A Progressive Scholars' and Activists' Conference on Anti-Semitism and The Left.

I don't know much about the people putting on this conference, but it addresses a very critical issue on the left.

Check out their website

August 21 - 23, 2004
Oakland Marriott Downtown
Oakland, California
Presented by Catalyst to Coalition

This conference is a gathering of Progressives and activists to share and develop our ideas, theories, and personal reactions to anti-Semitism within ourselves and our own communities, in an atmosphere of self-reflection, mutual respect and deep concern.

From their purpose page

The purpose of this conference is to:

Bring together diverse activists from many parts of the Left who are concerned about anti-Semitism.

Develop effective and responsible strategies for challenging anti-Semitism within our organizations and our political theories

Learn from one another about the history of anti-Semitism, about traditional stereotypes against Jews, and how we see those bigotries living within our psyches and in our current activist beliefs.

Validate that non-Jewish allies’ concern about anti-Semitism is an essential Progressive issue.

Develop the concept of coalition politics to include Jews among other oppressed peoples, counteracting the divide and conquer strategy that benefits larger forces of control.

Examine our ideas about oppressed groups who are
in conflict with one another, in order to show concern
for the oppression of both.

Strengthen the Left by learning to work with
organizations primarily concerned with anti-Semitism.

This conference will not attempt to resolve any
international disputes and will not produce any
resolutions or statements about any international
disputes.

A sobering look at the Iraq invasion--skill or luck?

Was the American victory in deposing Saddam Hussein the result of superior technology, brilliant war planning, and strategic superiority or more the result of luck and improvisation on the ground? A recent report from the US Army points in the later direction.

David Zucchino reported in the LA Times (registration required)

American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy.

These revelations come not from embedded reporters or congressional committees but from the Army itself. In the first internal assessment of the war in Iraq, an exhaustive Army study has concluded that American forces prevailed despite supply and logistical failures, poor intelligence, communication breakdowns and futile attempts at psychological warfare.

The study, titled "On Point" and aimed at "lessons learned," is at odds with the public perception of a technologically superior invasion force that easily drove Hussein from power. In fact, as the authors point out in their battle-by-battle narrative, there were many precarious moments when U.S. units were critically short of fuel and ammunition, with little understanding of the forces arrayed against them.

The study credits a relatively junior commander — Col. David Perkins of the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division — with shortening the war with a bold armored strike into the heart of Baghdad on April 7. Perkins' "thunder run" surprised Baghdad's defenders with its speed and firepower, collapsing the regime from within before Iraqi forces could draw the Americans into a protracted urban war.

Army Stage Managaed Saddam Statue Toppling

David Zucchino writes in the Los Angeles Times
(registration required)

The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.

As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.

The Day I Stopped Being a Rock Fan

I can date the moment when I ceased to be a rock music fan with exact precision, at least in my personal narrative if not on the calendar. I still listened to rock music at parties, on the radio, and even bought rock LPs and in later years CDs. But there came a moment when I no longer defined myself in a certain way or paid close and careful attention to the music that had once been so important to me.

On the same day I bought The Beatles White Album and Fathers and Sons a Chess LP that joined blues veterans Muddy Watters Otis Spann,and Sam Lay with a newer generation Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, stax bassist Dick "Duck" Dunn, and Buddy Miles. The were both double LPs. I stacked them on the spindle, alternating Beatles and blues. By the time, I had played all eight sides, I had left rock and roll behind.

There's a moment when Paul Butterfield comes in with a wild harmonica woop. For me that was it. The real authentic stuff. The White Album seemed a pale imitation. I may have played it a few more times, but shortly loaned it to a classmate. He never returned it and I never asked..

That was also the year of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew.

After that it was blues and jazz for me.

Normpoll: Ten Favorite Rock Artists

Norm Geras has another of his intriguing polls. This time he is asking for our all-time favourite rock stars. Norm leaves it to us to define the borders of the genre. Which is no little problem. Recently, Peter Guralnik was interviewed by NPR on the 50th anniversary of Elvis' first SUN single, "That's Allright, Mama." Guralnik, author of what is said to be the definitive Elvis bio and the superb Sweet Soul Music said that rock did not define a musical genre, but a marketing category.

That segmentation has been largely racial. There have been a few periods when the racial barriers have receeded--the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prince and Lenny Kravitz broke through in a latter period. But a cultural curmudgeon still might define rock as "black-influenced music made by white musicians for white consumers."

Here's my list

Rolling Stones
Cream
Allman Brothers
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Aretha Franklin
Bob Dylan
Bruce Springsteen
Electric Flag
Van Morrison
Otis Redding

Honorable mentions: Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix,The Band, Booker T and the MGs. Ray Charles, Santana, The Who,Was Not Was, Buffalo Springfield, Steely Dan, Sly and the Family Stone, Joni Mitchell, Shelby Lynn, Sheryl Crow, Ike and Tina Turner, The Beatles, Living Colour, Los Lobos, The Doors, Grateful Dead, Phish, Elvis Presley, Blood Sweat and Tears (Al Kooper, Stevie Wonder, James Brown

Ralph's Unholy Alliances: Oregon

TAPPED (American Prospect's blog) also has the low-down on Nader in Oregon

Two conservative groups, Citizens for a Sound Economy and Oregon Family Council, were phone-banking their supporters to get them to a Nader nominating convention -- with scripts reading “Ralph Nader is undoubtedly going to pull some very crucial votes from John Kerry, and that could mean the difference in a razor-thin Presidential election” -- Nader appeared on Lars Larson’s right-wing Oregonian radio show to plead for help in making it onto the ballot. Nader ultimately secured 1,150 signatures -- slightly more than the 1,000 signatures he needed to get on the ballot but possibly not enough to guard against a likely Oregon Democratic Party challenge to the petitions (if it finds enough mistakes to disqualify 151 signatures).

My Brush with MPAA's New Head

Fomer Kansas Congressman Dan Glickman has been tabbed to replace Jack Valenti as head of the MPAA, the movie industry's association and lobbying organization.

I met Dan in Congressman Bill Roy's almost successful challenge to Senator Bob Dole. Dan was chair of the Wichita school board and I was a student at Wichita State University. Dan was elected to the House two years later. By that time I had moved to New York City. During the Reagan years, I was working in DC for SANE/FREEZE. One Saturday, I went to the movies and saw Dan waiting in line. Even though it had been years since our last contact, Dan recognized me by name almost instantly.

I've had friendly, though brief, contact with Dan through the years, so I was pleased to hear of his new job. I didn't grasp at first, the political import of his selection, which struck a blow against the neo-spoils system which the GOP has been constructing in DC.

The Washington Post reported

K Street Project spokesman Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, fumed that the Glickman hiring was "a mistake. It's goofy. It's a studied insult." The Motion Picture Association's "ability to work with the House and Senate is greatly reduced because they've decided to hire a guy whose claim to fame is that he is a retired Clinton hire," Norquist said.

The K Street Project, which was conceived by Republican leaders in Congress and GOP activists elsewhere, identifies loyal Republican lobbyists and campaign contributors and then encourages lawmakers to welcome them into their offices to the exclusion of others.

Daily Howler's Howler Underestimates Americans

The Daily Howler, unmatched in critiquing the media’s right-wing bias, committed a howler of his own

what do American voters think? American voters are clueless, as always. More than half the American people still think Saddam was behind 9/11. The public is completely misinformed on this point—and the deceptions continue apace.

But as Oliver Kamm notes this cliche is based on a surface reading of the polls

Since le Carre wrote, the legend has persisted. One much-trumpeted poll reported in the Washington Post last September concluded that 69 per cent of Americans "thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon" - yet it's clear that this finding depends on the way the question is asked. Since February 2003 the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland has regularly tested public opinion on the relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda, asking respondents to select one of four options ranging from "no connection at all" to "Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks". The latter option has been supported consistently by around 20 per cent - and never more than 25 per cent - of respondents. The belief is flat wrong - but it is (a) substantially lower than the figure cited by the Financial Times and (b) not the same belief as that cited by the FT, either ("was directly involved" is a weaker claim than "was behind"). The bulk of respondents opted for either "a few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials" (a view held consistently by around 30 per cent) or (emphasis added) "Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda but was not involved in the September 11th attacks" (around 35 per cent).

Those two middle options strike me as entirely plausible and indeed likely claims. Rather than revealing a nefarious propaganda campaign by the White House, they testify to the good sense and scepticism of American public opinion. I wish the same characteristics were as much in evidence in the pages of the world's premier financial daily.

Bacon on unions in Iraq

David Bacon has a good piece on "Solidarity in Wartime" The Nation, which is marred by a couple of sloppy historical references and a questionable political demand.

The good stuff: Bacon rightly lauds the solidarity campaign of US Labor Against the War to support Iraqi trade unions. USLAW is raising funds to support the fledging trade unions and splitting the proceeds 50-50 between the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and the the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions. I had the pleasure of hearing Amjad Al-Jawhar of the later group speak at a March conference in Kansas City organized by KCLAW and a rally organized by many groups. (I made a presentation about labor rights in China at the conference.)

The Iraqi unions are demanding a new labour law in Iraq, codifying the precarious de facto rights to organise and take action they have won over the last year, remains unmet. Saddam Hussein’s 1987 labour law remains on the statute books, unenforceable for now but a threat for the future.

Unfortunately, Bacon attacks the AFL-CIO for accepting funds from the National Endowment for Democracy because The NED has a long, unsavory cold war history, abetting coups in Chile and Brazil..." The US-aided military coup in Brazil took place in 1964, the coup that toppled Salvador Allende ocurred in 1973. The National Endowment for Democracy, however, was not founded until 1983.

This anachronism is a key point in Bacon's misguided political demand. Bacon argues

Just as Iraqi unionists seek US labor support, the Administration wants American unions to assist in imposing this neoliberal model on Iraq. In an Orwellian moment, Bush announced in his State of the Union address that the occupation would lead to "free labor unions" in the Middle East. Soon after, the National Endowment for Democracy announced that it intends to supply funds for programs in Iraq to build such unions. The NED has a long, unsavory cold war history, abetting coups in Chile and Brazil, war in Central America and attacks on militant unions around the world. Funding US labor solidarity work with NED dollars would involve the AFL-CIO in helping to administer the very occupation that Iraqi workers and unions oppose. To build real labor solidarity, US unions must be willing to challenge the Bush/Bremer program, which means finding other resources to do this vital work.

The NED funds overseas programs for the Democratic and Republican parties, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO. It is modeled on a similar program in Germany. Now I don't see any reason why the labor movement should unilaterally disarm and refuse NED funds. Ideally, the international solidarity efforts of American labor should not rely on NED funds. There exists a potential to involve labor's grass roots in international labor solidarity.

I don't accept the premise that accepting NED funds means that US unions must necessarily accept the Bush/Bremer program.

O'Reilly Smears Alterman

Richard Lieby reported in the Washington Post

On his show the other day, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly apologized to Texas columnist Molly Ivins for calling her a socialist. Now liberal author Eric Alterman wants a retraction from O'Reilly, who recently labeled him a fellow traveler of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Alterman's Miami-based attorney, Sarah Clasby Engel, sent a demand letter to O'Reilly last week, saying, "We would like to take this opportunity to identify a lie you recently broadcast." On his show in early May, the conservative yakker called Alterman "another Fidel Castro confidant."

Threatening a defamation suit unless O'Reilly makes a retraction, Engel states: "We are certain that you will be unable to point us to any proof whatever of a personal relationship between Alterman, a proud anti-Communist liberal, and Fidel Castro." The letter notes that in mid-May, Alterman signed a public rebuke of Castro, assailing the "brute repression" of his dictatorship.

The lawyer gave O'Reilly five business days to respond. A Fox News spokesman told us the missive arrived only yesterday and "our legal department is reviewing it."

O'Reilly talked about Alterman's letter on his Tuesday program. By calling Alterman a fellow traveler of Castro, O'Reilly said he was just exercising his right to engage in satire.

The lette, which I also signed, was made public a little earlier that the Post has it. And it is was quite strong. Marc Cooper wrote about in his column on Common Dreams.

By its actions, the Cuban state declares that it is not a government of the left, despite its claims of social progress in education and health care, but just one more dictatorship, concerned with maintaining its monopoly of power above all else.

Boss Nader

Matt Gunn has this intriguing bit on Ralph Nader

Check this out from "Boss Nader," in National Journal's 6/5/04 print edition (sorry, subscription required):

Amid a dispute with the staff of one of his flagship publications in 1984 over its editorial content and a bid by staff members to form a union, Nader responded with the same kind of tactics that he has elsewhere condemned: He fired the staff, changed the locks at the office, unsuccessfully tried to have one employee arrested, and hired permanent replacements. When the fired workers appealed the action to federal authorities, Nader filed a countersuit. Applying a legal tactic that employers commonly use to resist union-organizing efforts, Nader claimed that the fired workers were trying to appropriate his business. Nader spurned efforts by other progressives to mediate the fight, and he refused an offer to settle the litigation by simply signing a declaration that his workers thenceforth would have the right to organize.

"I was shocked by how Ralph acted," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, who tried to mediate the dispute. "He seemed unable to see how this conflicted with his ideals."

Re-enlistment Blues

Via needlenose , the Rocky Mountain News reports on the impact of Iraq on Army re-enlistments. One item was mentioned in radio newscasts on Tuesday evening.

• At Fort Riley, Kan., whose 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division remains deployed in Iraq, re-enlistments are off sharply. Recruiters have signed only 50 percent of its quota for first-term re-enlistees, and 57 percent for mid-career soldiers.

There has always been a question whether a volunteer army can succeeed outside of peacetime.

Reagan the Racist

Roger Wilkins via the Virtual Stoa blog

...Reagan was an incredible combination of a person who was very optimistic, upbeat, but underneath there were some really ugly parts of his politics.

He was, I said once before on this program, he capitalized on anti-black populism by going to Philadelphia, Mississippi, for example, in the beginning of his campaign in 1980. Nobody had ever heard of Philadelphia, Mississippi outside of Mississippi, except as the place where three civil rights workers had been lynched - in 1964 - he said "I believe in states' rights." Everybody knew what that meant.

He went to Stone Mountain , Georgia , where the Ku Klux Klan used to burn its crosses, and he said "Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine." He was rebuked by the Atlanta newspapers - they said we don't need that any more here.

He went to Charlotte, North Carolina one of the most successful busing for integration programs in the country and he said I'm against busing and again the Charlotte papers rebuked him.

And the impact of that plus his attacks on welfare women, welfare queens in Cadillacs, for example. And his call for cutting the government. He didn't cut the government; the military bloomed in his time. But programs for poor people diminished entirely and America became a less civilized and less decent place...

Thomas Frank in Wichita

Thomas Frank gave a talk and book signing at Watermark Books in Wichita Saturday night promoting his new book What's the Matter with Kansas?. George Scialabbas warm and perceptive review in The Nation predicted that the book "should at last make Frank a national figure." He's certainly become a Kansas figure The independent bookstore, which has survived the onslaught of two Borders and two Barners & Nobles, was packed. I din't make a head count, but there could have been 200.

Frank could be the poster child for the button I once ordered from Northern Lights--"Not as convervative as I appear."

What Frank sets out to analyze is the unlikely alliance of blue-collar populist with what Franklin Roosevelt called the economic royalists. He does a masterful job.

But what is the solution? Frank was asked after his reading. "The only way to stop backlash populism is economic populism. The labor movement," he said, "is the place where the good populism is possible."

For more of Frank's view see his article in Le Monde Diplomatique where he scores not only the right-wing but certain leftists.

Why aren’t these contradictions crippling for the right? Partly because liberals refuse to take backlash populism seriously. They simply don’t bother to answer the stereotype of themselves as a tasteful elite, seeing it as a treacherous and obvious deceit mounted by the puppetmasters of the right. A smaller coterie of liberals don’t bother with it because they believe that conservative populism is merely camouflage for racism, which they believe to be epidemic in the US...

Leftists of these tendencies aren’t really interested in the catastrophic decline of the American left as a social force, in the drying up and blowing away of leftist social movements. If anything, this decline makes sense to them: the left is people in sympathy with the downtrodden, not the downtrodden themselves. It is a charity operation.

For them, having fewer people on the left isn’t a problem that might one day affect their material well-being, cost them their healthcare or their power in the workplace. Those things aren’t on the line for this species of liberal. Quite the contrary: having fewer people on the left makes the left more alluring to them. Superficial nonconformity is what the creative white-collar class values above all else, and the lonelier you are in political righteousness the more nonconformist, the more rebellious you are. Standing up against the flag-waving masses is the goal for this variety of liberal. Being on the left is not about building common cause with others: it’s about correcting others, about pointing out their shortcomings.

Kevin Canfield has a good review in the New York Observer "Cashing In on Culture Wars, The Right Marches On"

Frank is an entertaining and witty writer. Buy his book, subscribe to his magazine The Baffler, check out his website at http://www.tcfrank.com/.

Nader Watch

The Wahington Post reports that

Ralph Nader has run his campaign for president out of the same downtown Washington offices that through April housed a public charity he created -- an overlap that campaign finance specialists said could run afoul of federal laws.

Did Republicans Drive Ralph's Arizona Petition Drive?

The Arizona Democratic Party plans to challenge the signatures to place Ralph Nader on the states ballot American Prospect's election blog quotes a state Democratic worker "based on what we believe were Republican contributions to the signature gathering which could amount to an illegal campaign contribution if not reported. We are suspicious of how many of these were gathered by paid signature gatherers."

The majority of the signatures, according to published reports, were stamped "PAID CIRCULATOR," and local Democrats charge that Arizona Republicans are behind Nader's signature effort. State Democratic Chairman Pederson told the Arizona Republic that his party has found "mounting evidence" that Republican consultant and former Arizona Republican Party executive director Nathan Sproul "is the primary source of money" paying for Nader's petition gatherers. "Over the last several days, we have received information that strongly suggests a coordinated, highly funded secret effort by the Bush campaign, Christian right, and others (to put Nader on the ballot)," said a statement released by the Democrats.

Daily Kos reports that of first 2,000 signatures checked by Democratic volunteers in Phoenix 5 percent have been Democrats, 3 percent "other" or independent, and 92 percent Republican.

Nader Effect Now and Then

Swing State Projects reports

When I see a poll that does a version with and without Nader, I often feel that there's something of a Nader effect - ie, that Ralph is distinctly drawing more votes away from John Kerry than from George Bush. Ed, a frequent commenter here and proprietor of his own blog, Unfutz, has actually crunched the numbers and turned a suspicion into cold, hard fact.

Nationally, says Ed, Nader draws 1.53% from Kerry. It doesn't sound like a lot, but in a very close election, such a margin can mean a great deal. At MyDD, Chris calculates the 2000 Nader effect (based on exit polls) at 0.65%. This means that right now, Nader is hurting Kerry almost a full point worse than he hurt Gore four years ago.

As Chris points out, Nader is likely polling far better now than he actually will on election day. Several polls have shown Nader pulling an implausible 8% in various states. What I'd love to see now is what kind of Nader effect polls in June of 2000 were showing.

The answer: Harris' June 2000 poll had Ralph Nader picking up six points and Pat Buchanan four points, while George W. Bush leads Al Gore by seven percentage points (47 to 40%), among all registered voters.

Don't Vote Ralph

The Don't Vote Ralph website created by former Nader backers, features a cool flash video demolishes Nader's pretension that his candidacy will help defeat Bush. They promise to monitor polls throughout the campaign. In 2004, if you want to defeat Bush, send this flash movie url to all your friends you might be tempted to vote for Ralph.

McCormick is Right: Ditch the confederate flag

Wichita Eagle columnist Mark McCormick writes

Citizens will gather at Veterans Memorial Park on Sunday for a pre-Flag Day celebration in honor of the Stars and Stripes.

But another flag -- the Confederate battle flag -- is still there, too, and removing it could prove a perilous fight.

I think that flag represents enemy combatants and is out of place in a plaza honoring soldiers who defended our country. It should at least be removed during this weekend's Flag Day celebration.

The Real Reagan

Tired of the endless adulation of the late President, here are some alternate views:

Nathan Newman, "In Memoriam: Reagan's Victims"

It is indeed a solemn day, when we should reflect on the murder and blood on the hands of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

From those murdered by US-aligned death squads in Central America to the massacres in Lebanon to the funding of Bin Laden and other fundamentalists in Afghanistan to the continued support for war in Angola, Reagan was a busy man fomenting murder and terrorism around the world.

Harold Meyerson, "Class Warrior" Washington Post June 9

however much Reagan helped wind down the Cold War abroad, he absolutely revived class war here at home. Slashing taxes on the rich, refusing to raise the minimum wage and declaring war on unions by firing air traffic controllers during their 1981 strike, Reagan took aim at the New Deal's proudest creation: a secure and decently paid working class. Broadly shared prosperity was out; plutocracy was dug up from the boneyard of bad ideas. The share of the nation's wealth held by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans rose by 5 percent during Reagan's presidency, while virtually everyone else's declined.

The Nation editorializes:

Reagan once malapropped, "Facts are stupid things." He meant "stubborn," and we hope that they are, and that the facts of Reagan's presidency survive the hagiography now being written. His life, as the cliché-soaked commentators note incessantly, may have been an "American life." But his presidency was no morning in America; it empowered and enabled some of the worst elements of public life in our country: greed, arrogance, neglect and hypocrisy. This Reagan legacy, unfortunately, survives its namesake, and, worse, it has been enhanced by the son of his Vice President.

Marc Cooper in LA Weekly "Reagan Without Tears"

Indeed, none of us know for sure when Reagan came down with Alzheimer’s, but we have certainly experienced the collective amnesia of the American media in these last few days.

Cooper looks at Reagan's criminal policies in Central America and his legacy to the US

What Reagan did accomplish, however, should not be underestimated. While his own actions were not necessarily consistent, he firmly established a new tone and ethos in national politics. The mask of equanimity was ripped off American politics, and the winners in our society were finally given permission to publicly gloat. All of a sudden it was socially acceptable to denounce the poor, to blame the victims, to celebrate and even promote inequality. It was hip to be mean. The golf shirt, martini and cigar replaced the lunch bucket and a cool Bud as the icons of American workaday culture. Reagan’s legacy is best embodied not by the mistaken notion of him as a Strangelovian, bomb-dropping cowboy, but rather as the obedient radio and TV pitchman for General Electric. Fifty years from now, Reagan will be remembered not for lobbing a few missiles at Qaddafi or for funding the contras, but rather for presiding over the most radical transfer of wealth, upward, in the 20th century.

Jonathon Schell says that Reagan should not be credited with ending the cold war. Michael Tomasky in The American Prospect reminds us that Eastern Europeans had something to do with overthrowing Stalinism. He cites historian John Patrick Diggins

"the Eastern European forces of freedom that courageously took to the streets to overthrow communism... represented the three great antagonists of conservatism: the youth culture, the intellectuals of the '60s generation, and the laboring classes that still favored Solidarity over individualism."

Max Sawicky

"Reaganomics" cannot be associated with superior economic performance. The wonders of Reagan's tax cuts are mythic, not real. In no indicator below does the business cycle associated with Reagan and Bush (1980-90) compare favorably to others since 1960....Growth in GDP and productivity were clearly worse in the 80s than before or after. Unemployment was no better than the 70s, worse otherwise

Was Ray Charles white?

Very little of the genius of Ray Charles came through on the radio reports of his death. NPR was only slightly better than CBS. The songs they played were parts of "America" "Georgia on My Mind," and "I Can't Stop Loving You." Now these are all great performances. Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music is one of my personal favorites. But picking these to represent his music misses the mark. These are the Charles' songs most likely to be known to white Americans, but far from being his most important artistic or historical accomplishments. It is the same musical and historical sin as associating Louis Armstrong with "Hello Dolly" or "What a Wonderful World" rather than the epochal cadenza from "West End Blues."

All Music begins its Charles bio with these lines "Ray Charles was the musician most responsible for developing soul music. Singers like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson also did a great deal to pioneer the form, but Charles did even more to devise a new form of black pop by merging '50s R&B with gospel-powered vocals, adding plenty of flavor from contemporary jazz, blues, and (in the '60s) country."

Surely, "What'd I Say" "Drown in My Own Tears," "Hit the Road Jack" or "Unchain My Heart" would have been better selections.

NPR's All Things Considered did play a snippet of "This Little Girl of Mine," but they didn't mention that it was an adaptation of a gospel standard "This Little Light of Mine."

The booklet for the essential Charles box-set The Birth of Soul notes that in the 1950s Atlantic Records, Ray's label, was beginning to have success in crossing over black performers like LaVern Baker and Big Joe Turner to white teenagers. "At this very crucial juncture in Ray Charles' career, a very surprising thing happened. Charles refused to compromise his music with the simpler beat, more adolescent lyrics, and smoother singing that white rock and roll fans seemed to favor. He continued to write, arrange, play and sing from his soul, and his records continued to sell almost exclusively in the black community."

"No Sweat Sneaker"

NPR's All Things Considered on Tuesday June 8 featured a report on the "No Sweat Sneaker" from No Seat Apparel. The shoes are meant to help improve living conditions for factory workers around the globe. What NSA insists on is that workers be represented by an independent union.

If you want to listen to the segment, go to the archives for Tuesday and scroll down and down.

Wichita Peace Center's June 5 march

The Peace and Social Center has been recognized as a positive voice in the Wichita community for many years. Now people of conscience should oppose the demonstration it is cosponsoring on June 5 with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Pax Christi, the Muslim Political Affairs Council and others. Stay home, go to a movie. You’ll be doing more to promote peace.

Together these groups are hijacking the opposition of Bush’s Iraq war to advance a radical anti-Israel agenda.

At a moment when there is growing disenchantment with the war in Iraq, the antiwar movement needs as broad a platform and as broad an appeal as possible. But a small group has chosen instead to put the interests of sectarianism ahead of the interests of all those who oppose this foolish and unnecessary war.

The flyer for the June 5 demonstration has the slogans "End the Dual Occupations" "Stop the Genocide," "End the occupation of Palestine,’ and "When the occupation ends, peace begins."

The date for the demonstration is it itself inappropriate. It marks the anniversary of the 1967 war. Even such a tough critic of Israel’s foreign policy as Avi Shlaim recognizes that the Six Day War "was launched by Israel to safeguard its security, not to expand its territory." The Arab League at its January 1964 summit had openly declared "The establishment of Israel is the basic threat that the Arab nation in its entirety has agreed to forestall. .. the existence of Israel is a danger that threatens the Arab" and planned "collective Arab military preparation, [which] when they are completed will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel."

During the Six Day War there was much talk of destroying Israel from reactionary Arab nationalists. Cuba's Fidel Castro was so shocked by the nature of Egypt's anti-Israel propaganda at the time that he spoke out against it. In an interview that was published in the New Statesman on 22 September 1967, he told the journalist K S Karol that he believed Egyptians showed a lack of revolutionary principles. "True revolutionaries never threaten a whole country with extermination," he said. "We have spoken out clearly against Israel's policy, but we don't deny her right to exist."

Israel ended the war in occupation of the West Bank because Jordan, as part of the Arab alliance, launched military attacks on Israel and refused an offered cease fire.

"End the occupation of Palestine" is a slogan that fails to support peace between Israel and Palestinians. Hamas, Islamic Jahad, and elements of Arafat’s Fatah movement still consider any Jewish state to be "occupation." From its founding in 1964 until 1998 the National Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization took the same position and called for the expulsion of all Jews who came to Israel after 1917. The original charter is still displayed by the Palestine legation to the UN and other Palestinian bodies. A wing of the American Palestinian solidarity movement calls for Palestine "from the river to the sea," which advocates the destruction of Israel.

Thus, dual occupation cannot be used to equate the American occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

"When the occupation ends, peace begins." For every complex problem, there is a simple solution--that is completely wrong. As Michele Goldberg wrote in Salon "one of the key dynamics shaping both Democratic and leftist demands on Iraq [is] the sense that since progressives have so little power, it doesn't much matter what they call for."

Nir Rosen writes in the June Progressive "The entente between Sunnis and Shiites is likely to be only temporary. Though they are united in their hatred of America, when the common enemy has left they may not celebrate long before turning on the Kurds in the north and then on each other in a bloody civil war over who will define the borders and nature of the new theocracy in Iraq."

Most offensive of all, is the slogan "end the genocide." There is no genocide being perpetrated by Americans in Iraq or Israelis in Palestine. To make this charge is reckless and without foundation, It insults the memories of Jews, Armenians, Cambodians, Rawandans, and Kosavars who have suffered from real, not imagined, genocides. It blocks attention from the real Something more must be said. The Peace and Social Justice Center and the Muslim American Political Action Committee levy this charge against the state which provided refuge for the remnant of European Jews who survived Hitler’s holocaust and the overwhelming majority of Sephardic Jews who fled second-class status, persecution, and pogroms in the Arab world. Today, there is a revival of the crudest and most vile anti-Semitism is the Arab media. Sadly, some in Wichita have joined this campaign to vilify and demonize Israel.

The Peace center website asks members to make puppets with the suggested theme that "Bush as a puppet of Sharon." As Searchlight, the leading anti-fascist and anti-racist magazine in Great Britain puts it, "the idea that a cabal of Jewish people controls the world through political skulduggery has been a staple of antisemites since they propagandized against the French Revolution after 1789."