******I Did It My Way-With Bob Dylan’s Shadows In The Night In Mind

******I Did It My Way-With Bob Dylan’s Shadows In The Night In Mind

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Recently Sam Eaton an old friend of mine from high school days down at Carver High School in Southeastern Massachusetts did a review for the well-regarded and informative American Folk Music blog where he is listed as a regular contributor for Bob Dylan’s then latest CD brought out in 2014, Shadows In The Night.  [Subsequently in 2015 Columbia Records brought out Volume 12 f the apparently never-ending bootleg series this one centered on a 6 CD set of outtakes, mistakes, variations, songs that didn't make the albums, and whatnot from Dylan's fruitful 1965-66 period but that is old-time well-know music so doesn't really count as a latest CD. Sam had yet to review that compilation since he is not sure that he should not just go back and review the original albums; Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited.]  

Sam had sent me a copy of the review after I had reunited with him when I was looking for information via Google  about my Carver High School Class of 1964 50th anniversary class reunion via the “magic” of the Internet where Diana Rico (nee Kelly) along with her reunion committee had set up a class reunion website which he had joined thus proving that the Internet seems to be able to ferret out anybody who has ever put the slightest information on any website (and which has been recorded by our “friends” at NSA and other “big brother” operations done in “our interest” by the American government but enough of that for now as that is a subject worthy of another time). I then bought the CD on Amazon and after listening did my own amateur review, since writing such things is something I like to do in my spare time, which is essentially based on a lot of Sam's observations in that American Folk Song review. The reason for depending on Sam's observations is that while this album is slightly different from Dylan's early folk song work I have never really been able to do anything but grind my teeth when I hear such music and particularly Dylan's. Unlike Sam I am no folk music aficionado.    

The album a tribute to the king of Tin Pan Alley songwriter fest, Frank Sinatra, in the days when there was something of an unwritten code or maybe not unwritten but assumed by the division of labor that the singer and songwriter were strangers in the night in another sense. Songwriters for the most part wrote the lyrics and singers gobbled up what they were presented with. (Also later, after a semi-successful screen career where he did excellent work in the film adaptations of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity and Nelson Algren’s wrenching The Man With The Golden Arm and some notoriety as the leader of a rat pack of Hollywood and Los Vegas celebrities, named the “Chairman of the boards,” the boards being the stage upon which his fame rested as a singer, actor and hail fellow, well met.) In that review Sam noted that such an effort to go back to an aspect, an off-shoot of the great American Songbook of which Dylan knew so much even early on before he became famous as the “king of folksingers” was bound to happen if he lived long enough.

[Fir those who have forgotten, who had only a vague remembrance from parents' radio listening in the 1950s to the exclusion of rock and roll listening, or were too  young Frank Sinatra was the cat's meow in those day. Later, after a semi-successful screen career where he did excellent work in the film adaptations of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity and Nelson Algren’s wrenching The Man With The Golden Arm and some notoriety as the leader of a rat pack of Hollywood and Los Vegas celebrities, he was declared named the “Chairman of the boards,” the boards being the stage upon which his fame rested as a singer, actor and hail fellow, well met.)

Going back to the Great Depression/World War II period that our parents, we the baby-boomers parents (although Dylan born in 1941 missed the big generation of '68 boat but for Sam’s purpose that was okay Dylan got tagged as an honorary '68er) slogged through for musical inspiration. Going back to something, some place that when we were young and immortal, young and thinking that what we had created would last forever we would have, rightly, dismissed out of hand. And since Dylan has lived long enough, long enough to go back to some bygones roots  here we are talking about something that let us say in 1970 Sam would have dismissed as impossible. Dismissed as the delusional ravings of somebody like Sam’s older brother, Mason, who hated almost everything about the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s. Hated both before he did two tours in Vietnam beginning in 1965 even before the big call-ups after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, enlisting naturally, without a scratch on him, before he got married to his high school sweetheart who had waited, had waited through those two long tours for him maybe sensing that he would come through unscratched, got his little white picket house in hometown North Carver away from his South Carver working class son of a bogger (cranberry bogs the only thing that keep the town together back then and for which it had been famous for generations), and after when he would, along with the lovely bride stand in front of abortion clinics and spew hateful words and make threatening gestures against poor bedraggled young women (mainly)  up against it after some guy left her in the lurch to worry and fret about bringing another baby into this wicked old world. In addition "fag" bait (without the bride as far as Sam knew, they were not exactly on the best of terms then, or now for that matter) every guy in town whose had a word to say about peace and went crazy when somebody mentioned that gays ("in the closet gays") had served in the military during his war. Mason would think nothing of punching any guy who he thought was “light on his feet” (lesbians he seemed, according to Sam, he skipped for some reason), had been ready to spill blood it seemed to cut off the heads of anybody who wanted to breathe a new fresh breath not tinged with our parents’ worn out ways of doing business in civil society.

A whole dissertation or at least a serious long article could be written about how the gap of maybe three years, graduating in say 1961 like Mason and 1964 like Sam created a whole divide in social/political/cultural attitudes in many families. Not all but many where the fresh breeze of the Kennedy Camelot minute dream breeze had not been strong enough to check the desire of the former grouping to serve one’s country, right or wrong, marry one time forever, and get that little white fence house that was a step, maybe two, up from Ma and Pa and go down and dirty with every right-wing  yahoo who promised to "take the country back" and you can fill in the blanks on your own about who from when things came to a head.      
 

Strange as it may seem to a generation, the generation of ’68, today’s AARP generation, okay, baby-boomers who came of age with the clarion call put forth musically by Bob Dylan and others to dramatically break with the music of our parents’ pasts, the music that got them through the Great Depression and slogging through World War II, he has put out an album featuring the work of Mr. Frank Sinatra the king of that era in many our parents’ households. Dylan’s call, clarion call if you will of Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin’ (those dropped “gs” a sign of the folk informally and a general mid-country Midwest phenomenon) written and sung by him which began a trend in music that pulled the mythical Tin Pan Alley marquee down (and a lot of non-singing-instrument composers and professional studio musical on to cheap street) were direct assaults on whatever Grandfather Ike, the Cold War death bombs mentality or the deep freeze cultural and personal red scare which had carried  the country (and Frank) through the 1950s.
 

The music of the Broadway shows, Tin Pan Alley, Cole Porter/Irving Berlin/ the Gershwins/Jerome Kern, Sam who along with his interest in rock and roll, urban blues and protest-tinged folk music a la Dylan (and Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Utah Phillips, Tom Paxton and a group of other who I forget that Sam was always talking about ) also knew about and hence his status as “professional” amateur archivist and reviewer so forgive me if I have left anybody of  importance out. Have I missed anybody of importance, probably, probably missed some of those Rogers and Hart Broadway show tunes teams, and so on.

That proposition though, at least as it pertains to Bob Dylan as an individual, seems less strange as Sam pointed out to me if you were not totally mired in the Bob Dylan protest minute of the early 1960s as he was although folk music beyond a few Dylan tunes sung by others as I said before made my teeth grind, left me flat and even with Dylan it was an iffy proposition when he was cranky-voiced in live performances like one time, maybe 1964, when Sam, at Sam’s insistence, forced me since I had access to a car to go down to the Newport Folk Festival one hot July night to hear “the bard ” and he croaked out his set. Those were the days though when even I realized that whether Dylan wanted that designation or not, he was the “voice of a generation,” catching the new breeze a lot of us felt coming through the land.

In the end Dylan did not want it, ran from it (with the “help” of a serious motorcycle accident which kept him out of the live limelight, holed up in Woodstock along with musicians who would be the Band, the rock and roll back-up band for Dylan when he went electric in 1965 and later on their own, although not out of big time album making, that being a rather prolific album period for him, did not want to be the voice of a generation, had no banner to wave, no sign to hold up for humanity as say Joan Baez, an ex-girlfriend or something like that, and Phil Ochs did, although he liked and wanted to be “king of the hill” in the music department of that generation, no question.

Wanted too to be the king hell troubadour entertaining the world for as long as he drew breathe, as long as he had a song to sing (in what kind of voice god only knows, reptilian the last time I heard him previously a few years ago on some aspect of his never-ending tour gig and Sam said in that review of the Sinatra tribute album that they must have had to come up with some miracles of modern “fixer man” music technology to get his voice to sound even as bad as it did on his Sinatra-etched covers which were just short of spoken verses like some New Jersey Best Western hotel lounge lizard act) and he has accomplished that, the longevity part.

What Dylan has been about for the greater part of his career though has been as an entertainer, a guy who sings his songs to the crowd and hopes they share his feelings for his songs. As he is quoted as saying in a 2015 AARP magazine article connected with the release of his Frank Sinatra tribute what he hoped was that like Frank he sang to, not at, his audience. Just like Frank did when he was in high tide around the 1940s and 1950s and our bobby-soxer mothers were tripping all over themselves like he was Elvis or something and throwing who knows what his way, maybe, notes with telephones numbers and promises of the best time he ever had. That sensibility is emphatically not what the folk protest music ethos was about but rather about stirring up the troops, stirring up the latter day Gideon’s Army to go smite the dragon, to right a few, maybe more, of the wrongs of this wicked old world. Dylan early on came close, stepped into Mississippi for a day or so, then drew back, although it is hard to think of anybody from our generation except maybe Joan Baez and Phil Ochs who wrote and sang to move people from point A to point B in the social struggles of the times. 

What Dylan has also been about through it all has been a deep and abiding respect for the American songbook that he began to gather in his mind early on (look on YouTube to a clip from Don’t Look Back where he is up in some European hotel room with Joan Baez and Bob Neuwirth singing Hank Williams ballads like Lost Highway or stuff from the Basement tapes, either set, the recently released five CD set in the never-ending bootleg set or the rarer “Genuine Basement” tape which is  where he runs the table on a few earlier genres, especially country and show tunes). In the old days that was looking for roots, roots music from the mountains, the desolate oceans, the slave quarters, along the rivers and Dylan’s hero then was Woody Guthrie. But the American songbook is a “big tent” operation and the Tin Pan Alley that he broke from when he became his own songwriter is an important part of the overall tradition and now he has added his hero Frank Sinatra to his version of the songbook (at least he called him his hero but Sam said he would be hard-pressed to name one song Dylan covered of Frank’s in the old days even as a goof.)

Sam said (an I agree somewhat, as much as I am going to with folk songs that can still make my teeth grind) that he may long for the old protest songs, the songs that stirred his blood to push on with the political struggles of the time like With God On Our Side which pushed him (and dragged me along in his wake, for a while) into the ranks of the Quakers, shakers, and little old ladies and men in tennis sneakers in the fight for nuclear disarmament, songs from the album pictured above, you know Blowin’ In The Wind which fit perfectly with the sense that something, something undefinable, something new as in the air in the early 1960s and The Times Are A Changin’ stuff like that, the roots music and not just Woody but Hank (including an incredible version of You Win Again), Tex-Mex working later with George  Sahms of the Sir Douglas Quintet, the Carters, the odd and unusual like the magic lyric play in Desolation Row, his cover of Charley Patton’s Highwater Rising or his cover of a song Lonnie Johnson made famous, Tomorrow Night, but Dylan has sought to entertain and there is room in his tent for the king of Tin Pan Alley (as Billie Holiday was the “queen”).

Having not heard Dylan live and in concert over the past several years with his grating lost voice (for Sam it was always about the lyrics not the voice although in looking at old tapes from the Newport Folk Festival on YouTube his voice was actually far better then than I would have given him credit for) I said to Sam I really did wonder, like he did, though how much production was needed to get the wrinkles out of that voice to sing as smoothly as the “Chairman of the boards,” to run the pauses and the hushed tones Frank knew how to do to keep his audience in his clutches. Yeah, still what goes around comes around.             

Chelsea still faces charges for suicide attempt: Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Stipe release videos of support-Drop The Charges!

Chelsea still faces charges for suicide attempt: Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Stipe release videos of support

September 13, 2016 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
After years of inhumane treatment from the Army, and still facing 30 years in her prison sentence, Chelsea Manning attempted suicide on July 5th, 2016. Although happy to be alive, Chelsea is now facing charges related to her own attempt on her life.

>>Sign the petition and demand the Army drop these absurd charges against Chelsea<<

If convicted of these absurd “administrative offenses”, Chelsea could face indefinite solitary confinement for the rest of her prison term.
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and musician Michael Stipe released videos today in support of Chelsea.

Daniel Ellsberg: “I stand with Chelsea Manning. I hope you will too.”
Michael Stipe: “I support human rights for all people. As an American patriot it is my duty to stand with Chelsea Manning… Instead of giving her the treatment she needs, the government is now threatening her with indefinite solitary confinement. This is unjustifiable. It is unfair, and it needs to be stopped. You can help me stop it now- sign the petition at freechelsea.com.”
Chelsea is being charged for:

• Resisting the force cell move team (Chelsea was unconscious when this team arrived, which makes this charge particularly absurd.)
• Prohibited property (For a book she had mislabeled in her cell)
• Conduct which threatens (For somehow putting the prison at risk while attempting to take her own life, quietly, in her own cell.)

Chelsea will face a disciplinary board later this month, and could very likely be charged for her own suicide attempt. Join Daniel Ellsberg and Michael Stipe in demanding the government drop these unnecessarily cruel charges against Chelsea. Sign the petition, submit your own video of support to team@fightforthefuture.org, or tweet with #StandWithChelsea.

Sign the Petition!
>>Demand the Army drop the absurd charges against Chelsea<<

 

In The Time Of The Time Of An Outlaw Country Music Moment- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “The Best Of Van Morrison, Volume Two”

Click on the headline to link a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing his classic Into The Mystic.


CD Review

The Best Of Van Morrison, Volume Two, Van Morrison, Polydor, 1993

The basic comments here have been used, used many times, to review other Van Morrison albums from various points in his long and honorable career.

Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and his funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.

And that brings us to the album under review, The Best Of Van Morrison, Volume Two l, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. But Van Morrison is no one-trick pony as his long and hard-bitten career proves.

If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on his cover of Bob Dylan’s It’s All Over now Baby Blue, a classic folk bluesy number; the thoughtful Sense Of Wonder; the pathos of Real Real Goner; the song I’ll Tell Ma; and, something out of time,Hymns To The Silence . The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys wore their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves.

Campaign Non-Violence Action Week -September 18-25, 2016

Campaign Non-Violence Action Week -September 18-25, 2016   

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

 

 Frank Jackman comment:

 

One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.

        

To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).

 

Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.  

 

Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.         

*****He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

*****He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that westbound freight by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was ready  to face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of those latter day saints.

For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.

Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, tarvelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.

So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents"  reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.)

That Joe Hill by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”                   

Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the later Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about. So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.        

Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was. 

Several years later after getting washed clean from liquor and drugs, at a time when Jack started to see that he needed to get back into the real world if he did not want to wind up like his last travelling companion, Denver Shorty, whom he found face down one morning on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge and had abandoned his body fast in order not to face the police report, he noticed that Utah was playing in a coffeehouse in Cambridge, a place called Passim’s which he found out had been taken over from the Club 47 where Sam had taken Jack a few times. So Jack and his new wife (his and her second marriages) stepped down into the cellar coffeehouse to listen up.

As Jack waited in the rest room area a door opened from the other side across the narrow passageway and who came out but Utah. As Jack started to grab his attention Utah blurred out “Daddy Two Cent, how the hell are you?” and talked for a few minutes. Later that night after the show they talked some more in the empty club before Utah said he had to leave to head back to Saratoga Springs in New York where he was to play at the Café Lena the next night.         

That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

KINZER: Frustrating the war lobby

By trying to block a $1.15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, a bipartisan group of US senators is challenging one of the key forces that shape American foreign policy: the arms industry. Their campaign shines a light on the role that this industry plays in whipping up fears of danger in the world. How do Americans know that Saudi Arabia is a peace-loving country dedicated to fighting terrorism? The same way we know that Russia is a snarling enemy on a rampage of conquest: The arms industry tells us so… Not surprisingly, the arms industry has mobilized its considerable power on Capitol Hill to block this Senate resolution. “We are fighting General Dynamics,” one supporter of the resolution said last week. A vote could come soon. Blocking this arms sale would be a rebellion against one of Washington’s richest lobbies. That would send welcome chills through the corridors of power in the Pentagon, the war industry, and Saudi Arabia.  More

 

America Has Spent Nearly $5 Trillion on Wars Since 9/11

Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has spent $3.6 trillion on wars. When you add in the amount of war funding that the departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security have requested for next year — and then the estimated costs of our present commitments to veterans — the overall price tag comes to $4.79 trillion, according to a new report by Brown University’s Watson Institute. For $4.79 trillion we could forgive all outstanding student-loan debt in the United States, provide universal preschool to all American children, buy ourselves a high-speed rail system — and still have a couple trillion left over for a rainy day.

 

Obama’s Dilemma: Justice for 9-11 Families or Saudi Arabia?

It was 9-11 which initially gave the Bush-Cheney Administration and a subservient Congress the political cover to initiate a bombing campaign against the utterly defenseless, poverty stricken country of Afghanistan for ‘harboring terrorists’ before going on to initiate a full scale ‘shock and awe’ military invasion of Iraq which had nothing to do with 9-11 in 2003.  The fact that fifteen of the nineteen 9-11 hijackers were Saudi nationals was of no apparent consequence… JASTA [the Justice Against State Terrorism Act ] which amends the Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976 will allow US Courts to hear cases against a foreign state if injuries or harm have occurred as a result of terrorism.    Thanks to the Congress for doing their job, who rarely act in the best interests of the American people, for stepping up on this vote – with unanimous aapprovals by the Senate in May and the House of Representatives on September 12… It should be disturbing that the President who has a history of acting like a Globalist when the chips are down, would so fervently obstruct release of the pages for as long as he did and so it comes as no surprise that he threatens a veto.   More

 

Senators seek to block $1.15 billion U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia

Four U.S. senators introduced a joint resolution on Thursday seeking to block the U.S. sale of $1.15 billion of Abrams tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, citing issues including the conflict in Yemen. The measure was introduced by Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Democrats Chris Murphy and Al Franken, the latest indication of strong disapproval of the deal among some U.S. lawmakers. "Selling $1.15 billion in tanks, guns, ammunition, and more to a country with a poor human rights record embroiled in a bitter war is a recipe for disaster and an escalation of an ongoing arms race in the region," Paul said in a statement. In August, 64 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter urging President Barack Obama to delay the sale.  More

 

Email your senators and ask them to support this crucial legislation!

 

United States Announces $38 Billion Israel Military Aid Package

The agreement, which the two countries have been negotiating since November 2015, the United States will provide Israel with $38 billion in military aid over 10 years, $5 billion of them to be dedicated to the development of missile defense systems… The old military aid agreement, which ends at the end of 2018, totaled $30 billion over a decade or an average of $3 billion annually. That being said, the actual military aid the U.S. transferred to Israel was greater due additional aid approved by Congress following requests by Israel. Over the last few years Congress approved an additional $500 million annually to be added to the original base sum, which made the total amount of military aid transferred to Israel annually approximately $3.5 billion… The new military aid deal is expected to total about $38 billion over a decade, or an average of $3.8 billion per year. This amounts to the largest increase ever in U.S. aid to Israel.  More

 

What do Americans think about it?

Like on all issues facing the United States, the American public is split along partisan lines. Among Democrats and Independents, a majority (57 percent and 59 percent respectively) say it’s too much or way too much, while only 5 percent and 17 percent respectively say it’s too little or way too little. Republicans, on the other hand, were split evenly (40 percent each) in saying the aid is too much/way too much, or too little/way too little.   More

 

More Military Aid for Israel? NO THANKS!

Israel already enjoys a decisive military advantage over any combination of its neighbors and does not need more military aid from the US. We should also oppose military aid for Egypt and Jordan, countries that need to use funding for development not new weapons.  And we are against the billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf petro-monarchies which are making war on Yemen and intervening to fuel the violence in Syria.   Increasing military aid to Israel now that it is consolidating its control over the occupied Palestinian West Bank — relentlessly expanding settlements and conducting a record number of Palestinian house demolitions – sends precisely the wrong message.  There are many better uses for scarce taxpayer dollars.  $38 billion could do much to address issues of poverty at home and among needy countries abroad. 

Tell your Members of Congress:  This is no time to increase aid to Israel!

 

'President Donald Trump'?: Latest Polls Indicate Clinton Could Actually Lose

Two new polls released on Thursday highlight a disturbing reality: In a race between two unpopular candidates, an excited base could mean everything. And in the case of the current presidential contest—a race that observers say is "hers to lose"—the failure of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to inspire voters could prove her ultimate downfall… According to the LA Times, the biggest reason for the bump "appears to be an increase in the likelihood of Trump supporters who say they plan to vote, combined with a drop among Clinton supporters on that question… If Clinton loses this election, it will not be because Americans are dumb, racist misogynists who would cut off their noses to spite their faces in refusing to elect a sane woman over an insane man. It will not be because too many Americans "selfishly" voted for a third party or didn't vote at all. It will be because Clinton refused to compromise her allegiance to Wall Street and the morally bankrupt center-right establishment positions of her party and chose not to win over voters.   More

 

WHOSE FINGER? ON WHAT BUTTON?

Donald Trump’s lack of government experience, disdain for concrete policy positions and flippant manner have many questioning whether he can be trusted with this finger on the nuclear button. Trump himself has fed these concerns, as reportedly he asked, three times, during a private high-level briefing on nuclear weapons policy why a president can’t use nukes.  I don’t want Mr. Trump’s finger on the nuclear trigger. Nor do I want Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or anyone else (including the leaders of the eight other nuclear weapons states) to have the power to unilaterally decide the fate of life on our planet by “pushing the nuclear button” … Even a “limited” nuclear war, employing the relatively small arsenals of India and Pakistan in a regional conflagration, could cause global famine on top of the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocent people.  How is it acceptable or legitimate for anyone to have the power to decide whether our civilization continues, or whether other species survive? We shouldn’t trust anyone with this power. Human beings are far too fallible.  More

 

STANDING ROCK PROTESTS: North Dakota vs. Amy Goodman: Journalism is not a crime

Last Thursday, an arrest warrant was issued under the header “North Dakota versus Amy Goodman.” The charge was for criminal trespass. The actual crime? Journalism. We went to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to cover the growing opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Global attention has become focused on the struggle since Labor Day weekend, after pipeline guards unleashed attack dogs and pepper spray on Native American protesters. On that Saturday, at least six bulldozers were carving up the land along the pipeline route, where archeological and sacred sites had been discovered by the tribe. The Dakota Access Pipeline company obtained the locations of these sites just the day before, in a court filing made by the tribe. Many feel that the company razed the area, destroying the sites, before an injunction could be issued to study them. Scores of people, mostly Native American, raced to the scene, demanding the bulldozers leave. The guards pepper-sprayed, punched and tackled the land defenders. Attack dogs were unleashed, biting at least six people and one horse.

 

Drop the Charges Against Amy Goodman and Other Journalists Covering #NoDAPL

The pipeline has faced strong resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of 280 other tribes in the United States and Canada, not to mention countless other groups working in solidarity. The activism has led to a temporary stay on the project, and journalists are needed on the ground now more than ever as the fight continues.

Tell Morton County State's Attorney Allen Koppy to drop the charges against Goodman and everyone exercising their First Amendment rights to report on this story.

 

Is Trump an Aberration? The Dark History of the "Nation of Immigrants"

Donald Trump may differ from other contemporary politicians in so openly stating his antipathy to immigrants of a certain sort.  (He’s actually urged the opening of the country to more European immigrants.)  Democrats like Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton sound so much less hateful and so much more tolerant.  But the policies Trump is advocating, including that well-publicized wall and mass deportations, are really nothing new.  They are the very policies initiated by Bill Clinton in the 1990s and -- from border militarization to mass deportations -- enthusiastically promoted by Barack Obama.  The president is, in fact, responsible for raising such deportations to levels previously unknown in American history.  And were you to take a long look back into that very history, you would find that Trump’s open appeal to white fears of a future non-white majority, and his support of immigration policies aimed at racial whitening, are really nothing new either… As a start, what could the very idea of a “nation of immigrants” mean in a land that was already home to a large native population when European immigrants started to colonize it?  From its first moments, American history has, in fact, been a history of deportation.   More

 

Trump-inspired felon allegedly torches Ft. Pierce FL Mosque, says "All Islam is radical"

Joseph Michael Schreiber stands accused of having carried out an arson attack against a mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida, about an hour’s drive north from West Palm Beach. The mosque was burned down on the first night of Eid al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice, a major Muslim holy day that in part commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command. The fire was set after midnight and it wasn’t until 5 am until the local firefighters could put the blaze out…  Schreiber, 32, … has a history of petty theft and faces 30 years in prison if he is convicted of the arson as a hate crime. He at one point posted to his Facebook page a GOP National Committee picture showing Trump/Spence and the words “The team that will make America great again!”  More

 

We, the Plutocrats vs. We, the People

In the 1970s, Big Business began to refine its ability to act as a class and gang up on Congress.  Even before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, political action committees deluged politics with dollars. Foundations, corporations, and rich individuals funded think tanks that churned out study after study with results skewed to their ideology and interests. Political strategists made alliances with the religious right, with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, to zealously wage a cultural holy war that would camouflage the economic assault on working people and the middle class…  A plethora of studies conclude that America’s political system has already been transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy (the rule of a wealthy elite).  Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, for instance, studied data from 1,800 different policy initiatives launched between 1981 and 2002.  They found that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”  Whether Republican or Democratic, they concluded, the government more often follows the preferences of major lobbying or business groups than it does those of ordinary citizens.  More

 

99.6% of Paul Ryan’s proposed tax cuts would go to the richest 1% of Americans

The House Republicans' proposal for tax relief could force the government to borrow trillions of dollars to continue operating and might even weaken the economy, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.  By 2025, when the reductions would be fully implemented, 99.6 percent of the tax cuts would benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, according to the analysis. This group would enjoy the greatest relief as a share of their income (increasing their incomes after taxes by 10.6 percent on average) and in terms of dollars (an average annual savings of $240,000 for each household). Poor and working-class households would gain more modest benefits. The poorest 20 percent of Americans would see an average increase of 0.5 percent in their incomes, or about $120 a year. Households in the upper middle class, those in the 60th percentile through the 95th percentile, would pay more in taxes on average.   More

 

Elizabeth Warren Asks FBI Director to Explain Why DOJ Didn’t Prosecute Banksters

On Thursday, Warren released two highly provocative letters demanding some explanations. One is to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, requesting a review of how federal law enforcement managed to whiff on all 11 substantive criminal referrals submitted by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), a panel set up to examine the causes of the 2008 meltdown. The other is to FBI Director James Comey, asking him to release all FBI investigations and deliberations related to those referrals… “Not every individual or company accused of a crime is guilty of that crime and not every DOJ referral results in a conviction,” Warren writes in her letter to the inspector general. “But the DOJ’s failure to obtain any criminal convictions of any of the individuals or corporations named in the FCIC referrals suggests that the department has failed to hold the individuals and companies most responsible for the financial crisis and the Great Recession accountable. This failure requires an explanation.”   More

 

Nationwide Prison Strike Mostly Ignored

On September 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, inmate laborers at 40 prisons in 24 states across the country went on strike (The Root, 9/10/16). The Nation (9/7/16), Guardian (9/9/16), Wired (9/3/16) and Waging Nonviolence (9/7/16) all reported that this may have been the largest prison strike in history.  But a search of the Nexis news database for the terms “prison” and “strike” showed that most national corporate news outlets thought that the potential of history being made on September 9 needed little to no news coverage… Organizers for the strike have also made connections between prison labor and unions. Wired (9/3/16) reported organizers are “quick to point out that relying on cheap prison labor takes jobs away from those outside—but so far response from outside organizations like labor unions has been tepid.”  More

 

*   *   *   *

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

Syrian ceasefire holds - but balance lies with armed opposition

The ceasefire in Syria is holding with no one reported killed in fighting anywhere in Syria during the first 15 hours of the truce. Most groups have said they will abide by its terms, though in many cases they are doing so reluctantly… The armed opposition have the biggest motive for seeing the US-Russian agreement fail because it offers them little and envisages a joint US-Russian campaign against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the former affiliate of al-Qaeda that has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The latter is by far the most effective fighting force of the opposition… It is much too early to predict the outcome of the ceasefire and other sections of the US-Russian agreement, which took ten months to negotiate. Much will also depend on the attitude of regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey who have armed, financed and given safe passage to the armed opposition in the past. The policy of Turkey, who has stood as a sanctuary and base area for the rebels since 2011, will be crucial and may have changed because Ankara is giving priority to its war against the Kurds rather than overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.   More

 

SYRIAN PROPAGANDA WAR, Chapter XXXIV. . .

Given the contending internal forces and the rival proxy interventions in Syria, it was inevitable that there would be problems and challenges in implementing the ceasefire negotiated by the US and Russia.  However, nearly all the emphasis in the mainstream media, distorting UN statements, has been on supposed failures of the Syrian government to live up to the stipulations of the agreement – which have not even been published, apparently at the insistence of the US.  The reality is that many rebel factions, including some of those armed by the US, have rejected the ceasefire and declared themselves unwilling to sever ties with the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria now calling itself Fateh es-Sham.  Many of the apparent ceasefire violations come from these extremist groups, not from the government side.  And the delays in allowing relief supplies into rebel-held East Aleppo are at least in part due to rebel military and political actions, not just Syrian government reluctance.  Nevertheless, news reports distort the statements of the UN to place blame exclusively on the government side.  And inside supposedly starving East Aleppo, demonstrations by armed rebels and religious extremists have called for opposition to the ceasefire and the refusal of any aid under the agreement.

 

Pentagon grudgingly accepts Syria deal amid deep mistrust of Russia

“There is a trust deficit with the Russians; it is not clear to us what their objectives are,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of the U.S. Central Command, said Wednesday. “They say one thing, and we don’t necessarily see them following up on this.”  That mistrust resides most deeply in Carter, who officials familiar with the Russia negotiations said almost single-handedly delayed Friday’s final agreement with his repeated questions during the conference call. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced little objection during the principals’ meeting, officials said… Amid reports of internal administration clashes, and after a terse and somewhat grudging initial Pentagon statement saying “we will be watching” the Russians to make sure they comply, the White House said Wednesday that Obama is not looking for “a bunch of people that have the exact same opinion.”   More

 

US Perpetuating Stalemate in Syria

With no end in sight for the war in Syria, the Obama administration continues to approach the conflict in a way that is prolonging the fighting. As it pursues its stated goal of removing the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from power, the Obama administration is implementing a policy that keeps the Syrian regime and the many different opposition forces in the country locked in a deadly stalemate… In fact, some administration officials insist that a prolonged war works to their advantage. Despite the fact that the years of fighting have only succeeded in producing more death and suffering for the Syrian people, with the war now claiming somewhere between a quarter million and a half million lives, a number of officials contend that indefinite fighting provides the United States with strategic benefits… As the New York Times reported, “Mr. McDonough argued that the status quo in Syria could keep Iran pinned down for years.” In other words, McDonough believed that stalemate would require the Iranian government to expend much of its time and resources in a long-term effort to prop up the Syrian regime.   More

 

 

US troops 'forced to flee Syrian town' after FSA rebel threats

US special forces soldiers were reportedly forced to flee a town in northern Syria after Free Syrian Army fighters threatened to "slaughter" them for their "invasion", according to videos and reports posted on social media on Friday.  About 25 US soldiers were reportedly working with Turkish forces as they advanced on al-Rai, Aleppo, in preparation for an offensive against nearby al-Bab, which is controlled by the Islamic State group.  The FSA is allied with Turkish forces and ostensibly supported by the US as a "moderate" rebel group fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad…  In the video, fighters from the FSA chant that US forces are "pigs", "crusaders" and "infidels"… A voice on a megaphone can be heard to say there will be a "slaughter". The US forces were reportedly forced to leave the town after the protests.

 

Saudi-Backed Extremism is Fueling Yemeni Outrage

Al-Qaeda and IS are the biggest winners of the war. First, despite reports over the past few months that they were driven out of a number of southern cities, they continue to operate in Aden, Mukalla, Zinjibar, Jaar, and elsewhere—and will remain as long as Yemen lacks a strong government… As the atrocities accumulate and the humanitarian crisis worsens, Yemenis blame the U.S. administration for most of their suffering. Nationwide, huge posters in the streets proclaim, “America kills the Yemeni people,” as Yemenis are sure that the Saudis would not have dared to do all that to them without the consent of the United States… Saudis are increasingly worried—not only by rising hatred, anti-Saudi sentiment, and the growing number of attacks on southern Saudi Arabia, but also by the photos and videos published almost daily showing bare-footed Yemeni fighters defeating the Saudi army and its most advanced weapons.   More

 

It’s Not the Bullets Forcing Saudi’s Yemeni Troops Off the Battlefield. It’s the Pay

Maj. Mortada al-Youssefi has more to worry about as commander of a government military unit in Yemen than the enemy. He has also had to figure out how to stop hundreds of his own men from walking off the battlefield over not being paid.  He is one of the many Yemeni officials who have been struggling to contain the growing anger of pro-government fighters over payment delays from the Saudi-led Arab coalition that has been propping up the divided country’s president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and for the past 18 months fighting his main opponents, the Houthi militias that rule much of the country… The coalition had promised each recruit a minimum of about $270 a month — the prewar salary of a university professor with a master’s degree. But once on the front lines, according to several officers, most of the young men found themselves penniless for months on end.   More