Al-Zawahiri and Bush, two peas in a pod

Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top aide, derided George Bush in a tape released on Monday.

Given his stature in the al-Qaeda organization and his past tie-ins with bombings that have taken the lives of scores of innocents, Al-Zawahiri is obviously a murderous fiend, and putting him out of business should be at the top of the list. (BTW, who's keeping the list?)

Yet, remarkably, our own president isn't fit to lick Al-Zawahiri's shoes, statistically speaking, since Bush himself is responsible for the bombing of tens of thousands of civilians and the needless deaths of so many U.S. troops in Iraq (far more U.S. troops, it's worth pointing out, than Al-Zawahiri could ever lay claim to). What a conundrum...!

Of course, let us not forget that Bill Clinton and his cronies bombed Yugoslavia, which also resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, as this quote from the above link makes plain:

On March 24th, 1999, the NATO alliance, led by the United States, began bombing Yugoslavia. They bombed every day, with steadily increasing numbers of planes and escalating destructive power of bombs. The bombing was finally halted after 78 days, with an agreement for withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo, to be replaced by a mixed force of NATO and Russian troops under UN auspices.

The bombing of Yugoslavia was, overwhelmingly, of specifically civilian targets: homes, roads, farms, factories, hospitals, bridges, churches, monasteries, columns of refugees, TV stations, office buildings. The bombing was not intended to maximize civilian deaths, but neither was it intended to minimize them. The aim of the bombing was to destroy civilian installations on which people's lives and comfort depended, killing a few thousand random civilians for good measure, and thus weakening the will of the population to resist, so that they would submit to NATO occupation.

It's been mentioned before, but can you imagine the outrage and condemnation that would result if the U.S. Government bombed Minneapolis or East St. Louis or Houston, killing and maiming thousands of civilians as they went about their daily lives, in order to ferret out a small band of al-Qaeda operatives or secure a complex of buildings? Yet Bush & Co. have initiated scads of these 9/11-like disasters in places all over Iraq in the past few years.

In his recent tape, Al-Zawahiri says:

My first message is to the butcher of Washington, Bush: You are not just defeated and lying about it, but you are, with God's help, a loser. You are bad luck to your people. You brought them disasters and catastrophes, and you will bring them even more disasters.

Yeah, so he's trying to curry favor with impressionable types (millions, no doubt). But he's not far from the truth. And he goes on to say:

To the American mother I say, if the defense ministry called you to tell you your son is coming back home in a coffin, remember Bush. To the British wife I say, if you got a call telling you your husband is coming back home with his body charred, remember [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair.

Yup. 'Nuff said. Too bad Al-Zawahiri's a sociopath, and not a commentator on the Washington Post opinion page. Of course, George Bush couldn't even manage a commentary on the opinion page of Grit, but that's another post for another time.

I work in a museum where busloads of wide-eyed, inquisitive young children arrive everyday to learn about the world they live in. They clomp through in their little snowboots, carrying their bag lunches and dropping mittens as they enthusiastically head for the exhibits. The fact that we have a president who's completely indifferent to their lives and others like them, working instead for his cronies and a wantonly destructive political agenda, is mind-bendingly awful to contemplate, but that's what we're faced with.

You don't target civilians, period. You don't casually put them at great risk of death or dismemberment, you don't drop incendiary bombs on them or near them from aircraft thousands of feet up in the air, you don't scatter tens of thousands of unexploded land mines where they work and play, you don't use depleted uranium shells that will poison their air and water for decades to come, you don't fire down on their neighborhoods from the night sky. No matter what. Period.

Yet George Bush, the U.S. President, is responsible for all that and more. No wonder Al-Zawahiri gets so much mileage with his tapes! Face it, the two of them may as well be blood brothers. They both benefit from their little rivalry, while thousands suffer and die because of it.

Comedian Bill Hicks, who died over ten years ago, unwittingly summed up the likes of Al-Zawahiri and Bush perfectly when he said, "You're fucked, and you're fucking us."

Nonalignment pact

I continue to note with amusement the ads that google picks for me, based on the content of my posts. Alas, I'm now reading in that little box up above that it's not "easy to be a Christian" - which is especially true for me, since I'm a devout agnostic - and that if I'll just click the link, I'll learn what it means to "follow Jesus" in today's world.

Well, I'll leave that to others, though I can admit to a little curiosity. However, I refuse to capitulate - even to Satan. I'd love to have a beer with him, though, and Jesus is welcome to join in. (As long as there's no presumption of sex - unless Satan has retained his dastardly ability to appear in human female form, in which case it might be worth taking the plunge.)

I could make a plea for my readers to click through the ads, since I ostensibly make 12 or 16 cents for each one (never mind the odds of my reaching the $100 minimum for google to actually pay me are minimal at best). But I'd just as soon have people stay safely here on my cozy little blog, where there are no worries that they'll be in danger of unwittingly submitting to the predations of messianic reformers who want to fuck with their minds. We've got enough trouble in the world.

Speaking of trouble, Robert Fisk has a nice column in the UK Independent on how the U.S. got its just desserts with the election of Hamas in Palestine, like so many colonizers and meddling western governments in the past. You actually have to be a subscriber to the Independent to read the whole article there, but truthout has reprinted it in full, as they're wont to do.

And probing around for the Hamas article, I came across Fisk's intriguing review of Steven Spielberg's film Munich at this site, which makes me want to see the film more than ever. ("Munich suggests for the first time on the big screen that Israel's policy is immoral.") A few spoilers in the review, though, so tread carefully.

BTW, "Nonalignment Pact" was a b-side from around the time That Petrol Emotion released their amazing 1986 debut album, Manic Pop Thrill, which still holds a prominent place in my collection. Find a copy now, before it's too late.

What would Ian Curtis do?

The UK's Guardian newspaper reports that the BBC is marking the Easter holiday this year with a special presentation called the "Manchester Passion", described as a "contemporary retelling of Jesus's final hours", in which

...a character representing Jesus will sing the legendary Joy Division anthem "Love Will Tear Us Apart" before dueting his arch-betrayer Judas on the New Order hit "Blue Monday", according to senior church sources involved in the production.

Mary Magdelene, the penitent whore of the New Testament, is also getting in on the act: she is being lined up to sing the Buzzcocks hit "Ever Fallen in Love (with Someone You Shouldn't have)" accompanied by a string band.

Former Happy Monday and Celebrity Big Brother winner Bez will play a disciple.

The climax of the event sees Jesus sing the Smiths classic song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" as he is being flayed by Roman soldiers. He will then come face-to-face with his Roman prosecutor Pontius Pilate with the two of them singing a duet of the Oasis hit "Wonderwall"...

The event, which has the backing of the Church of England, will involve a procession of the public through the streets of Manchester, culminating with the resurrected Jesus singing an as-yet undisclosed song from the roof of the Manchester Town Hall. (Given Jesus's tres-exclusive membership in the Father-Son-Holy Ghost triumvirate, one possibility might be New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" - or maybe not.)

Katha Pollitt on women in higher education

I alluded to this phenomenon in an earlier post, and now Katha Pollitt has a nice piece in The Nation on the "feminization" of post-secondary schooling in the U.S. In a nutshell, women now outnumber men by a significant margin in colleges and universities, and the gap is expected to increase, with women projected to make up 60 percent of undergraduate admissions in the next few years.

Of course, that doesn't mean women have achieved parity in the workplace. In fact, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) Report GAO-04-35 (pdf file), women still make just 80 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts doing the same job.

So there's still a hell of a long way to go...

Naomi Wolf has vision of prominent religious icon

Feminist Naomi Wolf has told the Glasgow Sunday Herald that she had a "vision of Jesus" during a session to treat writer's block. Wolf, author of the 1991 book The Beauty Myth, which explores the ways in which the cosmetic, diet and plastic surgery industries promote unrealistic, unattainable standards of beauty for women, said she saw a "holographic" image of Jesus that was "full of light and full of love."

Strangely, she described seeing herself as a 13-year-old boy sitting next to the Jesus figure, feeling what it was like to be a young boy "with an older male who he really loves and admires and loves to be in the presence of." Has Michael Jackson been in contact with her recently? (Keep an eye on her nose - if it starts to morph like Michael's, there would be no small amount of irony in it.)

Yeah, I read the book when it came out. Notwithstanding its influence and importance at the time, I have to think it would be a very different volume if it were written today. It would be an interesting exercise to try and come up with the myriad ways in which society has changed - for better, for worse - in relation to the themes explored in Wolf's book. It'd be a minefield of paradoxes - I don't even know where I'd begin. It would require at least two double espressos, for sure.

The bin Laden book club

That canny reviewer residing somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Osama bin Laden, has given a thumbs-up to William Blum's Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, a veritable catalog of U.S. misdeeds throughout the 20th Century. Consequently, the book has risen from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon's selling index. Bin Laden mentioned it in last week's tape run on Al Jazeera, in one of the most novel publishing endorsements in recent history.

In today's Washington Post, Blum was glad for the acknowledgement of his work, which has been lauded by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Sam Smith, Gore Vidal and others, but hadn't made much of a blip in the mainstream until now. Among other things, Rogue State offers a rundown of U.S.-supported or instigated coups and overthrows:

From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes.

He discusses assassinations, U.S.-trained terrorists and militia, election meddling, kidnappings, C.I.A. training manuals, use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells, and more. Basically, all the things that are overlooked in most U.S. textbooks. It's too late for tens of thousands of dead in East Timor and Nicaragua, but maybe the newfound attention on Blum's book will open some eyes that were previously oblivious to the U.S. record.

Andrea Dworkin redux

Girl Friday posted a link to an excellent Village Voice piece on reproductive choice by Cristina Page. I was reminded that I'd been meaning to mention Susie Bright's obit for Andrea Dworkin, which got me thinking awhile back about my own exposure to Dworkin back in the late '80s when I was still feeling out my own ideas about sexuality and gender. I have to say Dworkin's (and partner John Stoltenberg's) ideas took hold of me at the time more than one might imagine, which led to a fair amount of confusion vis-a-vis my own heterosexual expression. Fortunately, I emerged relatively unscathed from that period, and perhaps the better for it, having had an intimate view of things from different perspectives.

God, that sounded dry. Well, if you want the details, you'll have to ask.

Now Susie Bright has an interesting collection of writings from various individuals on her blog, many of whom found themselves "at the wrong end of [Dworkin's] firing squad", as she puts it, as they remember the ways in which their own views about sexuality have been informed by Dworkin's ideas. It's well worth checking out for the breadth and variety of the contributions.

Bush/Cheney & Co. versus Timothy McVeigh

Fucking and mayhem will be the topics du jour.

Why? Well, I've been watching the little google adsense ads that appear at the top of this blog, and while it's intriguing at times to see what appears - something others have blogged about at length, in fact - it's been disconcerting to see one for "gracious senior living" (no doubt prompted by the condo post below) and another one that says, "Patriotic Pro-Military T-shirts. Have Fun Being Right." Fucking hell - where did that one come from?

Don't get me wrong, I dig "seniors". I interact with legions of them every day at the museum where I work, and I find comments about doddering old fogies to be moronic. These people have been through ten times the life experience that your average 20-something has - they've lived through more bad days at work, more heartbreak, more historic upheavals, more sex, more rainstorms, more coffee-mocha ice cream sundaes, more political scandals, and more of most everything else, save maybe system crashes and snowboard injuries. When I see an 85-year-old woman standing in front of me at the museum, I see the precocious young girl of 8 devouring books, the teenager confronting sex for the first time in the back of a car, the 25-year-old working her ass off during World War II, the 38-year-old sending her kids off to college, the 53-year-old facing down "middle age", the 70-year-old saying goodbye to her husband, and so much more. It's all there in her eyes when she smiles.

But I digress. Mainly, I just think it's odd that "senior housing" is the first thing that google comes up with for me. Can't we have something a little more compelling?

(BTW, before I forget, don't get me started on people who "hate kids" - never mind that they were likely allowed to pass through a more-or-less carefree childhood, free to learn and grow, without being spat upon by condescending adults...)

At any rate, getting back to the ads, and regardless of the obvious complexities vis-a-vis supporting the troops versus condemning the leaders and the war, yadda yadda, it's still the case that I'd rather avoid being associated with a pro-right-wing t-shirt enterprise on my blog. Because as we know, the right wing in the United States (and no, I don't mean your average, garden-variety Republican neighbor, or your garden-variety "fiscal conservative", or whatever - I mean the sick, rabid ones, the ones who've lost whatever vestige of humanity they started out with) is probably the most anti-troop, anti-enlistee political block in existence, given that their pro-Bush, pro-Iraq War stance actively promotes and encourages the slaughter of our own troops when the war has been shown to be a complete farce from the beginning.

So, where do they get off making pro-troop t-shirts? Wait - they said pro-military. Which means they may not be thinking of the troops at all.

I'll just have to work a bit harder to convince the google-bot that those ads don't belong here.

For starters, consider this: with the phony, contrived Iraq War, the depraved Bush/Cheney organization has now sent more Americans to an early grave than Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City. And look what happened to him!

Yeah, it's a little surreal to have a leader who's actually responsible for the needless deaths of more of your fellow citizens than one of the most notorious serial killers in recent memory, but that's just because Bush gets a pass, being the elected (doh!) leader of the nation.

You see, our perspective is distorted. A woman's 21-year-old son is deliberately yanked out of her life, away from his family and friends in Wisconsin or Iowa or wherever, away from his job, and he's plopped down into a situation thousands of miles away where he has only a slim chance of getting out alive, and many of us - many Americans - somehow accept it. Why in the world would we? Because we're not thinking that said 21-year-old was just sent away to die so that Cheney and the vast network of cronies and corporate interests who surround him can be assured of their nest eggs, or that someone's "shareholder value" will be preserved, or oil revenues, or whetever else. It's just too much to contemplate, right?

Instead, we're thinking - many Americans, most days - that the President et al are there to serve us, the citizenry, and that they're somehow doing their job, and that even when they commit us to dangerous courses, it somehow makes sense in the big picture, for all of us as a whole. Even if we disagree with their tax cuts for the rich, or their stance on abortion, or whatever else.

Fortunately, more and more people are beginning to question the truthfulness of that in the present context. Here's a simple exercise:

Visualize George Bush walking down the hall on the way to sign the paper that committed U.S. armed forces to conflict in Iraq. Then, imagine Timothy McVeigh driving his van on that sad morning into Oklahoma City. Now, imagine that George Bush, walking down that hallway, is Timothy McVeigh in his van - creeping down the road, parking in front of the building, calmly getting out, walking away, and waiting for the explosive charge to detonate. When George Bush picked up his pen to sign that document, he became a certified killer like Timothy McVeigh, only worse - because Bush, with that small act of signing a paper, condemned many more people to die than McVeigh ever dreamed possible. Deliberately, callously, deceitfully, without regard for the troops or their families, and certainly without regard for the thousands of civilians who would be killed and maimed as well.

So, in Bush, you have the kind of guy that you wouldn't even want your children to be near. Not because he'd lash out like some crazed, murderous fiend. Of course not. Like most of his ilk, he acts from afar, by fiat or dictate, he dresses reasonably well, he looks presentable. No, you wouldn't want your children to get near him because, like McVeigh (or Dahmer, or Atta), he's sub-human, he's tainted. He sent two thousand Americans off to die without batting an eyelash, and condemned tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis to death with the same stroke of a pen. (For those who, unbelievably, casually dismiss this latter fact, just substitute "tens of thousands of innocent Americans in downtown Cincinnati [or Minneapolis, or Houston, or whatever]" for an illustration of how it might feel to pick up the morning's paper and read that statistic.)

Saddam Hussein? Look at it this way. Think of your neighborhood. Think of the elementary school down the street, the cleaners on the corner, the many houses of your neighbors. Now, imagine Saddam Hussein was hiding out in one of those houses nearby, and the cops lost their marbles and decided they were going to fly over your neighborhood and drop scads of 400-pound incendiary bombs from thousands of feet up to rain down on your neighborhood, just to try and get the one guy. Now, he's a bad guy, but that's fucking crazy, right? How many kids would be at risk? How many regular people just going about their daily lives - working, making lunch, playing basketball, studying for an exam, pasting photos into scrapbooks, mowing the lawn, whatever? You don't put civilians at risk, *period*. Think of all the trouble the cops usually go to to get just three civilians out of the way when they're going to go in and nab some guy who committed a crime. Now, why is it all of a sudden OK to blow a city block's-worth of those civilians to kingdom come because we want Saddam Hussein?

It's pretty sickening, isn't it? Anyway, as Noam Chomsky said recently, we've been asked to believe that "the United States would have invaded Iraq even if its main product was lettuce and pickles," rather than oil.

Fat chance, right?

And now we're looking at potentially thousands of illegal wiretaps of American citizens. From the Nation:

...it now appears that thousands of calls were monitored and that the information obtained may have been widely circulated among federal agencies. It also appears that a number of government officials considered the warrantless wiretaps of dubious legality. Reportedly, several people in the National Security Agency refused to participate in them, and a deputy attorney general even declined to sign off on some aspects of these wiretaps. The special FISA court has raised concerns as well, and a judge on that court has resigned, apparently in protest.

So it'd be a start if we could impeach this guy. What are the odds? Pretty slim, I'd say. But who knows.

Punch or pleasure - pick your poison

The 5th of November Puppeteers version of the, er, well-known Punch and Judy play (I loathe use of the word "classic" when writing about supposedly canonical works), which they're calling The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch, is being presented on four Sunday mornings (brunch time) in January and February at the Bryant Lake Bowl. The 5th of November posse, headed up by Lancashire-born Cheryl Willis, has been lauded in the past for performances at In The Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and the Fringe Festival. Now Willis has come up with yet another twist on the tale of Mr. Punch, no doubt replete with more slapstick antics and anti-authoritarian mayhem than you can, er, shake a stick at. Cheryl's comedic sensibility manages to be both sweet and dark, touching and anarchic - so be prepared to enjoy this immensely.


As if that wasn't enough, Cheryl's crew will be presenting an erotic "shadow play" at the Bryant Lake Bowl on Valentine's Day, and this one promises to be anything but kid friendly, as it's based on the lascivious imaginings of Anais Nin. Cheryl's calling this “Little Birds” and other Anaïs Nin Valentines, and she explains it thusly:

Eat, drink, and listen to the smooth, sensual voices of faceless beings whispering stories of love, passion and obsession in a darkened room lit only by soft colored lights. With the wine, the glow, and a lover by your side, what else could be a more perfect date this Valentine’s… other than what happens once you get home… if you make it that far!

Ticket prices are on a sliding, pay-what-you-can scale from $8-$12, which makes this an ideal cheap date on V-Day. As Anais herself once said,

There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.

With enough sensual energy flowing through the theatre, it's entirely possible the 5th of November Puppeteers and their audience will manage to levitate the Bryant Lake Bowl on February 14th. You wouldn't want to miss that, would you?

Lust and galoshes

"From now on you will be strong. There is to be no more fear. Radiant... beautiful... you will be one of the daughters of the kingdom. That's what you are now, Sadie, one of the daughters of the kingdom... radiant... beautiful."

Combine an affable, happy-go-lucky but world-weary prostitute on the lam from an unspecified punishment handed down for an equally mysterious offense in faraway San Francisco, traveling the south seas by steamer... a puritanical, authoritarian preacher/reformer with his submissive, adoring wife at his side, visiting far-off locales, converting heathens, and passing harsh judgement on anyone who deviates from the sacred path... a young, urbane couple, looking like they stepped out of the pages of the latest Bergdorf Goodman catalog, he a pragmatic, liberal-minded doctor and she meticulously coiffed and attired, with scarcely an opinion on anything save that which affects her personally... and a bevy of American sailors, thousands of miles away from home...


Drop them all down on a perpetually soggy south seas island, with the company of a few "natives", an easy-going innkeeper for whom living in the U.S. was like being in prison, who now passes the time reading Nietsche and drinking wine... and you have the basic ingredients for an obscure, unusual film called Rain, released in 1932 and starring a very young Joan Crawford as the lusty young woman on the run from whatever it was that happened in San Francisco (by way of Honolulu, incidentally). Walter Huston plays the role of the fire-and-brimstone preacher who tries to "save" her, ultimately proving his complete hypocrisy in sordid fashion in an amazing turn of events at the end, and the excellent Guy Kibbee plays the innkeeper/general store manager who keeps everybody fed.


The island is identified in the film as being Pago Pago, and a more atmospheric portrait of an exotic, rain-drenched locale you'll likely never find. From the opening scene, when a group of sailors march through the driving rain in ankle-deep mud, singing in unison of how they were promised by a wily recruiter that their time in the tropics would be nothing short of a holiday, the viewer has a constant awareness of the unremitting wetness and humidity that pervades the island, and this provides the perfect backdrop for the woeful tale that unfolds - as do the native drums that beat nightly, off in the distance. Naturally, the actual location for the filming was Catalina Island, about 25 miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, California. But you'd never guess it from the film.


Rain was released just prior to the introduction of the censorious Hays Code, which attempted to clean up the supposed depravity and lurid themes that Hollywood allegedly foisted on an "unappreciative" public, ticket sales notwithstanding. Consequently, the film manages to be pretty racy and provocative, not least in the scene when we're introduced to Crawford's character on the steamer via a suggestive double-entendre: the British ship captain, speaking to an off-screen Crawford in an exasperated tone, after running out of the room the two of them had been occupying, says, "Now look here - you may take the British lion by the tail, you may twist it, you may jerk it, you may yank it, you may tie it in a big bow knot, but dash it all... you can't pull it out by the root!" Similarly, we're greeted to a refreshing dose of skepticism vis-a-vis evangelicals and their ilk, as when the innkeeper remarks, after being made aware of the arrival of the crusading preacher and his wife, "If there's one thing I hate, it's reformers... they'll break your back to save your soul." Never mind that the climax of the film turns on an event that couldn't even be hinted at in films for decades after the imposition of the draconian Hays Code. (I'll leave it for you to discover what that event is...)

The movie is based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, and it's actually a remake of the 1928 silent, "Sadie Thompson", which starred Gloria Swanson. It's thought by many to be one of Crawford's best performances ever, though it's often overlooked in summations of her career. Not only is it packed to the gills with good performances, it also benefits from some stunning b&w cinematography and Lewis Milestone's very able direction. You can find more reviews at Amazon, but visit eBay to find multiple copies of the film on DVD or VHS for just a few dollars.

Actual rental units (not condos!) slated for Milling District

Who'da thunk? Amidst the rampant condo-ification of the Minneapolis downtown area in general, and the riverfront/milling district in particular, Brighton Development has broken ground on 93 units of rental housing, right across the street from the Mill City Museum.

As profiled in the current issue of the Downtown Journal, the project will have 85 "affordable" apartments, including 17 section 8 (subsidized) one-bedroom units for lower income renters. The remaining 8 units will be market-rate. The project is called St. Anthony Mills Apartments.

Being that this is new construction in an especially hot area of town, the rents can't quite compete with your average "classic" building in the Wedge or Whittier neighborhoods, but they're still right in the range of the median rates for the city, ranging from $629 to $992. Most fall between $673 and $808. Still, it took some doing to make it work, including project funding from a slew of city, county, state and federal agencies (see the article for more details).

Brighton Development has been involved in the past with the development of the Mill City Museum, along with the Humboldt Lofts, the North Star Lofts, the Park Avenue Lofts, the Washburn Lofts, the Stone Arch Lofts, and many others in the area. (The starting prices for the Humboldt Lofts, situated right across the street from the new project, are in excess of $600,000.)

Now, since we have two Lund's grocery stores on the way for denizens of the downtown area, all we need is 600 to 1000 additional units of affordable, rent-based housing in the downtown core, and we'll be on the road to achieving the healthy balance that should be part-and-parcel of every metropolis. (Oh -- and universal healthcare, a free or low-cost college education for every graduating senior, fully-funded child care, a thriving market-socialist economy, the immediate departure - how about next Tuesday? - of the murderous Bush administration and their cronies from our nation's capitol, and a few other things...)

Perrin on Al Franken's visit to Abu Ghraib

Dennis Perrin, erstwhile writer for Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher (corrected - I had originally thought it was SNL), writes about Al Franken's visit to Abu Ghraib over the holiday season, wherein said Air America radio host posed for a photo with one of the canine enforcers there:

I really don't see a positive side to this. In fact, quite the opposite. It's a bit like posing with Bull Connor's dogs in Selma. They might be nice mutts off the clock, but when working, they're not engaged in the noblest of efforts.

Does Franken recall that when the dogs were let out in Abu Ghraib, the Red Cross estimated that 70-90% of those held and presumably tortured and/or beaten and bit were charged with no crime of any kind, and were later released?

More importantly, getting at the root of the Franken mindset, Perrin writes:

...he hosts one of the most boring and slowest-moving programs in the history of radio, and yeah, he's little more than a mouthpiece for centrist/rightwing Dems of the DLC persuasion. Also, after backing Bush's invasion of Iraq, believing or trusting that it was a robust exercise in humanitarian democratic intervention, Franken now has questions -- not serious ones, mind you, since he still believes that the US attacked Iraq for essentially good reasons. But some of the corruption and cronyism and lack of security concerns for the frontline troops has caused Franken to scratch his head and wonder What To Do Next.

Of course, what many are wondering is what Franken will likely do next vis-a-vis a potential run against Norm Coleman for his senate seat in 2008. How will Franken's defacto support for Bush's war, recent misgivings about "tactics" notwithstanding, play to Minnesotans?

Google running adsense-like ads in print version of Chicago paper

Since early December, Google has been running tiny ads in a sidebar in the Chicago Sun-Times, not unlike the ones that appear on Google-linked pages all over the internet. They're buying unused/unsold space from the paper, presumably at a hefty discount. One has to assume that most every newsprint-based paper has unsold ad space every day, so the market must be ripe for the picking. (Really - there must be tens of thousands of unclaimed column inches out there every morning.) Given the ubiquitous nature of Google right now and the bandwagonesque popularity said company enjoys, it's not too hard to imagine that this new venture might possibly qualify for "the-sky-is-the-limit" status. But I guess we'll see.

Quiet changes afoot amongst Muslim women in Europe

I thought this article highlighting what's described as a quiet revolution spreading among young European Muslim women was cause for some quiet optimism:

For many, the key is education, an option often denied their mothers and grandmothers. These daughters of the poor immigrants from mostly Muslim countries are moving into universities, studying law, medicine and anthropology. They are getting jobs in social work, in schools, offices, business and media.

(snip)

In the crowded immigrant suburbs ringing Paris, the scene of recent riots mostly led by young Muslim males, teachers say female students are the most motivated because they have the most to gain. This mirrors findings in young Muslim communities throughout Europe.

Somehow this doesn't surprise me in the least, and it dovetails nicely with recent stories that reported women outpacing men in college admissions in the U.S. This is excellent news, methinks. (And I'll refrain from patronizing comments like, "You go, girl!", even if the sentiment is there...)

Sounds inside

Sitting here late on a Sunday afternoon, I'm immersed in working and playing on the internet, and as always, music of some kind accompanies me. Being a music freak in general, and having been a club/coffeehouse/backroom/radio DJ over the years as well, I'm acutely aware of how my listening choices affect my mood and my ability to process other types of information.

Consequently, it can actually be a bit daunting to put something on, because I see the next hour of my life unfolding before me and I know the music will help to shape my state of mind. Silly, perhaps? Yeah, I always marvel at how I can listen to seemingly anything coming out of the speakers when I'm out at a coffee shop with my laptop, and still think deep thoughts and type long, overwrought sentences. But when I'm at home, the music takes on a more direct role, for some reason. It's just one of those strange things.

So, do I put on a long-time favorite like Sun Electric's Kitchen, which is guaranteed to get my neurons firing at a rapid clip as my fingers hunt and peck over the keyboard? Do I go with the pleasingly eccentric and eclectic compilation from the Swarf Finger label that I bought last year, which led to me to some really nice stuff from the likes of Spleen/Rob Ellis (like his Soundtrack to Spleen album, which is full of interesting sonic experiments and features guest vocals from longtime collaborator PJ Harvey)? Do I go with one of the first three albums from Norway's Bel Canto, releases that have stayed with me and proven their mettle for well over a decade? Or last year's Blue Eyed in the Red Room from Boom Bip, something I encountered on the Current when they first went on the air? Or my favorite Art Blakey/James Moody CD, New Sounds, with tracks that were released in 1948 but sound as fresh and exuberant as the first Clash album?

It's hard, it's really hard some days. Sometimes I fret about it, feeling like anything I put on, much as I like it, feels all wrong - or discovering that what I feel I want to hear actually eliminates any possibility that I'll be able to focus on my work. Then I often switch to radio, and am reminded for the thousandth time that I'd be lost without KSJN, and hosts/DJs like Valerie Kahler, Jeff Esworthy and Bill Morelock, people who've made life considerably more compelling at 9PM or 3:30AM or whenever else over the years. (As for the Current, that's a whole 'nother topic, but props to Mark Wheat, Kevin Beacham, and the Rhythm Lab for keeping things fresh in the Twin Cities... more on that station to come in a future post, no doubt.)

But now the stereo's gone silent, and the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard is accompanied by the hum of the refrigerator and the cars sloshing through the wet, snowy streets outside.

Gut of the quantifier

Tonight I was reading Andrea's comments at Minneapolitan Music about putting up with with drunks at shows - or, as she puts it, the "prototypical drunk guy who is at every concert", and it brought to mind an experience I had watching Robyn Hitchcock play in the 7th Street Entry long ago. There were two guys directly behind my friend and I - and by that, I mean directly behind us, because the room was jam-packed. These guys may or may not have been drunk, but they were on a loud, never-ending talking jag, going back and forth with one another about everything under the sun as those of us around them tried to tune them out and focus on the show. Granted, the music was loud enough, being that it was the Entry and all, and we were within sneezing distance of the action on the stage. But the two jabbering, self-important guys seemed to increase their volume and intensity with time, and it became close to unbearable. Finally, something in me just snapped, and I did something that I still wonder about to this day. I'm not an overly aggressive type, and I'm anything but intimidating in the flesh (meaning if someone had a notion to challenge me, I doubt I'd seem like much of a threat), but before I knew it, my left elbow shot out behind me and rammed into this guy's gut - or maybe it would have been his ribcage, since I remember being a little taller - and time as we know it came to a complete standstill. My arm slowly retreated as I realised what I'd just done, and there was nothing but dead silence behind me. I mean, the show was still going on, but I actually have a recollection of being bathed in complete silence for the first few seconds after I hit him. Either he was absolutely stunned at my action, standing there slack-jawed and unable to speak, or he was sprawled out dead on the scummy 7th Street Entry carpeting, or he was winding up to knock me silly. I never found out, though, because I was completely unable to turn around and look. Suffice it to say my friend and I didn't hear another peep from either of the two guys behind us for the rest of the show, and consequently - when I got over my amazement at what had transpired, and my anxiety over what might be yet to come - we managed to enjoy the rest of the show, being, as we were, big Robyn Hitchcock fans at the time. It helped that we'd been comped in the door as well, which was the general state of affairs for me at that point in time. And I bear that guy no malice anymore - I just hope he doesn't show up on my doorstep to knock me senseless someday.

Now, I was either going to comment about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's harebrained scheme to reign in "illegal" immigration in the state, or I was going to post my thoughts about Susie Bright's obit for Andrea Dworkin, which I just happened upon again. Instead, I think I'll just go to bed.

However, on the subject of sex...

I wanted to mention this Swedish band. I think it's a safe bet that absolutely none of your friends have heard them yet. They're called Strip Squad, and as befitting their name, they really like singing about sex. Shaved or no, it's hard to resist a tune called Hairless Youth of Bosnia, not least when the male singer cavalierly tells the world that "Baby's just so shy, it's almost hairless... I promise myself, I won't be careless" and his female cohort matter-of-factly follows it up with, "You won't be talking back, with my legs around your neck (it's nothing personal)...". In Pervert/Expert we confirm that it takes one to know one, and that it can be a recipe for a healthy romance. There's If You Don't Take Me Right Away You Might As Well Fuck Off, which has for its setting the poolhall and a disco, and is pretty much self-explanatory. In Unreliable Narrator, we learn of a shifty character who borrows money from everyone to pay the rent and goes out dancing every Friday at the indie club, and more importantly, that "when he masturbates, he thinks of the arch of your eyebrows, your almond-shaped eyes, and how you look when you say goodbye." And there's Down and Out and Away, which is actually an endearingly plaintive, girl-goes-away, boy-pines-and-wonders-if-he'll-be-missed song that has a great, unexpected "group sing" at the end, complete with raucous, syncopated handclaps. Strangely enough, there are times when it would be easy for someone to confuse Strip Squad with an early, low-fi version of Belle and Sebastian, but then the unapologetic focus on salacious themes rises to the fore, and there's no mistaking them. Granted, it's not all they sing about in their so-far fairly limited oeuvre, but it's something to be reckoned with. Maybe you can be the first one on your block to play them for the neighbors on a lazy Sunday morning.

Formalities

Where to begin? For starters, I owe it all to Girl Friday for inadvertantly having given me a kick in the pants, just by virtue of the fact that I've been reading her blog now and then (among many others, natch) and something she did or said pushed me over the edge this week - something made it inevitable that I would sign on to blogger and take the plunge myself. What was it? I'm sure I'll remember eventually, and then I'll be certain to blog about it. Now go look up alphenic in the dictionary, why don't you...

It's time for bed.

Initial

All that we see or seem (yadda yadda...)