Kat's Korner: The death of Ani DiFranco?
: Back before Ani DiFranco released Reprieve, I was excited, I was counting down the weeks. Then the CD came out and I thought I had a review for it. I made notes on various scraps of paper and was all set to assemble it into one review.
I never did.
That's not due to the fact that I'm in Ireland dealing with a dying family member.
That's due to the news by way of Toni.
I practically grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from my front door to the living room to listen to Reprieve shortly after it came out. We all love Ani but Toni's probably been her biggest and longest fan of my small circle of friends.
I was full of "Isn't it great" and "Isn't it wonderful" talk and basically stepping on every word Toni started to say. Finally, after I shoved her on the sofa and went to the stereo, it hit me that Toni wasn't excited.
I made all the pleasantries I normally would have greeted her with but now I was listening for any indication of something seriously wrong.
No indications were given and no words of distress were spoken.
Assuming it was the heat, this was still summer and these were furnace days, I ran to the kitchen for the pitcher of margaritas I'd made earlier and came back with salted glasses. Toni's face lit up like Maggie's.
Since she's not quite the booze hound Maggie is, I assumed it was the weather, poured her a glass and headed towards the stereo.
"Do we have to listen?"
Okay, now I was seriously disturbed.
This is the woman who drags me to Ani concerts. This is the woman who argued for fifteen minutes with a clerk at Tower over a free poster that was supposed to come with purchase of Evolve. (She got the Ani poster but only after she'd created such a scene that the manager had to intervene.
) This is the woman who begged me to help her create an Ani T-shirt in 1994 because she didn't think any of the ones available (on either market) did Ani justice. What the hell was going on?
Hadn't I heard, Toni wondered, Ani was pregnant.
Oh.
I put on the Who's Tommy and turned the lights down. We listened in silence and didn't begin speaking until the next CD, around the time Janis was singing "Call On Me.
"
See, the thing is, women have to fight for any kind of artistic credibility. And, for women who've listened to music for any length of time, pregnancy doesn't mean "joy." It usually means soggy.
You start getting 'lullaby' CDs that the artists wouldn't normally put out until after the chart making days were over. Or you get these audio equivalents of "destiny." You get a whole lot of crap, you just don't get any art.
I was never a huge fan of Sarah McLachlan. But she was getting better with each album and, by the time of Surfacing, I was actually starting to enjoy her arc of growth. Then came the news that she was pregnant.
I knew the next album would be a retreat. And it was, despite being called World On Fire.
Shawn Colvin's often used these days as an example by some of how women can't really work.
The argument goes, it's not 'natural' for women, they have to really work at it. (Well the last few few Bob Dylan albums have felt phoned in -- maybe everyone needs to work a little harder?) They toss out Shawn Colvin and the soggy mush she released post-pregnancy and the overly lit commercials she did.
And every woman suffers from that 'logic.'
'Logic' because Shawn Colvin wasn't a rocker before she got pregnant. She was as soggy as she is today long before she had her first bout of morning sickness.
But the 'logic' dominates and there are plenty of examples to back it up.
The woman who've left a big impact tend to be childless or else they adopted a child (or gave one up for adoption). That includes Janis who died early.
It includes Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Ann Wilson, and not many others.
Laura Nyro is an artist I love but when she emerged post-pregnancy, the art lost its urgency. Some argue Cass Elliot, whom I love, went into schmaltz after her pregnancy.
There are too many arguments to be made to put it down just as 'getting older.' Even Chrissie Hynde who can usually be counted on to kick out the jams when everyone around her is brewing tea and reaching for a caftan began making drippy statements about women's 'nature' as she began having children.
Toni and I started talking about what women we could think of who didn't go into retreat at the first sign of pregnancy?
We could name three: , Aretha Franklin and . We were depressed and you might be able to name more. I actually hope you can.
Lady Soul was always Lady Soul. She might get the worst producer in the world and, goodness knows, she's had some of them. But her work that goes soggy can be traced to that.
Etta James? The original 'bad girl' -- the archetype before the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las ever harmonized on their first note. Carly?
That keen eye for observation didn't switch to soft focus as a result of Sally and Ben.
Think Toni and I were making too much of it? Did you ever listen to Patti Smith's Dream of Life?
That the album which provided one of her best songs ("People Have The Power") could be surrounded with so much corn was heart breaking. Or take the strange career of Pat Benetar who came out belting hard rocking songs in her caberet voice, traded in the tights for shoulder pads and then seemed to turn the whole career over to her husband and lose every fan who'd ever screamed along to "Treat Me Right" with the acoustic drip that was Tropico. The woman who once snarled, "You Better Run" has spent the rest of her career trying to reclaim her fans, often via the blues, but traveling the road with some sort of Cowsills act.
Benatar, the woman who won four consecutives Grammys in the women rock vocals category (all before she gave birth and none since), also provided MTV with the second video they ever played. Not even the blues could allow her to, as the Jefferson Starship once sang, "Find Your Way Back" to her fans.
The two Pats offer an interesting comparison.
One was an artistic heavy hitter (Smith), the other a chart topper. Both rocked. Both went soft.
A little over a decade ago, we got another 'year of the women' in rock. The poster girl was Liz Phair. Exile in Guyville was a smart album full of angry thoughts and angry music.
It rocked. She had a highly limited vocal range but she got crowned by most as the 'rocker.' Then came the days of Mommy-dom.
And her career's never been the same. While her self-titled CD was so idiotic and so art-free, it made more than a few fans wish for the days of Whip Smart, the truth is that Liz Phair was already on the road to soggy.
The reality of pregnancy for many rocking women (I've gone with 'big' names because smaller artists, of any gender, have enough problems trying to break through) is not that different from the average women.
It's late nights in the rocking chair, it's blurry mornings where you sit at the kitchen table watching the high chair. It's a lot of yawning, it's a lot adjustment to a new schedule. And, reality, it's still an enormous amount of work that falls mainly on women.
To be a woman in rock is to invert, subvert or spoof the stereotype and possibly there's no energy left for that in the post-birth days? Now an artist could explore these moments, and Toni and I give Carly credit for doing so. But most ignore reality.
It's as though when the creative urge strikes them, they're going for a Calgon-take-me-away feel.
And it's drippy and it's sad and it hurts all women. So, for most women I know, the early days of being interested in sharing the news that ___ is pregnant quickly turns into an avoid the topic all together mood.
Toni was tying it into an episode of Sex in the City which I never saw but apparently Sarah Jessica Parker and company go to a party thrown by a woman who's become a mother and it becomes a nightmare. (Sarah Jess' Carrie even loses her beloved shoes. Clearly a tragedy akin to Dorothy losing her red ruby slippers.
) Even without having seen the episode, I could nod along to Toni's recap of retreat portrayed.
So what does the future hold for Ani DiFranco? The self-described "punk" (she didn't want to be called folk) has always rejected most labels.
She's been lesbian, she's been bi-sexual, she's been married to a man, she's spoken of, and sang of, the 'girl police' who want her to be one thing when she wants to be another.
Long before the first wave of concern over the career from dedicated fans, Ani had declared, "I am no poster girl with a poster" ("32 Flavors"). So despite the talent that practically screams for you to say, "Okay, with Ani, with Ani there will be a difference!
"; you find yourself quickly realizing that asking her to be a standard-bearer is asking for disappointment and all but inviting her to run the other way.
Now Patti Smith, unlike Pat Benatar, bounded back in the 90s and has stayed strong. Dream of Life sounds, now, like something she just had to get out of her system.
Ani shares more similarities to Patti than to Pat so there may be reason to hope. But, to be honest, for too many women who've seen SoggyStock play out (the ever evolving 'happening' that's outlived Woodstock and any other 'event' in the rock era), there's not much reason to hope.
Add in that Ani's had problems in the last few years (which led to a tour cancellation) that interfered with her guitar playing and the 'news' is enough to depress the hell out of you.
You might, as Toni and I did, try to find comfort in the fact that, if the sog-fest is temporary, the artist usually rebounds while, on the male end, they often seemed trapped in a cartoon version of themselves.
But that doesn't change the fact that the 'news' depresses us. We're fans of the music, not the artist.
If we were fans of the personality, we could probably be as exicted for Ani as anyone who spent the summer breathless over Angelina and Brad's offsprings or Tom and Katie's.
A pitcher and a half of margaritas later, we were ready to listen. "Half-Assed" is probably the best track on the CD.
But what we noticed was that this is Ani's album. She's had albums that worked before from start to finish as something more than a collection of songs. Obviously the live albums but the studio ones too (Not A Pretty Face, Little Plastic Castle, Evolve, Educated Guess).
But on this one, it's not just the songs that add together for a total portrait, it's the musical accents. I honestly had missed that until C.I.
pointed them out.
Reprieve is a CD for the big speakers, no question. But it's also one that you really should put on the head phones for at least once.
You'll discover so much more to it if you do. In terms of the production, it's a very textured work. Which is interesting considering that last time around, Ani had surrendered production duties to Joe Henry (Knuckle Down, an album that still hasn't spoken to me).
The textures are so wonderful (again, use headphones -- birds, traffic and more) that if Ani's going out, she's going out with a blaze.
"Hypnotized" opens the album softly and it may rank with "Both Hands" for Ani's most beautiful of her gentle songs. "So that's how you found me/ Rain falling around me .
. . And you were no picnic/ And you were no prize/ But you had enough pathos/ To keep me hypnotized.
" On the second track, "Subconscious," the key line is "I know where I'm going/ And it aint' where I've been." That really sums up the album. Reprieve is looking at the world and refusing to take part in the uglier parts.
The uglier parts are summed up best in "Millennium Theater:"
While out in TV nation
Under darkening skies
The resistance is just waiting
To be organized.
That's the album. She's looking at where the world is going and where it's been.
Of the illustration on the cover, Ani writes in the liner notes: "the cover tree was inspired by a photgraph taken in nagasaki, japan on august 10, 1945 by yosuke yamahata, just hours after the explosion of the atomic bomb." The tree on the cover is half-destroyed, half-alive. That too goes to what she's commenting on this time around.
It's a powerful album.
Still, it's hard not to hear "Millennium Theater" now (post 'news') and not worry, or at least wonder, where the 'news' will take Ani next? The fear is soggy in a New Morning retreat.
I hope that's not the case but most women into music can tell you they've pinned their hopes on a person before, "She'll be the one! She is the one!" The comedown is never pretty.
While back, around Ray of Light, I can remember some of my friends talking up Madonna as the "one." She was more marketeer than muscian. But she'd had a run on the charts like no one since Olivia Newton-John.
So, on the basis of that, there was some excitement even though she was doing the faux British accent, even though she was aspiring for 'respectable.' Today, she seems genuinely puzzled that her stage shows, where the most creativity has always gone, are seen as controversial in a manner that doesn't excite media debate but just brings condemnations. When you go for 'respectable,' maybe you bring that criticism on yourself?
It's one thing to court controversy and try for 'edgy' when you're all but passing out snapshots of your vagina, it's quite another when you're reinvented yourself for the last mile.
Ani's no Madonna. There's never been a team of writers or musicians needed for her to produce an album.
All Ani's learned, all she's observed, come together on this album. Is Reprieve the swan song?
On 1974's Hotcakes, Carly Simon observed the following in "Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby:"
Platform shoes on table tops
I think I'm going to have a baby
Opinons flying right and left
I think I'm going to tell them maybe
They're puttin' out to many photographs records
Think I'm gonna have a baby, a baby .
. .
I'm sure there are many "opinions flying right and left" with regards to Ani's 'news.
' And for her, it may be all annoying. (If so, don't follow your press.) But it is a real very concern.
Janis Joplin was blazing a trail of exploration and, once she died, she became a cautionary note. The 'boys' can be wild and never suffer the 'afterschool special' portrayals (Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, . .
.). The reality is that women are the first overlooked in the histories.
That's still true. They'll do their 'exception' and note a Joni Mitchell but, for instance, having just read a 'history of US rock' here in Ireland which lists only one female (Joni) but goes on and on about Jan Dean, the Rascals, the Bee Gees, the Blues Magoos, and just about every other name of someone with a penis attached to the body, things haven't changed that much. In the late eighties, pop stations in the United States, were going out of their way to attempt to figure out how to play the hits but avoid playing a woman after another.
The same 'concern,' then or now, has never been applied to male artists.
So there's a lot that women are up against. When someone manages to carve out their own space, that's cause for celebration.
Maybe in forty years, there won't be a need for women to respond to the news that a favorite female artist is pregnant with fears? But that's reality as well.
Of the big name female artists who 'crossed over' (even temporarily) into the 'boys' club' (which is what it is, it's not 'the club,' it's the 'boys' club' and a lot of men in the print set work harder than Spanky of The Little Rascals to keep it that way), the only one to give birth and not cause embarrassment is Carly Simon.
She did it by exploring life, what she was doing before. Maybe Ani will follow that path?
Time will tell.
After a couple of hours discussing the topic, Toni and I were able to think of one more woman of 'rock' whose work didn't go soggy as a result of motherhood: . So we were left with four.
Right now, we have Reprieve and if you haven't checked it out yet, make a point to.
Forget the 'news,' just blast "Half-Assed" out your speakers:
You start trippin
And I start slippin away
I was taught to zip it
If I got nothing nice to say
And down in the Texas of my heart
Driving a really big truck
Headed down a dirt road . . .
NYT: "Report Says Iraq Contractor is Hiding Data from U.S.
" (Glanz Norris)
"
They don't do that with all documents. They will release some information to the Pentagon but even with that information they note that it can't be shared with other government agencies or Congress. It's abuse of "propietary information" which allows KRB to refuse stating something as simple as how many US troops they are feeding.
Burns offeres " " which is dead on delivery. He focuses on puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Mailki, and his "outburst" last week (Wednesday's press conference) where he rejected notions of timetables and that he'd been involved in planning the raid on the Sadr City of Baghdad. al-Maliki and Zalmay Khalilzad (US ambassador to Iraq) issued a joint statement.
The implication is that things are better or at least the puppet knows who pulls the strings. That's already being rejected.
S. policy during a private meeting with the U.S.
ambassador Friday, pointing to American failure to either reduce violence or give his government authority over security matters.
S. Embassy said they had agreed to unspecified "timelines" to make tough political and security decisions on the country's future.
S. tone toward the Iraqi government and warned U.S.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to respect Iraq's sovereignty, according to two of the prime minister's advisers.
"
KIM LANDERS: Those comments come just hours after the US infuriated the Iraqi Prime Minister by leading a raid on a Shi'ite militia stronghold in Baghdad without approval from their ally.
.
With the hopes that it will appear. There's yet another Blogger/Blogspot problem:
ConnectException: Connection refusedblog
There were two. Three for the day counting the snapshot. If you can't view them, go to the mirror site where they are all up.
) Right now, we're debating whether there will be a new edition of this weekend? No one wants to spend hours working on a new edition only to have nothing show up at the site.
If the problem's not fixed by Sunday, remember that we do have a mirror site and access that.
| Saturday As Bush builds a 700-mile wall on the Mexican border, we ask, 'Is there a better monument to the we-don't-see, we-don't-care policies of this White House and Republican Congress? We tear down the walls, starting with two plaintiffs in the historic New Jersey lawsuit that affirmed the rights of same-sex couples, CINDY MENEGHIN and MAUREEN KILLIAN. Author and Nation writer JONATHAN SCHELL on why our constitutional government itself is at stake in the mid-term elections. And actor and playwright WALLACE SHAWN, who says at the crux is the relationship between rich and poor. Our media roundtable includes ODETTE ALCAZAREN-KEELEY, chief of staff of New America Media and host of "Headlines from the Ethnic Media" on 91. 7 FM-KALW in San Francisco, and author and ex-New York Times Middle Eastern bureau chief CHRIS HEDGES. Also with us, progressives heading to Congress: JOHN HALL from New York's 19th district and Californian FRANCINE BUSBY, who is poised to take the CA-50th seat that Republicans stole from her in a special election in June. Next weekend, an update on South Dakota's abortion wars with The Nation's Jennifer Baumgardner and others, the latest election protection efforts, and more. |
A U.S.
army war deserter who fled his unit in Iraq in 2005 and moved to British Columbia will return to the United States tomorrow and turn himself into the military.
Kyle Snyder, 23, said he decided to cross the border because of the leniency granted to fellow U.S.
deserter Darrell Anderson, who was given a less than honourable discharge earlier this month.
Anderson, 24, also served in Iraq and was living in Toronto before he turned himself into the military. Anderson and Snyder met each other while in Canada awaiting refugee board hearings.
The above, noted by Vic, is from Mike Howell's " " (Toronto Star). Vic noted that Howell has covered Synder and asked that we pair the above with an editorial. Synder's original announced plan was to return to the US next week (first of the month).
Howell is reporting the schedule for return has been pushed up. Below is The Third Estate Sunday Review's " " (and the illustration of Snyder is from that as well):
"I saw my friend completely change into this demon. I saw his soul die right in front of me.
" That's how Kyle Snyder watching his friend shoot an Iraqi who was raking rocks. Snyder's time in Iraq was supposed to be spent rebuilding, as he has said in many forums, that's what he signed up for. That wasn't what he saw.
There was no reconstruction going on. There were prostitutes being brought to the base, there was . Possibly that's how the US administration intends to provide opportunities for work to the women of Iraq who have lost most, if not all rights, since the illegal war began?
What does the US administration and the US military intend for young Americans? That's a key question because Kyle Snyder, like many others, signed up with the promise of education and health benefits. As he explains in Michelle Mason's documentary Breaking Ranks, the recruiters were after him.
Even attending the five-foot four inches Synder's high school graduation: "I had just recieved my high school diploma. I get off of the stage and here's another recruiter right outside the door -- waiting for me. I look back at it now and everything that I'm going through, everything that I've worked through I can retrace down to that moment that I signed that f**king contract.
"
After he joined, his fiancee became pregnant while he was on leave. He had been given lots of lofty promises about the health care she'd recieve. That never happened.
The baby was never born. Synder blames the military for not providing health care. As , "The military took my child.
"The military didn't do much. They didn't investigate the incident where the Iraqi raking rocks was shot (and lost a leg) which sent a message that , "Basically, what my commanding officers were telling me was I could get angry with anyone in Iraq and, because it was war, it didn't matter what happened. That was not the right answer.
" This was demonstrated in another incident, recalled in Mason's Breaking the Ranks, where he led a blindfolded Iraqi "into the building into city hall and within five minutes of him being in city hall I heard a BANG."
"I wanted to start a family, I wanted to go to college," speaking to the Veterans for Peace who'd come to the Canadian border. "Basically, the same things I want to do now.
"
It's a pretty simple dream, nothing big, nothing grandiose -- what many Americans would see as as a basic life, not even "the American dream." Synder's dreams of a simple life were in contrast to his own childhood, , "I wasn't a good kid. I didn’t have a good background.
I was in foster homes from thirteen to seventeen, then when I was seventeen, I went through a government program called Job Corps. So, from thirteen all the way up, I didn't have parental figures in my life really. My parents divorced; my father was really abusive towards my mother and he was abusive toward me.
I've still got scars on my back. I was put in Social Services when I was thirteen. I was an easy target for recruiters, plain and simple.
"
Which is the story for too many young Americans and those gas bags who want to scream "Volunteer military! Volunteer military!" might do well to look at the economic realities for so many who sign up -- what is "choice," what is "volunteer," when, as Jessica Lynch and many others have demonstrated, there are no other choices?
and member of Doris Kent is one of many mothers who can share the sad reality of this war. Her son, . As , his main reason for enlisting was to pay for college, ideally to USC or UCLA in California.
As , "When he was in Iraq he gathered about 75 books, so somebody named him 'the librian'." [ is a service that will allow you to select books and to avoid the trip to the post office to mail them.] There is something very sad when the basic, not "the American dream," is untainable for so many in this country.
As , "His junior year, a recruiter got hold of him, and he said, 'Mom, I'm going to earn my own college money.' I said, 'No. I'm going to pay for it.
' We argued about it for three months." Earning college money becomes even harder when the current administration has cutting funding to student loans and grants. It's a rush to the economic bottom for the country and one of the few benefitting are military recruiters who prey on the innocent and promise things that they know will never have to be delivered.
As Eileen Brennan's character tells Goldie Hawn's Judy Benjamin in the film Private Benjamin, "I don't care. I don't care what your lousy recruiter told you." So it is, and so it always has been.
But each generation of Americans faces fewer and fewer opportunites and real wages have remained, at best, stagnant for the last thirty years. In such a reality, in a nation that doesn't manufacture but does do 'service,' the term 'volunteer' becomes another useless, prettied-up term like 'termination' (for firing) and 'downsizing' (for lay offs).
Bully Boy truly is "the CEO" leader.
Just like other CEOs, he is awarded while everyone else gets screwed. While the Wal-Mart model as a 'model for peace,' the reality is far different. In Friday's New York Times, the huge rewards for the top and the neglect of the middle and bottom: "In the 1960's and 1970's, C.
E.O.'s of the largest firms were paid, on average, about 40 times as much as the average worker.
. . .
In the 1990's, executive stock options proliferated -- and executive pay soared, rising to 367 times the average worker's pay by the early years of this decade."
As documents in the groundbreaking book No Logo, the 'service economy' is built upon high turnover, little pay and transition but not promotion. True in the country's production is outsourced, true in the countries that are outsourcing.
In such an economy, words like 'choice' and 'volunteer' have little meaning but they do provide cover as they sugar coat reality.
So with "choice" meaningless, the recruiters prey. In April 2005, Kyle Snyder followed the examples of Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey and who knows how many others and self-checked out.
In Canada, he applied for asylum. No war resister has been granted asylum during the Iraq war (a direct contrast to the Vietnam era). Hinzman and Hughey's appeals are supposed to result in a verdict any day now.
Like before him, Kyle Snyder has made the choice to return to the US. Staying is a valid choice and a brave one. It means knowing you may never be able to return to the United States.
Even attending a funeral leaves you open to arrest. Snyder's plans currently are to return in November. All summer long the resistance went public and it should have been the story of the summer.
You should have read articles, heard and seen reports. That didn't happen. Maybe that's changed.
Maybe now the media can grasp that this is a movement and it does deserve coverage. (And, sadly, when we say "the media," we mean independent media. Even The New York Times covered Ricky Clousing's court-martial and sentencing -- click for Laurie Goodstein's article.
)
During the Vietnam era, these actions got more attention and more coverage from the mainstream than they have been getting from independent media. (For a chronicle of the resistance during Vietnam, check out the documentary ) Last Thursday, The Nation posted Staughton Lynd's " " (The Nation) and We'd like to see those two actions as encouraging signs but we're aware that that's just two independent media outlets. When no one else seemed interested, Amy Goodman established that she would try to interview each war resister who went public.
(Mark Wilkerson hasn't been interviewed yet.) That was great for 2003, 2004, 2005 and probably early 2006. But this is no longer a case of one person stepping up and then, awhile later, another.
This is becoming a movement. And it needs to be covered like one.
Goodman and The Nation, by highlighting Lynd, demonstrated that they grasp it is a movement so we'll slap gold stars on both of them for last week.
But the coverage needs to be there and it needs to be coming from more than just two outlets. Translation, if you've got time for a write up of a sit down with the Dalai Lamah, you've got time to do a write up on war resisters.
Unless you just don't care and if that's the case, you need to be upfront about it.
Not hiding behind, "I had to skim four books for a review this week!" If you just don't care, then absolutely, the coverage you provided this summer cuts it.
But some people don't have that luxury.
For many who are standing up, for many who are gone, for family and friends of all, the war has come home. Maybe not to your gated communities. But it has come home.
On Friday, Max Bootsy's inane comment:
". . .
the impact here is more isolated because so many soldiers come from military communities which are clustered in a handful of states." Oh really?
?
Alabama: 47; Alaska: 10; Arizona: 66; Arkansas: 35; California: 284; Colorado: 34; Connecticut: 22; Delaware: 12; Florida: 117; Georgia: 83; Hawaii: 13; Idaho: 16; Illinois: 107; Indiana: 56; Iowa: 33; Kansas: 31; Kentucky: 46; Louisiana: 63; Maine: 12; Maryland: 52; Massachusetts: 45; Michigan: 97; Minnesota: 39; Mississippi: 35; Missouri: 48; Montana: 12; Nebraska: 29; Nevada: 24; New Hampshire: 14; New Jersey: 47; New Mexico: 21; New York: 132; North Carolina: 63; North Dakota: 13; Ohio: 125; Oklahoma: 47; Oregon: 46; Pennsylvania: 135; Rhode Island: 10; South Carolina: 39; South Dakota: 17; Tennessee: 58; Texas: 245; Utah: 14; Vermont: 18; Virginia: 83; Washington: 53; West Virginia: 18; Wisconsin: 60; Wyoming: 7.
Whether the number is 7 (Wyoming) or 284 (California), it's not isolated to a 'few' states. And those are just the fatality numbers.
The war has come home.
Speaking in August, Kyle Snyder noted, "I am a 22 year-old combat veteran from the Iraq war." He is one of many who have been touched by the war and he's speaking out.
His story matters, his stand matters.
He is not alone and shouldn't be covered as if he is or given the impression that he is. He's part of a movement that includes Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Aidan Delgado, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Patrick Hart, Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Kevin Benderman, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Robin Long, Ryan Johnson, Clifford Cornell, Katherine Jashinski, Agustin Aguayo, and many more.
For information on war resisters in Canada, is the site. And more information on war resisters who have gone public can be found at . The latter of which recently noted of Ricky Clousing:
Ricky is currently being held in a military brig at Camp LeJune in North Carolina and it is urgent that he receive your words of encouragement and support!
The e-mail address for this site is .
Note: Post corrected: "Michelle Mason," not "Melanie Mason."
NYT: "42 Iraqis Die as Insurgents Attack Police Near Baquba" (Richard A. Oppel Jr Kirk Semple) Police officers acting on a tip about several kidnapped colleagues rode into deadly insurgent ambushes near here on Thursday, resulting in two intense battles that left at least 42 people dead, including 24 police officers, officials said.
Five American service members were killed Wednesday in Anbar Province, the military command reported Thursday, raising the American death toll in October to at least 96, one of the worst monthly tolls of the war.
The insurgent ambushes came as dozens of police officers converged on an area between Baquba and Baghdad, near a town called Khan Bani Saad. Word had come down late on Wednesday from the Interior Ministry that several Iraqi policemen who had been kidnapped days earlier near Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, were being held south of there, and province officials ordered a raid. But as the police officers rode out, what they found was a large and well-armed Sunni insurgent force.
A spokesman for the joint Iraqi-American command center in Baquba described the clashes as "very violent, brutal and heavy."
The above is from Richard A. Oppel Jr.
and Kirk Semple's " " in this morning's New York Times. Bothered by that news? Well, 'just back off!
' Martha notes Jonathan Weisman and Ann Scott Tyson's " " (Washington Post):
With his chorus of critics expanding deeper into Republican ranks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told detractors yesterday to pull back as U.S.
and Iraqi officials grapple with the uncertainties of laying out Iraq's course.
"You ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult," Rumsfeld said, appearing unusually combative as he sparred with reporters at the Pentagon. "Honorable people are working on these things together," he said, adding emphatically that "no daylight" exists between the U.
S. and Iraqi sides.
Rumsfeld's statements are as laughable as Patricia Heaton's looks (pre and post surgery).
That is a "known." Another "known" is that Rumsfeld's done a lousy job.
Charlie notes Jack Douglas Jr.
's " " (McClatchy Newspapers):
TEXARKANA, Texas -- As bullet-riddled, bomb-scarred fighting vehicles are slowly towed into the production lines of the Red River Army Depot in northeast Texas, 57-year-old Elnora Harris often wonders about the young soldiers who have been in them, traveling in harm's way through the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is a prevailing thought that hangs over the 3,100 civilian employees at this bustling U.S.
Army depot, 15 miles west of Texarkana, which came close to being closed last year until the government decided it was needed. The depot rebuilds thousands of disabled war machines -- some ripped to shreds by enemy fire -- that American troops depend on for safe travel in battle zones.
In a business made brisk by world conflict, Red River officials say they do not have enough money or manpower to keep up with the incoming shipments of crippled combat vehicles.
Row after row of disabled Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, cargo trucks and ambulances line the back lots of the depot -- a graveyard of metal.
Between 6,200 and 7,000 battle-worn vehicles are parked on those lots, and officials say it would cost as much as $65,000 to fix each of the Humvees and $500,000 to $1 million to repair each Bradley. A new battle-worthy Humvee, decked out with high-tech communication gear and state-of the-art armor, costs the government about $190,000.
A big Bradley costs $2.2 million, Army officials said.
Even if they are not hit by a bomb or blasted by gunfire, Humvees sustain seven times the wear and tear during war as they do in peace time, making it all the more important that rebuilding them is done efficiently, a Texas congressman said.
The e-mail address for this site is .
Knickmeyer raised the issue (that Gen.
Casey ignored)
"General Casey has repeatedly said resolving the milita issue will take a military and political approach. But Prime Minister Maliki has made clear that he doesn't want any kind of U.S.military action against the militias. He said that specificially, and he's blocked you from entering Sadr City."
Ellen Knickmeyer (Washington Post) asking George Casey a question in Tuesday's press conference.
To alter Carly Simon's "The Right Thing To Do," Knickmeyer's no prophet, but she does know occupation ways. She's been covering it for some time. Why is that she appears to have known more than George Casey who is the military person in charge of the illegal war and occupation?
From Sabrina Tavernise's " " (New York Times):
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki put himself at odds on Wednesday with the American government that backs him, distancing himself from the American notion of a timetable for stabilizing Iraq and criticizing an American-backed raid on a Shiite militia enclave.
Speaking in Baghdad just hours before President Bush held a news conference in Washington, Mr. Maliki tailored his remarks to a domestic audience, reassuring the millions of Shiites who form his power base that he would not bend to pressure by the American government over how to conduct internal Iraqi affairs.
His comments stood in stark contrast to the message given Tuesday by the top two United States officials in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr.
and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who said the timetable for political measures had been accepted by the Iraqi government.
But, as noted in , al-Maliki said no such thing when he held his press conference yesterday.
Back to Tavernise:
Mr.
Maliki's stance differs sharply from views presented by American officials, who speak of Shiite death squads as an evil equal to that of the Sunni insurgents. But it fits snugly inside the circle of hardening Shiite sentiment that the American military, in keeping full control of security, has not given the Iraqi government full power to intervene when Sunni militias or insurgents carry out sectarian cleansing.
[Yesterday, .
The plan was to note that in yesterday's snapshot. There wasn't time. So it's noted today.
]
From the Los Angeles Times, we'll note Lousie Roug's " " and pay attention to the second paragraph:
U.S.-led forces battled gunmen in Sadr City during two rare forays into the vast Shiite Muslim slum Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and drawing a swift rebuke from Iraq's prime minister.
The American troops, who called in airstrikes as they came under attack, were searching for a kidnapped U.S. soldier and hunting for a Shiite death-squad leader, authorities said.
The U.S. military said in a statement that the action had been authorized by the Iraqi government.
But Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, quickly renounced the operation, telling reporters at a news conference that it was an example of a continuing lack of coordination between Iraqi and U.S.-led troops.
attracted all the creepy crawlies to the public account. One point that had drive-by visitors enraged were the following comments refuting the official explanation at the time:
Another key point is that the Iraqi military was on the ground and calling in air strikes which, on the face of it, seems unlikely. All the more so when the : "But Iraqi police said the US troops shot at them while they were trying to take people injured in the raid to hospital.
" From helicopters? Doubtful.
It was doubtful and it's now been backed off.
That the creepy crawlies couldn't grasp that yesterday goes to their own issues. The second point in the drive-by e-mails was, the press conference on Tuesday. The remarks noted were stated.
I'm looking for a transcript of that still (online). If I don't find one today, this evening, I'll type up the faxed copy I got on that. (Type up because I'm not marking out the number it came from and trusting that someone won't be able to figure out a way to remove that online.
)
As Gina long ago dubbed this site, it's a private conversation taking place in a public sphere. I'm not here to spoonfeed visitors, burp them or wipe their asses. The remarks quoted in yesterday's snapshot were said in the press conference.
That they shocked visitors so (and we'll end with the second most shocking to visitors) isn't really my concern.
Turning to members e-mails, Lloyd notes John Ward Anderson's " " (Washington Post):
Five U.S.
servicemen were killed in western Iraq on Wednesday, raising the October death toll to 96 and making it the fourth deadliest month for U.S. troops in the 3-1/2 year war, the U.
S. military reported Thursday.
A sailor and four Marines were killed Wednesday in enemy action in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, an area of Iraq that is a stronghold for the radical Sunni group Al Qaeda in Iraq, a military statement said.
It did not say whether they died in the same incident.
Al-Anbar province is by far the deadliest for U.S.
troops: about 1,017 U.S. servicemen and women have been killed there since the war began, compared to 733 in Baghdad and 281 in Salahuddin province north of the capital, according to iCasualties.
org, which tracks casualties in Iraq. So far in October, 35 U.S.
troops have been killed in al-Anbar, 42 in Baghdad and seven in Salahuddin, accounting for 88 percent of the U.S. fatalities, according to the Web site.
Noted in , from Tuesday's press conference:
Lara Logan: Lara Logan, CBS News. Ambassador Khalilzad, if I can ask you, please, has Muqtada al-Sadr actually agreed to any of the plans that you've outlined here? Has there been any direct contact between him and U.
S. representatives? Because him and all of his ministers who control key ministries, like the Ministry of Health, say that they refuse still to have any direct contact with the U.
S. And if that is the case, then how are we expected to believe that they will support this plan in any way? And to General Casey, can I ask you, please, can we have an honest assessment of the Iraqi security forces?
Because when we're on the ground with your commanders, they tell us that when they try and order up an operation and ask for the Iraqi battalion or the Iraqi brigade, they're lucky if they get 40, 50 percent of the guys who are actually there. They have soldiers and policemen who are coming in collecting their pay checks and not showing up. The special inspector general of Iraq says there is no mechanism in place, and hasn't been for three years, to determine what forces show up, what don't, what the levels of attrition are, who is actually operationally capable.
So the numbers really are a lie, and we want the truth, and your soldiers on the ground want the truth out there.
The e-mail address for this site is .
As , is up and running: "More than 100 U.S. service members have signed a rare appeal urging Congress to support the 'prompt withdrawal' of all American troops and bases from Iraq" and that the action's goal is to gather 2,000 signatures to the appeal before presenting it to Congress.
that the target date for delivery to Congress is MLK Day (Monday, January 15, 2007). [Readers of the New York Times who are wondering where this in their paper, it's right there on page A13, a whopping one paragraph -- from AP -- in National Briefing.]
S. troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.
S. military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day in January 2007. The wording of the Appeal for Redress is short and simple. It is patriotic and respectful in tone.
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.
S. troops to come home. If you agree with this message, .
The Appeal for Redress is sponsored by active duty service members based in the Norfolk area and by a sponsoring committee of veterans and military family members. The Sponsoring committee consists of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Military Families Speak Out. Members of the military have a legal right to communicate with their member of Congress.
To learn more about the rights and restrictions that apply to service members . to send the Appeal to your elected representatives.
But it's about to just burst out in huge waves." is the first commissioned US officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. His father, Bob Watada, is beginning his third speaking tour to raise awareness of his son's case [an Article 32 hearing recommended court-martial, no decision has yet been annouced].
This speaking tour will last from October 26 through November 17th. Below are dates through Sunday:
It is time for U.S. troops to come home.
"
Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq, according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.The report provided the first official estimate that, in some cases, more money was being spent on housing and feeding employees, completing paperwork and providing security than on actual construction.
Those overhead costs have ranged from under 20 percent to as much as 55 percent of the budgets, according to the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
On similar projects in the United States, those costs generally run to a few percent.
The highest proportion of overhead was incurred in oil-facility contracts won by KBR Inc., the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown Root, which has frequently been challenged by critics in Congress and elsewhere.
The above is from James Glanz' " " in this morning's New York Times. The above should come as no shock to anyone who's followed Glanz' reporting on this topic. If it comes as a surprise or if you're wanting more on this topic, Robert Greenwald's latest documentary, , explores the waste in detail (including vehicles trashed when the motor burns out because they didn't bother to worry about basic maintance and, hey, the government can buy another).
To repeat one passage from the article:
Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq, according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.
Past time for Congressional investigations. Turning to resistance within the military, Drew Brown's " " (McClatchy Newspapers via The Monterey Herald):
Liam Madden opposed the war in Iraq even before he deployed with his Marine unit in late 2004.
But he came home convinced more than ever that the war was wrong.
"The more informed I got, the more I opposed the war," said Madden, 22, a Marine Corps sergeant in Quantico, Va. "The more people who died there, the longer we stayed there, the more I opposed the war.
The more I know, the easier it is to support withdrawal."
Madden is one of about 118 members of the U.S.
military who plan to petition Congress asking that U.S. forces be withdrawn from Iraq and brought home, said attorney J.
E. McNeil. McNeil is advising the grassroots group of active-duty service members, who organized the petition drive through a .
In a rare display of public dissent, Madden and another serviceman plan to go public Wednesday with their disapproval. Members of the military are more limited than civilians are in how they can express dissent.
Although a number of troops, including at least one officer, have been brought up on charges for refusing to serve in Iraq, and dozens more have deserted, this is the first time that serving members of the U.
S. military have publicly petitioned Congress to end the war. The action comes less than two weeks before the Nov.
7 elections, in which the Iraq war is a major issue.
The article also quotes 's attorney Eric Seitz stating, "The kinds of resistance and opposition and outrage that military people are now beginning to express has been simmering for quite a while. But it's about to just burst out in huge waves.
" Seitz is right. And thus far it has been one of the most uncovered stories of the year. (Pass it on to Project Censored.
) Watada, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder and others are part of the story that appears to be catching many by surprise.
With more on this topic, Martha highlights Ann Scott Tyson's " " (Washington Post) and Martha's zooming in on one section:
Marine Corps Sgt. Liam Madden, 22, served in Iraq's restive Anbar province from September 2004 until February 2005 and found his opposition to the war intensified after he returned to the United States.
"I don't think any more Iraqis or Americans should die because of the U.S. occupation," he said, expressing disappointment that Iraqi elections in January 2005 did not lead to a decline in violence.
"I think some things are worth fighting for, I just don't feel Iraq is one of them," said Madden, of Bellows Falls, Vt. The Quantico-based Marine plans to leave the service to attend college in January.
Madden said he and Hutton met and learned of the vehicle for expressing their views to Congress when they attended a lecture at the YMCA in Norfolk by David Cortright, the author of "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War.
"
Why does coverage matter? The last paragraph above stresses the importance of getting the word out. Note it came peer-to-peer, not via the media.
captures the importance of this movement. From :
An Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq
Many active duty, reserve, and guard service members are concerned about the war in Iraq and support the withdrawal of U.S.
troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.S.
military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January 2007.
The wording of the Appeal for Redress is short and simple. It is patriotic and respectful in tone.
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq .
Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S.
troops to come home.
If you agree with this message, .
The Appeal for Redress is sponsored by active duty service members based in the Norfolk area and by a sponsoring committee of veterans and military family members.
The Sponsoring committee consists of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Military Families Speak Out.
Members of the military have a legal right to communicate with their member of Congress. To learn more about the rights and restrictions that apply to service members .
Attorneys and counselors experienced in military law are available to help service members who need assistance in countering any attempts to suppress this communication with members of Congress.
Several members of Congress have expressed interest in receiving the Appeal for Redress.
to send the Appeal to your elected representatives.
The e-mail address for this site is .
NYT: "General May Call for Increas in U.
S. Troop Levels in Baghdad" (John F. Burns)
The top American military commander in Iraq said today that he might call for an increase in American troop levels in Baghdad as part of efforts to recapture the capital from insurgents and death squads that have pushed killings in the city to some of the highest levels of the war.Gen. George W. Casey Jr.
declined to specify steps to be taken to adjust the Baghdad security plan, which the American command said last week had failed to achieve targets for lowering violence when 7,000 additional American troops, roughly double the number previously deployed here, were assigned to Baghdad in August. At that time, American commanders described the stepped-up bid to regain control of the capital as a critical moment in the war, one that would likely determine its outcome.
"We're not going to telegraph what we’re going to do to the enemy," General Casey said today.
Or tell the American people apparently. Just hint and hedge. The above is from John F.
Burns' " " (New York Times). To no one's surprise (but those building their homes on the sands of the 'generals' revolt') Casey's comments are no surprise. And the point of " " (The Third Estate Sunday Review -- and, as , it is "Quck take" -- the "i" is left out intentionally).
This was also one of the points made in her . And you honestly have to wonder did no one see Dr. Strangelove?
(Or get beyond the press spin on Wesley Clark?)
Lloyd and Martha both noted Ellen Knickmeyer's " " (Washington Post):
The top American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he may call for more troops to be sent to Baghdad, possibly by increasing the overall U.S.
presence in Iraq, as rising bloodshed pushes Iraqi and American deaths to some of their highest levels of the war.
The commander, Gen. George W.
Casey Jr., also said he now believed Iraqi forces would be ready to take over security responsibility from the Americans no sooner than late 2007 or early 2008. The announcement of a 12- to 18-month target again pushes back the withdrawal of the bulk of the 145,000 or so U.
S. troops in Iraq.
When Casey spins.
Dropping back to , on Casey's ever spinning time frame:
The problem for General Casey is that he has said all this before. In July 2005 he predicted major troop withdrawals by this summer, only to have to accept today that he had to reverse that trend when summer came because the Iraqis could not cope with the surge of sectarian violence in Baghdad. He even said today that he would ask for more troops if necessary.
Zach notes Brian Cloughley's " " (CounterPunch):
I was a soldier for 36 years.
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