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Saturday, June 21, 2014
Gerry Goffin dead at 75: Carole King’s ex-husband and songwriting partner leaves unsung musical legacy
New York-born lyricist who co-wrote songs like ‘Natural Woman’ and ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ died Thursday in his Los Angeles home, his wife announced.
GAB Archive/RedfernsLyricist Gerry Goffin, best known for his collaborations with his former wife, Carole King, died Thursday at the age of 75.
Gerry Goffin, who with his first wife Carole King wrote classic 1960s songs like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Natural Woman," died Thursday at his Los Angeles home. He was 75.
His second wife Michelle said he died of natural causes.
"Gerry was my first love," King said in a statement Thursday. "He had a profound impact on my life and the rest of the world. Gerry was a good man and a dynamic force, whose words and creative influence will resonate for generations to come."
Goffin grew up in Queens with his mother and grandfather, whom he described as difficult. He said he was an introverted child who had a gift for science and a secret passion for music.
He met fellow New Yorker King when both were students at Queens College. They married in August 1959, when he was 20 and she was 17.
They began a songwriting partnership in which she composed most of the music and he wrote most of the lyrics. They wrote dozens of bad songs while he worked as a chemist and she took a secretarial job.
Gerry Goffin, Carole King's Ex-husband, Dies At 75
Inform
Gerry Goffin, a prolific and multi-dimensional lyricist who with his then-wife and songwriting partner Carole King wrote such hits as "Will You Love Me Tomorrow,"...
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Gerry Goffin, Carole King's Ex-husband, Dies At 75
Gerry Goffin, a prolific and multi-dimensional lyricist who with his then-wife and songwriting partner Carole King wrote such hits as "Will You Love Me Tomorrow,"...
His goal, he later said, was to write the kind of Broadway music on which he had grown up while listening to radio shows like "The Make-Believe Ballroom."
King wanted to write rock 'n' roll.
Rock 'n' roll won out when they had their first hit, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," a No. 1 in 1961 for the Shirelles.
Goffin said that when "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" reached No. 1, they took a limousine to his chemical-testing job so he could tell his boss there he quit. He was 21.
Goffin and King became one of several star writing teams at New York's famous Brill Building in the early 1960s, along with Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann.
Michael Ochs ArchivesHusband and wife singer songwriting team Goffin and King rehearse during a recording session in a New York studio in 1959.
The late Greenwich recalled years later that "We would go on weekend trips with Carole and Gerry, and I remember on the way back we'd listen to the radio and have a contest about whose songs we heard the most."
Goffin and King wrote often for "girl groups" like the Cookies ("Chains") the Chiffons ("One Fine Day") and Little Eva, who was their babysitter and had a No. 1 hit with their dance workout "The Locomotion."
They also had hits like "Take Good Care of My Baby" for Bobby Vee, "Every Breath You Take" for Gene Pitney, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees, "Crying in the Rain" for the Everly Brothers, "Up On the Roof" for the Drifters and the sentimental "You've Got a Friend" for James Taylor.
Goffin and King divorced in 1968, though they continued to collaborate periodically. King said in her autobiography that Goffin had ongoing problems from his LSD use in the 1960s.
Their relationship is dramatized in the Broadway musical "Beautiful."
R. Diamond/WireImageCarole King and Gerry Goffin reunite during for the 2004 Grammy Awards.
Born in Brooklyn and a graduate of Brooklyn Tech High School, Goffin eventually moved to the West Coast and remained active in the music business for the rest of his life.
His later songs included the Whitney Houston hit "Saving All My Love For You" and Diana Ross's "Theme From Mahoghany," both of which he cowrote with Michael Masser.
He and King were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
He is survived by his wife and five children.
At last night's performance of "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical" at the Sondheim Theatre, the cast dedicated the performance to him, and they dimmed the lights at the theater.
***Entering North-September,
1960-With The Atlantic Junior High School (Yeah, Yeah I Know Middle School)
Class Of 1960 In Mind
Now that we have
earlier this month safely passed the 50th anniversary of our
graduation from old North and we have now flown with the winds wherever they have
taken us since then I think it is appropriate to step back to that starry-eyed
first day of high school on September 7, 1960. [Thanks, Google Calendar] The
faint-hearted or those who have not taken their medication should pass on this
one. And, yes, I know that those classmates from Central Junior High (okay,
okay Middle School) did not enter North until September, 1961 but you can find
your own chronicler to tell your story. We will all link up to form the big
baby-boomer Class of 1964 then. By the way I have used a certain amount of
literary license here. Do you think a guy who half the time can’t remember
where he put his eye glasses these days can remember all this stuff from 50
years ago? Christ, no.
********
This story started
out as my response to a story that Frankie Riley, my old junior high school
buddy, told me one afternoon a whileback at his office in downtown Boston about an adventure he had going to
Norfolk Downs for his grandmother on a summer day a few weeks before school
started in 1960. That story triggered something in me and got me thinking back
to the start of school in 1960. This is the way I told Frankie the story one evening
sitting in a bar in Boston so although it is my story around the edges it could
have been Frankie’s story, or your story for that matter:
Funny, there I was, finally, finally
after what seemed like an endless heat-waved, eternal August dog day’d,
book-devoured summer, standing, nervously standing, waiting with one foot on
the sturdy granite-chiseled steps, ready at a moment’s notice from any
teacher’s beck and call, to climb up to the second floor main entrance of old
North, an entrance flanked by huge concrete spheres on each side, that were
made to order for me to think that I too had the weight of the world on my
shoulders that sunny day. And those doors, by the way, as if the spheres were
not portentous enough, were also flanked by two scroll-worked concrete columns,
or maybe they were gargoyle-faced, my eyes were a little bleary just then, who
gave the place a more fearsome look than was really necessary but that day, that
day of all days, every little omen had its evil meaning, evil for me.
There I was anyway, pensive (giving
myself the best of it, okay, nice wrap-around-your soul word too, okay), head
hanging down, deep in thought, deep in scared, get the nurse fast, if
necessary, nausea-provoking thought, standing around, a little impatiently
surly as was my “style” (that “style” I had picked up a few years before in
elementary school down in the Germantown “projects” after seeing James Dean or
someone like that strike the pose, and it stuck). Anyway it was then about 7:00
AM, maybe a little after, and like I said my eyes had been playing tricks on me
all morning and I could not seem to focus, as I waited for the first school
bell to sound on that first Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord,
1960.
First day of school should have been no
big deal, right? We all had done it many times before by then so it should have
been easy. Year after year, old August dog days turned into shorter, cooler
September come hither young wanna-be learner days. Nothing to get nervous
about, nothing to it. (Did I say that already?) Especially the first day, a
half day, a “gimme” day, really, one of the few out of one hundred and eighty,
count ‘em, and mainly used for filling out the one thousand and one pieces of
paper about who you were, where you lived, and who you lived with. Yeah, and
who to call in case you took some nasty fall in gym trying to do a double
twist-something on the gym mat, trying to impress in the process some girl over
on the other side of the gym with your prowess, hoping she had not been looking
just then if you faltered. Or a wrestled double-hammer lock grip on some poor,
equally benighted fellow student that went awry like actually had happened to
Frankie the previous year in eighth grade when he got flipped against the gym
wall trying to break the hold. Hey, they were still talking about that one in
the Atlantic Junior High locker rooms at the end of the year, I heard.
More ominously, they wanted that
information so that if you crossed-up one, or more, of your mean-spirited,
ill-disposed, never-could-have-been-young-and-troubled, ancient, Plato or
Socrates ancient from the look of some of them, teachers and your parents
(meaning embarrassed, steaming, vengeful Ma really, not
hard-working-could-not-take-the-time-off Pa in our neighborhoods) needed to be
called in to confer about “your problem,” your problem that you would grow out
of with a few days of after school “help.” Please.
That “gimme” day (let’s just call it
that okay) would furthermore be spent reading off, battered, monotone homeroom
teacher-reading off, the one thousand and one rules; no tardiness to school
under penalty of being placed in the stocks, Pilgrim-style; no illness absences
short of the plague, if you had it, not a family member, and then only if you
had a (presumably sanitized) doctor’s note; no cutting classes to explore the
great American day streets at some nearby corner variety store, or mercy, the
Downs, one-horse Norfolk Downs also under severe penalty; no (unauthorized)
talking in class (but you could bet your last dollar they would mark it down if
you did not “authorize talk,” Jesus); no giving guff (yeah no guff,
right) to your teachers, fellow students, staff, the resident mouse or your kid
brother, if you had a kid brother; and, no writing on walls, in books, and only
on occasion on an (authorized) writing pad.
Continuing rule-ward; get this one,
neither Frankie nor I could believe this one over at Atlantic, no cutting in
line for the school lunch. The school lunch, Christ, as poor as our families
were we at least had the dignity not to pine for, much less cut in line for,
those beauties: the American chop suey done several different ways to cover the
week, including a stint as baloney and cheese sandwiches, I swear. Moving
along; no off-hand rough-necking (or just plain, ordinary necking, either); no
excessive use of the “lav” (you know what that is, enough said), and certainly
no smoking, drinking or using any other illegal (for kids) substances.
Oh, yeah, and don’t forget to follow,
unquestioningly, those mean-spirited, ill-disposed teachers that I spoke of
before, if there was a fire emergency. And here’s a better one, in case of an
off-hand atomic bomb attack go, quickly and quietly, to the nearest fall-out
shelter down in the bowels of the old school. That’s what we had practiced over
at Atlantic. Frankie told me he hoped that they would not try that old gag at
North and have all of us practice getting under our desks in such an emergency
like in elementary school. Christ, Frankie thought (and me too when we talked
about it) he would rather take his chances, above desk, thank you. And… need I
go on, you can listen to the rest of the rules when you get to homeroom I am
just giving you the highlights, the year after year, memory highlights.
And if that wasn’t enough, the reading
of the rules and the gathering of more intelligence about you than the FBI or
the CIA would need we then proceeded to our shortened classes for the
ritualistic passing out of the books, large and small (placing book covers on
each, naturally, name, year, subject and book number safety placed in insert).
All of them covered against the elements, your own sloth, and the battlefield
school lunch room. Remember that humongous science book that has every known
idea from the ancient four furies of the air to nuclear fission, that math book
that has some Pythagorean properties of its own, the social studies books to
chart out human progress (and back-sliding) from stone age-cave times on up,
and the precious, precious English book (Frankie hoped that he would get
to do Shakespeare that year, he had heard that we would, we both agreed
that guy knew how to write a good story, same with that Salinger book that I
told Frankie about that I had read during the summer and that he would read
later that year). Still easy stuff though, for the first day.
Yeah, but this will put a different
spin on it for you, well, a little different spin anyway. That day I started in
the “bigs”, at least the bigs of the handful-countable big events of my short,
sweet life. That day unlike all the others before I was starting my freshman
year at hallowed old North and I was nervous as a kitten. Don’t tell me you
weren’t just a little, little, tiny bit scared when you went from the
cocoon-like warmth (or so it seemed compared to the “bigs”) of junior high over
to the high school, whatever high school it was. Come on now, I’m going to call
you out on it. Particularly those Atlantics who, after all, had been there
before at the beginning of seventh grade , unlike me who came out of the Germantown
"projects" and moved back to North Quincy after the "long
march" move over to Atlantic in that Valley Forge winter of 1959 so I didn’t
know the ropes at North at all. They, especially those sweet girl Atlantics,
including a certain she that I was severely "crushed up" on, in their
cashmere sweaters and jumpers or whatever you call them, were nevertheless
standing on those same steps, as we exchanged nods of recognition, and they were
there just as early as I was, fretting their own frets, fighting their own
inner demons, and just hoping and praying or whatever kids do when they are “on
the ropes” to survive the day, or just to not get rolled over on day one.
And see, here is what you also don’t
know, know yet anyway. I had caught Frankie’s disease. You have never heard of
it, probably, and don’t bother to go look it up in some medical dictionary at
the Thomas Crane Public Library, or some other library, it’s not there. What it
amounted to was the old time high school, any high school, version of the
anxiety-driven cold sweats. Now I know some of you knew Frankie, and some of
you didn’t, I told his story to you before, the story about his big, hot, “dog
day” August mission to get picnic fixings, including special stuff, like
Kennedy’s potato salad, for his grandmother. That’s the Frankie I’m talking
about, my best junior high friend, Frankie.
Part of that story, for those who don’t
know it, mentioned what Frank was thinking about when he got near battle-worn
North on his journey to Norfolk Downs back in that August. I’m repeating;
repeating at least the important parts here, for those who are clueless:
“Frankie had, just a couple of months
before, graduated from Atlantic Junior High School and so along with the sweat
on his brow from the heat a little bit of anxiety was starting to form in Frankie’s
head about being a “little fish in a big pond” freshman come September as he
passed by. Especially, a proto-beatnik “little fish.” See, he had cultivated a
certain, well, let’s call it “style” over there at Atlantic. That
"style" involved a total disdain for everything, everything except
trying to impress girls with his long chino-panted, plaid flannel-shirted,
thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to mankind. Like that
really was the way to impress teenage girls. In any case he was worried,
worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading…”
And that is why, when the deal went
down and I knew I was going to the “bigs” I had spent the summer that year,
reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say I did. The Communist Manifesto, that
one just because old Willie Westhaver over at Atlantic called me a Bolshevik
when I answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. I told you
that was my pose, what do you want. I just wanted to see what he was talking
about. In any case, I wasn’t no commie, although I don’t know what the big deal
was, and I wasn’t about to turn anybody in about it, and the stuff was hard
reading anyway. How about Democracy in America (by a French guy), The
Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knew our soon to be President Jack
Kennedy, and was crazy for old-time guys like Jackson), and Catcher In The
Rye (Holden was me, me to a tee). Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that
was just the reading on the hot days when I didn’t want to go out, anybody
could have tested me on the books, I was that ready.
Here's why. I intended, and I swear I
intended to even on that first nothing (what did I call it before?-"gimme,"
yah) day of that new school year in that new school in that new decade to beat
old Frankie, old book-toting, girl-chasing Frankie, who knew every arcane fact
that mankind had produced and had told it to every girl who would listen for
two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, boy meets girl struggle, at
his own game. Frankie, my buddy of buddies, mad monk, prince among men (well,
boys, anyway) who navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior
high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think
twice about it. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago was “in”;
that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least
a little, and I got dragged in his wake. Now I wanted to try out my new “style”
See that was why on that Wednesday
after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960, that 7:00 AM, or a little after,
Wednesday after Labor Day, I had Frankie’s disease. He had harped on it so much
before the opening of school that I woke up about 5:00 AM that morning, maybe
earlier, but I know it was still dark, with the cold sweats. I tossed and
turned for a while about what my “style”, what my place in the sun was going to
be, and I just had to get up. I’ll tell you about the opening day getting up
ritual stuff later, some other time, but right then I was worried, worried as
hell, about my “style”, or should I have said my lack of style over at
Atlantic. That will tell you a lot about why I woke up that morning before the
birds.
...Suddenly, a bell rang, a real bell,
students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move, especially those
Atlantics that I had nodded to before as I took those steps, two at a time. Then
it was too late to worry about style, or anything else. We were off to the
wars; I would have to make my place in the sun as I went along, on the fly.
********
[Frankie, who for once listened
patiently as I finished my story,then
let out with a “Who are you kidding Jackman that is not the way you told me the
story back then.” The he went on. I remember very well what you were nervous
about. What that cold night sweats, that all-night toss and turn teen angst,
boy version, had been about and it wasn’t first day of school jitters. It was
nothing but thinking about her. That certain "she" that you had kind
of sneaked around mentioning as you had been talking, talking your his head off
just to keep the jitters down. The way you told it then was while on those
pre-school steps you had just seen her, seen her with the other Atlantic girls
on the other side of the steps, and so you are going to have to say a little
something about it. And if you don’t I will.
See, I know the previous school year,
late in the eighth grade at Atlantic, toward the end you had started talking to
that Lydia Stevenson, yes, that Lydia who on her mother’s side from was from some
branch of the Adams family who had run the jagged old granite quarries town there
in North Quincy for eons and who had employed my father and a million other
fathers around there and then just headed south, or someplace for the cheaper
labor I heard later. She was one of the granddaughters or some such relation I
never did get it all down. And that part was not all that important anyway
because what mattered, what mattered to you, was that faint scent, that just
barely perceivable scent, some nectar scent, that came from Lydia when you sat
next to her in art class and you two talked, talked your heads off.
But you never did anything about it,
not then anyway although you said when we talked later about it you had this
feeling, maybe just a feeling because you wanted things to be that way but a
feeling anyway, that she had expected you to ask her out. Asking out for junior
high school students then, and for freshmen in high school too because we
didn’t have licenses to drive cars, being the obligatory "first date"
at Jimmy Jack's Shack (no, not the one off Wollaston Boulevard, that's for the
tourists and old people, the one on Hancock up toward the Square is the one I
am talking about). You said you were just too shy and uncertain to do it.
Why? Well you said it was because you came
from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the old town, over by the old abandoned
Old Colony tracks and she, well like I said came from a branch of the Adams
family that lived over on Elm in one of those Victorian houses that the swells
are crazy for now, and I guess were back then too. That is when you figured
that if you studied up on a bunch of stuff, stuff that you liked to study
anyway, then come freshman year you just might be able to get up the nerve to
ask her to go over to Jimmy Jack's for something to eat and to listen to the
jukebox after school some day like every other Tom, Dick and Harry did then.
.... So don’t tell me suddenly, a bell
rang, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move,
especially those Atlantics that you had nodded to before as you took those
steps, two at a time. And don’t tell me it was too late then to worry about
style, or anything else. Or make your place in the sun as you went along, on
the fly. No it was about who kind of brushed against you as you rushed up the
stairs and who gave you one of her biggest faintly-scented smiles as you both raced
up those funky granite steps. Yeah, a place in the sun, sure.]
A YouTube film
clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set
an "appropriate" mood for this sketch. Did we really listen to such
lyrics then and not wince, maybe think that they were cool or worse think that
the poor girl who was silly enough to go back into harm’s way to get that damn
class ring which her guy probably got from a cracker-jack box deserved
sainthood. Jesus.
*******
*In
Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-David McGowan
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information
about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement
Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war
prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag
Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found
Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of
the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of
the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site,
seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more
public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand.
Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan
Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense
organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of
advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that
spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement
list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all
serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these
brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and
disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old
Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of
class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise
incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their
cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to
your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make
this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All
Class-War Prisoners Now!
*In
Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Eric
McDavid
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information
about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement
Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war
prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag
Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found
Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of
the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of
the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site,
seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more
public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand.
Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan
Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense
organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing
the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am
honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this
June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious
leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and
sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a
separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An
injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of
class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise
incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their
cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to
your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make
this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All
Class-War Prisoners Now!
*In
Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Marie
Jeanette Mason
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information
about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement
Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war
prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag
Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found
Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of
the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of
the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site,
seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more
public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand.
Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan
Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense
organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of
advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that
spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement
list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all
serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these
brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and
disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old
Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of
class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise
incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their
cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to
your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make
this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All
Class-War Prisoners Now!
U.S. No Troops -No Drones -No Bombs No Planes -No Mercenaries- No Materials To Iraq
CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST IN IRAQ
Tell President Obama "Don't Try to Put Out the Fire in Iraq With Gasoline!"
In the 1980’s the US supported Saddam Hussein when he was using poison gas against Iran and his own Kurdish population; in the 1990’s we starved Iraq with a punishing embargo, while at the same time looking the other way when the regime repressed uprisings by Kurds in the north and the mostly poor Shi’a majority in the south; after the 2003 invasion US troops stood by while Iraq’s cultural patrimony was looted and destroyed; we first installed a subservient regime under a US pro-consul, then cultivated a Shi’a-dominated government after elections boycotted by much of the Iraqi population; we looked the other way when “our” Iraqi government and its supporters emptied Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods under the noses of US occupying troops; then we allied with Sunni tribal leaders to fight “al-Qaeda” but continued to look the other way when the new Iraqi government oppressed and disenfranchised non-Shi’a Arabs; now we seem to be trying to maneuver regime change in Baghdad to remove the same government we once empowered..
There was no “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” (or Syria) before our invasion. And, it must be noted, funding for the religious fanatics comes from “our” allies Turkey and the Gulf petro-monarchies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and others -- along with US-allied Pakistan in the background. Just like the “Freedom Fighters” in Afghanistan during the 1980’s, where Osama bin-Laden came to prominence.
Amazingly, there are now rising voices from our DC elites for US airstrikes against the Iraqi insurgents, to send US military trainers for the Iraqi army or even to deploy US troops on the ground. Very few seem to have learned the lesson that US intervention is the cause of the present nightmare in Iraq, not the solution.
The catastrophic outcomes of neo-colonial “divide and rule” have a lineage extending back throughout the 20th century in the Middle East and beyond. Once it was the British and French empire builders sowing chaos; now it is US neo-conservative and neo-liberal “democracy promoters.” Same chickens, different roost.
Black Flags Over Mosul
An army of Sunni fighters affiliated to al Qaida crossed the Syrian border into Iraq on Tuesday, scattering defensive units from the Iraqi security forces, capturing Iraq’s second biggest city of Mosul, and sending 500,000 civilians fleeing for safety. The unexpected jihadi blitz has left President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in tatters and created a crisis of incalculable magnitude. The administration will now be forced to focus its attention and resources on this new flashpoint hoping that it can prevent the makeshift militia from marching on Baghdad and toppling the regime of Nouri al Maliki. Events on the ground are moving at breakneck speed as the extremists have expanded their grip to Saddam’s birthplace in Tikrit and north to Baiji, home to Iraq’s biggest refinery. The political thread that held Iraq together has snapped pushing Iraq closer to a full-blown civil war.More
OBAMA: ALL OPTIONS OPEN ON IRAQ
US President Barack Obama says his government is looking at "all options", including military action, to help Iraq fight Islamist militants. But the White House also insisted it had no intention of sending ground troops. The remarks came after the cities of Mosul and Tikrit fell to Sunni Islamist insurgents during a lightning advance.The US has begun moving defence contractors working with the Iraqi military to safer areas. More
Congress divided over US military action in Iraq
Several Republicans urged military intervention following reports that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called for US strikes by drones and manned aircraft. "There is no scenario where we can stop the bleeding in Iraq without American air power," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters after a closed Armed Services Committee briefing with Defense Department officials. House Foreign Affairs Committee member and Iraq war veteran Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has been one of the most vocal proponents in the lower chamber. "We've got to get involved with airstrikes, stiffening the spines of the Iraqis," Kinzinger told Al-Monitor. "If Baghdad falls, it's really hard to imagine a Middle East that looks like that." …House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters at her weekly press conference that there is "no appetite in our country to be engaged in any military activity in Iraq." "I don’t think this is our responsibility," Pelosi said. More
MALIKI'S MOST SOLEMN HOUR
Some analysts said during the Second Gulf War that al Qaeda would be trading up from Afghanistan if it secured a base in Iraq. It was a prescient thought, but perhaps premature: between 2007 and 2010, Iraqis by and large rejected that fate for their country and dealt a body blow to the foreign Sunni jihadists who entered the country. But then the Syrian Civil War began... The most significant of these "new" groups has been the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which over the past year has spent as much time fighting other Syrian rebels groups as the Syrian Arab Republic's forces. ISIS was once aligned with al Qaeda's central command, but has since gone its own way… Sunni grievances against the government are real and legion: job discrimination, undue prosecution of activists, human rights violations by the police, welfare cuts that "punish" the Sunnis for their collaborationist role in past dictatorships. Well before this uprising, "the Sunnis [had] lost faith in the political process and the jihadists were once again able to make inroads among them." More
The Fall of Mosul and the False Promises of Modern History
The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments… Integrating Mosul into British Iraq, over which London placed Faisal bin Hussein as imported king after the French unceremoniously ushered him from Damascus, allowed the British to depend on the old Ottoman Sunni elite, including former Ottoman officers trained in what is now Turkey. This strategy marginalized the Shiite south, full of poor peasants and small towns, which, if they gave the British trouble, were simply bombed by the RAF. (Iraq under British rule was intensively aerially bombed for a decade and RAF officers were so embarrassed by these proceedings that they worried about the British public finding out.) To rule fractious Syria, the French (1920-1943) appealed to religious minorities such as the Alawites and Christians. More
GAB Archive/RedfernsLyricist Gerry Goffin, best known for his collaborations with his former wife, Carole King, died Thursday at the age of 75.
Michael Ochs ArchivesHusband and wife singer songwriting team Goffin and King rehearse during a recording session in a New York studio in 1959.
