unequal society. And they're right to be worried: A bad
start can ruin a child's chances for life.
Chapter 13: The Conscience of a Liberal (p. 265):
One of the seeming paradoxes of America in the early twenty-first
century is that those of us who call ourselves liberal are, in an
important sense, conservative, while those who call themselves
conservative are for the most part deeply radical. Liberals want to
restore the middle-class society I grew up in; those who call
themselves conservative want to take us back to the Gilded Age,
undoing a century of history. Liberals defend longstanding
institutions like Social Security and Medicare; those who call
themselves conservative want to privatize or undermine those
institutions. Liberals want to honor our democratic principles and the
rule of law; those who call themselves conservative want the president
to have dictatorial powers and have applauded the Bush administration
as it imprisons people without charges and subjects them to
torture.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Music: Current count 13787 [13753] rated (+34), 829 [812] unrated (+17).
November's Recycled Goods is done and finally up. Did a lot of jazz
prospecting this week, but the backlog has grown even faster. Moreover,
now I'm picking up downloads from Rhapsody as well as Universal's MPE
system. I'm noting both sources in these notes, not least because they
don't come with complete packing info, or for that matter even booklet
text (a major shortcoming, especially for MPE). The process encourages
me to make snap judgments, often on only one listen. Some of these
will no doubt eventually be seen as premature, but that strikes me
as a necessary risk. It also eliminates any subliminal sympathy I
might feel for the publicist taking the time and money to send me
product, so maybe it will help me sharpen my grades. The problem,
of course, is that no matter how much the resource base expands, I
only have so much time -- and I'm really swamped these days.
- Animal Collective: Strawberry Jam (2007, Domino):
Rock group, have a following, get a lot of good press, but I've
never managed to catch up with them before. Seemed like a good
thing to stream off Rhapsody (certainly beats paying cash). The
problem is that it's a tough album (and most likely group) to
get a handle on. First three songs just struck me as perverse,
but I started to get into the bang-bang-bang groove of the
longish "For Reverend Green," then I found other appealing
bits in what followed. Not a lot, and I still find them weird,
unsettling, and unpleasant. It's possible that further play
would kick it into place, or more likely kick it out of the
house. Grade is more of a swag than a considered opinion.
[Rhapsody download]
B+(*)
- Ani DiFranco: Reprieve (2006, Righteous Babe):
Aside from the live double, the best album she's come up with since
1999 (Up Up Up Up Up) or maybe even 1998 (Little Plastic
Castle): the music is slippery as has been the case of late
but the lyrics are sharper, or should I say the politics? She's
past the personal-is-political stage -- has something of a normal
although certainly unusual life -- but history is goddamn political
these days, and at least she's fighting back. Power to her.
B+(***)
- Stacey Kent: Let Yourself Go: Celebrating Fred Astaire
(1999 [2000], Candid): The basic good taste and elegance that seems to
characterize all of her work. Astaire's songs were written by Gershwins,
Berlin, Kern, etc. They are utterly dependable.
B+
- Diana Krall: The Look of Love (2001, Verve):
The strings of Claus Ogerman's orchestra are no more disconcerting
than a warm bath -- they fluff up the background without ever taking
over, rendering them harmless even if uninteresting. There are
reputable jazz musicians on this album, but they are inconspicuous.
Krall's piano is also insignificant. The music's effect is almost
sensory deprivation, leaving all focus on Krall's vocal mannerisms.
Given the right song, she's irresistible, and that happens more
often than not. "Cry Me a River," of course. "S'Wonderful," "Besame
Mucho," "Love Letters," etc.
B+(**)
- Van Morrison: At the Movies: Soundtrack Hits
(1964-95 [2007], Exile): Staggeringly brilliant, of course, but
still a useless compilation, with signs of the common best-ofs
like the two canonical Them songs, but with four live shots --
the only one not available better packaged elsewhere is a Roger
Waters duet on "Comfortably Numb"; lacks even the filmographies
that supposedly justify the inclusions.
B
- Van Morrison: Still on Top: The Greatest Hits
(1964-2005 [2007], Hip-O): Staggeringly brilliant, of course; if
you really want him reduced to a single disc -- say, to start an
argument over who's the greatest singer in all of rock history --
this is as good as Polydor's 1990 The Best of Van Morrison
and sustained through another 15 years; nothing less than awesome
until 14 tracks in, and nothing to complain about after that; of
course, one could carp about dozens of tracks they missed.
A+
- Robert Plant/Alison Krauss: Raising Sand (2007,
Rounder): T-Bone Burnett produced, which seems as significant as
anything else -- it certainly has more to do with the musical feel
as either of the name artists, who are present for the mesh of
their voices. (Krauss' fiddle is rarely present, rarely typical
when it is.) Odd mix of songs, only a few (e.g., "Fortune Teller")
all that familiar. [Rhapsody download]
B+(*)
- Elvis Presley: The Country Side of Elvis (1954-76
[2001], RCA, 2CD): In the end, Presley was Middle America, more
Las Vegas than Nashville, but hallowed on country radio, remembered
less for singing black than for being a white boy. This themed
collection -- slicing up and repackaging Elvis is a neverending
cottage industry -- offers two surprises. The first is how spotty
the early years were, where country songs were picked to rock out,
just like everything else. The second is how sublime his 1970s
cuts were, even with dross arrangements of crappy strings. He
had turned into an interpretive singer, and Nashville gave him
just the depth of substance he needed to work with. But that he
could hold his own on songs as definitively owned by others as
"Funny How Time Slips Away" and "She Thinks I Still Care" only
proves how great a crooner he became. The repackagers would be
well advised to refine the second disc here into a single.
B+(***)
- Dwight Yoakam: Dwight Sings Buck (2007, New West):
Of course, you could just listen to Buck Owens, whose lighter, less
pained voice gave songs like "Act Naturally" an offhandedness that
Yoakam doesn't have. On the other hand, the extra muscle does do
something for the ballads. In any case, this sounds too classic to
nitpick. [Rhapsody download]
B+(**)
Jazz Prospecting (CG #15, Part 7)
On the one hand, quite a bit of jazz prospecting follows. On the
other, it has made virtually no dent in the backlog. It's also the
case that I haven't moved from prospecting mode to trying to wrap
the next column up. That's at least another week away, given that
this coming week looks like it's going to be difficult and full of
distractions. I also want to make sure I get the Miles Davis and
Allen Lowe boxes into December's Recycled Goods, and I still have
a lot of listening to do on both.
A couple of technical things are worth noting. One is that I've
disabled Flash on my computer. I've been running into viral Flash
advertisements, particularly from AMG, which put my browser into a
state where all I can do is kill it. Flash has rarely been antyhing
but an annoyance, so I don't miss it, but unfortunately a lot of
musicians have websites built with it. Those websites are going to
be impossible to access, and that will make it harder to gather the
information that goes into these notes. (On the other hand, there
is some positive correlation between the amount of Flash and the
inutility of the information buried in it, so maybe the loss won't
be that great.) I've also started to listen to and in some cases
review -- more cursorily than usual, I'm afraid -- download music
from MPE and Rhapsody. The former is a poor substitute for the real
thing, but I've used it to fill out some Recycled Goods reviews --
e.g., UMe sent me the Johnny Cash live album in this month's RG but
not the Legend best-of, so I reviewed the latter from MPE.
The amount of stuff Universal puts into MPE is fairly small, but
Rhapsody promises to be a way to check out things I'm not getting
normally. Thus far I've only streamed things for curiosity, like
the recent Animal Collective. But I imagine that it will prove
useful here, especially for some of those big label records that
suspiciously never arrive here. I still haven't gotten into any
of the download-only releases, like Ayler has been pushing. (In
fact, after playing three records from Rhapsody, I haven't gotten
back to it in 4-5 days, the shelves taking priority.) When I do
review something from a download source, I'll note that like I do
with advances.
The Dynamic Les DeMerle Band: Cookin' at the Corner, Vol.
2 (2005 [2007], Origin): Drummer, sings swing tunes and jump
blues in a voice that brings Louis Prima to mind, especially when
he turns the microphone over to his straighter half, wife Bonnie
Eisele. But the analogy held up better on Vol. 1, where he
uncorked a funny story called "Bennie's From Heaven"; nothing here
comes close.
B+(*)
Kim Richmond Ensemble: Live at Café Metropol (2006-07
[2007], Origin): Alto/soprano saxophonist, based in Los Angeles, with
eight albums since 1988, three in a group co-led by Clay Jenkins, plus
several dozen side appearances, especially with Bob Florence's big
band. This group is a sextet, with three horns (John Daversa trumpet,
Joey Sellers trombone), piano, bass, and drums. The horns mesh very
cleanly, and Daversa is consistently impressive with his leads. One
thing this shows is that it's possible to do sophisticated postbop
without falling into the traps that seem to snag especially those
just out of college. So in many ways this is masterful -- although
not quite enough to shatter my resistance.
B+(**)
Ben Paterson Trio: Breathing Space (2007, OA2):
Chicago pianist. Website bio provides no useful info, unless you're
impressed that he recently played two months in a Taipei jazz club.
Presumably his first album. Trio includes Jake Vinsel on bass, Jon
Deitemyer on drums, both also unknown to me. Straight mainstream
player. Wrote two of nine pieces, the others mostly bop era, none
too obvious. Good touch, good taste, pleasing, respectable.
B+(**)
Deep Blue Organ Trio: Folk Music (2007, Origin):
Chicago group, with Chris Foreman on organ, Bobby Broom on guitar,
Greg Rockingham on drums. Third album; first two on Delmark. No
idea where the title comes from. Nothing here suggests anything
I can recognize as folk music: most of the pieces come out of
hard bop, with songs from the Beatles and Ohio Players slightly
more recent. Foreman doesn't strike me as a particularly imposing
organ player. He tends to pad out the groove rather than drive
it, letting Broom's guitar set the pace and direction.
B
Doug Beavers Rovira Jazz Orchestra: Jazz, Baby!
(2006 [2007], Origin): Or just Doug Beavers. Bio is very hard to
parse, and I have no idea what his discography looks like -- his
website has a long list of pieces and arrangements but it isn't
clear how they map to records, or if they do. Has worked with or
for Eddie Palmieri and Conrad Herwig -- salsa arrangements seem
to be a specialty -- and maybe Rosemary Clooney and/or Mingus Big
Band. Plays trombone, but employs five other trombonists, crediting
himself with one solo. First album, I guess. Concept is to take old
children's songs -- e.g., "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Shortnin'
Bread," "Comin' Round the Mountain," "Hush Little Baby," "Workin'
on the Railroad" -- and punch them up with 1950s-style big band
arrangements. Matt Catingub and Linda Harmon sing. I figure it
for a novelty and wonder how well it will wear, but it's a lot
of fun first time through.
[B+(***)]
Upper Left Trio: Three (2007, Origin): Third
album. Three players: Clay Giberson on piano, Jeff Leonard on
bass, Charlie Doggett on drums. All three contribute songs, with
Giberson enjoying a slight plurality. Group based in Portland,
I think. Giberson has three previous albums under his own name,
all on Origin. An early review, posted on their website, tries
to triangulate them: "Bad Plus wannabe"; "midpoint between the
Oscar Peterson Trio and Medeski, Martin, and Wood"; Giberson
"crosses Horace Tapscott with Tommy Flanagan." I don't hear any
of that, but I'm hard pressed to peg them.
B+(*)
Cyrus Chestnut: Cyrus Plays Elvis (2007, Koch):
Presley, of course. Well, why not? It's not like he's been doing
much of interest lately -- 1993's Revelation was the last
time he showed anything to get excited about. It's certainly a
lot more promising than another trip to church -- although he
couldn't resist ending with "How Great Thou Art" (and it comes
off nicely). Ballads like "Love Me Tender" always sound good,
and the upbeat ones remind you that Chestnut could boogie when
he wants to. But I have to wonder, why break the piano trio
continuity by adding Mark Gross sax on two cuts? That sort of
thing happens a lot when angling for a radio cut, which isn't
impossible here, but I find it disruptive.
B+(*)
Paul Bollenback: Invocation (2007, Elefant Dreams):
Four extra names on front cover, but nothing inside provides credits.
The names are Randy Brecker, Ed Howard, Victor Lewis, and Chris
McNulty, which presumably means trumpet, bass, drums, and vocals,
respectively. Guitarist. Originally from Illinois, but spent some
eye-opening years in New Delhi as a teenager. Currently based in
New York. Seven albums, starting 1995. Likes nylon strings. Don't
know what he's using here, but he gets a soft, silk sound that is
quite attractive. The trumpet is a nice, but somewhat rare, touch.
I don't care for the scat at all, but the final cut, Coltrane's
"After the Rain," holds together so nicely maybe I should give
it another play.
[B]
The New Percussion Group of Amsterdam: Go Between
(1986 [2007], Summerfold): A/k/a Nieuwe Slagwerkgroep Amsterdam,
founded in 1980 by Jan Pustjens and Niels Le Large. The roster
varies somewhat among the four pieces, including: Johan Faber,
Toon Oomen, Peter Prommel, Herman Rieken, Steef Van Oosterhout,
and Ruud Wiener. English prog/fusion drummer Bill Bruford and
Japanese marimba player Keiko Abe also appear on the cover and
on one piece each. The album originally appeared on EG Records
in 1987, and is now reissued on Bruford's label. It reminds me
a bit of the percussion ensembles Max Roach and Art Blakey tried
to put together c. 1960, but it's much more worldwise, especially
cognizant of Japanese percussion. The emphasis on marimba and
related instruments is also appealing.
B+(***)
Todd Isler: Soul Drums (2006-07 [2007], Takadimi
Tunes): Drummer, percussionist, seems to have special interests
in Indian and African percussion, evidently based in New York. This
is second or third album. Claims to have appeared on hundreds of
albums. AMG counts 16. Has a book called You Can Ta Ka Di Mi
This. Songs include various saxophonists, pianists, bassists.
Sandwiched between are short percussion-only pieces. Covers two
songs: Stevie Wonder's "Bird of Beauty" and Joe Zawinul's "Badia" --
the latter the closer, breaking the pattern with a guitar duo. The
song pieces are very nice. The interludes break up the sweetness.
B+(**)
Tim Collins: Valcour (2005 [2007], Arabesque):
Plays vibes; also (not here but not unrelated) piano and drums.
AMG lists four albums, starting in 2003, but his website describes
this as his first album as a leader. Group includes alto sax (Matt
Blostein), trumpet (Ingrid Jensen), piano (Aaron Parks), bass and
drums. That's a lot of options, letting them navigate some tricky
postbop. Sounds fine, but none of it sticks with me.
B
Brent Jensen: One More Mile (2006 [2007], Origin):
Saxophonist, plays soprano here but his main instrument is probably
alto. Website banner touts LA Jazz Bands, but Jensen seems to have
started in Idaho ("In 1986-87, Brent studied in New York City with
jazz legend Lee Konitz on a grant from the Idaho Commission on the
Arts") and wound up there ("Brent Jensen is currently Director of
Jazz Studies and Woodwinds at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin
Falls"). I have relatives in Twin (as they call it), and thought a
bit about moving there once -- seems like a nice place to retreat
to when all hell breaks loose. The other band members get their
names on the front cover: Bill Anschell (piano), Jeff Johnson
(bass), John Bishop (drums). They're strictly Seattle, for all
purposes the label's house band, slightly left of mainstream,
first rate players all. Johnson and Anschell contribute songs,
and Anschell arranges a couple of oldies; Jensen's only writing
credit is shared with Johnson and Bishop. So maybe this should
be viewed as a group effort, but it's Jensen's clear, measured
tone that gives it voice. Jensen's previous Trios was an
HM. We'll see if this one rises higher.
[B+(***)]
Richard Cole: Shade (2000-07 [2007], Origin):
Saxophonist, tenor first, soprano an afterthought, based in
Seattle. Third album. Name reminds one of alto saxophonist
d Richie Cole, but they have little in common. This album was
put together with tracks from three sessions: one from 2000,
three from 2005, four more from 2007. Randy Brecker gets a
"featuring" credit for the first two. The oldest track, "A
Shade of Joe," is by far the most impressive -- dedicated to
Henderson, Cole rises to the challenge. Becker has good spots
on the 2005 tracks. The 2007 tracks feature the Bill Anschell,
Jeff Johnson, John Bishop rhythm section, but Cole seems
diminished, and the overall effort is rather scattered.
B
The Cool Season: An Origin Records Holiday Collection,
Vol. 2 (2007, Origin): I really wish publicists would
just stop sending me Xmas music. I'm not interested in it. I
can't resell it (or anything else; oh, for the days when this
town still had record stores). I don't have space to shelve
it, even on the dregs shelf in the basement. I can't remember
ever liking it, even when Xmas still excited me. And my views
got more jaundiced when I read that Xmas music outsells jazz,
even though at least there are at least 10 times as many jazz
records released each year. I suppose the flip side of that
equation is that jazz labels, having to pay the bills to put
out the underappreciated music they exist for, should get in
on a bit of the Xmas action. That's all this really is. No
artists put their names on the covers here, but the whole
thing is done by the same quartet, featuring Origin's usual
rhythm section -- Bill Anschell, Jeff Johnson, John Bishop --
with Thomas Marriott on trumpet/flugelhorn. It's utterly
inconsequential, and pretty close to inoffensive. If for
some reason, like you own a retail business, you feel obliged
to play the stuff, this is an investment that will spare a
lot of people a lot of grief.
B-
Mörglbl: Grötesk (1999-2006 [2007], The Laser's
Edge): French fusion group, a trio consisting of Christophe Godin
(guitar), Ivan Rougny (bass), Jean Pierre Frelezeau (drums). Third
album, including one released in 1997 as Ze Mörglbl Trio. No idea
what the name and/or title mean, but it reminds me of a French
rock group from the 1970s named Magma that invented their own
language to sing in. All three are credited with vocals, but
they've managed to keep them discreet enough I didn't notice.
One song from 1999; the rest from two sessions in 2006. Fairly
innocuous fusion, dependable beat, one slow one has a sweet
tone and feel. There's probably a whole minor genre/cult for
what they do, especially in Europe, where instrumental rock was
a common response to the English language problem (damned if
you do, especially if you wind up sounding like Abba; damned
if you don't). Filed them under Pop Jazz, where they kick ass.
B+(*)
Poncho Sanchez: Raise Your Hand (2007, Concord
Picante): Conga player, from Laredo TX, seems to have inherited
Ray Barretto's lock on the percussionist category in Downbeat's
Critics Poll. Long list of albums, but this is only the second
I've heard. I can't see much point to it. The first and last
cuts are Memphis soul with Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, and
Eddie Floyd singing. Two in the middle feature Maceo Parker:
"Maceo's House" and "Shotgun." The congas do little for any of
those covers. Two more guest vocals go to Andy Montañez and
José "Perico" Hernández. They don't stick with me either, but
at least they don't have memories to compete with.
B
Charlie Hunter Trio: Mistico (2007, Fantasy):
Guitarist, currently plays a custom-built 7-string guitar cut
down from an 8-string. Has recorded prolifically since 1993,
including several albums with Bobby Previte as Groundtruther
and Stanton Moore and Skerik as Garage a Trois -- including
one in my replay queue. This seems about par. He is at the
center of a cluster of fusion musicians that combine loping
rhythms, funk, and electronics in interesting ways.
[B+(**)]
Kurt Elling: Nightmoves (2007, Concord): Widely
touted as the top male vocalist in jazz, a highly problematic
category. I've only listened to him rarely, more often than not
with much displeasure. This may reverse the ratio -- his "Undun"
swings fine -- but "A New Body and Soul" brings out all the usual
annoyances: the awkward forced word-fit of vocalese, the hipster
posturing, the fact that his voice doesn't have a crooner's reach.
Need to play it again and see which way it falls.
[B]
Jane Monheit: Surrender (2007, Concord): Didn't
bother asking for this, so I can't complain that they only sent
me an advance with no credits or hype sheet. Three songs credit
guests: two in Portuguese cite Ivan Lins and Toots Thielemans;
the third, "So Many Stars," was done with Sergio Mendes. She's
30 this month, with six albums going back to 2000. This one
debuted at #1 on Billboard's Jazz Chart, not that that gives
her any jazz cred. She has a striking soprano voice, capable
of precisely detailed innuendo. The music, on the other hand,
is swathed if not drowned in strings; given how stiff the
Yankee stuff is, the tinkly Brazilian percussion is almost
daring. Best song is the Jobim without the guests, "Só Tinha
De Ser Com Você." Runner up is "Moon River," which is buried
in goop and doesn't mind.
B- [advance]
Curtis Stigers: Real Emotional (2007, Concord):
Singer, originally from Idaho, moved to New York before he started
recording in 1991. Don't know his early work -- only heard one
unremarkable album from 2005. Didn't ask for this one either, but
it's good they sent it. Don't know whether he has much of a style,
but this makes a case for him in the Mose Allison school, at least
on Allison's "Your Mind Is on Vacation" -- tunes by other singers
who, by jazz standards at least, trend in that direction, follow
their models more closely (Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Stephin Merritt,
Bob Dylan). Larry Goldings co-produced, plays lots of keybs --
organ and piano are most prominent -- as well as accordion and
vibes. Four songs are just Stigers and Goldings, and the latter
proves to be a tasteful accompanist. The band pieces are similarly
loose, with John Sneider's trumpet a nice touch.
B+(*)
Christian Scott: Anthem (2007, Concord): New Orleans
trumpet player. Young -- don't have a birthdate, but website claims
he's 22, Wikipedia says he graduated from Berklee in 2004, something
doesn't add up. Nephew of alto saxophonist Donald Harrison. Second
album. First one came out last year in a cluster with pianist Taylor
Eigsti and singer Erin Boheme which tempted me to label them the Mod
Squad. Scott had the most talent then, and he has more now, but first
pass through I don't care for this record at all. Seems to me like
he's invented the jazz analogue to heavy metal. Aside for "Like That"
near the end, the music here is all heavy sludge: loud drums, immobile
bass, keyb gumbo. The only saving grace is that it provides deadened
surfaces to scratch with his trumpet or cornet or soprano trombone or
flugelhorn. Part of this may be explained by his Katrina theme, which
may have brought sludge and waste and decay to mind. Still, I should
hold this back for another play. "Like That" lightens up and is rather
pleasant. And the closing, "post diluvial" version of the title track,
features a biting tirade from Brother J of X-Clan. He's reaching, and
my initial distaste may not be the final word.
[B-]
The Engines (2006 [2007] Okka Disk): Jeb Bishop
(trombone), Dave Rempis (alto/tenor/baritone sax), Nate McBride
(bass), Tim Daisy (drums); i.e., the Vandermark 5 minus Vandermark
with a switch at bass -- lately, McBride has been appearing on more
Vandermark albums than Kent Kessler anyway. Sounded real promising:
I haven't heard most of the recent work by Rempis and Daisy, but
their two Triage albums were super, and Bishop's departure from
the V5 signalled an interest in developing his own work. Results
are, well, mixed, with pieces from all four showing their distinct
talents but not jelling into anything coherent. Daisy continues to
impress -- I particularly like the spots where the band lays back
and lets him work out. Rempis tends to squawk, for better and
sometimes for worse. Bishop paints dark, dirty swathes of sound.
I'd be more impressed if I had lower expectations.
B+(**)
Territory Band-6 With Fred Anderson: Collide
(2006 [2007], Okka Disk): Ken Vandermark's big band, originally
formed to spend some of his MacArthur Genius Grant money. Original
concept seems to have had something to do with the 1930s territory
bands, but it's always been hard to hear that in the records. Now,
in his liner notes Vandermark explains that his original idea was
centered around Fred Anderson, and that he got distracted when he
couldn't schedule Hamid Drake for the first session and wound up
using Paul Lytton instead, which led to a transatlantic meeting of
the avant-gardes, which led to the first five Territory Bands. This
isn't far removed: Lytton is still on board, as are the usuals from
Europe: Axel Doerner (trumpet), Per-Åke Holmlander (tuba), Lasse
Marhaug (electronics), Paal Nilssen-Love (drums), Fredrik Ljungkvist
(baritone/tenor sax), and newcomer David Stackenäs (guitar). In fact,
they outnumber the Chicago crew: Anderson, Vandermark, Jim Baker
(piano), Dave Rempis (alto/tenor sax), Kent Kessler (bass), Fred
Lonberg-Holm (cello). That makes for a big, sprawling group, and
it's hard to keep it all straight. In particular, I can't disentangle
the saxes -- Vandermark, Rempis, and Ljungkvist compete with Anderson
at tenor, although each plays a second instrument as well. And tenor
sax isn't all that prominently featured here, even if it produces
most of the wind in the occasional squalls. Marhaug's electronics
have gotten to where they register as integral to the music, and
Doerner's trumpet stands out. The five-part piece hold together
nicely, and Anderson gets his props at the end.
B+(***)
Baker Hunt Sandstrom Williams: Extraordinary Popular
Delusions (2005 [2007], Okka Disk): Album cover just gives
last names. The details are: Jim Baker (piano), Steve Hunt (drums,
percussion), Brian Sandstrom (bass, electric guitar), Mars Williams
(various saxes). Order is alphabetical, with all pieces jointly
credited. Needless to say, Williams makes the most noise, and he
makes an awful lot of it. I find that noise oddly exhilarating --
maybe I'm relieved to hear Williams back in form after all these
years trying to make a living out of acid jazz? Baker emerges in
the quieter spots. Over the last decade or so, he's sort of been
the Chicago avant-garde's go-to pianist, but they don't go to
pianists very often. Some interesting odds and ends, too.
B+(*)
Mr. Groove: Little Things (2007, DiamondDisc):
Contemporary jazz group: their words, I've never been sure what
they mean by that, and find the practical distinctions between
Billboard's Jazz and Contemporary Jazz charts to be impossible
to discern, probably just a branding issue. Formed sometime in
the 1990s by brothers Tim Smith (electric bass) and Roddy Smith
(guitars), currently at six with two keybs (Mark Stallings and
Steve Willets), sax (Tim Gordon), and drums (Donnie Marshall).
Also numerous guests, including original drummer Tony Creasman
on the majority of tracks. Four vocal tracks: one by Willets,
the other three by guests (Tim Cashion, Daryl Johnson, Ron
Kimball). Record ends with two "radio edits" of vocal pieces.
Band has also worked with Bonnie Bramlett and the late Boots
Randolph. They groove agreeably, and have fun with "Papa Was
a Rolling Stone," but the guests and programming suggests that
even under their own name the can't help being a backup band.
B-
Gary Foster/Putter Smith: Perfect Circularity
(2006 [2007], AJI): AJI stands for American Jazz Institute. Foster
is credited with woodwinds. Two booklet photos show him playing
alto sax, a third a flute. Lee Konitz wrote a note also mentioning
tenor sax. Foster was close to 70 when this was recorded. He came
out of Kansas a little too late for the west coast cool boom of
the 1950s, but he does have a connection to Warne Marsh and Konitz.
He cut three albums in the 1960s, little more under his own name,
but he has a substantial number of credits, including an acclaimed
record in Concord's Duo Series that Alan Broadbent got top
billing for. Smith is a bassist, five years younger. His credit
list is much shorter, conspicuously including a half-dozen albums
with Broadbent. This is a duo, with the usual limits but nicely
done, with both players holding interest in their solos as well
as their interplay.
B+(**)
Michael Blake Sextet: Amor de Cosmos (2005 [2007],
Songlines): Saxophonist, born Montreal 1964, moved to Vancouver, then
to New York, where he played in the Lounge Lizards. Here he's on a
Canadian label with an all-Canadian band, playing tenor and soprano,
in a sextet that includes Brad Turner (trumpet), Sal Ferreras (marimba),
Chris Gestrin (piano), André Lachance (bass), and Dylan van der Schyff
(drums). Played this twice. Like many parts, but can't get a grip on
the whole, and wonder whether it's worth trying to figure out.
B+(*)
Slow Poke: At Home (1998 [2007], Palmetto): This is
a 1998 album with Michael Blake (sax, keyb), David Tronzo (slide and
baritone guitar), Tony Scherr (electric and acoustic bass, guitar),
and Kenny Wollesen (drums and percussion). The original release label
was Baby Tank. This release is remixed with two additional cuts. The
press release describes this as Palmetto's "first digital only release."
It's not clear what that means. Palmetto's website offers something
for $10.99 and an MP3 version for $6.99, but it's not in Palmetto's
normal distribution. My copy is a promo in a jewel box with one-sheet,
one-sided inserts. Anyhow, we'll pretend this is a real release. The
interesting point would be Tronzo's slide guitar, which manages to
stay well outside any jazz guitar idiom I can think of -- sometimes
even sounds Hawaiian.
[B+(**)]
And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.
Mushroom With Eddie Gale: Joint Happening (2007,
Hyena): It's probably misleading to start with Gale, given that any
lead trumpet in a fusion context is going to evoke Miles Davis. The
rhythm is different, less funk, more spaciness. My impression is
that Mushroom doesn't have a single aesthetic; rather, they draw
from multiple sources, definitely including Anglo prog-rock à la
Gong. AMG also suggests kraut rock, but that's harder to detect;
in honor of Gale most likely they did bone up on Miles Davis. It's
hard to say whether the spaciness is a good idea. Other '70s fusion
bands did go in that direction, usually far less successfully than
here.
B+(**)
Alison Faith Levy & Mushroom: Yesterday, I Saw You
Kissing Tiny Flowers (2002-05 [2007], 4Zero): See what I
mean about Mushroom: this seems like a throwback to San Francisco
in the late '60s for no better reason than that Levy does a fairly
decent Grace Slick impression -- except in presence, since she
never really takes control of the album. That gives it a certain
anonymous quality. But while the evoke Jefferson Airplane, they
do so with more flexibility and wit. And their polymorphuousness
continues unabated and unapologetic. Inspirational title: "Kraut
Mask Replica."
B+(**)
Unpacking:
- Chris Barber: Can't Stop Now (European Tour 2007) (MVD Audio)
- Count Basie: Basie at Birdland (1961, Roulette Jazz)
- Sathima Bea Benjamin: A Morning in Paris (1963, Ekapa)
- Terence Blanchard: A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) (Blue Note)
- Carla Bley: The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu (Watt)
- Paul Bley: Solo in Mondsee (ECM)
- Ruby Braff and the Flying Pizzarellis: C'est Magnifique! (Arbors)
- Vashti Bunyan: Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind (1964-67, Fat Cat): advance, Nov. 13
- Paul Chambers: Bass on Top (1957, Blue Note)
- Vidal Colmenares: . . . Otro Llano (Cacao Musica)
- Walter Davis Jr.: Davis Cup (1959, Blue Note)
- Dion: Son of Skip James (Verve Forecast)
- Lou Donaldson: Gravy Train (1961, Blue Note)
- Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters: Hope Radio (Stony Plain)
- Something for You: Eliane Elias Sings & Plays Bill Evans (Blue Note): advance, Jan. 15
- Éthiopiques 23: Orchestra Ethiopia (1963-75, Buda Musique)
- Bobby Few: Lights and Shadows (Boxholder)
- Fond of Tigers: Release the Saviours (Drip Audio)
- Bobby Gordon: Plays Joe Marsala: Lower Register (Arbors)
- Grant Green: The Latin Bit (1961, Blue Note)
- Frode Haltli: Passing Images (ECM)
- Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez: Italuba II (Cacao Musica)
- The Inhabitants: The Furniture Moves Underneath (Drip Audio)
- The Jack and Jim Show Presents: Hearing Is Believing (Boxholder)
- Thad Jones: The Magnificent Thad Jones (1956, Blue Note)
- Manu Katché: Playground (ECM)
- Bennie Maupin: The Jewel and the Lotus (1974, ECM)
- Lee Morgan: Indeed! (1956, Blue Note)
- Lee Morgan: Volume 2: Sextet (1956, Blue Note)
- Lee Morgan: Volume 3 (1957, Blue Note)
- Lee Morgan: Candy (1957, Blue Note)
- Alfredo Naranjo: Y El Guajeo (Cacao Musica)
- Out to Lunch: Excuse Me While I Do the Boogaloo (Accurate): Jan. 8
- John Phillips: Jack of Diamonds (1972-73, Varèse Sarabande)
- Ike Quebec: Bossa Nova Soul Samba (1962, Blue Note)
- Jose Luis "Changuito" Quintana: Telegrafía Sin Hilo (Cacao Musica)
- Dewey Redman Quartet: The Struggle Continues (1982, ECM)
- Matana Roberts Quartet: The Chicago Project (Central Control): advance, no release date given
- Santos Viejos: Pop Aut (2007, Cacao Musica)
- Judee Sill: Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972-1973 (1972-73, Water)
- John Surman: The Space in Between (ECM)
- Baby Face Willette: Face to Face (1961, Blue Note)
- Tony Wilson 6Tet: Pearls Before Swine (Drip Audio)
- Wilson/Lee/Bentley: Escondido Dreams (Drip Audio)
- ZMF Trio: Circle the Path (Drip Audio)
Recycled Goods #49: November 2007
Recycled Goods #49, November 2007, has been posted at
Static
Multimedia. Static has a new layout, and for once I rather like the
way it looks. When I did the first column, they tacked on a featured
album cover as an illustration. The Village Voice had long done that
with Robert Christgau's Consumer Guides, so I immediately thought that
the cover illustration should be the Pick Hit. Somewhere along the line
I decided that two would be better, and that worked for a couple of
months, until laziness or technical simplemindedness got in the way.
I've never done much illustrating in my website, but started adding
cover scans to my archive versions, in part to make up for the lack
at Static. Then I started attaching the covers when I submitted my
piece -- first to avoid a bit of possible confusion, then I found
that it helped get the posts up faster. Anyhow, this is the first
month where both cover scans appear with the column, and it looks
good.
One thing to note is that the Pick Hits aren't necessarily the
top-rated records. The Billie Holiday box is in longbox (double
high) format, which wouldn't have worked for the layout -- not
that I knew this layout was coming. And there are a couple more
A+ records in the Briefly Noted. I think I did reach down there
once for a Pick Hit, but I almost always stick with the first
section. I've picked boxes a couple of times in the past -- my
own pages stack the two album covers, so that works reasonably
well -- but given this layout I'll try to stick with singles,
at least as long as it lasts.
The cumulative album count is up to 2052.
Here's the publicists letter:
Recycled Goods #49, November 2007, is up at Static Multimedia:
link
Sorry this notice is late. The column has been up since Monday. Static
has a nice new page layout, which makes it possible to feature two album
covers.
45 records. Index by label:
AUM Fidelity: David S Ware
Concord (Heads Up): Oliver Mtukudzi
18th & Vine: Gino Sitson
ESP-Disk: Don Cherry
High Note: Etta Jones/Houston Person
IASO: Puerto Plata
Putumayo World Music/Cumbancha: World Hits, Habib Koité (2)
Righteous Babe: Ani DiFranco
Shout! Factory: Kinky Friedman
Sony/BMG (Columbia): Patti Smith
Sony/BMG (Legacy): Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, The War (5), Catch and
Release, Isley Brothers, Trans Formers
Sunnyside (Circular Moves): Senti Toy
Sustain: Why the Hell Not
Time/Life: Hightone Anthology
Universal: Bo Diddley (3), Howlin' Wolf (4), Johnny Cash (2), Garbage (2),
Jimi Hendrix, Isley Brothers, Elton John
WEA (Rhino): Songs That Got Us Through WWII (2)
This is the 49th monthly column. Thus far I've covered a total of 2052
albums in Recycled Goods.
Thanks again for your support.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Weekly Roundup
Fell behind this week, so don't have much to report here. One reason
is that I've been battling a Flash bug that forces me to kill off whatever
I've managed to accumulate in my browser tabs, or sometimes just kills
the browser on its own. I've wound up disabling Flash, which is something
of an improvement -- would be even better if the browser didn't keep
asking me if I'd like to install Flash so it can cripple my system again.
Another reason is that I've already spun off something on Pakistan, of
which there's bound to be more and more. I also haven't gotten around
to following up on things I noticed. For instance, the New York Times
has a big article today [Sunday] on a multi-billion-dollar satellite
boondoggle -- not a big surprise, maybe not a surprise at all, but huge
enough to take note of. This weekly installment has been struggling of
late -- well, I've been struggling of late, taking it with me. Don't
know whether it's worth continuing, but as long as it keeps coming up
non-empty I guess I might as well.
Francis Davis: A Composer Ascendant. That would be Maria Schneider,
whose new Sky Blue has Davis reaching not only to Gil Evans but
to Duke Ellington for analogues. It's not so much that I disagree --
there's not much I do disagree with Davis on -- as that I'm so utterly
unconvinced that I have trouble believing there's even reason for such
a discussion. ("Offhand, no jazz composer has used the human voice so
effectively as an orchestral element since Mike Westbrook utilized
Norma Winstone on Love Songs, a 1970 album" -- offhand, I'm
not sure that anyone has ever, but Luciana Souza?) I have the record
down as a marginal dud candidate, just like the two others I have
heard. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who listens to jazz
who doesn't get her. I guess I'm stuck. I like the Gerald Wilson
better, but not so much as the previous one (In My Time). I
have some amount of intrinsic resistance to big band records, but
there are plenty of exceptions. Haven't heard the Harris Eisenstadt
record. He's done interesting stuff in the past.
Patrick Cockburn: In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK.
At last some reporting to provide context for Turkey's repeated
threats to invade the Iraq War's one purported success, the
effectively independent Kurdish region. Verifies that the PKK
are based in an Iraqi haven and are able to inflict nuissance
attacks on Turkey. But it is also true that Turkey has done
a poor job of consolidating the gains they made in arresting
PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and reconciling Kurdish resentment.
It also looks like the real conflict is between the Turkish
military and the moderate Islamist Erdogan government -- the
former sees aggressive action as a way of rousing nationalist
sentiment, while the latter depends on Kurdish support for
their margins. Like most (probably all) such conflicts, the
bad guys are on both sides, but the ones with the most power
(in this case the Turks) are the ones most negligent in not
attempting to defuse the situation -- and as usual it's their
power advantage that convinces them that they can depend on
force to impose their way. I don't believe that Kurds have
any intrinsic rights to a nation state, but one exists in
Iraq for the simple reason that Iraq's abuse of the region
has discredited any claims Baghdad may have. If Ankara can't
do any better, they'll wind up in the same situation. One
thing Cockburn doesn't go into is what the Americans are
doing about this. Nothing helpful, I suspect -- not least
because Bush has set the model for resorting to force as
the answer to all problems.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Welcome to the Nightmare
Back when Bush fired the opening shot in the War on Terror by taking
military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, I recall
arguing with a friend who supported the policy, but conceded that it
could destabilize Pakistan, and admitted that doing so would be the
nightmare scenario. It's taken six years, but Pakistan is starting to
look pretty shaky. Just scrolling through
WarInContext, I'm struck by
much of what I see. For example, Gary Sick:
What is happening today in Pakistan takes me back to the time when
the Iranian revolution was brewing, when I was the desk officer for
Iran on the National Security Council.
The ultimate reason for the U.S. policy failure then was the fact
that the U.S. had placed enormous trust and responsibility in the shah
of Iran.
He -- and not the country or people of Iran -- was seen as the
linchpin of U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf. Everything relied on
him. There was no Plan B.
As a consequence, the endlessly mulled-over U.S. response to
Iranian instability was that we had no choice except to support the
shah.
Paul Woodward comments that there is something of a plan B, Benazir
Bhutto, but that Sick's point still applies:
the US government's strategy in Pakistan hinges on its reliance on
a handful of personal relationships. This is hardly surprising during
a presidency in which a handshake has so often served as a substitute
for a genuine meeting of minds and the cultivation of mutual
understanding. [ . . . ] The Bush administration
has focused on General Musharraf in as much as he is perceived as
being helpful to the advance of American interests. In the process his
American backers have lost sight of the extent to which their friend
operates to the detriment of Pakistan's interests.
Musharraf is certainly not as megalomaniacal as the Shah, but like
the Shah he represents two things that in combination put him into a
rather indefensible position: he offends the Islamist right through
his secularism and his willingness to collude with the anti-Muslim
west, and he offends the secular left with his anti-democratic stance,
his militarism, and his willingness to collude with the capitalist
west. The one advantage he likely still has over the Shah is his base
in Pakistan's military, but that base is weaker and more fractured
than Turkey's, for instance, which makes it less likely to act on
its own and more likely to form an alliance which could quickly doom
Musharraf.
The other difference vs. the Shah is that the US has never been
all that happy with Musharraf. While he has been far more effective
than the US has been at capturing or killing Al-Qaeda principals,
he is routinely seen as not trying hard enough, especially in his
compromises with Pashtun tribal leaders which allow the Taliban
relatively safe havens on Pakistani territory. The net balance is
that Musharraf is seen in Pakistan as too much under Bush's thumb
but in Washington he is seen as not supplicant enough. Woodward
writes:
As everyone knows, Washington can only focus its attention on one
thing at a time and with all eyes now on Pakistan, opportunities for
reckless maneuvers present themselves elsewhere. Yet there are
compelling reasons why Pakistan now looks like the most dangerous
country in the world. Washington's confidence in the security of
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is largely invested in its confidence in
one man: Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, head of the special branch of the
military known as the Strategic Plans Division in charge of operations
and security. Kidwai represents what one former State Department
official describes a the only "safe box within Pakistan's army."
Irrespective of Kidwai's close ties to U.S. military officials, the
inherent vulnerability of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has long been
understood.
Meanwhile, Cheney and company have been trying to push confrontation
with Iran. As if Iran's own response to an American or Israeli attack
wouldn't be worrisome enough, such an attack would be certain to raise
a tsunami of anti-American sentiment all across the Islamic world, and
that could be felt most dramatically in an already unstable Pakistan.
I haven't followed the unfolding events very closely. No doubt there's
a lot more being reported and analyzed. But I do know two more historical
tidbits of some possible relevance. One is that the people who started
the revolution against the Shah weren't the clerics who wound up on top.
If anything similar happens in Pakistan, there's little reason to believe
it will settle down with the first change in power, and there's every
reason to think that the Islamists will gain strength through further
turmoil. The other is that when Benazir Bhutto was in power last time,
she wound up giving Islamists in the ISI relatively free reign in their
Afghanistan shenanigans, which is exactly when Pakistan most fervently
supported the Taliban.
Of course, all of this (and more) was shuffled into the deck in
2001 when the shooting started. I'm not surprised -- it seems clear
that this sort of ham-fisted arrogance is what the US has long been
about in the region, and the more attention we pay to it the worse
it gets. (Which sounds like I'm disagreeing with the conventional
wisdom that the Iraq War undermined the War on Terror directed at
the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. My thinking is more along the lines that
the mentality that led the US into Iraq was the same mentality that
was bound to screw up the Afghanistan campaign in the first place.)
I haven't checked, but imagine that my friend has come around. After
all, his nightmare is now ours.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Lloyd C Gardner/Marilyn B Young: Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam
Lloyd C. Gardner/Marilyn B. Young: Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam:
Or, How Not to Learn From the Past (2007, New Press)
Found this in the library, and thought I'd at least scan through
it. I wound up reading more than I thumbed past, the introduction
the main thing skipped. The quote section lists all of the chapters
(except the introduction). Some I didn't bother quoting from, but
even those pieces are not without interest. Gardner and Young are
revisionist (i.e., antiwar) historians from the Vietnam era, so
this has the feel of the now-older generation confronting the new
war -- not same as the old war, but all wars seem to have a lot
in common. Vietnam then and Iraq now are distinct enough. America
then and now differ in subtler ways, with much of the similarity
mere convergence -- the warmongers still lie, because they have
to lie to sell wars like these. At least one chapter is missing:
the one about how the Iraq war's protagonists see themselves in
the context of Vietnam. This has become increasingly weird ever
since Bush invoked the analogue of the Tet Offensive as proof of
current success. Supposedly Gen. Petraeus, the Great White Hope
sent in to lead the last-chance-for-victory surge, is qualified
for the job by his unique expertise as the one guy who faced and
mastered the lessons of Vietnam. That in itself would be fodder
for a whole chapter, but only if the book, like the war, is to
remain an open project.
Among various profound insights below, one that stands out
is how none of the counterinsurgency theorists have figured out
how to win hearts and minds. I think that's because there's no
way to force someone to love you. It's also because those who
blunder into such wars are enamored with force -- had they not
been, they wouldn't have picked the fight in the first place.
And make no mistake: both Vietnam and Iraq were wars of American
choice, wars that could easily have been avoided way before US
political leaders dug in so deep they convinced themselves that
leaving would be even worse than losing. Nowhere in the history
of either war did we consider trying to satisfy the hearts and
minds that actually existed. We always assumed they wanted to
be like us because we never entertained any other possibility.
That winds up being the tightest of all linkages between the
two wars. It is the lesson we didn't learn from Vietnam, the
lesson we repeated senselessly in Iraq. It is endemic to the
worldview of two generations of American chauvinists: today's
neocons and yesterday's paleoliberals.
1. David Elliott: Parallel Wars? Can "Lessons of Vietnam" Be
Applied to Iraq" (pp. 17-18):
I teach a course on U.S. foreign policy and a course on the Vietnam
War. Until 2004 I made great efforts to avoid linking Iraq and
Vietnam. The "lessons of Vietnam" are numerous but often
contradictory. Perhaps the most salient of these is to be very careful
in applying analogies. Yuan Foong Khong, a former student at the
Claremont Colleges, now at Oxford, wrote a classic book titled
Analogies at War, in which he painstakingly analyzed the
various ways in which analogies were misused by U.S. officials during
the Vietnam War. The book appeared in 1992, just as U.S. foreign
policy decision makers were grappling with the new and unfamiliar
terrain of the post-Cold War world. Khong analyzed in detail how and
why decision makers resort to analogies when confronted with novel
problems. They serve as a cognitive filter that transforms the
unfamiliar into something recognizable and reduces complexity to
manageable proportions. The pitfalls of this conceptual screening
process are many, however. The wrong analogy may be chosen -- perhaps
Kennedy and Johnson would have been better served by cautions about
the French experience in Indochina than by bracing lessons from Munich
and Korea. Or a potentially useful analogy may be misinterpreted or
misapplied, as in the case of the misguided application of British
experience int he Malayan Emergency to Vietnam.
(p. 29):
While [Thomas] Ricks's book [Fiasco] has been justly praised
for documenting the follies and blunders of the Bush administration in
Iraq, it also perpetuates the myth that there could have been a
smarter way to achieve the same objective.
It isn't clear why U.S. commanders seemed so flatly ignorant of how
other counterinsurgencies had been conducted successfully. The main
reason seems to be a repugnance, after the fall of Saigon, for
dwelling on unconventional operations. But the cost of such willful
ignorance was high. "Scholars are virtually unanimous in their
judgment that conventional forces often lose unconventional wars
because they lack a conceptual understanding of the war they are
fighting," Lt. Col. Matthew Moten, chief of military history at West
Point, would comment a year later.
This assertion would come as a surprise to the many scholars of the
Vietnam War and other "insurgencies" who point to the underlying
political issues as the factors that decided the outcome, rather than
the application of refined military techniques. Indeed, the very
mantra of "winning hearts and minds" -- often cited by military
proponents of counterinsurgency -- is a reflection of this key
point. No U.S. strategist in Vietnam ever devised a method of "winning
hearts and minds" -- and none of the counterinsurgency enthusiasts
lauded by Ricks seems to have a plan for winning the hearts and minds
of Iraqis under conditions of military occupation. Recall Richard
Cohen's statement that "the lesson of Vietnam is that once you make
the initial mistake, little you do afterward is right. If the basic
policy is flawed, the best tactics in the world will not salvage
it."
2. Alex Danchev: "I'm with You": Tony Blair and the
Obligations of Alliance: Anglo-American Relations in Historical
Perspective.
3. Wilfried Mausbach: Forlorn Superpower: European Reactions
to the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq (pp. 76-77):
To Europeans, America was anything but "at war." As Reinhard
Bütikofer, political director of the German Green Party, tried to
explain, "In this country, you have all these emotions that make even
the word 'war' very different for Americans and Germans. America has
its 'wars' against drugs and illiteracy. . . . Germans
associate war with the near-total destruction of their cities and
homeland." Half a year after the terrorist attacks, the German
ambassador in Washington confessed that he had to constantly remind
his backstops in Berlin "that the United States still considers itself
to be at war," whereas "most Germans don't feel they are at war, with
all the terrible connotations of destruction, defeat, and occupation"
that it held for them. If Germans think of war, they think of alarms
driving them into cellars and air raid shelters almost every day for
three years at a time; they think of the trials of organizing the most
basic needs of life in bombed-out cities among broken pipes and tons
of rubble. The British think of their own ordeal under the constant
threat of German bombers throughout the summer of 1940. Russians think
of a murderous war that raged on their soil for almost four years,
leaving behind an unfathomable scene of destruction and more than 25
million dead. The Dutch think of the echo, day in and day out, of
German boots on the cobbled streets of their occupied hometowns as
they were cowering behind drawn curtains. No, Europeans did not
believe that Americans were "at war." At the same time, their own
collective memories of war made them obtuse to the profound impact
that September 11 had on the American psyche.
(pp. 78-79):
Now, however, the two countries [France and Germany] ganged up
against the United States, provoking much of American media to switch
into full campaign mode. A doctored front-page photo in the New
York Post replaced the heads of the French and German
representatives to the UN with weasel faces. In the Wall Street
Journal, Christopher Hitchens described Chirac as a "positive
monster of conceit" and "a rat that tried to roar." Capitol Hill
cafeterias had to wipe the "French" from fries and toast on their
menus. A Nashville morning talk show called for "a boycott of all
things French, from Perrier to champaignes to wines and French
w-h-i-n-e-s, French berets, French pastries," and made an exception
for French kissing only because of Valentine's Day. Shock jocks near
Atlanta offered people the chance to demolish a Peugeot for ten
dollars. Even those who vented their anger in less destructive ways
complained in letters to the editor about France and Germany
conspiring against the United States on the global stage and about
their cynical enthusiasm for supporting America's enemies. As Justin
Vaïsse summed up, "In unfriendly American eyes, France is a cowardly
and effete nation that never met a dictator it couldn't appease. It is
immoral, venal, anti-Semitic, arrogant, insignificant, and nostalgic
for past glory. It is also elitist, dirty, lazy, and it is
anti-American." In light of all this, it is hardly surprising that
bumper stickers appeared reading "Iraq now, France next," and that the
French ambassador in Washington wondered whether the media was not
conveying the impression that, in fact, this order had to be
reversed.
In retrospect, this was one of the most embarrassingly stupid
parts of the run up to the war -- nothing more than an infantile
temper tantrum. That it happened now looks like an admission of
how shaky the case for war actually was.
4. Gareth Porter: Manufacturing the Threat to Justify
Aggressive War in Vietnam and Iraq (pp. 88-89):
One of the most chilling parallels between Vietnam and Iraq is the
way in which the war planners deliberately created threats out of
whole cloth to justify going to war. They felt they had to have a
serious threat, because without it, political resistance would have
been too strong, whether inside the government, outside it, or both. A
comparison of the two cases underlines a common characteristic of
aggressive war in a democratic system.
But the comparison also reveals both a fundamental difference in
the politics of Vietnam and Iraq and an enormous difference in the
sophistication and skill with which deceit and manipulation were used
to ensure the necessary political support for war. The
neoconservatives who engineered the United States into aggressive war
on Iraq faced a much tougher task in obtaining the necessary official
public compliance to open the path to war than did the national
security advisers to Kennedy and Johnson on Vietnam. In the early
twenty-first century there was no longer an enemy perceived to be
malevolent and all-powerful, and the attentive public was no longer
automatically inclined to support military force when the government
called for it. But the Bush war planners were much more
self-conscious, systematic, and disciplined in their approach to
creating the story line they needed to go to war than the war planners
of the Kennedy-Johnson era.
These differences are an indication of how much the system for
waging aggressive war has evolved in the more than four decades
between Vietnam and Iraq. In the end, however, it is still the
commonality of the two cases that stands out. Those who were pushing
for aggressive war had to conjure up a threat, because nothing in the
region of interest supported a case for the use of force, and they
knew it. In both the 1953-65 period of the Cold War and again in the
post-Cold War era (1991-2006), the United States was overwhelmingly
dominant in military terms, both globally and in the regions in
question. In the 1954-62 period, China was known by U.S. policy makers
to be militarily weak and was on the defensive, seeking to accommodate
capitalist and even feudalist regimes in the region in the hope of
containing U.S. military influence in the region, especially in East
Asia. The Communist movements in Southeast Asia, except for those in
Vietnam and Laos, were either small and weak or supportive of the
noncommunist regime. In the Persian Gulf and the Middle East in 2001,
no regional state was threatening to dominate the region.
(pp. 96-97):
Just as war in Vietnam was rooted in the determination of the
U.S. national security elite to maintain the dominant power position
the United States held in East Asia, the roots of the war in Iraq lie
in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the United
States as the sole superpower in 1991. But during the first post-Cold
War decade, U.S. power in the region was far less dominant than it had
been during the high tide of U.S. power in East Asia. As a result of
the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. military obtained a semipermanent role in
Iraq by creating no-fly zones for Saddam's forces in both the north
and the south patrolled by U.S. planes based in Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia. Beginning in 1998, these zones provided a vehicle the Clinton
administration could use to carry out increasingly aggressive bombing
operations against military targets in Iraq.
Nevertheless, the United States lacked permanent bases, and its
access to facilities in the Gulf remained politically tenuous, given
Saudi sensitivities about the U.S. military presence. And all across
the region Arab governments were generally unsympathetic to
U.S. policy in the Middle East -- especially its close relationship
with Israel. The United States had no political-military allies in the
region providing major bases from which it could project power into
the rest of the region. That constrained U.S. political-military
influence int he Middle East.
There was thus a wide chasm between the complete U.S. military
dominance globally and its relatively limited military presence int he
Persian Gulf. That gap frustrated the neoconservatives and hard-line
officials from past Republican administrations who had attacked
détente and advocated victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold
War. This group of former top national security officials -- led by
Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, and including
Richard Perle and Douglas Feith -- believed the United States had both
the might and the right to pursue far more ambitious
political-military objectives in the Middle East and elsewhere than
the Clinton administration had done in its eight years in office.
(p. 102):
The White House began intensive planning for the "Iraq rollout" in
July and determined that the best time to launch a "full-scale
lobbying campaign" on the coming war was the day after Labor Day when
Congress reconvened. As White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card
Jr. explained to the New York Times, "From a marketing point of
view, you don't introduce new products in August." A "White House Iraq
Group," which included Bush's political strategist Karl Rove, national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Cheney's chief of
staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and communications adviser Karen Hughes,
began meeting in August to plan in detail how the message on Iraq
would be shaped in the national media.
5. John Prados: Wise Guys, Rough Business: Iraq and the
Tonkin Gulf.
6. Andrew J. Bacevich: Gulliver at Bay: The Paradox of the
Imperial Presidency (pp. 128-129):
As George W. Bush's more bellicose lieutenants saw it, the
principal constraints on the use of American power lay within the
U.S. government itself. In a speech to Defense Department employees
just a day prior to 9/11, Rumsfeld had warned of "an adversary that
poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States
of America." Who was this adversary? Some evil tyrant or murderous
terrorist? No, announced the secretary of defense, "the adversary's
closer at home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy."
in fact, the internal threat was by no means confined to this one
bureaucracy. It encompassed much of official Washington. It included
the Congress and the Supreme Court, each of which could circumscribe
presidential freedom of action. It extended to the Central
Intelligence Agency and the State Department, which the hawks viewed
as obstreperous and hidebound. It even included the senior leadership
of the U.S. military, especially the unimaginative and excessively
risk-averse Joint Chiefs of Staff. All of these could impede the
greater assertiveness that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz had yearned
for even before September 11. In order to make headway on the foreign
front, each and every one of these sources of opposition on the home
front had to be neutralized.
So unleashing American might abroad implied a radical
reconfiguration of power relationships at home. On this score, 9/11
came as a godsend. In its wake, citing the urgent imperatives of
national security, the hawks set out to concentrate authority in their
own hands. September 11, 2001, inaugurated what became in essence a
rolling coup.
Nominally, the object of the exercise was to empower the commander
in chief to wage his Global War on Terror. Yet with George W. Bush a
president in the mold of William McKinley or Warren G. Harding -- an
affable man of modest talent whose rise in national politics was
attributable primarily to his perceived electability -- Cheney and his
collaborators were really engaged in an effort to enhance their own
clout. Bush might serve as the front man, but on matters of substance,
theirs would be the decisive voices. Gordon and Trainor describe the
operative model this way: "The president would preside, the vice
president would guide, and the defense secretary would implement,"
with Wolfowitz and a handful of others, it might be added, lending the
enterprise some semblance of intellectual coherence.
(p. 132):
As Rumsfeld and his disciples saw it, senior military officers
(especially those in the U.S. Army) were still enamored with the
Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force. The Powell Doctrine was rooted
in an appreciation of quantity -- employing lots of tanks, lots of
artillery, and lots of "boots on the ground." Rumsfeld's vision of a
new American way of war emphasized quality -- relying on precise
intelligence, precise weapons, and smaller numbers of troops,
primarily elite special operations forces.
Implicit in the Powell Doctrine was the assumption that the wars of
the future would be large, uncertain, expensive, and therefore
infrequent. Implicit in Rumsfeld's thinking was the expectation that
future American wars would be brief and economical, all but
eliminating the political risks of opting for force. The secretary of
defense believed that technology was rendering obsolete old worries
about fog, friction, and chance. Why bother studying Karl von
Clausewitz when "shock and awe" could make a clean sweep of
things?
For Rumsfeld and his coterie, here lay the appeal of having a go at
Iraq. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan had proved something
of a test drive for their ideas. The secretary of defense was counting
on a swift victory over Saddam to fully validate his vision and to
discredit once and for all the generals who were obstructing his
reforms.
So Rumsfeld was intent on having the war fought his way. In the
run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom he exerted himself to marginalize
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The secretary of defense had little use for
professional military advice and so, in planning the war, the chiefs
played essentially no role. The compliant JCS chairman, General
Richard Myers, so much under Rumsfeld's thumb that he was said by
Senator John McCain to be "incapable of expressing an independent
view," remained an onlooker. When one member of the Joint Chiefs dared
to dissent -- army General Eric Shinseki suggesting that occupying
Iraq might require several hundred thousand troops -- Wolfowitz
retaliated with a public rebuke and Rumsfeld pushed Shinseki into
instant oblivion.
Rumsfeld's chosen military interlocutor was General Tommy Franks,
commander of United States Central Command. In a best-selling memoir
published after his retirement, Franks portrays himself as a folksy
"good old boy" from west Texas who also happens to be a military
genius. More accurately, he was Rumsfeld's useful idiot -- a coarse,
not especially bright, kiss-up, kick-down martinet who mistreated his
subordinates but was adept at keeping his boss happy. Franks knew that
he was not really in charge, but he pretended otherwise. Appreciating
the "political value in being able to stand at the Pentagon podium and
say that the Bush administration was implementing the military's
plan," Rumsfeld was happy to play along.
So the hawks not only got their war but got it their way. The war
plan that Rumsfeld bludgeoned Franks into drafting conformed to their
requirements. It envisioned a relatively small force rushing toward
Baghdad at breakneck speed, swiftly toppling the Baathist regime, and
just as quickly extricating itself. Underlying these expectations were
three key assumptions: that the regular Iraqi army wouldn't fight,
that the Iraqi people would greet arriving U.S. and British troops as
liberators, and that major Iraqi institutions would survive the war
intact, facilitating the rapid withdrawal of all but a small
contingent of occupying forces.
In the event, these assumptions proved fallacious. When the
Anglo-American attack began, the anticipated mass defection of Iraqi
forces did not occur. The Iraqi army fought, albeit poorly (although
some U.S. troops found even this level of opposition
disconcerting). Iraqi irregulars -- the Fedayeen -- offered a spirited
resistance that caught allied commanders by surprise. Meanwhile, the
welcome given to allied forces as they traversed southern Iraq proved
to be spotty and less than wholehearted. Worse still, when Baghdad
fell, Iraq's political infrastructure collapsed, creating a vacuum and
giving rise to mass disorder.
7. Christian G. Appy: Class Wars (p. 149):
One contrast between our own time and the Vietnam era is that today
we are significantly less committed to curbing the worst consequences
of economic and social inequality. Though the burden of fighting in
Vietnam was not equally shared, and our presidents acted as if
domestic life could be as unencumbered as in the most prosperous
peacetime, for much of the 1960s there was at least a significant
national commitment to improving the lives of poor and working
people. While the social and economic reforms of the Great Society
have resulted in failures as well as successes, and its funding never
came close to approximating the claims of its rhetoric, it was at
least partially responsible for reducing the poverty rate from 22
percent to 13 percent between 1963 to 1973. Today working people not
only supply the troops who die in our name but bear the lion's share
of the economic sacrifices as we wage an apparently permanent "war on
terror" without so much as a slight increase in the minimum wage.
8. Elizabeth L. Hillman: The Female Shape of the All-Volunteer Force.
9. Gabriel Kolko: Familiar Foreign Policy and Familiar Wars: Vietnam, Iraq . . . Before and After.
10. Lloyd C. Gardner: Mr. Rumsfeld's War (p. 178):
Hence long before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld's worldview encompassed a
central belief in the irrationality of foreign leaders who would
commit nuclear suicide by launching a missile against the United
States, along with the untrustworthiness of allies or "coalitions,"
and the doubtful accuracy of the liberal-infested Central Intelligence
Agency. To those who would call this worldview the very essence of
imperial unilateralism, Rumsfeld had a ready answer -- constructing a
missile shield was the only way to reassure America's allies we would
be there and always willing to perform our special role as guarantor
of world order because we could not be held in check by a rogue state
or group brandishing a nuke. The world had been enjoying great
prosperity since the Cold War, he told Congress on June 21, 2001, and
the free market system spread into all corners of the world. To
hesitate now in building an anti-missile system was to choose
"intentional vulnerability," risking everything gained thus far and
putting future expansion in jeopardy.
On SOCOM (Special Operations Command), a military unit intended by
Rumsfeld as an alternative to the CIA's Operations Command
(p. 190):
A big aid to Rumsfeld in planning for SOCOM was the abrupt change
int eh definition of the enemy. At first President Bush referred to
the 9/11 attacks as crimes, not a military action. "This is not a
criminal action," Rumsfeld argued to the president, "this is war."
Admirer Rowan Scarborough called the episode "Rumsfeld's instant
declaration of war, and it took America from the Clinton
administration's view that terrorism was a criminal matter to the Bush
administration's view that terrorism was a global enemy to be
destroyed." Bush issued a military order in November that
characterized the 9/11 attacks as being "on a scale that has created a
state of armed conflict that requires the use of the United States
Armed Forces." How they would be used was up to Rumsfeld.
"If Rumsfeld gets his way," asserted one of the first assessments
of the future role of SOCOM, "administration hawks may soon start
using special forces to attack or undermine other regimes on
Washington's hit list -- without the sort of crucial public debate
that preceded the war in Iraq." Pentagon officials called SOCOM the
"Secret Army of Northern Virginia," falling into ranks under Donald
Rumsfeld's stern gaze. Asked to describe a scenario where the
Strategic Support Branch might play a role, Assistant Secretary of
Defense Thomas O'Connell happily obliged. "A hostile country close to
our borders suddenly changes leadership. . . . We would want
to make sure the successor is not hostile." Within a few weeks it
emerged, in a Washington Post article, that Rumsfeld wanted his
special operations forces to enter a country and conduct operations
without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador. In the Pentagon
view, the article said, the campaign against terrorism is a war and
requirse similar freedom to prosecute as in Iraq. Rumsfeld's pressure
on Bush to call post-9/11 activities a "war" instead of a "criminal
action" was indeed "a very big thought," and a lot had already flowed
from that idea. Chief of mission authority had been a pillar of the
new tension between State and Defense. "When you start eroding that,
it can have repercussions that are . . . risky." Colin
Powell's chief aide, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage,
instructed his counterterrorism coordinator, J. Cofer Black, to act as
point man to thwart the Pentagon's initiative. "I gave Cofer specific
instructions to dismount, kill the horses and fight on foot -- this is
not going to happen."
(p. 191):
To the neocons [Ahmed] Chalabi was the "George Washington of Iraq,"
but the arc of his career resembled the last "George Washington"
America supported, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam. Even more than the
strong-willed McNamara, who thought he understood how to fight Ho Chi
Minh and learned otherwise, Donald Rumsfeld knew: his
intelligence sources were good -- because he had a vision of a
post-Saddam Middle East welcoming American forces, as his friend Dick
Cheney assured the nation, as "liberators."
The curious mix of Hobbes and Wilson that inspired such hopes for a
happy outcome of war with Iraq could be seen also in Rumsfeld's
embrace of "shock and awe" as the answer tot he gradualism of the
Vietnam War that conservatives blamed for the defeat. It was certainly
true, as Lyndon Johnson often said, that almost until the last years of
the war, and whether the public thought that going into Vietnam was a
mistake or not, the prevalent dissenting opinion was not to get out
but to find a quick way to win.
11. Walter LaFeber: Zelig in U.S. Foreign Relations: The
Roles of China in the American Post-9/11 World (pp. 204-205):
A perceptive analysis of this pre-9/11 evolution was published in
the winter of 1999-2000 by Owen Harries, editor of the National
Interest, often lauded as the conservatives' most influential
foreign policy journal. Harries, however, dissented sharply from many
conservatives and most neoconservatives.
He began with the important axiom that describes the
two-century-old U.S. involvement with the Chiense: "over the years
Americans have had great difficulty thinking rationally about
China. They have tended to oscillate violently between romanticizing
and demonizing that country and its people." Americans, Harries
claimed, saw the Chinese not in accurate historical terms but through
"stereotypes" such as "China as Treasure" (that is, bottomless
markets), "China as Sick Patient" (thus badly needing U.S.-style
democracy and Christianity), or "China as Threat -- at one time Yellow
Peril, at another Red Menace, and now, in the eyes of some very vocal
and not uninfluential Americans, as rival, malevolent superpower." If
China did become a truly great power, Harries warned, given these
long-standing stereotypes -- upon which Americans ignorant of history
would depend to provide the necessary background for their foreign
policies -- "the chances of a cool, sensible American reaction cannot
be rated particularly high."
(p. 212):
The Chinese economic offensive, including targeting access to oil,
moved well beyond Asia into regions where the country's investors had
seldom been seen, regions long dominated by American dollars. In 2004,
China passed Japan to become the world's second-largest oil consumer,
6.5 million barrels a day. The United States consumed 20 million
barrels daily. If the acceleration of automobile sales in China
continued, by 2015 it could consume an estimated 14 million barrels
each day. Since world oil production and refining capacity were
already running at full tilt, it was not clear where those additional
7 million of so barrels of oil would come from each day. Saudi Arabia
held the globe's largest oil reserves, and since at least 1945 it had
worked closely with the United States. In early 2006, the king became
the first Saudi ruler to visit China, in large part because after 2002
his nation's oil shipments to the United States had declined while
they so increased to the Chinese that by 2005 Saudi Arabia was their
leading source of oil. In regard to Iran, China signed a $100 billion
contract to import 10 million tons of liquefied natural gas over
twenty-five years, and in return took a 50 percent stake in a huge
Iranian oil field -- two reasons why Beijing demonstrated little
interest in cooperating with Washington to sanction Iran's nuclear
program.
12. Marilyn B. Young: Counterinsurgency, Now and
Forever (pp. 223-224):
In October 2003, as the insurgency gained strength, then Major
General Raymond Odierno ordered the 4th Infantry Division to "increase
lethality." [Lieutenant Colonel Nathan] Sassaman was apparently eager
to comply: "When [he] spoke of sending his soldiers into Samarra, his
eyes gleamed. 'We are going to inflict extreme violence.'" As the
insurgency intensified, so did Sassaman's reprisals. In November,
after one of his men had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired
in the vicinity of the village of Abu Hishma, Sassaman, with the
permission of his immediate superior, Colonel Frederick Rudesheim,
wrapped the village in barbed wire, issued ID cards (in English), and
threatened to kill anyone who tried to enter or leave without
permission. In his own limited way, Sassaman used U.S. firepower as it
had been used in Vietnam. In response to a single mortar round, Dexter
Filkins reported, he fired "28 155-millimeter artillery shells and 42
mortar rounds. He called in two air strikes, one with a 500-pound bomb
and the other with a 2,000-pound bomb." When his troops were fired on
from a wheat field, Sassaman "routinely retaliated by firing
phosphorus shells to burn the entire field down." Elsewhere in Iraq,
the use of phosphorus shells was referred to as a "shake and bake"
mission.
The results of these efforts pleased Sassaman: "We just didn't get
hit after that." He did not describe, and the reporter did not ask
about, the effect on the human targets. Over and over again, Sassaman
met resistance of any kind with massive force, and taught his men to
do likewise. Like the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, according to Sassaman
and the troops under his command, understood only the language of
force. In any event, it was the only language any of the Americans
spoke other than English. Over the course of their tour, the men under
Sassaman's command became increasingly punitive toward the Iraqis
around them -- any Iraqi, all Iraqis. When a shopkeeper gave passing
troops the finger, they doubled back, searched his shop, drove him to
a bridge over the Tigris, and threw him in. "The next time I went
back, the guy is out there waving to us," a soldier told Dexter
Filkins. "Everybody got a chuckle out of that."
13. Alfred W. McCoy: Torture in the Crucible of
Counterinsurgency (p. 231):
Once torture begins, its perpetrators -- reaching into that remote
terrain where pain and pleasure, procreation and destruction all
converge -- are often swept away by frenzies of power and potency,
mastery and control. Just as interrogators are often drawn in by an
empowering sense of dominance over victims, so their superiors, even
at the highest level, can succumb to fantasies of torture as an
all-powerful weapon. Thus, modern states that sanction torture, even
in a limited way, run the risk of becoming increasingly indiscriminate
in its application. When U.S. leaders have used torture to fight
faceless adversaries, both communist and terrorist, its practice has
spread almost uncontrollably. Only four years after the CIA compiled
its 1963 manual for use against a few key Soviet counterintelligence
targets, its agents were operating forty interrogation centers in
South Vietnam that killed more than 20,000 suspects and tortured
countless thousands more. Similarly, just a few months after the CIA
used its techniques on a few "high target value" al-Qaeda suspects,
the practice spread to the interrogation of hundreds of Afghans and
thousands of Iraqis. In both cases, moreover, not only did torture
spread, but the level of abuse escalated relentlessly beyond the
scientific patina of the agency's formal psychological method to
become pervasively, perversely brutal.
At the deepest level, the abuse at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and
Kabul are manifestations of a long history of a distinctive
U.;S. covert-warfare doctrine developed since World War II, in which
psychological torture has emerged as a central albeit clandestine
facet of American foreign policy. From 1950 to 1962, the CIA became
involved in torture through a massive mind-control effort that reached
a cost of a billion dollars annually -- a veritable Manhattan Project
of the mind. After experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric
shocks, and sensory deprivation, this work then produced a new
approach to torture that was psychological, not physical, perhaps best
described as "no-touch torture."
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Website Maintenance
One thing I do is build and maintain websites. I mention this
because I spent time today updating two of them. By far the larger
is Robert Christgau's.
It has over 1000 pages plus a database of 13652 Consumer Guide
reviews. The update added the last three Consumer Guide columns,
plus dozens of reviews for Rolling Stone, a few links for his
NPR appearances, and an unpublished novella by his wife, Carola
Dibbell. We've been slowly assembling Carola's work, which is
still spottily represented. I really wish we could do something
similar for other critics, and for that matter figure out a way
to cross-index them. A few years back I conceived of a Writer's
Website Toolkit project, which would be the second generation of
the Christgau website software. I did some strawman designs for
that, but never made much progress. I did, however, get one bite,
and wound up building and maintaining a website for
Carol Cooper. I added a
couple of pieces to that website today.
A few years back I leased a server and put together a handful of
websites using two free software toolkits: drupal (a news-oriented
content management system) and serendipity (blog software). Meanwhile
my own website has continued to mutate and sprawl. I still figure
the next step is to build a Christgau-like site for my own music
writings -- quantity no longer seems to be a gating problem. But
I'm finding it hard both to get traction on that and more generally
to cope. I looked for my Recycled Goods column at
Static Multimedia
today. They have a nice new design, but it looks like they've
lost their links to my column. I don't know what this means, but
I don't get much out of the association either, and I'd be happy
to entertain any other ideas about where such a column (possibly
formatted differently; e.g., less-CG-like) might be hosted.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Sandy Tolan: The Lemon Tree
The full title of Sandy Tolan's book is The Lemon Tree: An Arab,
a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (2006, Bloomsbury). The
Arab is Bashir Khairi, who was born into a prominent Palestinian
family in al-Ramla, an Arab town that was forcibly evacuated by
Israeli soldiers in 1948, its residents made to march as refugees
to Ramallah, a West Bank town controlled by Jordan until 1967,
when it too was occupied by Israel. The Jew is Dalia Eshkenazi,
born in Bulgaria, her family emigrating to Israel in 1948, where
they moved into the same house that the Khairis had been forced
from. The lemon tree grew in the backyard of the house, planted
by Bashir's father, a familiar bond for both. In 1967, Bashir
was finally able to briefly return to al-Ramla, find his family
house, and find Dalia in the house. They two people provide a
prism through which Tolan tells the story of the conflict. Like
everything else, the pair are not true mirrors of each other.
They share a common bond, but their experiences are profoundly
asymmetric. Dalia comes off as a well-reasoned member of Israel's
peace block. Bashir, on the other hand, finds himself allied with
militants, and spends most of the post-1967 years in jail or in
exile.
The quotes hardly do justice to the book, especially to the
personal aspects of the story. By focusing as he does, Tolan
brings the story down to human scale, but in reducing it the
story becomes one arbitrary thread among many. The book does
not achieve, or even suggest, a happy ending, but then neither
does history. But the point is to understand the problem, not
to make it easier than it is. Dalia's Einstein quote seems to
be thrown out as a challenge, not achieved in the book, but
out there waiting for someone to rise to it.
I started putting these quotes together shortly after reading
the book, then got sidetracked and resumed much later, leaving
the later quotes rather bare. Doing a fair job would entail much
re-reading, and would no doubt result in many more quotes. This
is one of the best books to read on the subject. Comes with
extremely meticulous notes at the end.
In 1937 Britain's Peel Commission recommended partitioning
Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab regions, with the separation
enforced by forced transfer. The Zionist leadership embraced those
recommendations. The Arab leadership rejected them, and soon launched
an armed revolt, which lasted from 1937-39 until the British crushed
it. Afterwards, Britain treaded more carefully, discarding the Peel
Commission recommendations and instituting policies to forestall
further revolt by limiting Jewish immigration -- the change of policy
was detailed in the famous "White Paper." As it turned out, 1939 was a
very bad time to shut down one of the few avenues open for Jews to
escape from Nazi-dominated Europe. The Zionist debate in 1937
prefigured much of the ensuing history (pp. 18-19):
The Zionist leadership accepted Lord Peel's recommendations despite
internal dissension. Many Jewish leaders did not want to give up the
idea of a Jewish homeland across the whole of Palestine, and some
leaders even considered Transjordan,t he desert kingdom across the
Jordan River, as part of an eventual Jewish state. For them,
acceptance of the Peel Commission's report was a major compromise, and
their disagreement reflected ideological divisions that would manifest
for decades. David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Mapai Party and the
most influential of the Zionists in Palestine, had argued in favor of
the plan. At the core of the Peel Commission plan was the idea of
transferring the Arabs, a concept that had been advanced for decades
by fellow Zionists. In 1895, Theodor Herzl, founder of political
Zionism, had written that in purchasing land from the indigenous Arabs
for a Jewish homeland, "we shall try to spirit the penniless
population across the border by procuring employment for it in the
transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country
. . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of
the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
Forty years later, during Lord Peel's investigation, Ben-Gurion had
instructed Jews who met with the commission to recommend the transfer
plan. After the release of the commission's report, the Zionist leader
wrote: "We have to uproot from the roots of our hearts the assumption
that it is not possible. Indeed it is possible. . . . We
might be losing a historical chance that won't return. The transfer
cause, in my view, is more important than all our demands for
additional territory . . . with the evacuation of the Arab
population from the valleys, we get for the first time in our history
a real Jewish state." A year later, Ben-Gurion would declare, "I
support compulsory transfer." Others sympathetic to the Zionist cause
had warned against such measures. Albert Einstein and Martin Buber,
for example, had long advocated what Einstein called "sympathetic
cooperation" between "the two great Semitic peoples," who "may have a
great future in common."
The Arabs were as stunned by the Peel Commission's proposal as
Ben-Gurion was excited. The Arab Higher Committee, led by the mufti of
Jerusalem, promptly rejected it, not only because of the transfer
plan, but because of the partition itself. The Arabs would fight for a
single, independent, Arab-majority state.
The note about Buber and Einstein points out a missed opportunity
to forge a compromise between Jews and Arabs in favor of a state that
would respect both while rejecting British colonial rule. One thing
I don't know what to what extent such an understanding may have been
supported by Palestinian Arabs. In some ways it was implicit in their
one-state position, which at the time would have been a little less
than one-third Jewish. Such a state could even have welcomed fairly
large-scale Jewish immigration without becoming majority Jewish. But
two things worked against any such position: continued British rule
depended on keeping Jews and Arabs in opposition, and the Zionists
were overwhelmingly dominated by people like Ben-Gurion who desired
a Jewish-majority state on as much land as possible with as few Arabs
as possible.
At the end of the 1937-39 revolt (p. 21):
In May 1939, it appeared to some Arabs that the sacrifices of their
rebellion had brought a political victory. With British forces still
heavily engaged with the rebels, and with the situation in Europe
creating tens of thousands of Jewish refugees, the British government
released its White Paper, accepting many of the demands of the Arab
Rebellion. The British agreed to strictly limit Jewish immigration and
to tighten restrictions on land sales in Palestine. Most important,
the White Paper called for a single independent state. Many Arabs in
Palestine saw in the White Paper a practical solution to their
problem. But Hajj Amin al-Husseini, speaking for the Arab Higher
Committee, rejected the White Paper. His word carried the day in Arab
Palestine, even though it was made from exile: the ex-mufti had fled
Palestine nearly two years earlier, wanted by the British at the
height of the Arab rebellion. The ex-mufti's decision was unpopular
with many Palestinian Arabs, who believed they had missed an
opportunity.
The new British policy marked a sharp change from the Peel
Commission plan of only two years earlier. The White Paper was a major
concession to the Arabs. For the Jews of Palestine, it was an
abandonment of British support for a Jewish national homeland promised
in the Balfour Declaration, at a time when the situation for Jews in
Europe was growing more perilous. Within weeks, the Jewish
paramilitary squads were attacking British forces, planting explosives
in Jerusalem's central post office, and carrying out attacks on
civilians in Arab souks. The White Paper, it was clear, had shaken
Jewish-British relations in Palestine. "Satan himself could not have
created a more distressing and horrible nightmare," David Ben-Gurion
wrote in his diary.
By the turn of 1940, the British authorities had finally defeated
the Arab Rebellion through what they called "severe countermeasures":
tens of thousands jailed, thousands killed, hundreds executed,
countless houses demolished, and key leaders, including the mufti, in
exile. In the cities, Arab men had taken off their keffiyehs and
replaced them once again with the fez. The Palestinian national
movement was deeply divided and utterly unprepared for any future
conflict.
But the "single independent state" was promised some ten years in
the future, and in the end was not delivered. During the White Paper
period, the Zionists were able to build their militias to the point
where they were able to prevail in the civil war of 1948. Britain
not only did nothing to stop them; Britain furthered the partition
by encouraging Transjordan to occupy the West Bank, and Britain had
a hand in implementing transfer by shipping Palestinians, especially
from Jaffa, as refugees to Lebanon.
Britain's strategy was lose-lose, with Jews turning on them for
abandoning the Zionist dream, while keeping the Arabs in opposition
by denying them any political power. Yet Britain never could abandon
its colonial mentality, so they kept helping the Zionists even as they
were assaulted by major acts of terrorism. Britain was so committed to
divide-and-conquer rule that they never considered trying to reconcile
the two groups. Nor did they consider the alternative of permitting
Jewish emigration to anywhere else in Britain and its empire where
it would have been much less politically charged.
(pp. 45-46):
By the end of the war in 1945, Bashir had turned three and the
battle for the future of Palestine had reawakened. A quarter million
Jewish refugees flooded the Allied displaced persons camps in Europe,
and tens of thousands of Jews were smuggled out of the DP camps to
Palestine by the Mossad, predecessor of the present-day Israeli spy
agency. Most of this immigration was illegal under the British rule in
Palestine. The authorities began to intercept boatloads of European
Jews and intern them at Cyprus, off the coast of Lebanon. With its
White Paper six years earlier, the British had imposed strict
immigration limits in the face of the fears, demands, and rebellion of
the Palestinian Arabs.
As the details of the atrocities in Europe began to emerge,
however, the image of stateless, bedraggled Holocaust survivors in the
Cyprus internment camps was seared into the mind of the Western
public, and Britain was pressured to loosen its policy. U.S. president
Harry Truman pressed Britain to allow one hundred thousand DPs into
Palestine as soon as possible, and to abandon restrictions on land
scales to Jews -- measures to increase tensions with the Arabs of
Palestine. Arabs argued that the Holocaust survivors could be settled
elsewhere, including in the United States, which had imposed its own
limits on settlement of European Jews. The Zionists, too, were intent
on settling the refugees in Palestine, not anywhere else. In February
1947, when the ship Exodus arrived in Palestine's Haifa port,
British authorities refused to bend their immigration limits, denying
entry to the 4,500 Jewish refugees and forcing them to board other
ships and return to Germany. A French newspaper called the ships a
"floating Auschwitz." The incident shocked the Western world and
deepened support for the Zionist movement.
(pp. 49-50):
On the recommendation of the United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine, the UN General Assembly had voted, thirty-three states in
favor, thirteen opposed, with ten abstaining, to partition Palestine
into two separate states -- one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. A
UN minority report, which recommended a single state for Arabs and
Jews, with a constitution respecting "human rights and fundamental
freedoms without distinction as to race, sex, language or religions,"
was rejected. [ . . . ]
The Khairis were in shock. Under the UN partition plan, their
hometown of al-Ramla, along with neighboring Lydda and the coastal
city of Jaffa, was to become part of an Arab Palestinian state. The
plan stipulated that 54.5 percent of Palestine and more than
80-percent of its cultivated citrus and grain plantations would go to
a Jewish state. Jews represented about one-third of the population and
owned 7 percent of the land. Most Arabs would not accept the
partition.
If the partition plan went forward, al-Ramla would lie only a few
kilometers from the new Jewish state. At least, Bashir's parents
thought, it could have been worse; under the UN plan, the family would
not be strangers on its own land. Still, what would happen tot he
Arabs in what was now to be Jewish territory? The partition would
place more than four hundred thousand Arabs in the new Jewish state,
making them a 45 percent minority amid half a million Jews.
The Palestinians rejected the UN Partition Plan. The Zionists
saluted it, but when Israel declared independence, they did so without
recognizing the UN Partition Plan borders, and immediately went on the
offensive to expand its territory and to drive many Arabs into
exile. Israel's offensive was to include Jaffa, al-Ramla, and
Lydda.
(p. 56):
After the massacre by Irgun forces in Deir Yassin, the specter of
that militia penetrating al-Ramla had city leaders in a state of near
panic. They sent urgent cables to King Abdullah and to the commander
of his Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb, pleading for immediate help and
invoking fears of another slaughter. One voice cried, "Our wounded are
breathing their last breaths, and we cannot help them."
Abdullah, however, had received similar pleas from Arabs in
Jerusalem, begging him to "save us!" and warning that Jewish forces
were scaling the walls of the Old City. The king wrote Glubb that "any
disaster suffered by the people of the city at the hands of the Jews,
whether they are killed or driven from their homes, would have the
most far reaching results for us." He ordered his commander to
Jerusalem. On May 19, Glubb rolled into the Holy City to confront
Israeli forces with a force of three hundred men, four antitank
weapons, and a squadron of armored cars. On Arab-run Radio Jerusalem,
commentator Raji Sahyoun had promised "our forthcoming redemption by
the hand of Transjordan" and the "scurrying" and "collapse" of the
"Haganah kids."
Abdullah's secret agreement with the Jews did not envision this
fighting. It was designed to accept a Jewish state within the UN
partition boundaries while the king took over the West Bank and most
of the state designated for the Arabs, including al-Ramla and
Lydda. Now fighting on the ground made all of this uncertain. Yet Arab
Legion forces did not cross into territory allotted by the UN
partition resolution to the Jewish state.
Ben Shemen served as a gateway for Moshe Dayan's assault on
al-Ramla (p. 61):
The battalion was coming from Ben Shemen, the Jewish settlement
just to the north. For weeks the open community with access to its
Arab neighbors in Lydda had been transformed into a fortress
surrounded by barbed wire and concrete pillboxes. Earlier,
Dr. Ziegfried Lehman, the Ben Shemen leader, had objected to the
militarization of his community. The people of Ben Shemen had
purchased cows and even bullets from their Arab neighbors as recently
as May. But Lehman's opposition was in vain, and he had left Ben
Shemen in frustration.
(pp. 64-65):
When the Arab delegation arrived, Israeli soldiers woke up the
region's civilian security chief, a man named Yisrael Galili B. (The B
was to distinguish him from the other Yisrael Galili, the longtime
chief of the national staff of the Haganah.) Galili B greeted the men
and proceeded with Palmach troops to a small meetinghouse on the
kibbutz. There they ironed out the terms of surrender: The Arabs would
hand over all their weapons and accept Israeli
sovereignty. "Foreigners" -- Arab fighters from outside Palestine --
would be turned over to the Israelis. All residents not of army age
and unable to bear arms would be allowed to leave the city, "if they
want to." Implicit in the agreement was that the residents could also
choose to stay.
Galili B would soon learn that other plans were in the works for
the residents of al-Ramla: "The Military Governor told me," Galili B
wrote, "that he had different orders from Ben-Gurion: to evacuate
Ramla." Orders to expel the residents of al-Ramla and Lydda were given
in the early afternoon of July 12. The Lydda order, stating, "The
inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to
age," was given at 1:30 P.M. by Lieutenant Colonel Yitzhak Rabin.
(p. 78):
The new Soviet support for a Jewish state meant that the Bulgarian
government would back emigration of those Jews wishing to
leave. Georgi Dimitrov had just returned from a meeting int he
Kremlin, where Stalin had reminded him, "To help the Jews emigrate to
Palestine is the decision of the United Nations." Dimitrov immediately
conveyed this message to Jewish Communists who saw the UN partition
vote as a defeat. "The Jewish people, for the first time in their
history, are fighting like men for their rights," Dimitrov told his
Jewish comrades in a Politburo meeting in March 1948. "We must admire
this fight. . . . We used to be against emigration. We were
actually an obstacle to it. Which made us isolated from the
masses."
(pp. 83-84):
Despite the conflict, many Jewish intellectuals in Palestine had
argued that Israel's long-term survival depended on finding a way to
coexist with the Arabs. Moshe [Eshkenazi] was part of a Zionist
organization that had advocated a binational democratic state for all
the people of Palestine. The binational idea had taken root in the
1920s with the formation of Brit Shalom, or Covenant for Peace, which
advocated "understanding between Jews and Arabs . . . on the
basis of the absolute political equality of two culturally autonomous
peoples. . . ." Part of this philosophy was based on a
desire to preserve "the ethical integrity of the Zionist endeavor";
part of it was practical. Arthur Ruppin, a founder of Brit Shalom,
declared, "I have no doubt that Zionism will be heading toward a
catastrophe if it will not find common ground with the Arabs." The
spiritual father of coexistence was Martin Buber, the great religious
philosopher from Vienna, who had long advocated a binational state
based in part on "the love for their homeland that the two peoples
share."
(p. 89):
On August 16, Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator, dispatched
telegrams to fifty-three countries, appealing to them "to divert to me
at Beirut . . . any such stocks" of meat, fruit, grains, or
butter already on the high seas. The UN considered the situation in
Palestine a "large scale human disaster." By this time, the UN
estimated, more than 250,000 Arabs had "fled or have been forcibly
expelled from the territories occupied by the Jews in Palestine."
(Later figures would be three times the early UN estimate.) "Never
have I seen a more ghastly sight than that which met my eye here, at
Ramallah," Bernadotte wrote in September. "The car was literally
stormed by excited masses shouting with Oriental fervor that they
wanted food and wanted to return to their homes. There wer plenty of
frightening faces in the sea of suffering humanity. I remember not
least a group of scabby and helpless old men with tangled beards who
thrust their emaciated faces into the car and held out scraps of bread
that would certainly have been considered uneatable by ordinary
people, but was their only food.
(pp. 95-96):
Count Bernadotte continued to advocate a division of historic
Palestine between Israel and Transjordan, "in view of the historical
connection and common interests of Transjordan and Palestine." Under
this plan, the Khairis and other refugees would go home to al-Ramla
and Lydda -- not to an independent state, as many Palestinian Arabs
had fought for, but to an Arab state that would fall under the rule of
Abdullah and his kingdom of Jordan. (After the war, the "Trans" was
dropped and Abdullah's kingdom was known simply as Jordan.) Large
parts of the Negev would be returned to the Arabs; the Jews would keep
the Galilee and Haifa. The Lydda airport would be "a free airport" for
all; Jerusalem, as the November 1947 UN resolution had outlined,
"should be treated separately and placed under effective United
Nations control." As for al-Ramla and Lydda, Bernadotte's blueprint
declared that the towns "should be in Arab territory."
The mediator's proposals were based on what he saw as the political
realities of the day. "A Jewish State called Israel exists in
Palestine," he wrote, "and there are no sound reasons for assuming
that it will not continue to do so." Bernadotte also stressed another
point that would have been of great interest to Ahmad, Zakia, and the
tens of thousands of refugees sleeping on the ground in Ramallah: "The
right of innocent people, uprooted by the present terror and ravage of
war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective,
with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who
may choose not to return."
The next day, Count Folke Bernadotte was killed in the Katamon
quarter of Jerusalem. An assassin walked up to Bernadotte's UN
vehicle, thrust an automatic pistol through the window, and shot him
at close range. Six bullets penetrated, one to his heart. A statement
from the extremist Jewish militia group the Stern Gang claimed
responsibility, calling UN observers "members of foreign occupation
forces." David Ben-Gurion, Israel's prime minister, detained two
hundred members of the Stern Gang, including one of its leaders,
future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, and ordered the other extremist
Jewish militia, Irgun, led by another future premier, Menachem Begin,
to disband and turn over its weapons to the Israeli army. The Irgun
ceased to function as a separate military unit, and Ben-Gurion's fight
to consolidate the militias was now virtually complete. Begin, no
longer in charge of his own militia, began to convert the Irgun into a
political party, the Herut, which two decades later would form the
basis of the Likud Party.
(p. 126):
Throughout 1965 and 1966, Fatah, along with a new group called
Abtal al-Awda (Heroes of Return), launched dozens more attacks from
the West Bank and Lebanon on mostly isolated targets inside
Israel. The attacks sharply raised anxieties in the Jewish state, and,
as designed, sparked tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors.l
By late 1966 these attacks and the Israeli reprisals, had drawn a
reluctant King Hussein deeper into the conflict, and closer to the
point of no return.
Before dawn on November 13, 1966, Israeli planes, tanks, and troops
attacked the West Bank village of Samu, blowing up dozens of houses
and kiling twenty-one Jordanian soldiers. The invasion, especially in
its massive scale, shocked even some supporters of
Israel. U.S. officials immediately condemned the attack. In
Washington, the head of the National Security Council, Walt Rostow, in
a memo to President Johnson, declared that the "3000-man raid with
tanks and planes was all out of proportion to the provocation" -- in
this case, a Fatah land mine that had killed three Israeli soldiers on
November 11. Rostow said of the Israelis, "They've undercut
Hussein. We're spending $500 million to shore him up as a stabilizing
factor. . . . It makes even the moderate Arabs feel
fatalistically that there is nothing they can do to get along with the
Israelis no matter how hard they try. It will place heavy domestic and
external political strain on King Hussein's
regime. . . ."
(p. 140):
On the morning of Wednesday, June 7, Bashir and his family woke up
to a city under military occupation. Israeli soldiers in jeeps were
shouting through bullhorns, demanding that white flags be hung outside
houses, shops, and apartment buildings; already balconies and windows
fluttered with T-shirts and handkerchiefs.
Bashir was in shock from the surreal and the familiar. Another
retreating Jordanian army had been replaced by another occupying
Israeli force. In 1948, Bashir thought, we lost 78 percent
of our land. And now all of Palestine is under occupation. The
taste was bitter and humiliating. Not only did the Israelis capture
and occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they now held the
Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Perhaps most shocking of all was that East
Jerusalem, and the Old City with its holy sites, was now in the hands
of the Israelis.
(p. 161):
"Okay, Bashir, I live in your home," Dalia said finally. "And this
is also my home. It is the only home I know. So, what shall we
do?"
"You can go back where you came from," Bashir said calmly.
Dalia felt as if Bashir had dropped a bomb. She wanted to scream,
though as his guest she knew she couldn't. She forced herself to
listen.
"We believe that only those who came here before 1917" -- the year
of the Balfour Declaration and the beginning of the British Mandate in
Palestine -- "have a right to be here. But anyone who came after
1917," Bashir said, "cannot stay."
Dalia was astounded at the audacity of Bashir's solution. "Well,
since I was born and came here after 1917, that is no solution for
me!" she said with an incredulous laugh. She was struck by the total
contradiction of her situation: complete disagreement across a
seemingly unbridgeable gulf, combined with the establishment of a bond
through a common history, in a house where she felt utterly protected
and welcomed. At the base of it all, Dalia felt the depth of the
Khairis' gratitude for her having simply opened the door to the house
in Ramla. "And this was an amazing situation to be in," she
remembered. "That everybody could feel the warmth and the reality of
our people meeting, meeting the other, and it was real, it was
happening, and we were admiring each other's being, so to
speak. And it was so tangible. And on the other hand, we were
conversing of things that seemed totally mutually
exclusive. That my life here is at their expense, and if
they want to realize their dream, it's at my expense.
(pp. 211-212):
Dalia, flat on her back in her hospital bed, followed the debate
with her eyes. She was struck that Ghiath could not understand her
people's longing for the ancient homeland.
"But they were not born here," Ghiath protested. "For example, my
Jewish friend, Avraham, he and his father and his forefathers were
born here. Their family is from Jaffa. He is a true Palestinian."
So that means, Dalia thought, that I'm not?
"It's a different kind of self-understanding," countered Yehezkel,
the religious scholar. "What are you going to do about that? Why do
you think Israelis are afraid of you? We are not as afraid of the
entire Syrian army with all its weaponry as we are of you. Why do you
think that is?"
Ghiath looked at Yehezkel in amazement. Nuha and Dalia remained
silent as Yehezkel continued: "Because you are theonly ones who have a
legitimate grievance against us. And deep down, even those who deny it
know it. That makes us very uncomfortable and uneasy in dealing with
you. Because our homes are your homes, you become a real threat."
"Why can't we all live in the same state, rogether in peace?" said
Ghiath. "Why do we need two states?"
"Then you think you would be able to go back to your father's
house?" Yehezkel asked.
Dalia shifted in her bed. "And what would happen to the people
already living in those houses?" she asked.
"They will build new homes for them," Ghiath replied.
"You mean," Dalia said, "they will be evacuated for you to return
to your original homes? I hope you can understand why Israelis are
afraid of you. Israel will do everything to prevent the implementation
of these dreams. Even under a peace plan you will not return to your
original homes."
"What do we want? Only our rights and to live in peace."
"Justice for you is receiving back what you lost in 1948. But that
justice will be at the expense of other people."
[ . . . ]
Dalia said, "I'm not going to explain to you what the yearning for
Zion means to us. I will just say that because you see us as strangers
in this land, that is why we are afraid of you. You should not think
that I myself am free of fear. I have a good reason to be afraid: The
Palestinian people as a collective have not accepted the Jewish home
in this land. Most of you still consider us a cancerous presence among
you. I struggle for your rights despite my fears. But your rights have
to be balanced against our needs for survival. That is why you cannot
be satisfied. For you, every viable solution will always be lacking in
justice. In a peace plan, everybody will have to do with less than
they deserve."
(pp. 226-228):
Bashir's first days back in Ramallah were bittersweet. Arafat's
embrace of Oslo, together with his pledge to control "terrorism and
other forms of violence," had begun to pit the champion of Palestinian
liberation against the disparate Palestinian factions that had grown
increasingly unsettled about Oslo. To them, accepting Oslo represented
a surrender of 78 percent of historic Palestine; even the West Bank,
Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which represented the other 22 percent,
Israel didn't seem prepared to hand over. Already the Israeli
government had announced plans for thousands of new housing units in
East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians envisioned as their capital,
and Israeli construction crews were building new "bypass" roads to
better facilitate the travel of settlers from the West Bank to
Israel. These plans were being undertaken within the Oslo framework,
and many Palestinians worried that the new facts on the ground would
permanently alter their chances for a viable, sovereign state. These
fears were made more acute with the sudden surge in political violence
and assassination, which had begun less than six months after the
famous handshake on the White House lawn.
[ . . . ]
Arafat condemned each suicide attack and, under pressure from
Israel and the United States, ordered the arrest of suspected members
of militant groups. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were in
Palestinian jails, many by order of a secret Palestinian military
court for state security established under the Oslo framework. In the
first year of the court, several men died during interrogations; many
Palestinians accused Arafat of doing the dirty work for Israel. The
chairman responded to criticism by closing several newspapers and
detaining prominent Palestinian human rights advocates. Edward Said,
the Columbia University professor and leading Palestinian
intellectual, wrote that "Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have
become a sort of Vichy government for Palestinians."
Anger at Arafat deepened as he began granting favors to loyalists
who had come with him from Tunis. The chairman himself continued to
live modestly, but some of his longtime cohorts in exile built
mansions in Gaza, all the more striking for their juxtapostion against
the squalor of the refugee camps on one of the most crowded places on
earth. One of the mansions, estimated to cost $2 million, was built
for Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, who would later succeed Arafat
as the leader of the Palestinians. "This is your reward for selling
Palestine," a graffiti artist scrawled on the mansion stones. The poor
of the refugee camps, whose young men formed the basis of the
resistance to Israeli rule and whose casualties during the intifada
numbered in the thousands, now chafed under the rule of the elite of
Tunis. "Every revolution has its fighters, thinkers, and profiteers,"
one Gazan would say. "Our fighters have been killed, our thinkers
assassinated, and all we have left are the profiteers."
Bashir Khairi is arrested on suspicion of being involved with
George Habash's PFLP (pp. 167-168):
Bashir Khairi sat in a three-by-five-foot cell with stone walls,
iron bars, and a low-watt bulb dangling from the ceiling. He slept on
the cement floor, and for six nights he lay in the dark, shivering
without bedcovers. Since his incarceration at Sarafand prison -- the
old British lockup close to al-Ramla -- Bashir had developed a high
fever and chills; on the seventh day, Bashir remembered decades later,
his Israeli jailers brought him a blanket.
"In the interrogation room at Sarafand," Bashir recounted, "there
was a chair and a table, and on the table was a black shabbah,"
a hood. "You put the hood over your head, and they beat you. They beat
me on the hands, they choked me with the hood on. Other times they
would chain my hands and legs, blindfold me, and unleash the dogs. The
dogs would jump on me and pin me back against the wall. I could feel
their breath on my neck." Bashir believed the interrogations were
conducted by agents of the General Security Services, or Shin Bet. He
would recall the men with a precision and seeming calm of someone
remembering a trip to the store the day before. "Their faces," Bashir
would say quietly. "To this day I remember exactly their faces."
After the interrogations came psychological operations. "In my
cell," he said, "I would hear shots, and then someone screaming. Then
the guards would arrive and bring me outside and show me a hole, and
say, 'If you don't cooperate, this is where you'll end up.' Then I
would be back in my cell, hearing shooting and screaming. You'd think:
They're killing the people who don't confess." The Israeli
interrogators wanted Bashir to admit to having played a role in the
supermarket bombing and to describe the internal operations of the
PFLP so they could put an end to the El Al hijackings. The young
lawyer admitted nothing. He refused to confirm any association with
the Popular Front. Consequently, he said, the beatings, dog attacks,
and psy-ops continued.
This kind of treatment was not exceptional. In 1969, the year
Bashir was arrested, little was known outside of the Shin Bet about
Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners. In 1974, the Israeli human
rights lawyer Felicia Langer published a memoir, With My Own
Eyes, detailing her interviews with prisoners who had endured an
"ordeal of beatings and humiliation." She described prisoners who
showed evidence of blows to the head, hands, and legs; who told of
being punched in the face while blindfolded; who arrived for jailhouse
interviews in bloodstained shirts; who described hanging from a wall
by handcuffs tied to iron bars; who reported interrogations with
"electricity and sticks"; whose feet and hands were bound until they
bled.
In one case, Langer wrote, a fifty-two-year-old man with a
respiratory disease was interrogated naked, and "his hands were tied
behind his back; a rope was tied on to his hands too,a nd he was
lifted in the air thus. His interrogators beat him also now, and after
each beating they rodered him to talk, and since he had nothing to say
they went on beating him." Langer also described one prisoner, "blue
from the beatings," who died, the authorities claimed, after "he had
stumbled and fell down a staircase."
On one of her jailhouse visits, probably int he spring of 1969,
Felicia Langer met Bashir. She would remember a pale man with large
eyes who seemed "barely alive." "They beat me very badly," Langer
recalls Bashir telling her, "until I was barely able to stand up."
(p. 246):
The next day, Prime Minister Sharon ordered Israeli troops back
into Bethlehem, where they reoccupied the city, imposed a military
lockdown, conducted house-to-house arrests, and blew up five homes,
including the house where [suicide bomber] Nael Abu Hilail had lived
with his parents and slblings. Sine Sharon had come to power less than
two years earlier on a pledge to increase Israelis' security, bombers
had struck Israel nearly sixty times; this was nearly twice the number
of attacks of the previous seven years. Sharon's spokesman blamed
Arafat and the Palestinian Authority for the attacks, saying that "all
our efforts to hand over areas, and all the talk about a possible
cease-fire, that was all window dressing because on the ground there
was a continuous effort to carry out as many terrorist activities as
possible."
(pp. 260-261):
Bashir believed "it's the strong who create history," but his years
in prison and in exile had helped forge a longer-range view. "We are
weak today," he said. "But we won't stay this way. Palestinians are
stones in a riverbed. We won't be washed away. The Palestinians are
not the Indians. It is the opposite: Our numbers are increasing.
[ . . . ]
Dalis has long believed in Einstein's words -- that "no problem can
be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." For
Dalia, the key to coexistence lay in what she called "the three A's":
acknowledgment of what had happened to the Palestinians in 1948,
apology for it, and amends. Acknowledgment was, in part, to "see and
own the pain that I or my people have inflicted on the Other." But she
believed this must be mutual -- that Bashir must also see the Israeli
Other -- lest "one perpetuate the righteous victim syndrome and not
take responsibility for one's own part in the fray." Through this
acknowledgment, she and Bashir could act "as mirrors through which our
own redemption can eventually grow." As for amends: "It means that we
do the best we can under the circumstances towards those we have
wronged." But for Dalia this could not involve a mass return of
refugees. Yes, she believed, the Palestinians have the right of
return, but it is not a right that can be fully implemented, because
the return of millions of Palestinians would effectively mean the end
of Israel.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Music: Current count 13753 [13725] rated (+28), 812 [818] unrated (-6).
Another week. They go by in a blur, and my recollection of this one seems
particularly spotty. Still waiting for Recycled Goods to go through its
edit/posting phase. Played some old records. Did some jazz prospecting.
Spent a day playing the Jimmy Reed that turns out I had previously rated.
(Came to same conclusion: A-.)
- Sonic Youth (1981 [2006], Geffen): Their first
record, a 5-track EP, expanded to hour-length with 1981 live shots;
no songs to speak of, few vocals, mostly guitar, their notorious
noise tunings drilled home through repetition; in retrospect this
is transitional from Glenn Branca's avant no wave to the sound they
wound up with, and if anything gains from its conceptual bareness.
B+(***)
Jazz Prospecting (CG #15, Part 6)
Despite some distractions, still worked through a fair amount
of jazz prospecting this week, although I also spent some time
working on Recycled Goods. The November column is still stuck
in limbo, done but not posted. Next week should be more of the
same, although I should start addressing the replay shelves --
they're starting to fill up -- and start winding up the cycle.
It would be nice to get Jazz CG done by the end of November,
and get it published by year-end. December's Recycled Goods
column is filling up. By the end of the year, I expect to reach
two minor milestones: 15 Jazz Consumer Guides, and 50 Recycled
Goods. Don't know about 2008. I'm feeling dead tired at the
moment, making pitiful progress on all other projects. I've
even started getting letters wondering about the Christgau
website -- currently three Consumer Guides out of date. I'll
get that updated later this week, but that's a relatively easy
one.
Michael Camacho: Just for You (2003-04 [2007],
New Found): Vocalist. Has a distinctive voice, soft and silky,
which occasionally impresses but I don't find all that appealing.
First album, Don't know anything more about him. Album appears
to have been originally released in 2006 on CAP, then reissued
on New Found Records -- cover is changed, but songs look to be
the same. Five originals, plus standards including some basic
rock ballads ("Norwegian Wood," "Spanish Harlem").
B-
Champian Fulton with David Berger & the Sultans of
Swing: Champian (2007, Such Sweet Thunder): Singer,
plays piano on two tracks, would probably play more but not
much point in front of a big band. Born 1985, grew up in Norman
OK, then Le Mars IA, then back to Norman. Father plays trumpet,
became director of Clark Terry Institute for Jazz Studies --
Terry was a household guest early on, a world-class education
in itself. She graduated from SUNY Purchase, moved to New York,
sings with Berger's big band. The Berger band always seemed
better in theory than in practice, and are still little more
than perfunctory here, but Fulton fits in nicely and brightens
them up -- good examples are "He Ain't Got Rhythm" and "Just
One of Those Things."
B+(*)
Stacey Kent: Breakfast on the Morning Tram (2007,
Blue Note): Vocalist, originally from New Jersey, studied comparative
lit at Sarah Lawrence in New York, and took her degree to England,
where she married saxophonist Jim Tomlinson and stepped into what's
evidently a very successful singing career. Looks like she has ten
records since 1997. This is the first I've heard, and it's sent me
up and down. She has an attractive voice, thin, clear, with nary a
hint of the mannerisms so many jazz singers cultivate. The settings
are spare, mostly keyed off the guitar, with Tomlinson's sax mostly
limited to breaks. Two covers -- "Hard-Hearted Hannah" and "What a
Wonderful World" -- are exceptionally reserved. Four songs have
lyrics by novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Three songs are in French --
the first two especially beguiling. Penguin Guide: "Problem is, the
singer has simply repeated the formula across each subsequent record,
and given her temperate approach they've taken on a soundalike
quality." SFFR.
[B+(**)]
The Very Best of Diana Krall (1995-2006 [2007],
Verve): The most successful jazz vocalist of her generation, her
precise, practiced control of nuance is evident in every note,
sometimes so conspicuously that she stretches slow songs out to
imponderable lengths. Still, she has no hit parade, no canon --
the selection here seems arbitrary, favoring her least graceful
albums making the songs seem unnecessarily difficult. I imagine
that other selections are equally viable -- had I started from
scratch to make up my own mix tape, I doubt I would have picked
as many as two of these songs.
B+(**)
New York Voices: A Day Like This (2007, MCG
Jazz): Vocal group, obviously. They formed in 1987 with original
members Darmon Meader, Peter Eldridge, and Kim Nazarian still
together, and Lauren Kinhan since 1992. Meader also plays tenor
sax, and Eldridge piano. This is their tenth album, including
featured appearances with the Basie Orchestra, Paquito D'Rivera,
and something involving chants. It is the first I've heard, and
hopefully the last. Dynamically they borrow from vocalese, but
they lay it on much thicker, with nothing that suggests humor.
C-
Stanley Clarke: The Toys of Men (2007, Heads Up):
Bassist, mostly electric although he plays a good deal of acoustic
here, as well as variants like piccolo bass and tenor bass. From
Philadelphia. Made a big splash in the early 1970s (his own early
20s) with Return to Forever and on his own, but his crossover never
carried much critical weight -- one result being that this is the
first of his 30-some records I've heard. (Of course, I have heard
other records he's played on -- AMG's list runs to four pages.)
This one is an odd mix of things. The six-part title suite would
be overblown arena jazz if such a thing existed. But there are
also solo bass pieces (acoustic, no less), funk drums duos, keyb
and guitar trios, a vocal piece with Esperanza Spalding writing
and singing. Most of it is quite listenable, but I don't quite
see how it adds up.
B
The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet: Guys and Dolls
(2007, Arbors): Francis Davis beat me to this in the Voice -- it
seems to have slipped through the random post office filter, so
I had to request a copy. For once, Davis likes an Allen album
better than I do. The reason almost certainly is Frank Loesser,
whose "Guys and Dolls" I've never felt any connection to. I do
have a 1992 RCA CD of a Broadway revival, dutifully purchased
following Robert Christgau's recommendation. Played it once or
twice, got nothing, shelved it. I should probably dig it out for
reference here. The quartet is often wonderful here, with Cohn's
light guitar enjoying the rhythm more than Allen's luscious tenor
sax. But most cuts come with vocals, with Rebecca Kilgore and
Eddie Erickson in the key roles. Neither are as sharp or shrill
as I recall the musical, which may be an improvement but if so
is one that calls the whole project into question. No urgency
on this.
[B+(**)]
Evan Christopher: Delta Bound (2006 [2007],
Arbors): Clarinetist, b. 1974 Long Beach CA, headed for New
Orleans, stopping for a three-year stretch in the Jim Cullum
Jazz Band. Previous albums include two volumes of Clarinet
Road: The Road to New Orleans; The Ragpickers --
half Tony Parenti in 1949, half Christopher in 2002; a Jazz
Traditions Project Live at the Meridien. He dedicates
this album to Lorenzo Tio Jr. (1893-1933) -- "the father of the
New Orleans clarinet style and the early teacher of many of
the greatest clarinetists who came from New Orleans" -- but
he works the broader tradition, starting with a Parenti piece,
adding originals, and checking out New Orleans nods from Hoagy
Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Quartet, with Dick Hyman on piano,
although he's far less interesting than the clarinet.
[B+(***)]
Chick Corea and Béla Fleck: The Enchantment
(2007, Concord): Duets, about half from each artist's catalog.
The banjo often merges into the piano, producing something like
a harpsichord sound, and giving the whole affair a baroque cast --
not as rigid rhythmically, of course.
B- [advance]
Jamie Fox: When I Get Home (2006 [2007], Rare Cat):
Guitarist, from California. First album. Doesn't look to be all
that young. Brief bio on website suggests a checkered career:
"played lead guitar and served as Musical Director for the Joan
Baez World Tour (1989-1991), . . . was lead guitarist
for Blood, Sweat, & Tears (1998-2000), touring the USA and
Canada." Not being much of a guitar buff, I could go up or down
on his attractive mainstream guitar, but he put together a pretty
good band -- four (out of five) names I recognize, the best known
being pianist Kenny Werner, the most impressive saxophonist Dan
Willis. His work here reminds me that I still owe Willis an
honorable mention for Velvet Gentlemen.
B+(*)
Bernie Kenerson: Just You & Me (2007, Bernup):
Subtitled "The Art of the EWI" -- promised as the first of a number
of volumes exploring the Akai EWI 4000s electronic wind instrument;
i.e., a synthesizer you control by blowing into. EWI's show up on
some smooth jazz records, but not often otherwise. (Sanity check:
fgrep through my notebook produces: Michael Brecker, Felipe LaMoglia
[w/Ignacio Berroa], Bob Mintzer, Jørgen Munkeby [Shining], Steve
Tavaglione [Jing Chi], Andre Ward. That strikes me as short on the
smooth side, but my note-taking isn't always up to snuff there.)
Problem is that Kenerson doesn't push the instrument very far. He
describes himself as "a child of funk and fusion," cites Brecker
as his favorite musician, and picks Mintzer's Yellowjackets as his
favorite band. Backed with keybs, bass and percussion, Kenerson
mostly sticks with harmless funk and a bit of space atmosphere
here. The EWI ranges from flute to sanitized alto sax tones --
it's not the problem, but not the solution either.
B
Daniel Smith: The Swingin' Bassoon (2004 [2007],
Zah Zah): Plays bassoon, obviously. Born 1939, has a reputation
in classical music, including a 6-CD set of 37 Vivaldi bassoon
concertos. Over the years he's tried a lot of unconventional
things with bassoon -- English folk songs, Scott Joplin rags,
a Jazz Suite for Bassoon -- and now bebop, with this
record the follow-up to last year's Bebop Bassoon (also
Zah Zah). Listening to things like "Scrapple From the Apple"
and "St. Thomas" makes it pretty clear why jazz musicians
favor saxophones over bassoon: it just doesn't have the speed,
clarity, nuance, and power that we're used to. The band's a
quartet, and Martin Bejerano's piano sounds like the real
thing.
B-
Josh Nelson: Let It Go (2007, Native Language):
Young (28?) pianist, born in Long Beach, attended Berklee, now
based in Los Angeles. Cites Bill Cunliffe and Alan Pasqua as
mentors. Looks like his second album, after Anticipation
(2004). Seems to me that the label specializes in pop-jazz --
I don't normally get their records -- but this is thoughtful,
smartly composed and arranged postbop. (Nelson's lists Rhodes
and Hammond C3 among his credits, but acoustic piano dominates.)
Much of the credit goes to a first-rate band: Seamus Blake on
tenor sax, Anthony Wilson on guitar, Derek Oleskiewicz on bass,
Matt Wilson on drums. Two cuts add a string quartet -- one also
pitching singer Sara Gazarek. She's unnecessary here, but not
unfortunate. (Evidently Nelson also runs a promo company, and
she's a client, as well as a label-mate.)
[B+(***)]
Bruce Eskovitz Jazz Orchestra: Invitation (2007,
Pacific Coast Jazz): Listed in the credits as Dr. Bruce Eskovitz.
Got his Ph.D. at University of Southern California. Don't know how
old he is, but he's got some grey in the beard and a discography
that goes back to 1992, or maybe to 1983. Plays saxophone, mostly
tenor, some soprano, some alto flute. AMG describes his early
records as "crossover," but he turned around and did a Rollins
tribute (One for Newk) in 1993. This is a 10-piece big
band -- not huge in terms of numbers, but they play loud -- one
of several things I like about them. Another is a choice cut
called "Latin Fever" which Eskovitz wrote as a classroom salsa
intro but kept in the book because it's "always a crowd pleaser."
Reminds me of Gillespie's big band. Finally, I like it when the
saxophonist takes center stage and cuts loose. Not a lot of
finesse here. Maybe the academy isn't so stuffy after all.
B+(**)
Sean Jones: Kaleidoscope (2007, Mack Avenue):
Trumpet player, b. 1978 in Warren OH. Fourth album, quite a few
side dates, mostly with labelmates but he can also point to some
notable big band work (Brad Leali, Gerald Wilson). Never got a
final copy of this; for that matter, got an advance but no final
of his previous Roots, which I never got to (but may be
around here somewhere). This one is meant to showcase vocalists.
Don't know who sings what, but the vocalists are: Kim Burrell,
Gretchen Parlato, Carolyn Perteete, Sachal Vasandani, JD Walter.
Most have a gospel vibe, and none strike me as the least bit
interesting. But the trumpet does shine behind them, and tenor
saxophonist Walter Smith III breaks loose some tough runs.
Maybe I should find the old promo?
C+ [advance]
Sean Jones: Roots (2006, Mack Avenue): This one
was released in Sept. 2006. Again, all I have is the advance. On
the back it says: "Sean Jones and Roots take you from the
church, to the dance hall, and through the night clubs of New
Orleans." Actually, they start with "Children's Hymn" and end
with "John 3:16" and "I Need Thee," stopping at "Come Sunday"
and "Lift Every Voice" and similar fare along the way -- maybe
Brad Leali's "Puddin' Time" counts as a change of pace? (Sounds
like it.) Jones is a bright, energetic trumpet player, but he
rarely picks the music to show that off. The saxophonist has
some good moments; evidently that's Tia Fuller.
B
Marlon Simon and the Nagual Spirits: In Case You Missed
It (2006 [2007], Jazzheads): Drummer, percussionist,
originally from Venezuela, moving to US in 1987, studying in
Philadelphia, then New York. Brother of pianist Edward Simon and
trumpeter Michael Simon, both present here. No idea what the band
name signifies, but the music has a deep Afro-Cuban vibe, with
bata drums on several cuts, Roberto Quintero's congas on more.
Three cuts add a string quartet, more for color than anything
else. The horns are lively, with Alex Norris playing trumpet,
Peter Brainin sax, mostly tenor.
B+(*)
Steve Kuhn/Steve Swallow: Two by Two (1995 [2007],
Owl/Sunnyside): Piano/electric bass, two longtime masters, trading
songbooks as well as lines. Played it with pleasure three times and
have no idea of how to write about it: intimate, understated,
seductive, but too respectful to shake much of anything loose.
B+(*)
Linda Sharrock/Eric Watson: Listen to the Night
(1994 [2007], Owl/Sunnyside): Singer, married to guitarist Sonny
Sharrock, who featured her on his 1969 album Black Woman --
as I recall, she appeared as something of a banshee, a limited
role on a good album with some tremendous avant power riffing.
They did two more albums together -- haven't heard either --
then divorced in 1978. She moved to Austria, popping up on the
occasional Wolfgang Pushnig album; also appeared with the Korean
group Samul Nori. On the other hand, this is a quite conventional
jazz vocal album, with Watson's attentive piano the only backing,
and Sharrock's rich, dusky voice fit securely in a line that
extends from Sarah Vaughan to Cassandra Wilson. Three originals
are hit and miss, but the lead-off "Lover Man" is especially
striking, a choice cut.
B+(**)
Frank Rosolino/Carl Fontana: Trombone Heaven
(1978 [2007], Uptown): Two of the better bebop trombonists to
follow in JJ Johnson's wake. Both came up in big band, notably
playing with Stan Kenton at different points. The group here
includes Elmer Gill on piano, Torban Oxbol on bass, and George
Ursan on drums. It was recorded live in Vancouver a few months
before Rosolino's tragic death -- he shot his two young sons,
killing one, blinding the other, then killed himself. Fontana
recorded less frequently as a leader, but has if anything the
stronger reputation. The two trombone leads are delightful on
a mixed bag of swing and bop standards.
B+(**)
Jay Azzolina: Local Dialect (2007, Garagista):
Guitarist, b. 1952, studied at Berklee, got an MFA at Conservatory
of Music at Purchase NY. Played with Spyro Gyra, John Patitucci
(present here), Tim Ries (also here) Rolling Stones Project, plus
various popstars and mainstream jazzers. Third album, with Ries'
sax and flute, Scott Wendholt's trumpet, Mike Davis' trombone,
Larry Goldings' organ, Patitucci's bass, Greg Hutchinson's drums,
a few others scattered abouts. Regarded as a fusion guitarist.
I'm not so sure, but he does force the rhythm in uninteresting
directions, and nothing else appeals enough to sort out.
B-
François Carrier/Michel Lambert: Kathmandu (2006
[2007], FMR): Alto saxophonist and drummer, respectively, both
from Quebec. They've played in a trio for much of the decade,
but here, recording live in Nepal, it's just the two of them.
Carrier's become one of my favorite players -- clear, liquid,
almost always on edge. Lambert plays free and can mix it up.
Basically what I expected, but I'll have to give it a closer
listen later.
[B+(***)]
Gebhard Ullman: New Basement Research (2005-06
[2007], Soul Note): German, b. 1957, plays tenor sax and bass
clarinet here, soprano sax and various flutes elsewhere. Claims
40 albums as leader/co-leader going back to 1985. This is the
fifth I've heard, all in the last 2-3 years. The title refers
back to a 1995 two-horn album he did with Ellery Eskelin. This
time he's escalated to three horns, with Julian Argüelles on
soprano and baritone sax and Steve Swell on trombone. The sound
is loud, discordant, boisterous. I found it to be fun, but Laura
made a point of how much she hated it, and I have to admit that
it's unlikely to travel well, or to convince anyone lacking
commitment to old-fashioned free jazz.
B+(*)
No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.
Unpacking:
- Ben Allison & Man Size Safe: Little Things Run the World (Palmetto): advance, Jan. 22
- Marcos Ariel: 4 Friends (Tenure)
- Bachata Roja: Acoustic Bachata From the Cabaret Era (IASO)
- Richard Cole: Shade (Origin)
- The Cool Season: An Origin Records Holiday Collection, Vol. 2 (Origin)
- Brent Jensen: One More Mile (Origin)
- Mörglbl: Grötesk (The Laser's Edge)
- Louise Rogers: Come Ready and See Me (Rilo): Feb. 1
- Barbara Rosene and Her New Yorkers: It Was Only a Sun Shower (Stomp Off)
- Ken Serio: Live . . . in the Moment (Tripping Tree Music, 2CD): Jan. 22
- Yerba Buena Stompers: Dawn Club Favorites (2001, Stomp Off)
- Yerba Buena Stompers: Barbary Coast Favorites (2001, Stomp Off)
- Yerba Buena Stompers: New Orleans Favorites (2002, Stomp Off)
- Yerba Buena Stompers: San Diego Favorites 2002-2003 (Diamondstack)
- Yerba Buena Stompers: San Francisco Bay Blues (2005, Stomp Off)
- Yerba Buena Stompers: Duff Campbell's Revenge (2005, Diamondstack)
- Yerba Buena Stompers: The Yama-Yama Man (2007, Stomp Off)
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Weekend Roundup
Tom Engelhardt: Thoughts on Getting to the March.
One of the differences between the Vietnam and Iraq wars is the declining
trajectory of antiwar protests today. Engelhardt reflects on this, but by
the time he gets to the point I had already gotten there. Protests against
the Vietnam war increased because people on both sides of the issue saw
them as a legitimate democratic process. Engelhardt writes:
By and large, the demonstrators of that moment not only believed
that Washington should listen, but when, for instance, they chanted
angrily, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?", that
President Lyndon Baines Johnson would be lisening. (And, in
fact, he was. He called it "that horrible song.")
Now, that such demonstrations seem pointless is as much as anything
a loss of faith not just in the current leadership but in the democratic
process as a whole. This has occurred at several levels, starting with
the inordinate focus on money in influencing political decision-making.
There's also an ideological prophylactic which roughly translates as
"war's too important to let the people have any say about it." Iraq
is a whole textbook on that theme, designed as it was to marginalize
and forget the 500,000 antiwar citizens who marched on Feb. 15, 2003
in New York plus millions elsewhere -- a standard which if innefectual
left the movement nowhere to go.
Michael Schwartz: Iraq Policy Floating on a Sea of Oil.
In rehearsing the history of America's oil diplomacy, Schwartz misses
one thing that I think is key: the extent to which America's expertise
in world affairs before WWII was limited to business interests. For
every US government employee abroad there must have been at least 10
businessfolk (and probably 2-3 missionaries). One consequence of this
is that business interests were able to lead state (presumably public)
interests -- in fact, it took little more than a red scare to push
the state's buttons. That oil is considered a "national interest" is
a residue of this confusion, a good part of the problem the difficulty
officials have in distinguishing the interests of consumers and oil
companies -- rather incredible given how cleanly they break on the
question of price, don't you think? The upshot of this is that the
Iraq war was incredibly stupid for US consumers, who are paying at
least twice as much now as they would with Saddam's Iraq free to sell
to the market. On the other hand, for the oil companies the war was
a win-win proposition: either they capture much needed new resources
or at least they squeeze the market and profit from the price rise.
The odd thing is that it's never clear who's leading whom around:
do the oil companies want the war? or is oil just an angle for the
warmongers to get their way (in which case the oil companies are
just going along for the ride, hoping to keep in good grace)? Same
thing can be said for Israel's relationship to the Iraq war: most
likely they didn't need or or even particularly want it, but they
went along with it, figuring it kept their alliances intact.
Tony Karon: Give Fareed Zakaria a Medal!
You know, the much threatened war with Iran is boring. That's mostly
because it's locked in the jaws of interminable contradiction: on the
one hand, it's clear that launching such a war would be an act not
just of political stupidity but of outright insanity; on the other
hand, the people with their fingers on the triggers are certainly
stupid and quite possibly insane. So it's impossible to dismiss their
threats as mere bluster or taunting, but it's exhausting to have to
deal with them afresh each time. At least, I'm not the sort of person
who suffers idiots kindly. So it's good that Zakaria has put himself
into this debate. That he went along with the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq may cut him some cred in Washington that people who were
right all along don't seem to have.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Studs Terkel: "The Good War"
I picked up Studs Terkel's "The Good War": An Oral History of
World War II (1984; paperback, New Press) after watching Ken
Burns' The War, although I had bought a copy a year or so
earlier. I felt like I wanted to get some sense of what the war
felt like to those who lived through it. In particular, I felt
that coming out of discussions with my aunt, Freda Bureman. Her
husband, my uncle Allen, died in a car wreck when I was a small
child, but he had served in the navy for much of the war, seeing
considerable action in the Pacific. Allen was only one of many
in my family involved in that war: my father and two of his
brothers were in the army, one shot and partially disabled in
Italy; several cousins on my mother's side were also involved,
one in particular winding up as a guard at the Tokyo war crimes
trials. Of course, others in the family lived through the war --
my mother and one of her sisters worked in airplane factories
here in Wichita. I was born in 1950, so for me the war was fresh
history, but not experience. Vietnam was experience for me, and
that recast everything.
The more I learn and think about World War II, the more clear
it becomes what a profound shock the war was to the path of
American history. It changed how we thought of ourselves and
how we thought of the world, and while victory in the war was
certainly better than defeat would have been, the changes it
wrought weren't necessarily for the better. With victory came
an extraordinary arrogance which we still suffer from -- and
for that matter make the world suffer with us. It led to a
romance of war that we haven't shook off even though none of
the many wars the US has engaged in have been anywhere near
as satisfying. The quotes I pulled from Terkel's book reflect
my concerns. It's a long book, 589 pages, and fascinating. It
even goes beyond the Americans-only approach Burns is limited
to, although only on occasion.
In the book, short intros by Terkel are in italics. Anything
not in italics is a quote from the interview, listed at the start
of each quote.
John Garcia, a dock worker at Pearl Harbor (p. 20):
There was so much excitement and confusion. Some of our sailors
were shooting five-inch guns at the Japanese planes. You just cannot
down a plane with a five-inch shell. They were landing in Honolulu,
the unexploding naval shells. They have a ten-mile range. They hurt
and killed a lot of people in the city.
When I came back after the third day, they told me that a shell had
hit the house of my girl. We had been going together for, oh, about
three years. Her house was a few blocks from my place. At the time,
they said it was a Japanese bomb. Later we learned it was an American
shell. She was killed. She was preparing for church at the time.
Robert Rasmus (p. 47):
We were aware that the Russians had taken enormous losses on the
eastern front, that they really had broken the back of the German
army. We would have been in for infinitely worse casualties and misery
had it not been for them. We were well disposed toward them. I
remember saying if we happen to link up with 'em, I wouldn't hesitate
to kiss 'em.
Robert Lekachman (pp. 67-68):
Unlike Vietnam, it wasn't just working-class kids doing the
fighting. You go to college faculty clubs today and on the walls are
long lists of graduates who died in the Second World War. It was the
last time that most Americans thought they were innocent and good,
without qualifications.
There were black marketeers on the home front, people who were, as
usual, hustling for themselves. But most Americans at home did observe
price controls and rationing. Soldiers who came home on leave were
treated with respect by the folks, unlike the Vietnam veterans. They
bought war bonds: Buy yourself a tank. It was an idealistic
war. People still believed.
The boys came home, eager to make up for lost time. Newly married,
and Levittown selling homes for six or seven thousand dollars, four
percent mortgages, no down payment. A postwar boom that lasted until
1969. Eisenhower was the perfect symbol of the period. It was as
though a massive dose of Sominex were administered to the whole
population. There was now less concern for those beyond your immediate
family. Making it yourself was what it was all about in the
fifties.
The GI Bill produced an educational explosion. If you wanted to
educate yourself, you got a good deal. Like millions of others, I went
back to school. I got full tuition at Columbia.
Peggy Terry (p. 111):
My husband was a paratrooper in the war, in the 101st Airborne
Division. He made twenty-six drops in France, North Africa, and
Germany. I look back at the war with sadness. I wasn't smart enough to
think too deeply then. We had a lotta good times and we had money and
we had food on the table and the rent was paid. Which had never
happened to us before. But when I look back and think of him
. . .
Until the war he never drank. He never even smoked. When he came
back he was an absolute drunkard. And he used to have the most awful
nightmares. He'd get up in the middle of the night and start
screaming. I'd just sit for hours and hold him while he just
shook. We'd go to the movies, and if they'd have films with a lot of
shooting in it, he'd just start to shake and have to get up and
leave. He started slapping me around and slapped the kids around. He
became a brute.
Betty Basye Hutchinson (p. 134):
When I think of the kind of person I was, a little hayseed from
Oroville, with all this altruism in me and all this patriotism that
sent me into the war! Oh, the war marked me, but I put it behind me. I
didn't do much except march against Vietnam. And my oldest son, I'm
happy to say, was a conscientious objector.
Paul Pisicano (pp. 142-143):
Suddenly we looked up, we owned property. Italians could buy. The
GI Bill, the American Dream. Guys my age had really become
Americanized. They moved to the suburbs. I think American suburbs are
bound by their antiblack sentiments. That's the common
denominator. They're into it very easily, it seems. They feel they've
achieved.
But they're worse off than they were before. That's the part they
don't understand. They really haven't been assimilated. They're just
the entrepreneurial rough-riders. They'll still take a tougher tack
than most guys, getting what they want. Not one of my friends has taken
an intellectual direction. The war bred the culture out of us. The
opera, all the good things. My father could whistle every damn opera I
ever heard. Of course, every house had Caruso records. There wasn't a
family that didn't have a lift-up phonograph. Opera was like cars for
us. What the automobile is to Americans, opera was for us. My friends
in the suburbs know nothing about opera, nothing about jazz. Just
making money.
Jack Short (pp. 144-145):
In a way, World War Two had a positive impact on me as an
individual. I can say I matured in those three years. I certainly did
want to obtain an education. I wanted to better myself rather than,
say, hitting a local factory. I didn't want to be a blue-collar
worker. This was basically all we had in our area. Fortunately, I was
educated on the GI Bill. I obtained a nice position in the company,
have a nice family. Everything in my lifetime sine the war has been
positive. I don't mean that war is positive. They're all negative as
far as I'm concerned.
The war changed our whole idea of how we wanted to live when we
came back. We set our sights pretty high. If we didn't have the war,
in Poughkeepsie, the furthest you'd travel would be maybe New York or
Albany. But once people started to travel -- People wanted better
levels of living, all people.
I come from a working-class family. All my relatives worked in
factories. They didn't own any business. They worked with their
hands. High school was about as far as they went. I went to college,
studied accounting, and that's all I've been doing for thirty-two
years.
Admiral Gene Larocque (pp. 190-191):
After the war, we were the most powerful nation in the world. Our
breadbasket was full. We enjoyed being the big shots. We were running
the world. We were the only major country that wasn't
devastated. France, Britain, Italy, Germany had all felt it. The
Soviet Union, our big ally, was on its knees. Twenty million dead.
We are unique in the world, a nation of thirty million war
veterans. We're theonly country in the world that's been fighting a
war since 1940. Count the wars -- Korea, Vietnam -- count the
years. We have built up in our body politic a group of old men who
look upon military service as a noble adventure. It was the big
excitement of their lives and they'd like to see young people come
along and share that excitement. We are unique.
We've always gone somewhere else to fight our wars, so we've not
really learned about its horror. Seventy percent of our military
budget is to fight somewhere else. [ . . . ]
Our military runs our foreign policy. The State Department simply
goes around and tidies up the messes the military makes. The State
Department has become the lackey of the Pentagon. Before World War
Two, this never happened. You had a War Department, you had a Navy
Department. Only if there was a war did they step up front. The
ultimate control was civilian. World War Two changed all this.
[ . . . ]
Nuclear weapons have become the conventional weapons.We seriously
considered using them in Vietnam. I was in the Pentagon myself trying
to decide what targets we could use. We explored every way we could to
win that war, believe me. We just couldn't find a good enough
target. We were not concerned about the opprobrium attached to the use
of nuclear weapons.
I was in Vietnam. I saw the senseless waste of human beings. I saw
this bunch of marines come off this air-conditioned ship. Nothing was
too good for our sailors, soldiers, and marines. We send 'em ashore as
gung ho young nineteen-year-old husky nice-looking kids and bring 'em
back in black rubber body bags. They are a few little pieces left
over, some entrails and limbs that don't fit in the bags. Then you
take a fire hose and you hose down the deck and push that stuff over
the side.
John Kenneth Galbraith, who participated with George Ball and Paul
Nitze in a 1945 study of the effectiveness of aerial bombing in the
war (pp. 208-210):
The results were not in doubt. The bombing of Germany both by the
British and ourselves had far less effect than was thought at the
time. The German arms industry continued to expand its output until
the autumn of 1944, in spite of the heaviest air attacks. Some of the
best-publicized attacks, including those on German ball-bearing
plants, practically grounded the Eighth Air Force for months. Its
losses were that heavy. At the end of the war, the Germans had ball
bearings for export again. Our attacks on their air-frame plants were
a total failure. In the months after the great spring raids of 1944,
their production increased by big amounts.
[ . . . ]
The [atomic] bomb did not end the Japanese war. This was something
that was carefully studied by our bombing survey. Paul Nitze headed it
in Japan, so there was hardly any bias in this matter. It's ironic
that he has sine become fascinated with the whole culture of
destruction. The conclusion of the monograph called Japan's
Struggle to End the War was that it was a difference, at most, of
two or three weeks. The decision had already been taken to get out of
the war, to seek a peace negotiation.
The Japanese government, at that time, was heavily
bureaucratic. The decision took some time to translate into
action. There was also a fear that some of the army units might go in
for a kind of Kamikaze resistance. The decision was not known in
Washington. While the bomb did not bring an end to the war, one cannot
say Washington ordered the attacks in the knowledge that the war was
coming to an end.
Would not millions have been lost, American and Japanese, in the
projected attack on the mainland, had it not been for the
bomb?
That is not true. There would have been negotiations for surrender
within days or a few weeks under any circumstances. Before the A-bombs
were dropped, Japan was a defeated nation. This was realized.
This experience, as a member of the commission, had an enormous
effect on my attitudes. You had to see these German cities, city after
city, in 1945 and then to on to the utter horror of Japanese cities to
see how frightful modern air warfare is. There is nothing nice about
ground warfare: twenty thousand men were killed on the first day in
the Battle of the Somme in World War One. But this didn't have the
high visibility of Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Mainz. And to see Tokyo
leveled to the ground. I was left with an image which has stayed with
me all my life.
Elliott Johnson (pp. 259-260):
We were so mixed up, Americans and Germans. People were shooting at
my dear friend Ed Bostick, our forward observer. This was on the
second day or third. He jumped into a ditch on the side of the
road. The only thing that saved him was a dead Germany boy who he
pulled on top of him. He lay there for hours until he felt safe to
move. When he came back, he fell in my arms. Imagine what he'd been
through, using a dead boy as a shield.
I went back to my foxhole and I was suddenly drained. It was about
one-thirty in the morning. I had to stay on duty until two. Ed was to
come and relieve me. I couldn't stay awake. I was just plain
exhausted. We never turned the crank or rang the bell on the
telephone. When you are an officer -- and this included the top
noncoms -- you went to sleep with your headset at your head. Instead
of ringing the bell or speaking, we'd just go (whistles softly), and
that would waken you from a sound sleep. This voice came on and said,
"Yes, El?" I said, "Can you relieve me? I'm just bushed." He said
"I'll be right over." He came walking over to where I was and for some
reason he began to whistle. I"ll never know why. A young artillery
man, one of ours, I'm sure had dozed off. The whistle wakened him. He
saw a figure and fired.
I was out and running, and I caught Ed as he fell. He was dead in
my arms. Call it foolish, call it irrational, I loaded Ed in a jeep. I
had to take him in for proper care. Now! I went to our battalion
headquarters, and I was directed to this drunken colonel. He came out
and said, "Get that goddamn hunk of rotten meat out of here." You have
no idea of my feeling toward him. It's remained with me for a long
time, hard to get rid of.
Dr. Alex Shulman (p. 287):
I got to Buchenwald, too. Did you know that Buchenwald was a zoo?
On the gate, engraved: Buchenwald Zoological Gardens. The ultimate
humiliation. They didn't let us in, but we could look in. The smell
and the bodies all were still there. So nobody can tell me it didn't
happen. (Laughs.)
Americans have never know what war really is. No matter how much
they saw it on television or pictures or magazines. Because there is
one feature they never appreciated: the smell. When you go through a
village and you suddenly get this horrible smell. Everybody's walking
around with masks on their faces, 'cause it's just intolerable. You
look out and see those bloated bodies. You no longer see humans,
because they've been pretty well cleaned up by now. You see bloated
horses and cows and the smell of death. It's not discriminating, they
all smell the same. Maybe if Americans had known even that, they'd be
more concerned about peace.
Lee Oremont (p. 315):
The Depression ended with the war in Europe. The market business at
once ceased to be competitive. The problem of making money
disappeared. It became automatic. The immediate concern was how to
avoid taxes. All of a sudden, there was an excess-profits tax. It was
avoided by increasing officers' salaries, inflating expense accounts,
and handing out large bonuses. I remember salesmen coming in to sell
you gadgets or systems. Their first selling point was: "It doesn't
matter. Uncle Sam pays most of it anyway." You could spend money very
freely. It was the government's money.
When we started out, our net worth was $65,000. I told my partner,
with all the problems coming up -- rationing, shortages, labor
scarcity -- if we could hold on to this at the end of the war, we'd
have done a good job. Instead, business jumped crazily. You could sell
anything you got, it just walked off the shelves.
It was hard to get certain merchandise. Bags, for instance, were in
short supply. You did without. Customers brought their own shopping
bags. Every shortage became an added profit. If you were short of
help, you did with less. You couldn't get new equipment, you used old
stuff. The net result was substantial profits. During our first year,
we made $100,000 out of a net worth of $65,000.
[ . . . ]
It didn't take a genius to make money during the war. I know a
number of people who still think it was their brilliance that made
them so successful. They get pontifical and tell you how efficient
they were, how hard-working and smart. Bullshit. They happened to be
in the right place at the right time. All you had to do was to open a
store and not get dead drunk. You had customers ready and willing and
able to buy all you could get. It didn't take any brains or hard
work. If it was true of smaller firms, imagine how it worked for the
big ones.
We were offered a chance to invest in a housing development. Our
stores were in the heart of the aircraft industry. We put in
$15,000. In six months, we got double. We were just small
investors. The builders were getting financing from the
government. They built tracts in ninety days. They started out selling
the houses for $4,000. By the time they were ready, they were getting
$6,000. That extra money was just clear profit. Right now, those
houses are easily $60,000.
I'm really pissed off by people who have such horror of price
controls. Price controls really saved us from a devastating
inflation. I don't think they went up more than five percent. In spite
of being violated in a chickenshit way by black marketeers. Overall,
prices didn't go up. Interest rates were down.
[ . . . ]
I think the war was an unreal period for us here at home. Those of
us who lost nobody at the front had a pretty good time. The war was
not really in our consciousness as a war. In spite of the fact that I
think I'm politically aware, I never had the personal worry of
somebody in real danger. We suddenly found ourselves relatively
prosperous. We really didn't suffer.
John Kenneth Galbraith, who was put in charge of price controls in
1941 (p. 323):
There is with World War Two no memory of inflation. Unlike World
War One and Vietnam. It was partly due to our coming out of the
Depression. There was an enormous opportunity for expanding output as
distinct from raising prices. In the war years, consumption of
consumer goods doubled. Never in the history of human conflict has
there been so much talk of sacrifice and so little sacrifice. Another
thing was the mood of the country. The war, unlike Vietnam, had almost
unanimous support from the people. There was a strong objection to
people who tried to circumvent controls. There was a black market, but
it was small. There were troublesome moments in the case of meat, but
there was a great deal of obloquy attached to illegal behavior.
We greatly feared we'd hold the prices and see a decline in
quality. It didn't materialize. Manufacturers, protecting their
trademarks, were unwilling to risk reducing quality. There was a
certain flow of shoddy goods, but it was unimportant.
John Houseman, worked for the Office of War Information (OWI),
which did propaganda, ran Voice of America (p. 352):
We were all civil service, so everyone was investigated. Sometimes
it took up to six months. One of our best writers was fired because
he'd been with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. Among the
investigators were many who had owrked for Henry Ford as union
busters. They invented the term "premature anti-fascists," PAF. It was
used in adverse reports that we received on people.
Erich Lüth, of Hamburg, Germany (p. 433):
We were afraid at home, with every chime of the clock. All the
time. I was afraid they'd find out my real opinions. One of my
brothers was already in a concentration camp. He had been a
bookseller. You know, before the millions of Jews were thrown into the
camps, there were hundreds of thousands of German democrats, poets,
ministers, students, labor people, thrown into the camps.
Vitaly Korotich (pp. 434-435):
I was seven years old when I see my first terrible war poster. Jews
of Kiev, you must be on Lvov Circle. Those who will not be there will
be killed. It was September 1941. Kiev was a multinational city. We
have up to two hundred thousand Jews. The German army invaded Russia
June 22, and on September 19 they were in Kiev.
They kill people from the third day of their occupation. It was Yom
Kippur, Jewish holidays. They throw them in Babi Yar. It is an abyss,
a very, very deep hole in the ground.
Nobody believed this would be done. It was done so easy. I ask
those who came from Babi Yar. They say they believe these people are
quite normal and they take you somewhere to nice places. Some people
believe they will go to Palestine. Nobody believed a tfirst they will
be killed. [ . . . ]
In 1943, nobody can believe it. When we start to open
documents. The prisoners from other camps, who burned these bodies,
they were killed too after two weeks of their work. Each evening, they
were kept in old house standing near to Babi Yar. They dream about
escaping. They looked in the pockets of those dead bodies for
keys. The people who were killed in Babi Yar, they take keys with
themselves. They think they are going back. For me, this is the
metaphor! Keys for freedom in the pockets of the dead.
More than three hundred war prisoners run away. Only fifteen
escaped. SS men killed all the others. Six of them still alive. I know
five Jews who survived Babi Yar.
They tell me the story and I filmed it. They speak about such
details: two or three trucks with children's shoes, which Germans take
from Babi Yar in two weeks. How many children must be killed to fill
one truck with shoes? They speak of looking for gold teeth, those who
try to smash bones. Fascists do this in very practical way. They are
very orderly. [ . . . ]
After the war, all German documentary film come to Soviet
archives. In every German battalion, there will be one movie operator,
who'll take miles and miles of these films. Sometimes, they never
opened them. When we start to open them, it was terrible for me. It
all came back to me. We work more than two years with those movies. I
became crazy looking through it and looking. Sometimes it looks like
the world after the neutron bomb. Because there are only things, no
people Everybody dead. Like Babi Yar.
Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor at 11 of 12 Nuremberg trials
(p. 459-465):
For most people my age, the war and its aftermath were the most
intense experiences of our lives. So many crises that overtook me were
directly due to the war. I was in no way a military person when I went
into the army. I don't think I'd ever seen an American officer in
uniform -- except on the Fourth of July -- until shortly before the
war. After Pearl Harbor, all officers in Washington were required to
wear uniforms. It became a common sight. There could have been none
more unmilitary than my generation. The military seemed a world
apart.
Through all those years -- the normality of Harding, the boom, the
bust -- the army was less than a hundred thousand. It just wasn't part
of a normal person's experience. The Pentagon had not yet come into
existence. The military budget was, of course, much smaller, The war
ballooned the whole thing and it became a major part of everybody's
life. The voice of the military, after World War Two, became very
strong. [ . . . ]
Why did they do these things? Because it had become the thing to
do. People most of them were followers. Moral standards are easily
obliterated. Take Eichmann: a minor electrician in Vienna. He joins
the SS and he becomes an officer and a gentleman. He likes that. He
gets promoted. He never got beyond lieutenant colonel, but that was
pretty good for a Viennese electrician. They so very easily fall into
the pattern that their superiors set up for them, because that's the
safe way. They may be loving husbands, nice to their children, fond of
music. They have been accustomed to moral standards prescribed from
above by an authoritarian regime. The safe way to be comfortable in
life is that way: following orders.
After I came back, I was quite often asked to talk about
Nuremberg. Early in 1950, I addressed the membership of a Jewish
synagogue in Brooklyn. I said, The idea that these Nazis of the
Holocaust were all a bunch of abnormal sadists is not so. Most of them
are very ordinary people just like you and me. You should have heard
the uproar that went up from that audience. The same thing happened to
me last spring. I told the rabbi that my views are a bit clinical and
might not be the right thing for his congregation. He said it's a very
sophisticated group. Exactly the same thing happened.
If our general population were subjected to the same trends and
pressures that the Germans were, a great many of us would do the
same. Maybe not as many, because we're not quite as authoritarian as
the Germans. But a lot of us would. I think we do still have some
built-in political safeguards, but they're not ironclad. If the
depression gets worse -- things are already getting more bitter than
they were a few years ago -- I can see some of the same things
developing.
Arno Mayer, born in Luxemburg, came to US in 1940, future
historian, worked in Army intelligence (pp. 465-467):
At Post Office Box 1142, I became the morale officer for German
generals who had been captured and flown to Washington. They were from
the regular Wehrmacht and from the Waffen SS. They all had one thing
in common: they had fought on the eastern front. I was to get as much
information as I could with regard to only one thing: the battle order
of the Red Army. About Germany, not one blessed thing. Even at that
time, a few months after D-Day, the thoughts of the American
government were already on the next phase of the confrontation.
I was not to do any interrogation. I was to keep these fellows
happy, to put them in a good mood so they would readily talk about
stuff. With liquor, with newspapers. One day I was misguided enough to
bring them The Nation and a copy of PM. I thought it was
perfectly legitimate fare in a free country. When my officers found
out that I was handing them literature of that nature, I was told in
no uncertain terms that I could give them Life magazine and the
New York Times, and Reader's Digest, but for God's sake,
not any of that other stuff. [ . . . ]
I also became the morale officer for Wernher von Braun and three
other big scientists that were brought here. Of course, by then we
were in a dead-heat competition with the Soviets for the personnel
that had worked at Peenemünde, the installation where the German
rockets were developed. The Soviets, of course, got their own
Germans. Everybody had his own Germans, getting ready for the next big
bang.
This is followed by a story about Mayer taking the Germans shopping
for presents to sent back home (pp. 467-468):
I had the fiendish thought that it would be nice to take them to a
Jewish department store. So I took them to Landsberg Brothers. We
started on the main floor and bought the usual stuff: cocoa, sugar,
coffee, all the stuff that was in very short supply in Germany. Where
next? "We'd like to send our families some underwear." They wanted
panties for their wives. I was all of nineteen years old and had never
gone to buy panties. We went to the lingerie department. Imagine these
four odd characters, with long leather coats and green Tyrolese hats,
at the panties counter. Accompanied by ein kleine
Judenbube [the Germans' nickname for Mayer].
The saleswoman said, "What size?" Almost by reflex, out came their
slide rules. Centimeters into inches. She came back and held up a
panty made of nylon. My four charges, as if it had been orchestrated,
threw up their hands: "Aber nein, Unterhosen aus Wolle und mit langen
Beinen." Woollies with long legs, 'cause it's going to be very
cold. We didn't get out panties. What next? They would like to get
some brassieres. The lady was rather puzzled with the four odd men
moving up to her. Again, the slide rules came out. At that moment the
military police came and took the five of us to jail. The powers that
be finally cleared us and we got back to Post Office Box 1142. All of
this was in service to the nation.
The Germans considered me a pretty stupid fellow, which I was
supposed to be. I remember their trying to convince me that the only
reason they mucked around with these rockets is that they wanted to
improve the airmail service between Berlin and London. They wanted to
get it down to eight minutes. (Laughs.) At that moment, I cracked up,
which I wasn't supposed to do.
They tried to give the impression that they never really approved
of the Nazi regime. They worked exclusively as scientists in the
interest of advancing the cause of science and research. And one fine
day we'd get to the moon. They pleaded complete political
ignorance. They knew very well when they scrambled away from
Peenemünde they'd be a hell of a lot better off being captured by the
Western armies than they would be by the Red Army.
Hans Massaquoi, currently an editor of Ebony magazine in
Chicago, but born 1926 and raised in Hamburg, his mother German,
his father Liberian; his is as interesting as any story in the
book, especially as he tries to fit in with the Nazis and gets
rejected (pp. 498-499):
In that same year, '36, Max Schmeling went to the United States to
do battle with Joe Louis. I was rooting for Schmeling. In '38, when
Louis beat him, I was crushed. That's how much I identified with the
Germans. It was not a matter of Hans Massaquoi, black. I was a
Hamburger and Schmeling was my man.
It's clear to me that had the Nazi leadership known of my
existence, I would have ended in a gas oven or at Auschwitz. What
saved me was there was no black population in Germany. There was no
apparatus set up to catch blacks. The apparatus that was set up to
apprehend Jews entailed questionnaires that were mailed to all German
households. The question was: Jewish or non-Jewish? I could always,
without perjuring myself, write: non-Jewish.
My mother was now reduced to day work. She was so popular in the
hospital where she had worked that doctors were kind enough to employ
her as a cleaning lady. That's what she had to do in order to
survive.
My scholastic records entitled me to go to the Gynmansium,
the secondary school. A sympathetic teacher called me aside and said,
"You have to be a member of the Hitler Youth movement to
qualify. You're not accepted as a Hitler youth. So . . . I'm
sorry." [ . . . ]
Many of the German youth that followed the call to arms weren't
moved by any political considerations to kill Jews or Poles or
Russians. It's the old quest for adventure. Hitler made it very
attractive. He put the fancy uniforms on his troops. Had I not been
constantly rejected, there's no telling how enthusiastic a volunteer I
might have been.
Eventually this rejection becomes an identity for Massaquoi, as
he moves into an anti-nazi "swing boy" counterculture (pp. 499-500):
Their affinity was for English and American records. Jazz
especially. If they caught you playing these records, they'd
confiscate them or take you to jail and keep you overnight. They'd
give you a lecture or a beating. I became part of that group. We were
just seventeen, eighteen, We'd meet at certain nightclubs. You could
look at us and know we were anti-Nazi.
The Nazis hated our guts. Any chance they had, they would kick us
in the pants or make life miserable for us. There was nothing
ideological about us. We were nonpolitical, just anti Nazi
regimentation. It was a total turnoff. We didn't want to be bothered
by this nonsense.
Then the war came home (pp. 500-501):
The first bombings of Hamburg started in 1942. The raids
increased. In 1943, Hamburg was practically demolished. In three
nights, forty-one thousand people were killed. My mother and I were
right in the middle of it. On the street where we lived, there was a
public air-raid shelter. Every street had to have a shelter, which you
could reach in five minutes.
I remember one night, about nine o'clock, the siren started
wailing. We grabbed our suitcases and made it down. We'd been in this
same shelter many, many, many, many nights before. The shelter was
packed. There must have been two hundred, most of them neighbors we
knew. There was not a moment when there was no Allied aircraft over
Hamburg. It was an around-the-clock affair. The British would attack
us at night and the U.S. air force in the daytime.
That night, about midnight, we heard the bombs dropping. It lasted
about an hour. When it was over, we tried to get out, but we
couldn't. The building over us was hit by an incendiary bomb and was
on fire. The outside walls had collapsed and had blocked the
exits. People were running around, getting hysterical. Nobody gets
out, they were shouting.
About eight the next morning, we heard digging outside. They were
removing the walls. We were half suffocated. We couldn't breathe. When
we reached the street, that part of Hamburg where I lived was totally
burned down. My mother and I made it to an overpass of an el
train. All the survivors went there. We were picked up by trucks and
taken out of the city. In those days, refugees -- and we were all
refugees now -- could use the trains without paying.
Massaquoi moved for a while to the Harz Mountains, near Peenemünde,
where the V-1 and V-2 rockets were made. He later returned to Hamburg.
When the British occupied Hamburg, his black skin turned into an
advantage, as nobody expected there were any black Germans. One
more comment (pp. 503-504):
My biggest disappointment, for those who've really suffered under
the Nazis, is the benign treatment of those Nazis by the Allies. We
had assumed a housecleaning would follow the occupation. That the
British and Americans would come in -- as the Russians did -- and,
first of all, round up the Nazi suspects. And make sure that those who
had been in power would not get back in power. Quite to the contrary,
within a very short time we saw these same people who terrorized the
neighborhoods in charge again. The wardens, the block leaders, all
these Gruppenführer, all the ex-functionaries, were back in the
saddle. A lot of my friends were so disillusioned they left
Germany. One particularly brutal Nazi I worked for at a rubber
plant. This went on everywhere.
Another phenomenon occurred: the disappearance of Nazis. You saw
pictures of thousands of them screaming and hollering "Heil Hitler."
If you asked anyone, Were you ever a Nazi? Oh no, not me. Just about
all these former functionaries appeared in their old positions.
I think Americans were the worst in this respect. They fraternized
so readily. The American brass that came over, in an ostensible effort
to have things run smoothly, immediately became pals with these old
Nazis.
I think it filtered down from Washington. We'd rather deal with the
Nazis and have them on our side. Let's not be too serious about this
denazification. Go through the motions, but don't step on too many
toes. We ultimately will need them.
Victor Tolley, a marine in the first group to occupy Nagasaki
(pp. 544-545):
I may be carrying a touch of radiation myself. If a person picks up
one rem it can linger in your cells all your life. It may lay dormant
and nothing may happen to me. But when I die and I'm cremated and my
ashes are scattered out over some forest, that radiation is still
alive. Twenty-seven thousands from now, somebody might pick up that
rem of radiation from those ashes of mine and come down sick.
I believed in my government. Whatever Roosevelt said, by god -- and
he was God -- we believed it. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was
totally dedicated. They gave me a rifle and when they said go forward
and kill that enemy or be killed, you did it. You didn't question it,
'cause you're doing it for your country. Now I'm sixty-eight years of
age and I've had a chance to reflect back on my life. I've had a
chance to sit down and do a lot of reading and a lot of studying. Now,
I question. I question my government and I think every American
should. I don't think that any individual can say Mom, apple pie, and
the President of the United States is it and stop thinking. Whatever
the government says is not always right.
Caspar Weinberger and I went to high school together. I sat right
next to him for four years. We were friends and we've
corresponded. But I can no longer believe in Cap Weinberger and what
he stands for. I don't give a damn what Cap or the President or what
anybody says, I have to think for myself. And I saw what I saw.
We didn't drop those two [atomic bombs] on military
installations. We dropped them on women and children. The very minute
I was jumping up and down and hugging my buddy and was so elated,
there was a little baby layin' out in the street charred and burned
and didn't have a chance to live. There was seventy-five thousand
human beings that lived and breathed and ate and wanted to live that
were in an instant charred. I think that is something this country is
going to have to live with for eternity.
Paul Edwards, who worked with UNRRA on relief and refugees after
the war (p. 573):
While the rest of the world came out bruised and scarred and nearly
destroyed, we came out with the most unbelievable machinery, tools,
manpower, money. The war was fun for America -- if you'll pardon my
bitterness. I'm not talking about the poor souls who lost sons and
daughters in the war. But for the rest of us, the war was a hell of a
good time. Farmers in South Dakota that I administered relief to, and
gave 'em bully beef and four dollars a week to feed their families,
when I came home were worth a quarter-million dollars, right? What was
true ther was true all over America. New gratifications they'd never
known in their lives. Mass travel, mass vacations, everything else
came out of it. And the rest of the world was bleeding and in
pain. But it's forgotten now.
Friday, November 02, 2007
The Superartist dropped over this afternoon. It occurred to me
that I had enough ingredients left over unused in recent dinners
that I could throw together a pizza without shopping. Figured I
should also offer something for desert too. I had recently bought
a copy of The New Best Recipe and recalled that they had
claimed to have the best recipe ever for brownies. I looked it up,
found that I had a 6 oz. box of bittersweet chocolate in the pantry
that would do the trick, so whipped up a batch. It turned out a
little sugar-grainy, but rich as fudge and more tempting. As for
the pizza, beyond the crust, which I have a fairly generic recipe
for, everything else was pure improv. Aside from leaving it in
the 500F oven a bit too long -- the crust was browned to the point
of toasty, making me think the 15 minutes I gave it should have
been pared down to 12-13 minutes. I can't give you anything like
a measured recipe, but before I forget, the method and makings
were something like this:
I made a tomato sauce, which came together roughly in this
order (quantities are very rough guesses):
- Heated 2 tbs. olive oil. Sauteed 1/2 yellow onion, finely
chopped, until it started to brown.
- Added 1/2 red bell pepper, diced, and 4-5 cloves garlic,
roughly chopped. Cooked a few more minutes.
- Added all the fresh tomatoes I had leftover: 4 small yellow
ones plus 2 small red ones, roughly chopped. Cooked a few
more minutes.
- Decided that wasn't enough, so added a whole can (28 oz.?)
of organic Italian peeled tomatoes with most of the juice,
chopping them up pretty much to mush.
- Added a handful of chopped Italian parsley, about 1/4 cup.
Added about 1/2 tsp. each Spanish paprika and Turkish oregano.
Stirred it all up, and kept cooking.
- Tasted it and found it kind of sweet and sour but not all
that interesting. Then I started chopping up and mixing in
various odds and ends: 6-8 large, pitted Spanish olives; a
little more than 1 tbs. capers; leftover garum (less than
1 tbs., made from garlic, oil cured olives, anchovies, and
capers); leftover escalivada (less than 2 tbs., made from
roasted eggplant, red bell pepper, tomato); a few small
unlabeled red peppers -- don't remember what they were,
but they tasted sweet and hot (maybe 1 tbs.); 3-4 pieces
of sun-dried tomato, chopped fine. Added a few turns of
black pepper. Overall cooking time was more than 1 hour.
Sauce was thick, not uniformly red. Tasted interesting.
Meanwhile, I sliced a fairly large eggplant into thin discs.
Heated up a teflon-coated round, flat grill pan. Brushed a few
discs with olive oil, grilled them, brushing other side, turning
a couple of times until done. Moved them aside on paper towel
and did more, until done.
Heated up another pan. Added 3/4 lb. extra-lean frozen hamburger
(3 patties). Broke them up as they browned. Could have used more
fat, and wound up adding a little (less than 1 tbs.) duck fat. Cut
about 1/4 red onion into thin quarter-rounds and added to hamburger.
Had two slices of carriage bacon (about 2x3-inch slabs, a little
more than 1/8-inch thick, about 10-15% visible fat); cut them into
fine dice and added them. Had about a 4-inch chunk of rather tough
Spanish chorizo, which I cut into thin discs then tried to chop in
food processor (which had a rough time so I had to finish by hand;
I'm thinking I need a new one). Kept cooking until it was all well
browned, somewhat crisp and crunchy.
Finally, I rolled and stretched the pizza dough out into two of
Uncle Clagge's pans (one round, one oblong; Clagge was a blacksmith,
and these are old family heirlooms). Slathered sauce on, which at
this point was rather chunky. Covered with eggplant slices in a
single layer. Topped with meats, evenly scattered. Then I added
cheeses: what was left of a bag of shredded commercial mozzarella;
a fist-sized chunk of fresh mozzarella hacked into rough shreds;
about 6 oz. crumbled feta; a scattered sprinkling of grated
parmesan. All the cheeses were white-ish; the mozzarella melted
down, the feta browned, the parmesan held its own.
Baked for 15 minutes at 500F, which was a couple minutes too
long. The bottom (round) pan turned out toastier, probably because
the other (oblong) was deeper. Result was a thickly topped pizza
with a lot of complex tastes, not conspicuously cheesy or meaty
or tomatoey -- the eggplant sort of held it all together.
Paul Kriwaczek: Yiddish Civilisation
Paul Kriwaczek's Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a
Forgotten Nation (2005; paperback, 2006, Vintage Books) is a
useful history of Yiddish-speaking Jews in Europe, starting with
the migrations of Roman and Greek Jews into central and eastern
Europe, ending (more or less) with the Holocaust.
(pp. 16-17):
Perhaps, I thought, the missing millennium was a response to the
trauma of the Holocaust. Until Nazi times, the Yiddish speakers of
Britain could still have regarded themselves as expatriates and
escapees from their eastern European homeland, and many maintained
links with their relatives still in the old country -- our rabbi, for
example, had studied in the seminaries of pre-war Poland -- just as
South Asian Britons still see themselves as part of the Indian,
Pakistani or Bangladeshi diaspora and often return to holiday and even
marry in their district of origin. But the annihilation of Continental
Jewry had left the Yiddish speakers adrift, like lost and orphaned
children, with no links to their past, the grotesque horror of the end
of the Yiddish heym inducing what psychologists would call a
state of denial, pretending that the heym had never existed, as
if by wiping out the memory of what had been, the pain of its loss
could be eased.
Now I have come to believe that in the 1950s a kind of deep shame
at Yiddish-speaking Jewry's terrible fate played an important role in
British Jews' self-imposed amnesia. Instead, after 1948, they lifted
their eyes to a more distant time horizon, and recognised in the new
State of Israel the land that two thousand years of daily prayer had
assured them was their true ancestral home.
Needless to add, the Zionists had their own ideological reasons
for wiping memory clean of the Yiddish heym -- while not
responsible for the Holocaust, it appeared much as the realization
of their prophecy, a point they belabored endlessly.
(p. 20):
Fifty years previously, clarinet players like Mezz Mezzrow (Milton
Mezirow), Artie Shaw (Arthur Jacob Arshawsky) and Benny Goodman had
abandoned klezmer for jazz and swing. Now, in an unexpected reversal
of history, young Jewish musicians were returning to the old,
previously derided, music. Many Jews who hadn't stepped inside a
synagogue since their bar-mitzvah, and even some marrying outside the
faith, now wanted a klezmer band to play at their wedding. Even
non-Jews could take part. Klezmer ensembles have sprung up in the most
unexpected places, even Japan.
(pp. 25-26):
The story of the Yiddish civilisation that I favour rejects a
black-and-white clash between gentiles and Jews, between oppression
and survival, and embraces a far more nuanced contest conducted within
the Yiddish-speaking people themselves: a game of tension and
conflict, a tug-of-war-and-peace between East and West, between German
speakers and Slav speakers, between intellect and emotion, between
orthodoxy and syncretism, between those who identified themselves as
"Jews," members of the Jewish people,a nd those who thought of
themselves as "Jewish," nations of Jewish faith, a tussle in which
first one side celebrated victory over the other, then roles were
reversed while former winners lost to erstwhile losers, until finally
the contending teams were separated by the umpire of history -- a long
struggle which called up a new interpretation of what it means to be a
Jew.
The Jews of Rome (pp. 32-33):
These were not all immigrant settlers from Judaea. Contemporary
sources make it clear that many, perhaps even most, of the subjects of
Rome who followed the Torah were not of pure Hebraic origin. Dio
Cassius, a Roman historian of the second century, was clear that "all
those who observe the Jewish law may be called Jews, from whatever
ethnic group they derive."
The expansion of Judaism to include converts from other nations had
already begun in the last two centuries before Christ's birth, when
the Hasmonean rulers of Israel had vigorously spread the Jewish
religion among the surrounding peoples by the sword -- and by the
izmel, the circumcision knife. Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites or
Idumaeans, Herod's nation, were progressively incorporated into the
Israelite, Jewish, domain. Later conversions, however, were not
imposed by force. While today's orthodox rabbis are reluctant to
encourage conversion, gentiles throughout the classical world saw
Judaism as an attractive and welcoming religion. As the centuries
progressed and fewer and fewer intelligent pagans found themselves
convinced by the barbaric old gods with their sensual appetites and
violent tempers, belief in the prophethood of Moses and reverence for
the Torah attracted ever more popular support from the many who, as
the historian Suetonius records, "without publicly acknowledging that
faith, yet lived as Jews."
The remaking of western Europe (pp. 58-59):
Between the beginning of the fifth century and the end of the
sixth, a mere two hundred years, the time of the barbarian remaking of
western Europe, the population crashed. From an estimated forty
million citizens in the year 400, it halved to not much over twenty
million, the greatest population slump known to western history, such
was the catastrophic effect of the collapse of Rome's empire, the ruin
of its productive and economic systems, the disintegration of its
communications networks.
Those who still remembered their ancestral rural origins returned
to the countryside, where the Roman great estates, the
latifundia, forgot cash-crop production for a market that no
longer existed and reverted to self-sufficient subsistence farming,
reducing their horizons and shrinking their bounds to become small,
self-contained communities, protected from internal crime and external
attack by local warlords, who often gave little more than nominal
allegiance to a distant royal court, and were fed, clothed and
otherwise supported by the estate's produce. Cash money almost ceased
to circulate. [ . . . ]
Among the Jews, those who were able, particularly the Greek
speakers, trekked to the coast and took ship for the East, as like as
not on Jewish-captained vessels, no doubt hoping for a safer voyage
than the one survived in the fourth century by Synesius -- then a
pagan writer but later a Christian bishop -- who described in a letter
to a friend how he feared that all was lost when the captain stopped
commanding the vessel in the middle of a storm th say prayers for the
onset of the Sabbath. The Jewish population of the lands of the former
western empire diminished in even greater proportion than that of the
gentiles. Military attack, economic collapse, disease and starvation
hit the Hebraic middle and working classes disproportionately
hard. The teeming Jewish quarters o the cities of Italy emptied. Many
must have fled with their families to the self-sufficient country
estates, giving up their freedom, their religion and their Jewish
identity to avoid starving to death.
(p. 63):
Indeed, Arians were often accused by Catholics of Judaising,
perverting Christianity in a Jewish direction. In addition, Arianism
promoted a much more tolerant attitude to religious belief than Roman
orthodoxy. An Arian bishop reproved the staunchly Catholic Bishop
Gregory of Tours thus: "Blaspheme not a doctrine which is not
thine. We on our part, although we do not believe what ye believe,
nevertheless do not curse it. For we do not consider it a crime to
think either thus or so," an attitude summed up in King Theodoric the
Great's definitive statement: "Religionem imperare non possumus,
quia nemo cogitur ut credat inuitus." (We cannot command religion,
for no man can be compelled to believe anything against his will.)
(p. 107):
To keep the record straight, it must be emphasised that, despite
the ever-present risk of attack and irrational outbursts of aggression
against them, early medieval Jews were not especially singled out for
particularly barbaric treatment. There were plenty of other targets
too. If it were not the Jews, it might just as well have been
foreigners, lepers, heretics or anyone else who attracted the evil eye
of the mob, like the sad and strange old women burned alive as witches
in their thousands to popular applause. Thirty-five London-resident
Flemish merchants and weavers were, for no particular reason, savagely
hacked to pieces by the insurgents of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 --
by then there were no Jews left in England for popular fury to vent
itself on.
Enter Martin Luther (p. 173):
His last sermon, "An Admonition Against the Jews," delivered three
days before he died in 1546, was hideously predictive of Nazi policy,
prefiguring passages in Goebbels's infamous propaganda film The
Eternal Jew. Luther proposed to dispatch all the Yiddish speakers
back to the Middle East. "Who prevents the Jews from returning to
Judaea? Nobody. We shall provide them with all the supplies for the
journey, only in order to get rid of that disgusting vermin. They are
for us a heavy burden, the calamity of our being; they are a plague in
our midst."
Then there was John Calvin (p. 179):
The Geneva reformer's promotion of Old Testament law, particularly
the Ten Commandments, his loathing of images, his acceptance of
financial trading, perhaps even his belief in predestination -- which
absolves the sinner of total responsibility for the sin -- turned
Christianity in a new direction. The consequences have been
incalculable. Scholars with persuasive arguments have ascribed much of
what we prize about our modern world to Calvin's legacy: the
separation of Church and state, the Enlightenment, liberal humanism,
religious tolerance, capitalism. We owe the existence of the State of
Israel and today's wealthy and influential Atlantic diaspora at least
in part to the man who write, "If we compare the Jews with other
nations, surely their impiety, ingratitude and rebelliousness exceeds
the crimes of all other peoples." The Encyclopaedia Judaica
compares Calvin with the biblical soothsayer Balaam, who was called
upon by the king of Moab to curse Israel, but who blessed her
instead. "The Geneva reformer, too, set out to curse the Jews, but in
the end turned out to have blessed them."
The Yiddish renaissance (p. 181):
While the Protestant Reformation was beginning to build up its
irresistible head of steam back in the 1530s, the European economy was
again careering towards hell in a handcart. Economic historians have
argued convincingly that this was not by chance, that the two were
closely connected, that if you chart the uprisings, wars, civil
disturbances and expulsions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, all usually attributed to religious enthusiasm, you will
find that the peaks and troughs coincide with a graph of the value
of money and the prices of commodities like food and fuel. Not that the
religious divisions played no part, but that those with little or
nothing to lose were more likely to risk their all in a dangerous
cause.
Across Europe what we today would call stagflation took hold. The
contrast between rich and poor became ever more grotesque. Landowners
grew fat, while peasants starved. Rising prices persuaded lords to
convert their tenants' rents to labour obligations, opening up new
lands to the plough and forcing their peasants to work on them
unpaid.
Kriwaczek doesn't bring this up, but this was when the Spanish were
flooding Europe with gold looted from the Americas, and were bringing
slavery back into fashion as a system for dominating labor.
Of fortunes rising and falling in Poland (p. 236):
It was not just nepotism, however, but also the Yiddish
entrepreneurs' expertise in management and administration that led to
their dominance. In places where Jewish leasing of customs was not
allowed, Jews were still in demand as silent and invisible, but
executive, partners to nominal Christian leaseholders, foreshadowing
the dishonourable practice of the early Nazi years.
The alliance between ruthless Polish nobles and insecure Yiddish
frontiersmen proved dangerous and destructive. The Jews now held a
position that nothing in their background or religious law had
properly prepared them for. They had been placed in authority over
another people, of another social order, another culture and another
religion, a people whom the magnates, the Jews' masters, regard as
racially inferior and fair game for callous exploitation. Tragically,
shaking off the restraining influence of wiser counsels of the West,
the repeated warnings of the rabbis of metropolitan Cracow, Posen and
Lublin, the Yiddish businessmen who flocked to the colony came to
regard the peasantry in a similar contemptuous light.
I first ran across the second paragraph above when Tony Karon
quoted it in his blog. It raises some echoes for Israel/Palestine.
It also sets up the context for the specific form anti-semitism
was to take in eastern Europe.
On the Cossack revolt of 1648-49 (pp. 241-242):
In itself the Cossack revolt was nothing new. This was far from the
first uprising of the Ukrainian hosts. But the revolt coincided with
the peak of the economic disaster that had finally spread to these
furthermost reaches of the Polish commonwealth. The Baltic grain
trade, on which the Polish nobility's profits depended, had collapsed;
customs duties had dwindled away; the wool and textiles business had
shrunk to nearly nothing. As their incomes diminished, the Polish
magnates put ever more financial pressure on the Jews and the Jews in
turn attempted to squeeze ever more from the Ukrainian serfs. This was
the final straw to lay on the peasants' backs. They rose in
unrestrained fury against their oppressors, into an explosion of
savagery that nobody, not even the Polish army, could withstand. In
1648 and 1649 rebel bands spread carnage throughout Poland, as far
west from the Ukraine as Posen and as far north as Vilna and
Minsk. [ . . . ]
Whatever the real truth, whether the martyrs numbered 50,000,
100,000, or 500,000, Professor Shmuel Ettinger of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem points out that "Jews began to return to their
localities in Volhynia at the end of 1648, and a short while later
were again living throughout the territory up to the Dnieper. Despite
the memory of the holocaust of 1648-49, this region was one of the
most densely populated by Jews during the 18th and 19th centuries."
The Jews suffered monstrously, but they returned. On their return,
however, they lived in very reduced circumstances compared with their
previous generations. The Ukrainian massacres signalled the end of
Yiddish prosperity in the East. After Chmiel the Wicked, the
Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was no longer the goldene
medine, the golden land, that it once had seemed.
(pp. 268-269):
The opposition was fierce and at times brutal, beginning in 1772,
when the Vilna Kehile closed down the local Chassidic prayer
rooms, arrested the Chassidic leaders, publicly burned their books and
pronounced their followers excommunicated. A letter was sent out, over
the Gaon's name, to other communities exhorting them to campaign
against the "godless sect." When the first works of Chassidic
literature began to appear, particularly the so-called Testament of
the Ba'al Shem Tov, Elijah ben Solomon [the Gaon] chaired a
rabbinical council of war, which issued circulars ordering the
communities to expel all the pietists, to burn their works, to regard
them as being "of another faith" and therefore not to intermarry with
them, not to eat their food, nor to bury their dead: "It is the duty
of every believing Jew to repudiate and pursue them with all manner of
afflictions and subdue them, because they have sin in their hearts and
are like a sore on the body of Israel."
The progroms following the assassination of Russian Czar Alexander II
in 1881 (pp. 292-293):
Now a Jewish woman, Gesia Gelfman, was found among those held
responsible for the czar's assassination. (She was condemned to death,
but being pregnant her sentence was commuted -- she died of
peritonitis soon after giving birth to a daughter.)
The naming of a single Jew was enough to break the dam holding back
the enmity of so many of the Russians. A tidal wave of progroms
crashed across the Pale of Settlement. Perhaps the government saw
anti-Jewish violence as a useful diversion, for where it did not
actively promote the outrages, it did nothing to stop them. Jews were
assaulted and killed, and their property destroyed, in cities and
towns over all the provinces of the empire: Elizavetgrad, Kiev,
Konotop, Nizhniy-Novgorod, Nyezhin, Pereyaslav, Odessa, Smyela and
Warsaw in 1881, Blata in 1882, Ekaterinoslav and Rostov-on-Don in
1883, Nizhniy-Novgorod again in 1884.
To bring the disturbances under control, the czar established a
commission to investigate the cause. This body reported that the
disorders had been the result of "Jewish exploitation" and, "now that
the government has firmly suppressed the riots and lawlessness in
order to protect the Jews, justice demands that it immediately impose
severe regulations which will alter the unfair relations between the
general inhabitants and the Jews and protect the former from the
harmful activity of the latter."
The government responded by enacting the harshly repressive May
Laws, restricting Jews' rights of residence yet further, severely
limiting their ability to become shareholders, take out leases or sign
contracts, and banning them outright from holding office in joint
stock companies. The aim of these measures was succinctly put in a
statement attributed to the then head of the Russian Orthodox Church:
"One-third of the Jews will die, one-third will flee the country, and
the last third will be completely assimilated within the Russian
people." Russians were making it clear that they were no longer
prepared to allow any room at all for the nation with whom the Slavs
had shared their land for more than a thousand years.
On the founding of the Bund (p. 295):
In October 1897 a group of workers, artisans and intellectuals met
in Vilna, ever since the Gaon's time the centre of Yiddish
intellectual life, to establish the General Jewish Workers' Union in
Lithuania, Poland and Russia (Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in
Lite, Poyln un Rusland). The new body grew rapidly, organising
strikes and boycotts, and successfully helping to improve the
conditions of the Jewish working class. In contrast to Zionism, which
they felt to be a petit-bourgeois movement, guilty of abandoning a
thousand years of heritage, members of the Bund emphasised the
importance of stubborn doykeyt (being here) and saw itself as
part of the great international labour movement.
(pp. 295-296):
The last-ditch struggle for the recognition of eastern European
Jews as a nation, with Yiddish as their language, now became a war on
two fronts: against the imperial authorities of Austria and Russia on
the one side, and on the other against the promoters of Zionism,
emigration to the Holy Land and the revival of Hebrew -- a movement
whose polemics refused to accept the validity of a Yiddish-speaking
identity. "Those miserable stunted jargons, those ghetto languages
which we now employ, are the stealthy tongues of prisoners," wrote
Zionist leader Theodor Herzl dismissively in 1896. "He who knows no
Hebrew may be an ignoramus," riposted supporters of the Bund,
"but he who knows no Yiddish is a gentile."
(p. 300):
For most the gain was worth the loss. As Professor John Klier of
University College London points out in a recent book review, contrary
to the common myth it was not just anti-Semitism that emigrants wanted
to leave behind -- they had no guarantee that tolerance would be
greater elsewhere -- but more the claustrophobia of shtetl
existence, its class and clan divisions, its ruthless dominance by
reactionary Tsaddikim or ultra-conservative rabbinical
oligarchies, its self-imposed limitations on living a full, rich and
successful life.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Karen Armstrong: A Short History of Myth
I plan on making a big push this month on the book notes, so
I'll be slipping a lot of these in, especially on days I don't
have anything more immediate to write about. For me this is
background research. I've been reading pretty steadily, making
little marks in the books to flag memorable passages. Retyping
them, sometimes with comments but often just with page numbers,
helps me keep track of this stuff. And hopefully is of interest
to some readers. The notes are ultimately archived in the
books section.
I've read a couple of Karen Armstrong's books about religion,
and found her to be a reasonably fair-minded and even-tempered
historian. So I thought her short book on myth might help fill
in some questions I have about the origins of religion. The
early parts of the book turned out not all that useful, perhaps
because the history itself is so buried in myth. So most of
the quotes I marked wound up in the later, more historically
sound period. There her strong belief that mythos and logos
are diametrically opposed modes of thought, each valuable in
its own way, assumes prominence. She believes that they should
be able to coexist in meaningless contradiction, and finds
their opposition (e.g., in the minds of fundamentalists) is
proof of our modern inability to experience myth with the
same immediate sensibility as existed before the rise of
science.
(pp. 70-71):
As we know, a creation story never provided people with factual
information about the origins of life. In the ancient world, a
cosmogony was usually recited in a liturgical setting, and during a
period of extremity when people felt they needed an infusion of divine
energy: when they were looking into the unknown at the start of a new
venture -- at New Year, at a wedding or a coronation. Its purpose was
not to inform but was primarily therapeutic. People would listen to
the recitation of a cosmological myth when they faced impending
disaster, when they wanted to bring a conflict to an end, or to heal
the sick. The idea was to tap into the timeless energies that
supported human existence. The myth and its accompanying rituals were
a reminder that often things had to get worse before they could get
better, and that survival and creativity required a dedicated
struggle.
(p. 86):
Some of the old myths had pointed out that creativity was based
upon self-sacrifice, but the Axial Sages made the ethical consequences
of this insight more explicit. This self-immolation had to be
practised in daily life by everyone who wished to perfect his
humanity. Confucius infused the old Chinese ethos with the Axial
virtue of compassion. He promoted the ideal of ren
('humaneness'), which required people to 'love others'. He was the
first to promulgate the Golden Rule: 'Do not do unto others as you
would not have done unto you.' The Axial spirit demanded inner
reflection and self-scrutiny, a deliberate analysis of the deeper
recesses of the self. You could not behave rightly to others unless
you had first examined your own needs, motivation and inclinations;
proper respect for others required a process of shu ('likening
to oneself').
(pp. 116-118):
Theology was only valid if pursued together with prayer and
liturgy. Muslims and Jews eventually reached the same conclusion. By
the eleventh century, Muslims had decided that philosophy must be
wedded with spirituality, ritual and prayer, and the mythical,
mystical religion of the Sufis became the normative form of Islam
until the end of the nineteenth century. Similarly, Jews discovered
that when they were afflicted by such tragedies as their expulsion
from Spain, the rational religion of their philosophers could not help
them, and they turned instead to the myths of the Kabbalah, which
reached through the cerebral level of the mind and touched the inner
source of their anguish and yearning. They had all returned to the old
view of the complementarity of mythology and reason. Logos was
indispensable in the realm of medicine, mathematics and natural
science -- in which Muslims in particular excelled. But when they
wanted to find ultimate meaning and significance in their lives, when
they sought to alleviate their despair, or wished to explore the inner
regions of their personality, they had entered the domain of myth.
But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Christians in Western
Europe rediscovered the works of Plato and Aristotle that had been
lost tot hem during the Dark Age that had followed the collapse of the
Roman Empire. Just at the moment when Jews and Muslims were beginning
to retreat from the attempt to rationalise their mythology, Western
Christians seized on the project with an enthusiasm that they would
never entirely lose. They had started to lose touch with the meaning
of myth. Perhaps it was not surprising, therefore, that the next great
transformation in human history, which would make it very difficult
for people to think mythically, had its origins in Western Europe.
(pp. 125-126):
The first scientist wholly to absorb this empirical ethos was
probably Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who synthesised the findings of
his predecessors by a rigorous use of the evolving scientific
disciplines of experiment and deduction. He believed that he was
bringing his fellow human beings unprecedented and certain information
about the world, that the cosmic system he had discovered coincided
completely with the facts, and that it proved the existence of God,
the great 'Mechanick' who had brought the intricate machine of the
universe into being.
But this total immersion in logos made it impossible for
Newton to appreciate the more intuitive forms of perception. For him,
mythology and mysticism were primitive modes of thought. He felt that
he had a mission to purge Christianity of such doctrines as the
Trinity, which defied the laws of logic. He was quite unable to see
that this doctrine had been devised by the Greek theologians of the
fourth century precisely as a myth, similar to that of the Jewish
Kabbalists. As Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (335-395), had explained,
Father, Son and Spirit were not objective, ontological facts but
simply 'terms that we use' to express the way in which the 'unnameable
and unspeakable' divine nature adapts itself to the limitations of our
human minds. You could not prove the existence of the Trinity by
rational means. It was no more demonstrable than the elusive meaning
of music or poetry. But Newton could only approach the Trinity
rationally. If something could not be explained logically, it was
false.
(pp. 130-131):
This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that
their traditions were in line with the new era, but this was
impossible if you thought that these myths should be understood
literally. Hence the furore occasioned by The Origin of Species
(1858), published by Charles Darwin (1809-82). The book was not
intended as an attack on religion, but was a sober exploration of a
scientific hypothesis. But because by this time people were reading
the cosmogonies of Genesis as though they were factual, many
Christians felt -- and still feel -- that the whole edifice of faith
was in jeopardy. Creation stories had never been regarded as
historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you
start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science
and bad religion.
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Oct 2007 |
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