Getting the word out, part 2

The May 2007 issue of Paris Transatlantic has a long review by Nate Dorward on the Braxton Iridium box:

The nine CDs in this collection document everything played during the four nights of performances, and come with a 56-page booklet containing a thoughtful overview by Braxtonologist Jonathan Piper as well as commentaries by many of the musicians (one misses the assiduous bookkeeping of a Graham Lock, though: some guidance as to the subsidiary compositions involved in these dense collages would have been helpful, and not hard to assemble, given that the backstage footage shows the musicians keeping score of composition numbers on a tally-sheet). The cherry on top is the tenth disc, a DVD with a documentary feature mingling clips from the performances and excerpts from a talk by Braxton; it also includes a video of the entire performance of Composition 358. The sum total is, needless to say, a luxury item that will set off waves of covetousness in the heart of any Braxton follower – and perhaps a certain amount of hesitancy as well, since, aside from the price tag, the prospect of listening to and absorbing ten hours' worth of this endlessly demanding music is daunting in the extreme.
***
It's obviously too early to offer anything approaching a definitive judgment on this set. Committed Braxtonites will already have purchased it and been duly delighted. Those less committed but sympathetic – in which camp I'd put myself – will find it by turns fascinating, baffling, exasperating and exciting. As often with Braxton's more ambitious projects, question-marks remain over how well the music's potential is actually realized – despite the evident enthusiasm of the 12+1tet and their immersion in his music and vision, the results are sometimes ragged and out-of-focus. But anyone seriously interested in his music should give it a listen, even if only in the form of individual downloads of a few CDs.

Getting the word out, part 1.5

Forgot to point to this review by Marc Medwin at All About Jazz:

It is the MO of this listener/writer, or, as Anthony Braxton puts it, this “friendly experiencer,” to attempt to bring the reader into individual moments of a performance. The present set does not allow such an approach, or, rather, it renders the approach superfluous. Here, we are presented with almost ten hours of music in which, Braxton explains, one measure can represent an entire composition. It is ironic, given the diversity of material and instrumentation employed over these four evenings, that the results are still so astonishingly unified.
The eight compositions in this ambitious collection close out the Ghost Trance Music (GTM) series. Anyone following developments in GTM’s 11-year history—well documented here in the essay by Jonathan Piper—will hear the continuing and recurring lifeline pulse of first-species GTM alongside the rhythmic enhancements and displacements of latter-day compositions, but the net effect is one of constant layers of submergence and rejuvenation. Each set begins with an area, designated by Braxton but very quickly broadening into other compositional territories charted by subgroups—a flute and bassoon duet, guitar and drums, or a vocalizing trio.
The musicianship is of the highest caliber and it would be unfair to single anyone out; the set deserves essays and volumes, which are doubtless forthcoming, as it marks the end of a Braxton era, the 2006 4 Compositions (Ulrichsberg) 2005 Phonomanie Viii set on Leo a harbinger of things to come.
Meanwhile, for a concise if grittily fanciful but all-encompassing description of the Iridium stand, Margaret Davis’ poem will not be bettered. In fact, the liners were especially helpful in coming to terms with musical complexities—the insider perspectives offered by ensemble members and Henry Grimes’ singularly wise portrait of Braxton the revolutionary being especially noteworthy. The DVD supplements and rehashes the notes with clarity and simplicity, providing a fitting encapsulation of a singularly important event that staunchly defies mere qualifiers and descriptors.

Begone BC

Kath & I will be walking the morning of Sunday, May 13, in support of the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization -- please consider making a donation on my fundraising page.

Getting the word out, part 1

some early feedback on the Braxton 12+1tet's 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, which is now available for purchase directly from the label:

Dan Ouellette in Billboard magazine:

Inarguably this year's most expansive and creative improvisational performance, the "9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006" nine-CD boxed set chronicles iconic alto-saxophonist Braxton on a four-night engagement with his 12+1tet at New York's Iridium. Recorded in March 2006, the collection comprises nine large-scale, world-premiere Braxton compositions (with numerical titles, Nos. 350-358) that complete his 11-year-old "Ghost Trance Music" series of works that he calls "sonic units" and "language music." [JG: well, not quite -- "language music" is a specific set of sound typologies] Braxton's music, characterized by form that elicits and invites free interplay, is a playground of shapes, tempos, layers, weaves and waves. It is journey music replete with comic harmonic excursions, off-balance meandering, quirky curiosity, elliptical eeriness and seesawing dissonance. On the one hand, the music is abstract, but on the other, deeply emotional with different hues of urgency, fear, lightheartedness and timidity.

An excerpt from an Amazon.com customer review:

4 ½ Stars.
***
Having had the set for a week, I have absorbed all nine discs and the DVD over the course of six-nights. Needless to say that after just one-time through, I have just skimmed the surface- and still I am sated, yet eager to tackle the set in its entirety again starting in a few days. One could (and should) easily spend weeks and months digesting and experiencing this music. Themes, sub-themes, small instrumental dialogues, inspired solos, interesting compositional techniques, passages of jarring juxtapositions, moments of sheer cerebral beauty- all of these are to be had in abundance with a capital A.
The DVD runs about two-hours and provides context and visuals to accentuate those which Braxton's music invariably generates. The documentary finds him discussing the origin, dynamics and execution of Ghost Trance Music at Columbia University and is interspersed with performance footage from the Iridium shows. Also presented is Composition 358 in its entirety.
***
One criticism leveled at Braxton is that he is too prolific. Those interested in exploring his music don't know where to start, while those who follow him find it hard to keep up. Certainly a ten-disc set will do little to quell this quibble, but ultimately the question is: To buy or not? For fans of Braxton's work the answer is a resounding yes. Scrimp and save if you must, but this is an indispensable document which represents the culmination of four-decades of work.
To the curious and uninitiated the answer is also yes. Approach the set with open minds and ears and you will be both rewarded and enriched for your time and listening attention. These are the works of a master at the top of his game.

Some kind words on the Braxton discussion group from Kevin Frenette (a guitarist with a new release of his own, which he was kind enough to send me):

I received my 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 box set yesterday morning (autographed too!!!) --- Listened to about 4 discs so far and the music is incredible...but I spent the evening watching Jason's DVD...WOW!!!! It is worth the price of the boxed set alone. Great footage of the group performances and we finally get to see/hear what was discussed at Columbia University. It's an incredible look deep inside the GTM and it's priceless to see Braxton himself discussing what it's all about and see the ensemble putting it into practice.
Thanks Jason --- superb work.

Listen to this interview of Braxton by John Schaefer, Soundcheck, WNYC, 20-Apr-2007. (If you've never heard Schaefer's program, check out some other archived shows for interviews with everyone from Courtney Love to Cecil Taylor.)

Pick up the May 2007 issue of JazzTimes for an excellent article by David Adler. UPDATE: this article is available here (pdf format)

And there's much more on the way: look for upcoming articles and reviews in Down Beat, Signal to Noise, Paris Transatlantic, Jazzman (France), and The Wire (UK).

Kudos to Scott at Improvised Communications for doing an absolutely terrific job getting the word out!

9+1 on 12+1 in 26

As Mr. Bynum says, the excitement is building.
The trailer is now up on YouTube.

who: Anthony Braxton 12+1tet
what: 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 [9-CD + DVD]
when: April 3, 2007
where: Firehouse 12 Records and other retail outlets
why: because music is the healing force of the triverse

Hear the people's voices here and here.

UPDATES:

Liner-note contributor Steve Smith mentions an upcoming signing in NY.

Read another set of notes contributed by Dave Douglas.

For Malachi Ritscher (1954-2006)

Kenneth Patchen
"No One Ever Works Alone"
from Panels for the Walls of Heaven (1946)

No one ever works alone.

Put the good things here. There is so much, so very much!
O trees flowers birds the face of my darling! hurry hurry the great
tongues of truth! O speak out!
Against the dead trash of their "reality."
Against "the world as we see it."
Against "what it is reasonable to believe."
Out with the rascals
And all their bloody works!

There is a beautiful sun today.
Have you change for one hundred and ninety odd dullards, sir?

Look you have a life--use it! No one ever works alone! Hate and
fear O blast them to hell for love everyway and every old how
you can! There is so much, so very very much!

Gategeese the windopeninghosts of air. My invitation--O come
if you like: I won't forget your kindness. Live gently. Now is the
I wouldn't kid you time to stand up and count them.
My conclusion is:
There is only one thing that matters and that is life.
No one ever works alone.

Life needn't be ugly. I don't protest great good God I demand!
All this ratty lying murderous swindle of theirs be damned!
There's a beautiful sun today! When are we going to throw the
bastards off our backs. Art has no place for lies.

Jesus the earth is real and it warms like a hand in the sun.
Three green white horses. Look you have a life--put your soul
into it! When you buy a suit don't just get something that will
look good on your boss. If you won't mind I'm going to say get
with it! Live your own life for a change, eh?

The leaves fall. The chances don't lessen.
Nothing of flesh should be treated shabbily.
I at any rate cannot resist trying a little one-step even on the brink.
What are you in terror of?
The baby fox goes to sleep under the thousand-ton tree.
Life needn't step to their dirty tune.
Each pays for his own piper
When you get right down to it.

Media Cleans House - Will Americans?

Taibbi:

We are in the last week before midterm elections in George Bush's second term, five years after 9/11, three and a half since the beginning of the Iraq war. By now we can say without much hesitation that the media establishment has turned not only on George Bush, but on the public attack-dogs of his right flank who dominated the national political media for so long. There's no more free lunch for the likes of O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, the latter of whom also took an unusually savage fragging in the national media last week for his attack on Michael J. Fox.
* * *
What's happening is that these talk-radio pit-vipers who for a decade or so had us all wondering, "How the fuck do these guys get away with this stuff?" are now no longer getting away with it....
* * *
What's dangerous about what's going on right now is that an electoral defeat of the Republicans next week, and perhaps a similar defeat in a presidential race two years from now, might fool some people into thinking that the responsibility for the Iraq war can be sunk forever with George Bush and the Republican politicians who went down with his ship. But in fact the real responsibility for the Iraq war lay not with Bush but with the Lettermans, the Wolf Blitzers, the CNNs, The New York Timeses of the world -- the malleable middle of the American political establishment who three years ago made a conscious moral choice to support a military action that even a three-year-old could have seen made no fucking sense at all.

It doesn't take much courage to book the Dixie Chicks when George Bush is sitting at thirty-nine percent in the polls and carrying 3,000 American bodies on his back every time he goes outside. It doesn't take much courage for MSNBC's Countdown to do a segment ripping the "Swift-Boating of Al Gore" in May 2006, or much gumption from Newsweek's Eleanor Clift to say that many people in the media "regret" the way Gore was attacked and ridiculed in 2000. We needed those people to act in the moment, not years later, when it's politically expedient. We needed TV news to reject "swift-boating" during the actual Swift Boat controversy, not two years later; we needed ABC and NBC to stand up to Clear Channel when that whole idiotic Dixie Chicks thing was happening, not years later; we needed the networks and the major dailies to actually cover the half-million-strong protests in Washington and New York before the war, instead of burying them in inside pages or describing the numbers as "thousands" or "at least 30,000," as many news outlets did at the time; and we needed David Letterman to have his war epiphany back when taking on Bill O'Reilly might actually have cost him real market share.
* * *
This assault on the Republicans that's taking place in the national media right now is partially a reflection of national attitudes, but mostly a matter of internal housecleaning. The members of the Bush administration have proven to be incompetent managers of the American system, and so they are being removed. It's that simple. They screwed up a war that all of these people wanted, turned public opinion against the dumbed-down militarist politics that until recently was good business for everybody. And so they have to go. Mistake any of this for ideology or principle at your peril.

Now it's the people's turn to clean House -- though we may never really know what the people want.

Do You Know Where Your Country Is?

Poetry as I need it

Thanks to Peter K for pointing me to the Nietzsche Family Circus - keep refreshing for some indeterminate fun.

Some favorites so far:
here - here - here - here - here

Cats Be Jammin'

Call it pussyfootin'.

Misha's Pief did it 40 years ago.

And of course there was...

for Leandro Barbieri

Flowers and Sweets

It's much, much worse than we thought:

An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university. *** While critics point to the discrepancy between this and other independent surveys (such as Iraq Body Count's figure of 44-49,000 civilian deaths, based on media reports), the Bloomberg School team says its method may actually underestimate the true figure.

read the report (pdf)
more; more

Who's the terrorist?

Bush & Foley

"Foley, let's compromise. If they're smaller than this, I'll call the police."

Tower Records, R.I.P.

A fond farewell to an institution that helped me and millions(?) others discover a lot of great music you'll never find in Wal-Mart or Best Buy - and where, flipping through the bins, I occasionally found something I wasn't specifically looking for.

Brazilian Bad-Ass

I haven't listened to the album yet, but damn!

Reminds me of...

At long last

An odd aside

From a NYT article on the new Bob Woodward book:

The book, bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release, is the third that Mr. Woodward has written chronicling the inner debates in the White House....

Seems someone's pissed they didn't get a freebie.

Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?

The ol' Lysistrata strategy:

Colombian gangsters face sex ban
Wives and girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia's most violent cities have called a sex ban in a bid to get their men to give up the gun.
more

Žižek's Impossible Realism

Slavoj Žižek on Israel's wars on its neighbors:

Let's try a mental experiment and imagine that, instead of Lebanese women and children, the human shields used by Hezbollah were Israeli women and children. Would the IDF still consider the price affordable and continue the bombing? If the answer is "no," then the IDF is effectively practicing racism, determining that Jewish life has more value than Arab life.
***
The problem courted by Israel in its continuous display of power is that this display will be soon perceived as a sign of its opposite, of impotence. This paradox of power is known to anyone who has had to play the role of paternal authority: In order to retain its force, power has to remain virtual, a threat of power.
***
It is those who evoke the Holocaust who effectively manipulate it, making it an instrument for today's political uses. The very need to evoke the Holocaust in defense of Israel's actions implies that its crimes are so horrible that only the absolute trump-card of the Holocaust can redeem them.

Art is a Cat

Jerry Saltz takes on the neo-Cartesians:

In the days just after September 11, painter Gaylen Gerber reported the "small victories" he felt going to the Art Institute of Chicago and simply "looking at shiny plastic furniture from the '60s and '70s that in some way, maybe because of its superficial and ultra-clean look, made me feel a little better."

Gerber was experiencing the ways in which art tells you things you don't know you need to know until you know them. He was in touch with how art can be "a vacation from the self," in critic Peter Schjeldahl's words, or a journey to it; how it's a system for mapping, reflecting, prospecting, and creating consciousness. Art is a region where protocols are invented or suspended and things one doesn't understand change one's life. That's why those shiny chairs cut through the gloom, a ceramic pot can vie for greatness with the Sistine Ceiling, and the Vietnam Memorial channels a nation's remorse even though it is based on the one thing that most Americans purport to loathe: abstraction.

Art is often political when it doesn't seem political and not political when that's all it seems to be. Neither Andy Warhol nor Donald Judd made overtly political art. Yet both changed the way the world looks and the way we look at the world. That's because art creates new thought structures. Imagine all the thought structures that either would have never existed or gone undiscovered had all of Shakespeare been lost. Art does far more than only meet the eye. It is part of the biota of the world. It exists within a holistic system.

Crazy from the Coffin

Building on a piece from the soundtrack to the film Preparati la bara! (Ferdinando Baldi, 1968) [aka Django, Prepare a Coffin!], Gnarls Barkley has the hit of Summer '06... though it also has similarities to an old tune by Harvey Scales.

Hear for yourself in these mp3s:

• Gianfranco Reverbi, "Nel cimitero di tucson" (Preparati la bara!, 1968)
• Harvey Scales & the 7 Sounds, "Love-itis" (from the Shakin' Fit! compilation)

To the Gallows

New Taibbi:

The Democratic Party has been operating for two decades without the active participation of its voters. ***

It's been an essentially oligarchic system of government, where all the important decision-makers have been institutions, with any attempts by ordinary people to circumvent the system coldly repressed. Remember 2000, when Ralph Nader was not only not allowed to debate with Al Gore and George Bush, but wasn't allowed in the building -- not even allowed in a second, adjoining hall in the building, not even when he had a ticket? Well, we have a replay of that proud moment in our history going on now, with Hillary's Senate primary opponent [Jonathan] Tasini being shut out of debates by New York's NY1 TV channel (owned by TimeWarner) which is insisting that qualified candidates not only reach 5 percent support in the polls (Tasini is at 13 percent and rising) but raise or spend $500,000. Said NY1 Vice President Steve Paulus: "All Tasini would need is for each [New York state registered voter] to send him a dollar. Right now, with the money he's raised, he does not represent the party he claims to represent."

So a war chest is now the standard for representation? In order to get on television, you need a dollar from every voter? (Are we electing a Senator or holding a Girl Scout raffle? What the fuck?) And this is decided by . . . an executive for a corporate television station? One that recently sent a reporter [Adam Balkin] to Japan to do features on high-tech toilets? In other words, NY1 will pay to put an exotic Japanese toilet on a few million or so New York television screens -- but insists on seeing a half-million dollar deposit before it will put a Democratic candidate with 13 percent support in a televised debate? Am I missing something?

more here on Jonathan Tasini

more here and here on the Clinton-Tasini non-debate

Taibbi's "Low Post"

After what seems like an eternity, Matt Taibbi has returned with a weekly web-only column, with pieces on Lamont-Lieberman, David Brooks, the DLC & Yuppie Paranoia, and Hillary Clinton:

Beltway pros like Hillary have long understood that in tough times, the vast majority of disgruntled Americans would rather find a way to convince themselves that their party agrees with them than face the fact that they never had any choice at all on a wide range of crucial issues. They're willing to be swayed by a carefully scripted display of canned anger like Hillary's outburst in the Senate [against Donald Rumsfeld] because the alternatives -- third-party politics, grass-roots activism, dropping out of society altogether -- are too exhausting and radical to even imagine. Because getting to the root causes of things is so hard and scary, they'll settle for punishing an unpopular politician, even if it means electing his accomplice.

So they'll vote, even for a factory-produced fraud like Hillary Clinton, because voting is easy. Much easier than doing something.

That Liberal Media II

Remember the NSA wiretapping story published by the New York Times in December 2005? The NYT actually had the story before the 2004 election:

It has now been confirmed by the New York Times Executive Editor, Bill Keller himself, that they had the story for weeks before the 2004 election and even had a draft for possible publication a week before election day.

Read the NYT Public Editor's piece here.

That Liberal Media

Sickening:

"Is Ned Lamont the Al Qaeda candidate?"

This was the question that CNN's Nice Haircut Chuck Roberts posed this afternoon to Hotline's John Mercurio.

Watch it here.

UPDATE: Mr. Nice Hair apologizes.

Feeding the Pain

Israel continues its war crimes in Lebanon, while the U.S. gives its approval and support.
Bush justifies Israel's acts as "part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East."
Let's give Bush the benefit of the doubt and say he's referring to Hezbollah rather than all the Lebanese people as the "force of terror." What exactly has Hezbollah [or Hizbullah] actually done to Israel to invite this full-scale attack on Lebanon?

Per Stephen Zunes:

Unlike the major Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah forces haven't killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade. Indeed, a 2002 Congressional Research Service report noted, in its analysis of Hezbollah, that “no major terrorist attacks have been attributed to it since 1994.” The most recent State Department report on international terrorism also fails to note any acts of terrorism by Hezbollah since that time except for unsubstantiated claims that a Hezbollah member was a participant in a June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force dormitory at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

While Hezbollah's ongoing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel are indeed illegitimate and can certainly be considered acts of terrorism, it is important to note that such attacks were launched only after the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on civilian targets in Israel began July 12.

Juan Cole continues to provide useful insights:

The wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon does not make any sense. Why bomb roads, roads, bridges, ports, fuel depots in Sunni and Christian areas that have nothing to do with Shiite Hizbullah in the deep south? And, why was Hizbullah's rocket capability so crucial that it provoked Israel to this orgy of destruction? Most of the rockets were small katyushas with limited range and were highly inaccurate. They were an annoyance in the Occupied Golan Heights, especially the Lebanese-owned Shebaa Farms area. Hizbullah had killed 6 Israeli civilians since 2000. For this you would destroy a whole country?

So once again we see some vague linking of "terrorism" with "Muslim"/"Arab"/"Middle Eastern" peoples, resulting in the indiscriminate collective punishment of entire civilian populations and infrastructure for the alleged crimes of a few militants (who do not in fact hide among civilians). This strategy will surely diminish any anti-U.S. and anti-Israel sentiment in the region and deter people from acting on it, right?

"There's going to be another 9/11, and then we're going to hear all the usual claptrap about how it's good versus evil, and they hate us because we're good and democratic, and they hate our values and all the other material that comes out of the rear end of a bull."
-- Robert Fisk, quoted here

If only "those people" would appreciate the righteous intentions (never about oil) of those who invade their lands, support their tyrants, destroy their economies, and displace and kill them. What an unappreciative lot.

"It is no secret that in past years, Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihad terror. The reasons are understood. There are constant warnings about it by Western intelligence agencies, and by the leading specialists on these topics. One can bury one’s head in the sand and take comfort in a "wall-to-wall consensus" that what we do is "just and moral", ignoring the lessons of recent history, or simple rationality. Or one can face the facts, and approach dilemmas which are very serious by peaceful means. They are available. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even "apocalypse soon."
-- Noam Chomsky

Thankfully, as of this writing, Mazen Kerbaj is alive in Beirut, creating art and music which is truly as serious as your life.

PS - Despite being subject to the distortions of our pro-Israeli media, (actually anti-Israeli, since these crimes will boost anti-Israel sentiment and violence) a significant portion of the U.S. population sees through the lies: according to the latest poll, 44% believe Israel's response is either unjustified or justfied-but-excessive, while 43% believe it is justified and not excessive. However, in yet another example of our democracy gap, blind support of Israel's actions is endemic to the U.S. ruling class:

On July 18, the Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense." After House majority leader John Boehner removed language from the bill urging "all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure," the House version passed by a landslide, 410 to 8.

And the "progressive blogosphere" (e.g., Kos) has been conspicuously silent, sweeping the issue of U.S. complicity under the rug.
The Israel Lobby has certainly been effective in instilling the values of self-censorship in public discourse, using the reprehensible tactic of equating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. Is this the legacy of the Holocaust?

Hot Jazz

Time: 1:00am
Temperature: 85°F
Heat index: 93°F

• "Hotter Than 'Ell" (Fletcher Henderson, Tidal Wave compilation, 1934)
  
• "Too Hot For Words" (Billie Holiday, Lady Day: Complete Columbia Recordings, 1935)
• "Too Darn Hot" (Ella Fitzgerald, Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, 1956)

what we need:

• "Drifting on a Reed, aka Air Conditioning" (Charlie Parker, Complete Dial Sesssions, 1947)
• "Ice Cream Konitz" (Lee Konitz, Subconscious-Lee, 1950)
• "Let's Cool One" (Thelonious Monk, Genius of Modern Music, v.2, 1952)

Time for some reggae and a cold beverage.

Meanwhile, back on the East Coast...

While the L.A. Times finally put some focus on the massive Iraqi death toll, the N.Y. Times keeps looking at the country it helped destroy (remember Judy "boo" Miller) through rose-colored glasses:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 25 — Enrollment in Iraqi schools has risen every year since the American invasion, according to Iraqi government figures, reversing more than a decade of declines and offering evidence of increased prosperity for some Iraqis.

Despite the violence that has plagued Iraq since the American occupation began three years ago, its schools have been quietly filling. The number of children enrolled in schools nationwide rose by 7.4 percent from 2002 to 2005, and in middle schools and high schools by 27 percent in that time, according to figures from the Ministry of Education.

The increase, which has greatly outpaced modest population growth during the same period, is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy landscape of bombs and killings that have shattered community life in many areas in western and central Iraq. And it is seen as an important indicator here in a country that used to pride itself on its education system, then saw enrollment and literacy fall during the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule.

The rest of the article is packed with statistics and personal anecdotes about kids going back to school. Isn't that sweet? Hey, maybe that's the solution to truancy in our own public schools: Bomb the inner cities! Let's see... on a per-capita basis, about 20,000 Chicagoans will have to be sacrificed on behalf of this "Reading is Fundamental - Seriously" campaign.

The report uses a framework which absolves the U.S. of responsibility for the sanctions which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children (which was just fine by Clinton's Secretary of State):

In many ways, the increase is a measure of how far Iraq had fallen. Iraq was one of the most educated countries in the Middle East in the 1970's. *** But enrollment began to fall significantly in the 1980's, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and only worsened during the period of international economic penalties that were imposed after Mr. Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. ***
Much of the decline in the education system that happened in the last years of Mr. Hussein's government came as a result of an economic downturn during the era of international penalties on Iraq. As the country grew poorer in the 1990's, the numbers of working children went up.
[emphasis added]

The penalties were "international," and the country just "grew poorer." Apparently the U.S. didn't have any policies towards Iraq until the 2003 invasion, when things got better:

Teachers and administrators interviewed in four Iraqi cities said their classrooms were more full than they had ever been — a continuation of a pattern they began to see just months after the American invasion in 2003, when class sizes began swelling again. [emphasis added]

Again and again, bad things just "happen" or are attributed to "international" forces, while readers are reminded about the evilness of the former Iraqi leader:

The increase has pointed out many of the infrastructure problems that plague the country. Hussein al-Rifaii, a former high school teacher and political prisoner under Mr. Hussein who is now the general director of schools in eastern Baghdad, said the country needed approximately 5,000 new schools, an increase of almost 50 percent.

Infrastructure problems "plague the country" - you know, like a natural case of locusts. And it has to be noted that al-Rifaii was a political prisoner, lest we forget the "liberating" effect of the invasion.

So the kids who have survived the U.S. assault on Iraq are going back to school - while job opportunities are being created daily:

The official who helped prepare the statistics for this article was assassinated this month.

(NOTE: The LA Times and NY Times do not have common ownership.)

It's about time

Kudos to the Los Angeles Times for putting Iraqi casualties front and center:

BAGHDAD — At least 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to statistics from the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies — a toll 20,000 higher than previously acknowledged by the Bush administration.
Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since.
The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting: Proportionately, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years.

Not a perfect article -- it should have mentioned the Lancet study (pdf) and Les Robert's estimate of 100,000-300,000 deaths -- but it's a good start.

Send a letter to their editor, as I did:

Thank you for the article by Louise Roug and Doug Smith on the Iraqi death toll. For over three years the media has been virtually silent about the primary victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. These casualties cannot be diminished as "collateral damage," since there are no valid targets in an illegal war. I hope you will follow up with stories about these victims and how their communities have been impacted, in the same way such stories are told regarding much smaller-scale tragedies involving U.S. citizens (e.g., Sept. 11, 2001).

UPDATE: The LA Times published my letter.

Two Funny

The Daily Show on "dickishness" & the Colbert Report on snake marriage

I knew UofC students were special, but...

it's cruel to make them ride the short bus.

Over 100,000 dead Iraqis can't be wronged

Norman Solomon takes on the "liberal" media:

"The story really takes us back into the 8th century, a truly barbaric world," John Burns said. He was speaking Tuesday night on the PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," describing what happened to two U.S. soldiers whose bodies had just been found. Evidently they were victims of atrocities, and no one should doubt in the slightest that the words of horror used by Burns to describe the "barbaric murders" were totally appropriate.
The problem is that Burns and his mass-media colleagues don't talk that way when the cruelties are inflicted by the U.S. military -- as if dropping bombs on civilians from thousands of feet in the air is a civilized way to terrorize and kill.

Better killing through technology!
It also avoids those high laundry bills when mass homicide is done by less "civilized" means.

We hear that of course the U.S. tries to avoid killing civilians -- as if that makes killing them okay. But the slaughter from the air and from other U.S. military actions is a certain result of the occupiers' war. (What would we say if, in our own community, the police force killed shoppers every day by spraying blocks of stores with machine-gun fire -- while explaining that the action was justifiable because no innocents were targeted and their deaths were an unfortunate necessity in the war on crime?)

As Pierre Tristam notes, the lack of feature-film-friendly images and stories covers up the extent of U.S. terrorism:

Dramatic stories of American losses or suspended tragedies spring up as out of nowhere—Jessica Lynch, the four American mercenaries killed and strung up on that Fallujah bridge, the two missing soldiers. The story plays out in the media in that Black-Hawk-Down language of inspiring honor against overwhelming odds no matter the outcome. The Iraqi background, where everything is more collectively violent, more tragic, more abject than anything the Americans are suffering collectively (remember: civilians have no armor, and civilians are bearing the brunt of the butchery), is nothing more elaborate in the storyline than those painted backdrops the old Hollywood studios used interchangeably movie after movie. Iraqis extras aren’t even in the picture, begging the indelicate cliché: when an Iraqi dies out of America ’s line of sight, has he even existed?

This is the traditional framework:

"It's only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it's not terrorism."
-- Noam Chomsky

Bacharachablog

Burt gets radical:

I've been writing love songs all my life, never rocking the boat. There were years that I paid no attention to the political process, times I never voted. *** But starting with the 2000 election, things for me began to change. I watched as Bush basically stole the election, and other terrible situations occurred; and by the time 9/11 hit, I didn't feel like writing love songs.

***

On "Who Are These People," it was very important for me to make a statement about what I was feeling at the time.

"Who are these people that keep telling us lies
and how did these people get control of our lives
and who'll stop the violence 'cause it's out of control?
make 'em stop."

And then when Elvis [Costello] came in on the middle verse he sang,

"This stupid mess we're in just keeps getting worse,
so many people dying needlessly
looks like these liars may inherit the earth
even pretending to pray and getting away with it."

Elvis sang my last two lines with the very strong intensity I felt:

"Things really have to change,
Or we're all fucked!"

Nobody has ever sung fucked like Elvis Costello.

Go Burt! Go Burt!

He's obviously not going for radio airplay with that one - especially with the new obscenity laws.

So this is what our broadcast media has come to: a Burt Bacharach song can't be heard, while we get endless doses of the psychopath known as Ann Coulter (who has yet to respond to a very generous offer from Henry Rollins).

When you can't say 'fuck,' you can't say 'fuck the government.'
-- Lenny Bruce

(thanks to A House Is Not A Homepage for the pointer)

ps - Coincidentally, I've been spinning those classic Bacharach/Warwick collaborations lately - amazing stuff.

Reflections on Experience

I really dug this Nation piece by Jackson Lears, ostensibly a review of Martin Jay's Songs of Experience, tracing the concept of "authentic experience" through the history of modern philosophy.

Cruel & Unusual, but Hilarious

The Stern Fan Network has one of the most diabolical and creative - and ultimately hilarious - pranks on its discussion board. I fell for it when I first came across this thread in the main discussion forum, a thread originating in the "Pranks" forum, which I had never checked out. But a couple of minutes (and several extra heartbeats) later, after reading similar threads, I finally figured it out - and realized this gag has been going for at least 3 years. Once you know how it works (via the [you] code) and go back to re-read the threads, you realize it's some Siriusly clever and funny stuff. Revenge of the web geeks?!

"Believe It or Not, I'm Walking on Air..."

Stephen Colbert once opened "The Colbert Report" with: "I swallowed 20 condoms full of Truth and I’m about to smuggle them across the border." Well, Colbert delivered the goods in Bush's lap at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner - watch all three parts.

Trapped in the Closet

Morgan Meis has a great piece on R. Kelly's extraordinary R&B opera:

[It] broke me down and rearranged me as a man. *** You can’t believe you’re watching it, and you can’t stop. You have no idea exactly what it is, even, that you’re watching or how such a thing could possibly have been created . . . and you want more.

You can watch the episodes at YouTube, but apparently you need to hear Kelly's commentary on the DVD as well.

UPDATE: the commentary is also on the Tube - and it's even better than the "Trapped" serial!

Taibbi Knows Jack's Shit

Another instant classic by Matt Taibbi.

All Together Now...

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands.
(clap clap)
If you're happy and you know it clap your hands.
(clap clap)
If you're happy and you know it then your face will surely show it.
If you're happy and you know it clap your hands (clap clap)

or maybe a little Sam & Dave:

Don't you ever feel sad,
Lean on me when times are bad.
When the day comes and you're down,
In a river of trouble and about to drown

Just hold on, I'm comin',
Hold on, I'm comin'

UPDATE: The homicidal scumbag still doesn't think anything went wrong.

Treated Like Animals? If Only

From a Katrina survivor:

"I would rather have been in jail," Janice Jones said in obvious relief at being out of the [Superdome]. "I've been in there seven days and I haven't had a bath. They treated us like animals."

Not quite, Ms. Jones:

Thousands of people are feared dead in the rubble of storm-shattered New Orleans, but at the New Orleans zoo only three of its 1,400 animals died in the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. The famous Audubon Zoo has the good fortune of being located on some of the city's highest ground, but it also had a disaster plan for the animals that worked better than the city's plan for humans.

So there we have it: in planning for a catastrophic disaster, our society chooses to save zoo animals and to kill human beings. Make no mistake, this is not a disaster but a crime.

Perhaps that zoo director would have done a better job as head of FEMA than that horse show commissioner. But in Bushland, no one can ever screw up, so it doesn't really matter who's in charge.

Reality and Its Discontents

We know about politically-motivated photo-ops, but this is unconscionable. Kos sums it up: "This is absolutely the most fucked up thing ever done by this president, in a long list of fucked up things."

Marjorie Cohn reminds us:

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

Eli at leftiblog notes that even the Wall Street Journal suggested Cuba as a model for disaster preparedness.

If only Fidel had been in charge instead of FEMA.

Castro conquered Ivan.
Bush was bitch-slapped by Katrina.
No wonder he refuses to face Cindy.

For Bob Denver - RIP, little buddy

The "us" in the U.S.

BushCo's response to Katrina speaks for itself. The question of whether the type of racism on display is deliberate or not is irrelevant. What's worse: treating certain people as inferior or as invisible? In any case, it could not be any clearer that Americans who live in poverty and have dark skin are not considered truly American.

On September 2, Bush stated that "now we're going to go try to comfort people in that part of the world." That part of the world? I didn't know that BushCo's efforts to turn the clock back to the 19th century involved reversing the Louisiana Purchase.

In April 2004, Bush, while justifying his democracy-at-the-point-of-a-gun policy, said:

There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.

As Robert Jensen notes:

It appears the president intended the phrase "people whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is "ours," he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are "a different color than white." So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if "their skin color may not be the same as ours"?

This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about skin color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it seems clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can govern themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the capacities of people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their ability to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is white. Or, more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't white?

What do we do with them?
We let them drown.

These are the Bush Family Values.

Happy National Preparedness Month

There's irony and then there's irony:

National Preparedness Month is a nationwide effort held each September to encourage Americans to take simple steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses and schools. National Preparedness Month 2005 is being co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the American Red Cross. Throughout September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the American Red Cross will work with a wide variety of organizations, including local, state and federal government agencies and the private sector, to highlight the importance of emergency preparedness and promote individual involvement through events and activities across the nation.

Look here -- and note the blonde-haired white girl, looking all safe & comfortable. Hmm... I didn't see many blonde-haired white girls in the Superdome, so... Hey, job well done, Homeland Security!
This call, however, puzzled me:

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Oh, wait, I get it: no Red Cross = more dead people = fewer living people, making the evacuation, when they finally got around to it, that much easier! Brilliant!
Yes, die Heimat is in the good hands of Michael Chertoff, who, days after Katrina hit, had no idea that thousands of people were in the New Orleans convention center -- and has the balls to blame the media [UPDATE], the local government, and the impoverished residents who could not evacuate. Un-fucking-believable. I guess he now qualifies for a promotion in this Bush administration.
BTW, if you were wondering, VP Dick Cheney has been hard at work -- making sure the cleanup and rebuilding contracts go to Halliburton. Sound familiar?
Krugman, once again, nails it:

Ideological cynicism about government easily morphs into a readiness to treat government spending as a way to reward your friends. After all, if you don't believe government can do any good, why not?
***
[The Bush administration's contempt for FEMA] reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility

Put another way, under BushCo, government is indeed a force for good, but "good" is defined in terms of the wealthy white Christian male in the mirror.
As Mike Whitney writes, the poor & black

were left to face the rising waters and the government neglect without any prospect of real assistance. When you can't buy your way out, you're left to rot; that's how the "invisible hand" of the free market operates. The message is clear: if you have nothing, you are nothing.

New slogan for the GOP: "If You're Brown, It's Trickle Down or Drown"

Good Fucking Question

Atrios on BushCo's handling of the Gulf Coast disaster:

The emergency preparedness for a medium scale biological or chemical attack, or the "dirty bomb" scenario, would be exactly identical to the kind of preparedness you'd have for a natural disaster of this type. Sure, some of the complications would be different in the various situations, but the basic needs - mass evacuation, temporary shelter, the provision of safe food and water, medical care - would be the same.

Haven't they done fucking anything in 4 years?

This is what you get when an administration is filled with incompetents.
It could not be more obvious that those in power don't really give a damn about the fate of poor black folk -- they're too busy destroying the lives of other darker-skinned people.
More here and here.

Liberal Blogosphere for Hurricane Relief



Please donate now.

The Greatest Act of Terrorism

Sixty years ago, the U.S. dropped two WMDs over Japan, killing a quarter of a million human beings (mostly civilians). Another quarter million continue to suffer the physical consequences today.
Read:

• Frank Brodhead
  
• Norm Dixon
• Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin
• Gary Kohls
• Anthony Gregory
• Richard Drayton
• James Carroll
• Mickey Z
• and the cover-up
  

Melted Idol

DRog brings the funny:

...the audience grew even larger and more enthusiastic when platinum-blonde '80s pop prince Billy Idol delivered a set of oldies such as "Dancing With Myself" and "White Wedding."

At age 50, Idol looked as if he'd stepped out of Madame Tussaud's wax museum, and the heat and his ridiculous leather pants threatened to make him melt onstage, which would have been the most entertaining part of his show.

Taking Over the Controls

Gotta have some laughs as the neo-fascists take another step forward...

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue."
--Lloyd Bridges as Steven McCrosky

iCanned

Jacques Chailley in 1961 (i.e., pre-Walkman, pre-iPod):

The fantastic success of the L.P. record, which has found its way into every home, is perhaps the most important single event in the history of twentieth-century music. Combined with the no less spectacular diffusion of radio and television, it has resulted in "canned music" having become the essential musical nourishment of our generation. ... Thanks to "canned music" we hear infinitely more music than ever before and, if we desire it, of infinitely better quality. But do we listen to it as well as we used to? The best tinned products can never take the place of a sauce carefully prepared and left to simmer slowly over the fire. Is not the loss of that human contact which the concert hall ensures an exorbitant price to pay for this extraordinary all-round enrichment?

from 40,000 Years of Music: Man in Search of Music

Mmmm... pizza...

Another fine piece of investigative journalism from Steve Colbert.

Who's Crazy?

A rare moment of sanity on Capitol Hill, courtesy of George Galloway. Democrats should take a few lessons from this George.

But turn the dial to 60 Minutes for some more insanity from the American Taliban that makes me want to throw my TV and/or myself out the window. Jesus Fucking Christ. Let's hope the ACLU puts an end to this particular form of abuse & homicide.

UPDATE: Katha Pollitt on "Virginity or Death!":

What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time. No sex ed or contraception for teens, no sex for the unwed, no condoms for gays, no abortion for anyone.... *** As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear. That's why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be less available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep women in their place.

What Fucking Balls

A magazine made what may be a serious mistake (though of course there's a heap of other documented cases of the military's systematic use of severe humiliation tactics, subsequently buried after the initial uproar over Abu Graib):

Newsweek magazine, under fire for an article that prompted violent protests by mistakenly reporting that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Quran, said Monday it was investigating the matter and would make other corrections or retractions if needed.
***
"It's puzzling. While Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refuse to retract the story," said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met. In this instance it was not.
"This was a report based on a single anonymous source that could not substantiate the allegation that was made," McClellan added. "The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged. I just find it puzzling."

Let's get this straight: It has been definitively proven that the Bush Administration intentionally lied to justify its invasion of Iraq, which led to hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, and free promotion for Al-Qaeda's recruiting department. They've never admitted a mistake, and our Kommander-and-Thief has even joked about the fact that there were no WMDs. The incompetence of their intelligence gathering and war planning has been shown to be roughly equivalent to that of the Russians in WWI. And they have the nerve to criticize the "journalistic standards" of a magazine? As if Newsweek is responsible for increasing anti-American sentiment around the world, and not Bush's militant imperialist policies.

What fucking balls.

UPDATE: kos has a similar post, without pointing out the obvious.

UPDATE: Taibbi chimes in:

It's funny. The only time anyone thinks to blast the use of "unnamed sources" is when the mistake occurs in that rarest of phenomena in mainstream journalism: the dissenting piece of investigative journalism. *** [K]issing ass is not a crime in America, while questioning the government often is. At least, you better not screw it up if you try. God help you then.

Round One: Fat Cats 1, Theocrats 0

This filibuster "compromise" is a travesty.

LiberalOasis gets it exactly right:

pressure from corporate interests (who want the judges, but also want the Senate to function so they can get more friendly legislation) is still cutting against the efforts of the Dobsonites [the radical theocrats led by James Dobson].

Fox’s Chris Wallace said yesterday, “I talked to a big business executive this week who was not happy [about the nuclear option]...he said, this is going to be bad for business if the Senate shuts down.”

Yup, Congress was on quite a roll, with class action "reform," bankruptcy "reform," repeal of the inheritance tax, tax breaks and drilling rights given to oil companies, etc. This resolution of the current filibuster struggle perfectly illustrates what today's Republicans (and most Democrats) are all about: lots of noise from the Christo-fascist fundamentalists, but ultimately the wealthy elite calls the shots. There was no way they were gonna risk a shut down of the expensive machinery that rubber-stamps their piracy.

However, this battle for control within the GOP is far from over. Once a seat opens on the Supreme Court, the theocrats will put everything they have (and then some) into getting their way, since the Supremes are the ones who ultimately rule on the issues that matter most to them (marriage, reproductive rights, church/state separation, etc). Should they succeed, there may be no going back.

These judges are by any measure (except perhaps whatever measure they use, if any, in Texas) incompetent and unethical jurists -- especially Karl Rove's hand-crafted monster Priscilla Owen, who thought nothing of taking money from Enron and Halliburton, not recusing herself from cases in which they were a party, and ruling in their favor.

Rich on the Anti-Gay Crusade

Frank Rich explains why Republicans are so intent on going "nuclear" (read it while you can):

Today's judge-bashing firebrands often say that it isn't homosexuality per se that riles them, only the potential legalization of same-sex marriage by the courts. That's a sham. These people have been attacking gay people since well before Massachusetts judges took up the issue of marriage, Vermont legalized civil unions or Gavin Newsom was in grade school. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, characterizes the religious right's anti-gay campaign as a 30-year war, dating back to the late 1970's, when the Miss America runner-up Anita Bryant championed the overturning of an anti-discrimination law protecting gay men and lesbians in Dade County, Fla., and the Rev. Jerry Falwell's newly formed Moral Majority issued a "Declaration of War" against homosexuality. A quarter-century later these views remained so unreconstructed that Mr. Falwell and the Rev. *** Their cronies are no different. As The Washington Post reported, Rick Scarborough, the Texas preacher and Tom DeLay acolyte whose "Patriot Pastor" network is a leading player in the judiciary battle, first became active in politics in 1992, when he helped oust a local high-school principal for the crime of presiding over an AIDS-awareness assembly. ***

Which judges do these people admire? Their patron saint is the former Alabama chief justice Roy S. Moore, best known for his activism in displaying the Ten Commandments; in a ruling against a lesbian mother in a custody case, Mr. Moore deemed homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature" and suggested that the state had the power to prohibit homosexual "conduct" with penalties including "confinement and even execution." Another hero is William H. Pryor Jr., the former Alabama attorney general whose nomination to the federal bench was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. A Pryor brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Texas anti-sodomy law argued that decriminalized gay sex would lead to legalized necrophilia, bestiality and child pornography. It was Justice Anthony Kennedy's eloquent dismissal of such vitriol in his 2003 majority opinion striking down the Texas statute that has since made him the right's No. 1 judicial piñata.

What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks.

Happy Birthday, Studs!

93 and counting

Virtual Studs

Nervous Proofreaders Are

How many times do you think writers and editors are going over stories that mention the title of the new Star Wars film, "Revenge of the Sith"?
Future Congressional investigations I see.

Golden Skeleton

A new act of identity correction by The Yes Men
(read this and this for a refresher on Dow & Bhopal)

Eva Cracks Wise

A few jokes for the White House stenographers.
Hey, remember this hilarious bit by hubby last year?

A murderous psychopath and his obedient poodles.

Letters, they get letters

The Sun-Times gets my 2 cents (rather than 50):

Regarding the May 2, 2005, commentary by Lisa A. Rickard, "Lawsuits choking state's economy":

Lisa Rickard is absolutely right that there is an "abusive legal climate" in Illinois. However, like others arguing for "tort reform," she fails to acknowledge that businesses are more responsible for this abuse than are "trial lawyers": According to a study by Public Citizen, corporations "file four times [in Cook County, almost six times] as many lawsuits as do individuals represented by trial attorneys, and they are penalized by judges much more often for pursuing frivolous litigation." So while there are certainly many frivolous tort claims filed by "trial lawyers," the much greater problem -- ignored by pro-corporate shills like Rickard -- is the out-of-control litigiousness of corporate lawyers.
Jason Guthartz
Lakeview

Here's that study. From the summary:

Corporations think America is too litigious only when they are on the receiving end of a lawsuit. But when they feel aggrieved, businesses are far more likely to take their beef to court than are consumers.

I should have also referred to these facts (taken from this article):

[T]he numbers don't support the corporate claims. The frequency of tort suits has been declining for a decade. According to an April 2004 Department of Justice study, the number of tort cases in state courts declined by nearly a third (32 percent) between 1992 and 2001. Only 3 percent of cases ever go to trial and the median jury trial award fell by more than half, from $64,000 in 1992 to $28,000 in 2001.

More here:

• Greg Palast
• Dan Zegart & followup
• Ted Rall
• Ralph Nader
• and Molly Ivins, who notes that the Bush Klan's push for "tort reform" is consistent with their habit of promoting "a weird fix for [a] nonexistent problem (so reminiscent of nonexistent WMDs, the "crisis" in Social Security and other non-problems)."

119 Years Later...

In the post-Reagan era of corporate piracy, the assault on workers continues; as Molly Ivins points out:

The Tax Justice Network recently reported the world's richest individuals have placed $11.5 trillion in assets in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes, a sum 10 times the GDP of Great Britain. The ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay reached 301 to one in 2003. *** In 1982, the ratio was 42 to one. ***
In previous recoveries, workers got an average of 49 percent of the national income gains, while corporate profits got 18 percent. This time, the workers are getting 23 percent and the corporations are getting 44 percent — about one half as much as the share that has gone to corporate profits.

Looking at the statistics from another perspective, if we assume a 9-5 workday, by 4:00pm on the first workday of the year, the average CEO will have earned more than the average worker will earn in the entire year. (Or: From 1982 to 2003, the time it took the average CEO to earn the average worker's annual income went from seven days to seven hours.) As the wealthy keep getting their tax breaks, the trickling tinkling down continues. more here

Even businesses which some might think would have a more enlightened approach to labor rights have sided with the forces of global destruction.

In yet another Orwellian reversal, Bush's "ownership society" has nothing to do with what that might really mean.

Today, May Day, is the time to join the movement that will correct such reversals, demanding basic fairness and responsibility along with an end to imperial aggression.