Sheehan's remarks

Cindy Sheehan is someone I view sympathetically, and not just because of her personal loss. But she's been led down a blind alley by the far-left activists who've been whispering in her ear from the beginning. This account from Green Left Weekly is regarding a speech she delivered in Australia in May of this year:

Sheehan said her son, Casey, was killed by someone in the Mahdi Army controlled by Moqtada al Sadr. But she bears no animosity towards the Iraqi resistance fighters. She told the meeting that the mother of an Iraqi fighter had written to her afterwards saying that Iraqis didn’t want to kill young Americans, but that they did want the US to get out. “They wanted my son out of their country”, she said simply, adding “I wish they didn’t have to, but the Iraqi people have the right to resist the occupation”.

How Sheehan chooses to understand the death of her son is nobody's business but her own. But is she unaware of the wanton murder and terror being sown by the Mahdi Army at this point in time? I often get the sense that some the most outspoken antiwar advocates stopped following the news from Iraq about two years ago.

One of the big lies of this war (and there have been lies in abundance) is that the Sadrists and their Sunni counterparts -- those who kidnapped and tormented Jill Carroll and murdered her translator Alan Enwiya -- had no choice in all of this. Just utter the magic word "occupation" and all is forgiven. In 2004, this view was naive. In 2006, when Iraq has descended into civil war and the militias have turned their guns on Iraqi civilians as never before, it is inexcusable. The antiwar movement needs to move beyond "occupation" consciousness and take a long, deep inhale of civil war consciousness. In this regard, the lefties are not ahead of the rest of the country.

To confront the Bush administration as Sheehan has done requires courage, yes. But she'd be all the more courageous if she challenged some of the left's glib talking points and showed some genuine understanding of the situation on the ground in Iraq. True, she has sacrificed a great deal for her cause, at serious detriment to her own health. She has endured torrents of ignorant abuse. But this does not mean that her every utterance is splendid.

Rumsfeld's remarks

Rather than do the right thing and resign as secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld has lashed out at critics of the Iraq war and the war on terror generally, comparing them to those who would have appeased Hitler. "[A]ny kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere," said Rumsfeld. As Marc Cooper notes, this speech was delivered "only a week after his boss and chief enabler, GW Bush, swore to the nation that this administration would never, ever, under any conditions as much as dream of questioning the patriotism of war critics."

Of course this is Rumsfeld's pathetic attempt to change the subject from his own incompetence, not to mention his behind-the-scenes advocacy of torture and trashing of the Geneva Conventions -- you know, those "quaint" international norms meant to preserve the distinction between right and wrong that Rumsfeld claims to care so much about.

This is not to say that "moral and intellectual confusion" doesn't exist on the left; in the case of people like John Pilger, George Galloway, Alexander Cockburn and others, "confusion" is putting it far too mildly. I'm well aware that Rumsfeld's targets include just about anyone to his and the president's left. Debunking the extreme left worldview remains important, however -- not for Rumsfeld's reasons, but because decent and coherent politics simply demands it. And because the extremos, who have a way of dominating the street-protest landscape, give people like Rumsfeld something to hang their hat on.

George Allen's racism no "mistake"

Max Blumenthal has a detailed piece in The Nation concerning Senator George Allen of "macaca" fame. Allen has had dealings with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist organization; in his statements of support for neo-Confederate groups he has described the Civil War as "the War Between the States" and "a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights." He said and did these things while he was governor of the state of Virginia (and one of the most vocal supporters of the Gingrich-led congress, as I recall).

The term "macaca" is no mystery -- it is a French slur used against North African immigrants. As Ryan Lizza of TNR has reported, Allen speaks French and his mother is French Tunisian. He knows exactly what it means.

As Blumenthal points out, even conservative pundit Peggy Noonan has opined "that anyone involved with the CCC 'does not deserve to be in a leadership position in America.'" Allen's presidential prospects are toast, of course. He may well lose his senatorial reelection bid. That he was ever a senator at all is a national disgrace. And after Trent Lott-gate, no one should pretend Allen is the only one.

JFA: Helping musicians in need

One great way to aid post-Katrina New Orleans is through the Jazz Foundation of America. Check out their website and give if you can, or spread the word.

Cockburn responds

Alexander Cockburn has responded to charges that he picked up and reprinted a fraudulent interview with Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah. He refers to the original source, Evrensel, as "a serious newspaper." [Insert laugh track.] He also cites a philosophy professor, Idris Samawi Hamid of Colorado State University, who argues:

Instead of shouting "fake!" we should be encouraging the kind of broad anti-imperialist front that this interview encapsulates.

Fact-checking be damned! The political utility of a document trumps its veracity -- a cardinal rule of the Rove White House, one could say. Professor Hamid also contends: "There is no prima facie reason to suppose this interview is fake." No? How about this, as the blogger "Angry Arab" points out:

There is a Central Information Unit in Hizbullah which distributes the transcript (in Arabic) of ALL interviews with Hasan Nasrallah ... to the Lebanese and Arab media. And any interview with him would be considered front-page story. And Nasrallah gave only ONE interview since the war started--to Ghassan Bin Jiddu of AlJazeera.

But why bother with such details? The important thing is to further the project of far-left solidarity with Islamist fanaticism. In the mid-90s Cockburn declared himself an ally of the right-wing militia movement in the U.S., so what else is new.

A. Roy and the Naxalites, postscript

Hate to keep beating up on left activist/author Arundhati Roy, but this story in the Monitor struck me as important. Not long ago I criticized Roy's claim that she is "doomed" to support violent resistance movements, including the Maoist "Naxalites" of rural India. In Anuj Chopra's account for the Monitor, we learn of villagers' efforts to create social change through community radio, without the help of Maoist extortionists:

When villagers in this restive corner of India realized that an official was siphoning off food and fuel meant for the poor, they had a choice. They could go to the authorities, or turn to Maoist rebels.

Worried the government would get bogged down in bureaucracy and the Maoists would only invite bloodshed, the villagers chose a new route: They broadcast their case on community radio.

Now that's something Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! should be able to get behind. After all, she's a community radio activist herself. It was to Goodman, however, that Roy made her comments on the Naxalites, and Goodman did not challenge her.

More from Chopra:

"They [the Maoists] come and kill the corrupt. But that doesn't solve our problem," Mr. Mehta says. "Community radio [on the contrary] empowers people to kill corruption."

[...]

India's Maoists, or Naxalites, claim to be battling government corruption and indifference in the name of those at the bottom rung of society. But that effort, many counter, has come through unlawful means. Naxalites are infamous for imposing "levies" or taxes - between 20 to 30 percent - on those carrying out infrastructure projects in their "domain." Highway contractors, builders, and local businessmen trading in forest produce are all forced to cough up "their share."

The Naxalites are also known to rally the masses and call general strikes - partly by intimidation of the gun.

[...]

A local Naxalite outfit has warned AID [Alternative for India Development, the NGO supporting community radio] to stop their radio program in the region. Two years ago, they gutted one of their audiovisual vans. And the rebels often browbeat local reporters from AID.

Again, let's appreciate the irony. Maoist rebels in India are bullying independent broadcasters. Arundhati Roy claims there's really no choice but for the left to support the bullies. Amy Goodman, a widely admired independent broadcaster, doesn't challenge her.

From Democracy Now! we're supposed to be getting news and views the mainstream media won't report. But there's no mention of AID and community radio in the Roy interview. The Monitor has put Democracy Now! to shame on this issue.

Spike Lee: a final note

Acts 3 and 4 of Spike Lee's masterly Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke" did not disappoint. The emphasis in this half was the political economy of disaster and the long-term impact of the government's outright negligence.

Act 3 begins with harrowing images of destruction and grief, set against a breathtaking piece of music by trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard. Last year, after hearing his sextet at Joe's Pub, I became convinced that Blanchard is one of the most consequential musicians of this decade.

A few other details stand out: local radio host Garland Robinette breaking down and sobbing during an interview; Terence Blanchard doing the same; an interview with the young New Orleans physician who crashed a Dick Cheney photo op and said "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney" not once, but twice; and Al Sharpton's take on the infamous remarks of Barbara Bush -- "the president's mama of America," as he put it. I'm far from Sharpton's biggest fan, but this was a moment to savor.

I do have one complaint, and it's a big one, though it involves less than a minute of film. At some point during Act 2 (if memory serves), Harry Belafonte appears on screen to laud Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for stepping up and pledging assistance when the U.S. government was failing so miserably. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Chavez is a populist demagogue; he's expressed unqualified admiration for just about every ruthless dictator on this planet. That, however, is not the most galling thing about this moment in the film.

Think about it: Could Hugo Chavez have been the only foreign leader who pledged support during the Katrina crisis? Of course not. It took me about five seconds to locate this information, dated September 2, 2005:

As of Thursday the countries and international organizations willing to help include - Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, the Organization of American States, Jamaica, NATO, Australia, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

The list of countries offering assistance is "growing literally by the hour," [State Department spokesman Sean] McCormack said.

The Australian government today announced a donation of A$10 million to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Needless to say, there's no mention of Australia in Spike Lee's film.

To single out Hugo Chavez for praise in this context is sheer propaganda, marring an otherwise extraordinary piece of work.

Counterpunch: your source for fake news

Alexander Cockburn's far-left Counterpunch has published what appears to be a fraudulent "interview" with Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, in which the sheikh proclaims solidarity with left anti-imperialists and so forth. The disclaimer is a classic:

Editors' Note: The authenticity of this interview has been challenged, maybe because Nasrallah doesn't speak entirely according to Orientalist expectations of what a Shi'a leader should be saying.

Translation: If you think the interview is fake, you're a racist.

Bill Weinberg has more at WW4 Report.

A friend of mine in Turkey notes that the "interview" first appeared in Evrensel, "a rag published by the Turkish Labor Party, which is a pathetic far left group that is rabidly anti-everything." No wonder Counterpunch was impressed.

P.S. -- My friend adds:

"The Turkish press (I use that term lightly) came to mind when I read that letter from the 18 writers in The Nation. They talk about how the [Gaza violence] actually started with Israeli's abduction of two Palestinians, and how this wasn't reported anywhere except in the Turkish press... As someone who lives here and monitors the Turkish press, I can tell you it's the most unreliable source of information imaginable, from the mainstream down to, obviously, fringe publications like Evrensel."

The "we" of Jewish nationalism

Since I've taken the anti-zionist left to task again here, I'd like to add a comment on the lamentable state of affairs within the Jewish community.

Last week sometime on PBS's Newshour, there was a segment airing the responses of American Jews to the Israel/Hezbollah war. For one young woman on an organized "Birthright Israel" tour, the matter was quite simple: "They [the Arabs] don't want us here," she said, then began to cry. The moment was instructive. Many diaspora Jews have a view of Israel that is not simply uncritical, but pre-political and purely emotive. This standpoint is encouraged and reinforced by mainstream Jewish institutions ("Birthright Israel" is by no means a project of the radical right). It is reflected in Hebrew school curricula and propounded by teachers who are simply unqualified on the subject of the modern Middle East.

While it's not true across the board, Israelis tend to have a far more critical and informed view of their country, and I imagine quite a few would scoff at the word "us" in the sentence I quoted above. I believe it is harmful for young diaspora Jews to be fed the illusion that they are part of the Israeli polity. The time for questioning the notion of "birthright," the distorted "we" of Jewish nationalism, is long overdue. Young diaspora Jews must be taught to think independently. (The Israeli "Law of Return" is a matter for another post.)

To be clear, I am not raising the reactionary bugaboo of "dual loyalty." There is nothing wrong with diaspora Jews developing connections -- cultural, spiritual, intellectual, etc. -- to the state of Israel. But this shouldn't come at the expense of informed citizenship.

Not long before he died, Arthur Hertzberg spoke at NYU in a forum with the Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi. In his introductory course on Zionist thought, Hertzberg recalled, he would always put the following essay question on the final exam: "Make the case for Arab nationalism." One student was deeply offended and lodged a complaint with the dean, who then raised the issue with Hertzberg. "She answers the question or she fails the course," Hertzberg said, standing firm. Unlike so many others, Hertzberg is someone who truly earned the title of "leader." The Jewish community needs more like him -- thousands more. Enlightened diaspora leadership is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for progress in the Middle East.

Spike Lee's triumph

I'm with Troy Patterson of Slate -- Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" is superb, so far. (Part 2 airs tonight.) Going in I had misgivings about Lee's take on the levee conspiracy theory. But this plays a short and pretty much insignificant role; author Doug Brinkley calls it an "urban myth" and that view isn't really challenged.

Lee's visual sense is stunning; his narrative is meticulous and fair-minded. No public figure emerges unscathed. The U.S. Coast Guard, however, is vindicated.

The "liquidation" letter returns

The Nation has published "A Letter from 18 Writers" on the Israel/Palestine conflict — the signatures were far fewer when I first mentioned this document, some weeks ago. The initial signers were Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn and a few others, who declared that Israel's "political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation." The Nation reproduces something close to this language on its homepage.

By this point, Toni Morrison, Gore Vidal and quite a few others have added their names to this demagogic and irresponsible statement. Vidal has lost all coherence — he's written sympathetically of Timothy McVeigh and mouthed isolationist rhetoric that is hard to distinguish from Pat Buchanan's. Chomsky and Roy have reduced themselves to acting as megaphones for Hezbollah.

But I digress. The letter seems an attempt to validate the Zionism=Nazism trope while slickly avoiding the actual words. The term "liquidation" is an underhanded reference to the Jewish ghettos of WWII. Propagandistic, demonizing rhetoric of this sort is all too prevalent; recently we heard it spouted by Hugo Chavez, self-proclaimed ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. José Saramago, one of the new letter-signers, has made his famous contribution as well. For someone of Toni Morrison's stature to lend this stuff credence is damaging, quite frankly, to the cause of peace in the Middle East. Well done.

Jonathan Edelstein has an exemplary four-part series on "the language of the Israeli-Arab conflict." The posts are from 2003, but Edelstein's closely argued remarks on terms like "genocide," "apartheid," "terrorism" and even "Zionism" remain all too relevant. "[P]ublic discourse on the Middle East conflict increasingly operates according to Lewis Carroll rules," he writes. The "liquidation" letter is better understood with this in mind.

Tom Terrell

My fellow music journalist Tom Terrell, a delightful presence on the New York scene, has been diagnosed with cancer. There is a benefit concert planned for September 11 (handbill attached). We're pulling for you, Tom.

Mideast mystification

In the letters section of this week's NY Times Magazine, Carol Haskill of San Francisco writes of the Middle East as

...a strange, timeless place where nothing has changed for thousands of years, where fierce hatreds are as ancient as the deserts and cannot be tamed or reasoned with in Western terms. We will never understand it.

She's right about one thing: We will never understand the Middle East if we cling to gibberish of precisely this sort. The idea of the Middle East as somehow impervious to analysis, let alone dialogue and compromise, has been thoroughly debunked by Fred Halliday, among others. The Mideast conflict is an entirely modern phenomenon that can and should be studied comparatively (Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, etc.). The view outlined by Haskill is unfortunately widespread, and it's very much a part of the problem.

Jill Carroll, continued

As I noted last week, the Christian Science Monitor is running Jill Carroll's part-by-part narrative of her kidnapping ordeal in Baghdad. She's up to Part 6 (as of Sunday night).

It's clear from Carroll's account thus far that her captors were (and are) hate-filled sociopaths, not the "freedom fighters" of extreme-left imagination. This piece by Dan Murphy bounces off Carroll's hostage diary with a closer look at the Mujahideen Shura Council, the group that apparently held her. The MSC, according to Murphy, is a Zarqawi/al Qaeda-aligned group that has tried to put an indigenous Iraqi (Sunni) face on the foreign al-Qaeda presence in Iraq. During her captivity, Jill Carroll received a visit from Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, who'd been chosen to lead the MSC as an Iraqi figurehead in place of Zarqawi. This man was a senior officer in Saddam Hussein's air force — a Baathist insider all the way. There are conflicting accounts of his actual importance, however.

Be sure to scroll down for the sidebar that accompanies Murphy's piece. It blows apart the argument that the native Iraqi "resistance" is somehow nobler than the foreign Zarqawi force, or that the two are entirely distinguishable:

Evan Kohlmann, an expert on Al Qaeda propaganda, says that the political statements of Carroll's captors are interesting because they indicate that some powerful Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups staunchly support Zarqawi's tactics of using suicide bombings, targeting Shiite civilians, and launching terror attacks beyond Iraq's borders.

"It's not just Al Qaeda and it's not just foreign fighters" who support terrorist attacks on civilians, says Mr. Kohlmann. "It's Iraqis, too, who are doing it, and that's a big problem."

Also don't miss the description of Abu Ahmed, a senior planner for the MSC, taking time out from a busy day of slaughter to read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

The Monitor has set up a fund not only for Alan Enwiya, Jill Carroll's murdered translator, but also Adnan Abbas, the driver who managed to escape the scene of the kidnapping. Information below.

---

Alan Enwiya is one of nearly 100 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since March 2003. Alan (left side of photo) is survived by his wife, Fairuz, his two children, Martin and Mary Ann, and his parents. They have left Iraq and hope to move to the US where they have relatives.

Jill Carroll's driver, Adnan Abbas, is a witness to Alan's murder. He, his wife, and their four children (including a newborn) have also fled Iraq for their own safety.

In response to readers, the Monitor has established funds to help each family start a new life. Donations may be sent to:

The Alan Enwiya Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

The Adnan Abbas Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

Donations can also be made online.

Sounds to cherish 4

Another in an occasional series...

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Orchestral Works (ECM New Series)
Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester. Lesser-known (at least to me) works recorded in 2002, including "Danses Concertantes" for chamber orchestra (1942), the ballet "Apollon Musagète" (1927) and three Igor-orchestrated madrigals by Gesualdo (1960).

Scott Reeves, Congressional Roll Call (Creative Jazz Records)
Homemade packaging, but the music sizzles. Reeves plays trombone and a fabulous-sounding thing called the alto flugelhorn. An amalgam of two sessions, from 1996 and 1999, the latter featuring James Williams (R.I.P.) on piano. (Kenny Werner plays on the earlier cuts.) Mostly original music by Reeves.

Jon De Lucia, Face No Face (Jonji Music)
One of several astonishing debut releases I've heard this year (Francisco Mela, Walter Smith III and Gilad Hekselman are among the others). De Lucia, alto/soprano saxophone, plays mostly originals with a young, hypercreative New York lineup: Nir Felder on guitar, Leo Genovese on piano, Garth Stevenson on bass and Ziv Ravitz on drums. Sumie Kaneko plays koto and shamisen on "Edo Komoriuta," a traditional Japanese lullaby.

Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind (Music Maker)
I can't say enough about this "African-American string band based in the Triangle area of North Carolina." Here are three people who have yet to reach their 30s, playing unadulterated old-time hillbilly music. From the back cover: "Rooted in the traditional music of the foothills and mountains of North and South Carolina, this unique ensemble is made up of two Carolina natives, Rhiannon Giddens (b. 1977 - banjo, fiddle, voice) and Justin Robinson (b.1982 - fiddle, voice) as well as a songster from Arizona, Dom Flemons (b.1982 - guitar, banjo, jug, harmonica, snare & voice)."
Visit the site of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, Inc., "dedicated to helping the true pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern musical traditions gain recognition and meet their day to day needs."

Gil Evans, The Complete Pacific Jazz Sessions (Blue Note)
Two reissues combined: New Bottle, Old Wine (1958) and Great Jazz Standards (1959). This is classic Gil, featuring Johnny Coles, Cannonball Adderley, Curtis Fuller, Budd Johnson, Elvin Jones and countless others. In spirit and in packaging, the collection reminds me of another, more contemporary must-have: Don Grolnick's The Complete Blue Note Recordings, which brought together Weaver of Dreams (1989) and Nighttown (1991).

Bill Carrothers, Shine Ball (Fresh Sound-New Talent)
Wildly inventive free improvisations for prepared piano (Carrothers), acoustic bass (Gordon Johnson) and drums (Dave King of the Bad Plus).

Charles Koechlin (1867-1950), Les Heures persanes op. 65 (Hänssler Classic)
A contemporary of Stravinsky's, probably one of my top-five favorite composers. Heinz Holliger conducts the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart in a reading of "The Persian Hours," composed for piano between 1913-1919, scored for orchestra in 1921. From Otfrid Nies's liner notes: "Koechlin... did not live to hear a complete performance of either the piano or the full orchestral version...."

Spike Lee and Katrina

In this week's Village Voice, my friend and colleague Larry Blumenfeld writes about "When the Levees Broke," Spike Lee's HBO film on Hurricane Katrina and the fate of New Orleans. This passage is ripe for further comment:

One potentially controversial element of the story—persistent suspicion that levees were intentionally exploded in some sections to flood the poorer black sections of New Orleans—is considered [in Lee's film] without sensationalism.

Lee raised this possibility during an October appearance on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, mentioning 1965's Hurricane Betsy, when similar rumors surfaced, and the 1927 floods, when some levees were, in fact, intentionally blown. "I don't put anything past the American government when it comes to people of color in this country," Lee told Maher. Tucker Carlson shot back that Lee was a "reckless conspiracy theorist" and that he was "feeding paranoia." Yet David Remnick raised these same points in much the same manner in a New Yorker piece earlier that month. In the film, such suspicion is considered by residents who "heard a boom" as well as by John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide, who finds "too many similarities between 1927 and Katrina," especially similar failures of the levee policy.

"Maybe they did, maybe they didn't," Lee says. "We'll never know because it won't be investigated. But the flood should not have happened anyway. The Army Corps of Engineers has said it was their fault. Somebody should go to jail."

Readers of this blog know that I have little patience with conspiracy theories (for my take on 9/11 conspiracies see here, here and here). "Maybe they did, maybe they didn't," says Lee, but it's really necessary to pick one: Either the Bush administration was woefully and criminally incompetent in responding to the disaster, or it was so diabolically in control of the situation as to engineer the levee collapse itself.

To believe the latter -- that the administration deliberately flooded New Orleans's poorest districts, creating a humanitarian catastrophe -- one would also have to believe that they proceeded to mismanage their own man-made crisis in full view of the news media, the American people and the world. They were just pretending to be a bunch of callous and ineffectual morons! They deliberately flushed their moral and political credibility down the toilet for all time! The evil genius of it!

From what I recall of David Remnick's New Yorker piece, he simply explained the conspiracy theories and why they've gained traction among the poor and disenfranchised. He certainly did not endorse the theories. I haven't yet seen Lee's film; it's possible that he raises the subject in a similarly responsible way. But his statements on the Bill Maher program were not exactly measured and circumspect. The meat of the exchange is here. [Note: I'm not endorsing the right-wing agenda of the "NewsBusters" blog.] To my mind, the only person making any sense during the contretemps is Michel Martin of ABC News, who accused both Spike Lee and Tucker Carlson of "following a script," generating heat rather than light.

Conspiracy issue aside, there's little doubt of this film's importance. HBO will broadcast "When the Levees Broke" on August 21 (part one) and August 22 (part two), and again in its four-hour entirety on August 29. Watch.

Because it's there

Go here to watch a robot play John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" solo. (Hat tip: Doug Ramsey)

It's often said that Coltrane played with no vibrato. (I've said it myself.) Wrong. He played with very little vibrato. This robot plays with no vibrato. And it sounds terrible.

How to help

The Head Heeb pledges to match reader donations (up to a point) toward reconstruction and/or humanitarian aid for Lebanon and northern Israel. Here's the portal he recommends for aid-giving tips.

PUK office bombed in Mosul

More bad news for the Iraqi Kurds. From Al Jazeera:

A bomber has attacked the offices of a top Kurdish political party in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing and wounding more than 40 people.

The explosion outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) killed at least nine people and wounded more than 36 on Tuesday morning, police said.

This follows news of a checkpoint bombing on July 31:

Four Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were killed and 10 wounded ... when a car bomb driven by suicide attacker went off at a checkpoint on Dahuk-Mosul road, on the boarder [sic] with the Arab part of Iraq.

Sunni militants are doing their best to drag the Kurds into the Iraqi civil war. It's no coincidence that the Kurds and Shiites are calling for the resignation of the speaker of parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadania, a Sunni who sympathizes with the insurgents.

Atzmon descends

As I've noted, Oliver Kamm and I are on different sides of the Israel/Lebanon debate, and other debates as well. But Kamm remains one of the most effective and articulate foes of the deranged left (if one can even call it left).

In this post Kamm exposes the latest ravings of the Israeli-born, UK-based jazz musician Gilad Atzmon. I wrote about Atzmon's vicious antisemitism, thinly disguised as pro-Palestinian activism, in an October 2005 column for Jazz Times.

Plumbing new depths in his comments about the current Mideast war, Atzmon doesn't bother so much with apologetics for Hezbollah, as other hard-leftists have done. No, Atzmon moves straight to apologetics for Nazi Germany. "To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse," he argues. "Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas... has [sic] never been a Nazi tactic or strategy." Give him credit, though. At least he realizes that to paint Israel as worse than Nazi Germany, one must falsify the history pertaining to the latter.

Critics who write about Atzmon's music need to know that they are dealing with a Hitler apologist, not a peace and justice activist.

Jill Carroll's ordeal

The Christian Science Monitor is serializing Jill Carroll's account of her 82-day hostage ordeal. Part I is gripping; check back in coming days for the rest.

Carroll's interpreter, Alan Enwiya, was murdered on the spot at the site of the kidnapping. There is a fund for donations to his bereaved family. Information below.

---

Alan Enwiya is one of nearly 100 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since March 2003. Alan is survived by his wife, Fairuz, his two children, Martin and Mary Ann, and his parents.

In response to readers, the Monitor has set up a fund to help support Alan's family and to enable them to start a new life in the US, where they have relatives.

Donations may be sent to:

The Alan Enwiya Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

Donations can also be made online here.

Clarification on a quote

On August 10 I expressed annoyance with a quote from a story in the Forward about "zero dissent" within the Jewish community on Israel/Lebanon. I'm grateful to the person quoted, Hadar Susskind of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, for taking the trouble to get in touch with me:

I was not happy with the original quote in the Forward. I specifically said that there is "zero dissent" among JCPA member agencies, not among the entire community. I have a lot of respect for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek and others who have voiced a range of different opinions. On top of that, I agree with your assessment that it is foolish for anyone to claim to speak for the entire community. I can, and often do, speak in the name of JCPA's 13 national and 125 community agencies, but I know full well that there are other voices that are not represented even under that broad umbrella.

"Hezbollah's Other War"

Michael Young, opinion editor of Beirut's Daily Star, has an excellent primer on Lebanese sectarian politics in today's NY Times Magazine. While Young doesn't address it directly, his piece underscores the absolute intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the far-left embrace of Hezbollah.

Detailing the Siniora government's tense and fragile efforts to deal with Hezbollah and secure a hopeful future for Lebanon, Young writes:

It did not take very long before the rift between Hezbollah’s supporters and detractors was reflected in the [Siniora] cabinet. The most divisive episode came late last year, when the government majority sought to approve a mixed Lebanese-international court to try the suspects in the Hariri assassination. The Shiite ministers refused to go along, arguing that the move was premature. The majority saw this as a ploy to protect Syria at a time when Nasrallah was publicly reaffirming his alliance with the Assad regime. On Dec. 12, in the tense hours following the assassination of the prominent anti-Syrian journalist Gebran Tueni, the government broke the deadlock by voting to approve a mixed tribunal. This was constitutionally defensible, but the Shiite ministers claimed it broke the rule that all important decisions must be made by consensus. They walked out of the government but did not resign. Hezbollah was not about to lose the convenient cover of legitimacy provided by participation in the cabinet, but it had every intention of gumming up the system so that the cabinet majority would not act as a majority again.

For all its efforts, Siniora’s government became less and less able to govern. Early this year, Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament, proposed a ‘‘national dialogue’’ of leading politicians to address the most divisive issues — like the fate of Hezbollah’s weapons. But little came of this. In the dialogue, Nasrallah would make concessions and then invariably step back from implementing them. The final straw was the July 12 abduction of the Israelis. For most of the ministers in the government, the operation was nothing less than a coup, a brazen effort to show that the majority had no control over so basic a matter as a declaration of war. [my emphasis]

Rather than see its power wane, Young argues, Hezbollah started a war in order to undermine its domestic opponents. Also, one could add, to gain glory and further demonize Israel. The issue of Lebanese prisoners, the Shebaa Farms — all a mere pretext.

Leftists who support Hezbollah, openly or tacitly, do not support Lebanon or the Lebanese people. They support a self-interested renegade faction of the Lebanese government. And they have the nerve to call themselves antiwar activists.

[Update: Hazem Saghieh weighs in at openDemocracy.]

Halliday's new column

Fred Halliday has a new column at openDemocracy, calling us back to the universalist ethos of Isaac Deutscher and Hannah Arendt:

What Isaac Deutscher and Hannah Arendt noted contains truths that the contemporary middle east, and the world, sorely need. Their relevance is to much more than the Arab-Israeli question; it applies in principle to any of the numerous other national or inter-ethnic conflicts across the world where local rhetoric and partisan solidarity from outsiders have reinforced each other in a dance of death, as if one side were angels and the other devils .... In regard to the middle east, Muslims and Arabs across the world identify with the Palestinians (or, more recently, Hizbollah) on ethnic, religious and communitarian lines; Jews do the same, in support of Israel. Even many of those Jews who oppose the policies of the state of Israel speak as Jews ("not in my name").

There is an enormous historical regression involved here. It involves seeing membership of a particular community, or claims of affinity, ethnicity or religious association with others, as conveying particular rights (or particular moral clarity) on those making such claims. In purely rational terms, this is nonsense: the crimes of the Israelis in wantonly destroying Lebanon's infrastructure, and the crimes of Hizbollah and Hamas in killing civilians and placing the lives and security of their peoples recklessly at risk, do not require particularist denunciation. They are crimes on the basis of universal principles – of law, decency, humanity – and should be identified as such.

(In this regard, ethnic and religious diasporas are among the last people who can offer rational explanation or moral compass in regard to such events. Recently, when interviewed by a BBC panel set up to consider accusations of bias in regard to the Arab-Israeli dispute, I was given a list of the British-based groups the panel had consulted – Muslim and Arab on one side, Jewish and Zionist on the other. My recommendation to the panel was to ignore completely what any of them said and to question whether they should have any standing in the matter.)

Read the rest — it's important.

Iraqi Kurdistan troubles

There are reports of spreading anti-corruption demonstrations and government crackdowns in Iraqi Kurdistan. (In March I visited the autonomous northern region and wrote about it on this blog.) Bill Weinberg at WW4 Report has links, including a statement from Houzan Mahmoud of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, and this piece in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The RFE page contains links to additional coverage of the Kurdistan region.

Iraqi Kurdistan has a reputation as Iraq's lone success story. But the ruling parties may fritter away that success if they institute harsher repression and fail to allay popular discontent.

There's trouble brewing between Kurds and Shia in the south as well.

More music video greatness

Late last year I linked to a fantastic video by the group OK Go. Here's another. Wow these guys have a lot of time on their hands. Apparently they sustained minor injuries while making the clip. (Hat tip: Phil DiPietro)

Calling foul

Hawks, the birds of prey, are known for their extraordinarily keen vision. Hawks of the human variety, not so much. Oliver Kamm has been blogging only sporadically this summer, but the last couple of posts have been teeth-clenching. Here he reprimands the voters of Connecticut for handing a primary victory to Ned Lamont; he also wishes Joe Lieberman luck in his useless and vainglorious independent bid. In another post, on Israel/Lebanon, Kamm argues:

Calling for an immediate ceasefire is equivalent to calling for an enduring threat to the lives of Israeli civilians from an Iranian-backed private army driven by theocratic ideology.

Odd that he should write this on August 11, the very day the UN Security Council came to agreement on a ceasefire resolution. In any case I must object, since I backed the UN's call for an immediate ceasefire early on. I will not accept that in so doing, I "called for an enduring threat to the lives of Israeli civilians." Along with quite a few others, I believe the best way to address that threat is not to plunge Lebanon into chaos, not to kill civilians and then issue cavalier apologies, not to... well, too late. (It appears the Israeli offensive will continue until Sunday, when Olmert presents the UN draft to his security cabinet.)

It's not remotely clear that Kamm's approach — the Bush-Rice-Olmert approach — will usher in a new era of security for Israel. Quite the contrary. And to suggest that the alternatives are "equivalent" to not caring about Israeli civilian life is below the belt. It's also plain wrong. I'm sure that Kamm, like me, is disgusted by the Hezbollah apologists (and, yes, supporters) on the far left. But what the Galloways and the Finkelsteins say is not true. We are not all Hezbollah now. Those of us who insist on criticizing Israel, as harshly as we see fit within bounds of reasoned discourse, should not be tarred as appeasers.

Finkelstein: "We are all Hezbollah now"

This is quite a bandwagon. The famed anti-zionist author Norman Finkelstein has laid bare the depthless poverty of his political and moral judgment:

...for those who believe in freedom and dignity, We are all Hezbollah now.

So he proclaims, as he distributes a screed from Samah Idriss, editor-in-chief of the magazine Al-Adab. Idriss's statement, a model of unvarnished and unyielding fanaticism, is very much worth reading in full. Here is the big finish:

Regardless, the victory of the Islamic Resistance is "near, very near, truly near," as swore the symbol today of Arab dignity (yes, dignity, dear liberals), Sayyid Hasan NasrAllah. That victory will also be a victory for Palestine. All that is necessary at this moment is a tenacious hold on principles, unswerving support for the Resistance, and serene patience.

It is the fate of Lebanon to be neighbor to a vicious enemy, Israel. But it is Lebanon's ennobling choice to stand by the side of its heroic freedom-fighters, and by the side of Palestine.

I have nothing to add, other than to note what Finkelstein has endorsed, clearly and without shame — indeed, with unseemly pride.

An editorial change

Readers are advised that I have enabled the "moderate comments" function on this blog. Open comments are one of several options available to bloggers. All the options have their pluses and minuses; many blogs don't permit comments at all. I've chosen the intermediate course, and will select comments to publish on a case-by-case basis. Factual inaccuracies will of course be noted and corrected, as has always been the case on Lerterland.

I am grateful to all who take the time to read this blog, and I continue to welcome constructive responses.

An artistic folly

Just received an email touting a DVD of a benefit concert for the Stop the War Coalition that took place on November 27 of last year. (It hits the stores in October.) Performers included Brian Eno, Rachid Taha, Imogen Heap and Mick Jones of the Clash. I own records by all these people and I think highly of them. Their political judgment, however, is poor.

At the bottom of the email there's this:

The StWC is a UK anti-war group set up shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The "war" in the Coalition's title refers to the various wars that are claimed to be part of the war on terrorism. The Coalition has been the most prominent group in Britain campaigning against the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

The most prominent group -- true that. But the StWC didn't simply campaign against the war in Iraq. They campaigned in support of the so-called Iraqi resistance, a force that has found time between attacks on U.S. troops to slaughter many thousands of Iraq's Shia Muslims. The Sunni "resistance" is now party to a civil war that it played a significant role in instigating. As Michael Bérubé observes in his lively four-part takedown of the extremist left [update: oops, part five is here], novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy took the following stand:

I just feel that that resistance in Iraq is our battle too and we have to support it. And we can’t be looking for pristine struggles in which to invest our purity.

Bérubé: "I can’t help pointing out that, for Roy, while the party trying vainly to unseat the Cheney Administration was not worthy of 'our' support in 2004, the Iraqi 'resistance' was, on balance, good enough."

These days Roy is undertaking similar apologetics for Hezbollah. The Stop the War Coalition, better termed the Start the War Coalition, is worse, marching in the streets under the yellow flag of the Party of God. I don't know about Imogen Heap and Brian Eno and friends, but this doesn't inspire me to break into song.

Tide turning?

Back on July 31, Judeosphere linked to a story in the Forward. I was struck by the following:

Hadar Susskind, who directs the Washington office of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said that there is "zero dissent" within the Jewish community [about the war in Lebanon]. "As opposed to everything else we do, on this we have absolute unanimity," he said.

This has been my beef with the establishment Jewish organizations all my adult life -- there is not simply a lack of dissent, but a tendency to boast about it. Susskind's claim was probably overstated in any case, although the Israelis, as usual, are ahead of the Americans. The prominent liberal authors Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua and David Grossman have finally broken with the war consensus -- specifically the decision to expand the ground invasion. So have Peace Now and Meretz.

In the UK, Rabbi David Goldberg is speaking out against Israel's offensive and critiquing the "existential threat" language being used to justify it. David Hirsh of Engage responds with ambivalence, arguing that the assault on Lebanon is wrong but the "existential threat" cannot be so easily dismissed. My view leans toward Goldberg's. But I share some of Hirsh's worry, particularly at a time when so-called peace activists are marching under banners that proclaim "We are all Hizbullah!"

What do we talk about when we talk about Hezbollah? I pondered this as I watched a recent edition of "Scarborough Country," the MSNBC talk show hosted by the loudmouth former Gingrichite congressman Joe Scarborough. His guests were Mort Zuckerman, the publishing magnate and outspoken right-winger, and Ian Williams, UN correspondent for The Nation.

Scarborough tried to get Williams to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Williams wouldn't do it. He said, at various points, that Hezbollah "might be" or "could be" terrorist, but that it was also a political party and a social welfare organization that basically runs southern Lebanon. Scarborough and Zuckerman saw their opening and pounced. Zuckerman insisted that it doesn't matter whether Hezbollah "picks up the garbage every once in a while." Scarborough, in typical fashion, continued to badmouth Williams after the interview was over.

Here, in microcosm, was everything that is wrong with current discourse on the Middle East. Know-nothing rightists like Scarborough refuse to acknowledge the complexities of a society like Lebanon's. Much of what Williams said about Hezbollah's role in Lebanon was irrefutable. But he and other left commentators tend to equivocate about Hezbollah's terrorism, not to mention the explicit antisemitism and rejectionism of its worldview. And that's to say nothing of left extremists like George Galloway, who support Hezbollah outright.

About a week earlier on the PBS Newshour I heard the Mideast analyst Flynt Leverett describe Hezbollah as a resistance group and a terrorist organization in literally the same breath. He had no trouble holding both ideas in his head at the same time. Leverett, formerly with the CIA, the State Department and the National Security Council, is no Hezbollah apologist. But neither is he a right-wing numbskull. That's why he left the Bush administration. He hasn't got all the answers; no one does. But I think we could all learn from that little example.

The week in bigotry

Judeosphere points us to two interesting antisemitic diatribes in the media. First this from Jostein Gaarder of Norway, author of the novel Sophie's World:

There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. [...] There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.

[Update: Gaarder responds to his critics here. Judeosphere responds here.]

Then this by Kurosh Arianpour in the Berkeley Daily Planet:

One should ask why anti-Semitism has persisted throughout the centuries... Let us go back to 539 BC, when Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, went to Babylonia and liberated Jews. One can ask why Jews were enslaved by Babylonians. Also, one can ask why Jews had problem with Egyptians, with Jesus, with Europeans, and in modern times with Germans? The answer, among other things, is their racist attitude that they are the “Chosen People.” Because of this attitude, they do wrong to other people to the point that others turn against them, namely, become anti-Semite if you will.

"If you will." Nice flourish.

To this sordid little roundup we should an instance of rank anti-Muslim bigotry. It comes from Daniel Pipes, a right-wing "expert" on terrorism-related matters. Pipes has coined the term "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" [note: I am not making this up] and used it to explain Naveed Afzal Haq's shooting rampage in Seattle on July 28:

...Mr. Haq's actions are a clear instance of "Sudden Jihad Syndrome," whereby normal-appearing Muslims unpredictably become violent. His attack confirms my oft-repeated call for special scrutiny of Muslims. Because the identity of the next homicidal jihadi cannot be anticipated, Muslims generally need to come under heightened observation.

These words of wisdom appeared in the New York Sun. No word yet on Pipes's grand strategy for dealing with postal workers.

This is now

Heated exchanges today in the UN chamber. Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman said, without a trace of irony, that the Lebanese people must choose between "those who build and those who destroy." By the latter he meant Hezbollah, indeed a destructive force. But to ordinary Lebanese, the Orwellian tinge of Gillerman's speech must have been hard to miss. Israel has chosen destruction, and the only choice it has given the Lebanese is flee or die.

[Update: I should have noted that Gillerman's statement is tantamount to an admission that Israel is pressuring the Lebanese population through bombing — a violation of the Geneva Conventions.]

In coming days I hope to able to comment on the swirl of diplomatic initiatives. The Head Heeb has some provisional thoughts here. Meanwhile, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch debunks the continued excuse-making for Israeli brutality. Of course right-wingers are spilling tons of virtual ink in an attempt to discredit HRW as biased, even though its condemnations of Hezbollah are quite clear.

Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic is candid about Israel's claims of superior virtue:

If your guilt reminds you of how otherwise guiltless you are, then you have not been improved by the discovery of your sin, you have been corrupted by it. It is important also to be wary of the pride of self-criticism. At least we worry about such things [i.e., civilian deaths]: this proves only that the standard is low. To congratulate oneself upon the severity of one's self-reckoning is to vitiate it--to nullify conscience by reference to its very exercise.

Indeed, and it makes Bernard Henri-Levy's terrible essay in the NY Times Magazine that much harder to take. BHL, as he's known, allows that "the Israelis aren't saints," but by the end of the piece he's calling Shimon Peres "a prince-priest of Zionism," "this Wise Man of Israel," even carrying on about his "handsomeness." Maintaining no critical distance whatsoever, BHL tries to pass off an apologia as a pained, philosophical soul-search.

That doesn't stop Andrew Sullivan from lauding BHL's bathos, as if it's ironclad proof that Israel is facing "a different war" and has no choice but to pulverize Lebanon. In this light it's worth reading Ethan Bronner's discussion of the Ariel Sharon legacy in the NY Times Week in Review of August 6:

Hezbollah was hardly passive during Mr. Sharon’s five years in office. There were more than a dozen serious attacks, including cross-border infiltrations and seizures, and rocket and mortar fire, which killed Israeli civilians and soldiers. Mr. Sharon ordered a few airstrikes and return fire but nothing remotely on the scale of what has been happening now. What occurred on July 12 differed little from some of those earlier attacks.

The July 12 attack is nonetheless to be condemned, as I've done from the beginning. But Bronner's analysis demonstrates that Israel has an array of choices, not just the choice of unrestrained wrath. Yes, Ahmadinejad's regime can only be viewed with alarm, but as I've said, the Iranian connection is being bandied about cynically, to obstruct reasoned argument about Israel's conduct.

It must also be said that the picture on the antiwar left is not at all pretty. On August 5 George Galloway and his minions marched among yellow Hezbollah flags and placards with pictures of Hassan Nasrallah. (One demonstrator even held aloft an image of the scowling Khomeini.) Critics are absolutely right to mock the UK's Stop the War Coalition as the Start the War Coalition.

It's Lamont

Ned Lamont beats Joe Lieberman. It's a potential net gain for the Senate, although Lamont went on The Colbert Report last week and declared there was no difference at all between him and Lieberman on Israel. He also couched his argument for Iraq troop withdrawal in crudely isolationist terms. But Lieberman's a disaster, and he wasn't any better in 2000 (Marc Cooper makes the case — or rather, allows William F. Buckley to make the case).

That was then...

Jeff Weintraub recently linked to this overview of Israel/Lebanon border issues in the wake of the 2000 withdrawal. I haven't delved in fully, but it's worth a look for obvious reasons. From the opening summary:

Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Lebanon's steps towards the reestablishment of governmental control there open a new era in Israeli-Lebanese relations.... [C]urrent conditions allow for cautious optimism and the possibility of a quiet border for the first time in many years.

Oy Vey.

Another PS on Juan Cole

A friend alerts me to this piece by Danny Rubenstein about "the seven lost villages," which Juan Cole alluded to in a post criticized by Jeff Weintraub (here for background). I thought I'd point it out to those interested.

Noteworthy gigs

Too much music going on in New York to mention it all, but I was struck last week by two trio performances. Bill Frisell's show at Celebrate Brooklyn on August 3 had him playing with Tony Scherr (bass) and Kenny Wolleson (drums) in front of a giant screen, onto which were projected Buster Keaton films, several of Jim Woodring's "Frank" cartoons, and Bill Morrison's treatment of the 1926 Karloff picture "The Mesmerist." The previous night at Joe's Pub, DJ Spooky debuted something called Subliminal Strings, with Min Xiao-Phen on pipa, Yumiko Tanaka on shamisen and Spooky himself on digitized turntables. A "conversation," as Spooky termed it, between traditional Asian string instruments and futurist beats, with fairly extensive commentary along the way. Spooky quoted William Gibson to start: "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed."

August 4 was also a treat — trombonist Curtis Hasselbring and his quartet The New Mellow Edwards played Cornelia Street Café, followed by a trip to the Jazz Gallery for alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon and his thunderous, phenomenally intricate Rhythm Collective. It struck me that Zenon and his fellow saxophonist Marcus Strickland are both juggling two different types of bands: a piano-based acoustic quartet and an earthier combo with electric bass.

Sounds to cherish 3

Another in an occasional series...

The Al Cohn Quintet Featuring Bob Brookmeyer (Verve)
Reissue of a 1956 date for Coral Records. Brookmeyer's high-art arrangements of "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Ill Wind," originals, etc. With Mose Allison on piano, Teddy Kotick on bass, Nick Stabulas on drums. Keeping count of Brookmeyer's priceless collaborations (Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Raney, etc.) is a challenge.

Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra, Cugi's Cocktails (Verve)
A concept album about alcohol. Recorded for Mercury in New York, August 1963. Arrangements by Hal Mooney; personnel unknown. Not to be mistaken for kitsch, this is some of the hottest dance music ever.

James MacMillan, Seven Last Words from the Cross (Hyperion)
For orchestra and voices, performed by Polyphony with the Britten Sinfonia. MacMillan is 47 years old, from Scotland. His first movement, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," starts inaudibly and builds to harrowing shouts of "REX... REX... ISRA-EL...!" The fourth movement, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" (Lord, Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?), could send you running from your house.

Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), Twelve Violin Sonatas, Op. 5 (Hyperion)
Two discs, six sonatas each, plus a bonus "elaboration" of the Sonata No. 9 in A Major. The first six are for violin, cello and organ, the second six for violin, cello and harpsichord. Recorded by the Convivium ensemble in 1989.

Gene Krupa Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements (Verve)
Recorded 1958 in New York. The band includes Phil Woods, Doc Severinsen, Hank Jones, Kai Winding, Barry Galbraith and more. Mulligan conducts. Pure gold.

Blind Willie McTell, Pig 'n Whistle Red (Biograph)
The blind bluesman sings and plays guitar in Atlanta, Georgia in 1950, accompanied by Curley Weaver on second guitar. From Don Kent's liners: "Their last session together, presented here, shows an amazing range of material reflecting pop, ragtime, gospel, hard blues and hokum." More than blues, it's a ragged and raw kind of country music.

Don Edwards, Last of the Troubadours: Saddle Songs II (Dualtone/Western Jubilee)
Edwards is in his 60's, a cowboy singer from New Jersey, captured here on two CDs with just a guitar and voice. The first song, the 16-bar "Gone to Texas," sounds uncannily related to McTell's first song, the 16-bar "Don't Forget It."

Guillaume de Chassy & Daniel Yvinec, Wonderful World (Sunnyside)
De Chassy (piano) and Yvinec (bass) in a little gem of a production, mostly duets on standards but with brief, random snippets of jazz vocals from Andy Bey, Ilya Lushtak, Michael Leonhart and others. (Lushtak and Leonhart, guitar and trumpet respectively, aren't known as singers.) Milt Hoffman adds spoken-word segments that are artlessly haunting. "A testimonial to America's music heritage," writes Hoffman in the liners.

A quick word on Juan Cole

I'm grateful to Jeff Weintraub for linking here a couple of times in recent days. In one post he quoted my critique of Lara Deeb's primer on Hezbollah, and he termed Juan Cole's analysis an "academic whitewash" as well. Leaving that Cole post aside for the moment, I'd like to recall my post of July 20, in which I cited Cole's strong condemnation of Hezbollah:

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

In view of Hezbollah's continued firing, deeper and deeper into Israel, Cole's words remain important and morally worthy.

Six Picks: August 2006

My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in All About Jazz-New York, August 2006:

Chris Byars Octet, Night Owls (Smalls Records)

Bob Gallo, Wake-Up Call (self-released)

Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet, Way Out East (Songlines)

Houston Person with Bill Charlap, You Taught My Heart to Sing (HighNote)

Reuben Rogers, The Things I Am (Renwick Entertainment)

Helen Sung, Helenistique (FSNT)

Kurdistan makes The Daily Show

"Honey, grab the kids and pack up the Passat, we're going to Iraqi Kurdistan!"

That was Jon Stewart's sarcastic line on The Daily Show last night, after airing a clip from the Kurdistan Development Corporation's promo film, "The Other Iraq." Gordon at Harry's Place linked to the promo a few days ago.

Iraqi Kurdistan deserves lots of credit for its comparative stability, but Jon Stewart is right: One shouldn't idealize the place. There's pervasive official corruption and a growing discontent, particularly among the young, with the ruling KDP and PUK parties. Read my two-part report on the aftermath of the Halabja riot of March 16, 2006, here and here. For more, read the concluding post from my Iraqi Kurdistan travelogue.

P.S. -- As I've mentioned before, Turkey keeps threatening to invade Iraqi Kurdistan to drive out the PKK. Iran, which has been lobbing shells at alleged PKK positions in northern Iraq, has now indicated that it would support a Turkish invasion. (Hat tip: David Bloom)

A call for moderation

A letter appears in today's NY Times, calling for moderation, sanity and an end to the violence currently engulfing the Middle East. It is signed by Daniel Barenboim, Tony Kushner, Nadine Gordimer, Costa-Gavras, Lakhdar Brahimi and many more. I think it's a necessary statement -- in stark contrast to the weasely, irresponsible broadside from Chomsky and friends in yesterday's Guardian.

One of the signers of the NY Times letter is Harold Pinter. I'm surprised. Pinter is not known for anything resembling moderation. He lent his support to an odious campaign in support of Slobodan Milosevic. He signed on to a previous communication from Chomsky et al., the one that accused Israel of trying to "liquidate the Palestinian nation." But Pinter's name was conspicuously absent from yesterday's Guardian pronouncement. He signed the NY Times statement instead. I say this cautiously and provisionally, not knowing exactly what gives, but good for him.

MERIP corrects

In this post I noted that Lara Deeb's account of how the Israel/Lebanon conflict started was simply inaccurate. A reader has pointed out the following correction issued by MERIP:

CORRECTION: Due to an editor's error, the initial version of this article misleadingly implied that Hizballah did not fire any rockets at Israel in July 2006 prior to the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. In fact, there was a rocket attack in the Galilee on the morning of July 12, prior to Hizballah's raid on the army convoy and the current Israeli military campaign. We regret the error.

Music amid the bombs

A correspondent just forwarded me this:

During an Israeli bombing raid on Beirut, a Lebanese trumpeter grabbed his instrument and pressed record. From his apartment, 2 miles from a target site, Mazen Kerbaj could hear and see bombs exploding in the distance. Mazen afraid for his life was inspired to make a statement using the explosion of the bombs and destruction of his neighborhood as a sonic back drop for a sound piece. Using extended techniques on the trumpet he improvised over the sound of the city being attacked. The piece is entitled "Starry Night."

More here.

A world gone mad

There have been incidents of anti-Jewish vandalism in Rome, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Vandals painted the word "Hizbollah" in large letters outside the gate of Glasgow's Garnethill Synagogue. The Holocaust memorial in Brussels has been defaced with condoms and excrement. See Norm for more; watch the Engage weblog for updates.

Andrew O'Hagan's Daily Telegraph editorial on the Mel Gibson scandal makes for timely reading. Note that O'Hagan doesn't mention Gibson's "Passion" film at all. His goal is transparent, and it is not, as he states, "to peel back the layers" of the Gibson story. It is to air his own beef with the Jews. "Jews, and by extension Israelis, are un-insultable in ethnic terms, though everybody else is," O'Hagan complains, as the vandals shake their spray-paint. "I know it's hard to tell a people who saw six million of their number murdered to turn the other cheek," O'Hagan continues, working up to veiled threats: "[B]ut turn the other cheek they must, unless they want to present themselves as the great unimpeachable race apart."

The usual hard-left eminences -- Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, others -- have returned with a statement to the Guardian condemning Israel's attack on Lebanon. They are not wrong to condemn it. But after citing Israeli violations of "existing international laws," they make no reference at all to Hezbollah's violations of the same laws. They do, however, refer to "Hizbullah's resistance," concluding: "We offer our solidarity and support to the victims of this brutality and to those who mount a resistance against it." This is what passes for a moral stance on the radical left: artfully worded support for an organization whose leader has made antisemitic statements worthy of Hitler. Chomsky and friends need to condemn the vandals who scrawled "Hizbollah" outside the Glasgow synagogue.

Meanwhile, the comedian and political provocateur Bill Maher has come out in support of Israel, claiming it is "forced to kill civilians in its own defense." Specious arguments like these are taking hold and they must be challenged. Adam Shatz did so in a very useful piece in the LA Times (hat tip: Marc Cooper).

[Update: More on Jew-hatred at WW4 Report.]

Castro

The timing of Jon Lee Anderson's article in last week's New Yorker was uncanny. The focus of Anderson's piece is the Castro regime's succession strategy, a campaign it calls the Battle of Ideas (hint: it's a battle against ideas). It will be interesting to see if the repression can be maintained without the Old Man. I support full democratic freedoms in Cuba but I oppose the conservative agenda of the Miami exiles.

Anderson reports as well on the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, co-chaired by Florida Senator Mel Martinez and, of all people, Colin Powell. The Bush administration also has a "Cuban transition coordinator" in Caleb McCarry, whom Anderson knowingly describes as "the Paul Bremer designate of Cuba." Cubans need not allow Raul Castro to shove more authoritarianism down their throats. But neither should the island be sold off to Starbucks and Wal-Mart.

Medved responds

The film critic, outspoken Jewish neoconservative and former Mel Gibson flack Michael Medved (was he paid too?) weighs in on Gibsongate. Get ready to cringe:

At a time when Israel finds herself isolated as never before, imagine the impact of Gibson announcing a supportive trip to Jerusalem in the company of selected Jewish leaders -- with a reverent, remorseful stop at Auschwitz on the way.

The man is a simpleton. It's sad.

[Update: Wait, maybe he's brilliant. "Selected Jewish leaders." Like Medved, perhaps? Free airfare, your face in front of the cameras? You can't beat it.]

Gibson paid Lapin

During the Mel Gibson "Passion" controversy, the right-wing rabbi and family values campaigner Daniel Lapin argued that Gibson "has made it 'cool' to be religious." Lapin has now released a statement. Andrew Sullivan draws our attention to a very important disclosure. Lapin says:

It is all too easy to join the circling hyenas and denounce [Mel] Gibson while he is down. On the other hand, though he has provided some financial support to Toward Tradition, I don't feel obliged to leap to his defense.

Gibson contributed money to Lapin's political organization. Lapin flacked for Mel's movie and had the temerity to pose as a moralist.

Pilger weighs in

In June I took a fond look back at veteran radical journalist John Pilger's "we cannot afford to be choosy" remark, in regard to the so-called Iraqi resistance. That was 2004, it is now 2006, Iraq is in civil war and Pilger is still spouting the same sentimental clichés, this time in a recent piece on the Guardian's Comment Is Free site. [Hat tip: Norm]

Pilger serenades Hezbollah as well, citing the group as a prime example of "humanity at its noblest." He also condemns Israel for "driving [Palestinians] to the despair of having to commit their own atrocities...." Having to commit their own atrocities. I'm all too familiar with the "who can blame them" analysis, but to see it stated this baldly and recklessly is somewhat rare. I thought I'd point it out.

Deeb's dishonesty

Lara Deeb, a cultural anthropologist at UC Irvine, has penned a primer on Hezbollah for the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). She complains of misleading reports about Hezbollah in the mainstream media. But her own analysis, which is quite detailed, makes no mention whatsoever of Hezbollah's judeophobic worldview or the antisemitic statements of senior Hezbollah leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah. "Nasrallah is widely viewed in Lebanon as a leader who 'tells it like it is' -- even by those who disagree with the party's ideology and actions," Deeb writes. Maybe so, but Deeb does not bother to state, much less evaluate, what it is that Nasrallah says.

The New Yorker has made available a two-part series from 2002 by Jeffrey Goldberg. In the first part, Goldberg speaks with Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, author of the book Hezbollah: Politics & Religion. A Shia scholar, Saad-Ghorayeb is severely critical of Israel, even calling it "a colonialist state." But she is also quite frank about Hezbollah ideology. "There is a real antipathy to Jews as Jews," she says, citing the following line from a Nasrallah speech: "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli." That right-wingers are quoting this to justify Israel's current assault on Lebanon does not give Deeb license to ignore it. (For more on Nasrallah's Jew-hatred see David Aaronovitch's piece in the London Times.)

Deeb goes on to rewrite the history of how the current conflict started:

The Hizballah rocket attacks of July 2006, which commenced after Israeli bombardment of Lebanon had begun, have thus far killed 19 civilians and damaged numerous buildings -- nothing like the devastation and death wrought by Israeli aircraft in Lebanon.

Hezbollah's rocket attacks did not commence after Israeli bombardment had begun. Hezbollah staged a diversion with rocket attacks in the north, then it abducted the Israel soldiers.

[Update 8.4.06 -- MERIP has issued a correction on this point.]

Deeb continues:

[Hezbollah] stated that they had captured the [Israeli] soldiers for use as bargaining chips in indirect negotations for the release of the three Lebanese detained without due process and in defiance of the Supreme Court of Israel. As noted, there is precedent for such negotiations.

And as not noted, the capture of soldiers for use as bargaining chips is hostage-taking, a direct and unambiguous violation of the rules of war according to Human Rights Watch. Israel's administrative detention policies are indeed unjust, but if Deeb can work in verbiage about that, at least she can clarify how international law applies to Hezbollah on this question, rather than avoiding the question altogether. (Deeb goes on to cite Human Rights Watch in regard to Israel's use of cluster munitions.)

I could continue. Deeb does convey some anthropological insight, as well as information about the plight of civilians in Lebanon, but it's in the context of a political apologia for Hezbollah. It's a misleading piece of work at best.

There is a need, all the same, for dispassionate study of Hezbollah, given the Bush administration's talk of Middle East "birth pangs" and new paradigms and such. (It's astonishing how this president and his flunkies continue to preach optimism.) Tonight on PBS Shimon Peres warned an entirely compliant Margaret Warner of Hezbollah's attempt to "de-Lebanize" Lebanon and Iran's attempt to make the Arab world Persian. Broader geopolitical issues matter, but these lurid scenarios are being used to deflect questioning of Israel's conduct, which we will see continue for days if not weeks.

Mel Gibson: "How'd that happen?"

Editor, political commentator and sex advice columnist Dan Savage loves to take apart what he calls the HTH defense: "How'd that happen?" As in, "I wound up in bed with my wife's best friend, how'd that happen?" Savage always retorts: It happened because you wanted it to happen and you allowed it to happen, so stop pretending otherwise.

Mel Gibson is now essentially raising the HTH defense in his second attempted apology for his antisemitic outburst. From the NY Times: "Gibson said he's 'in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display'..."

"Where those vicious words came from"? They came from his mind and then his mouth. Human beings are mysterious, but they're not that mysterious.

[Note: Andrew Sullivan hangs the Jewish and Christian theocons with their own words here, here, here and here.]