Bush's game of Hide-the-Coffins / please, Sir, may we see what your wars cost? / Dover AFB & the flag-draped coffins (continued)

Abbas said...

seeing this occur in canada is so commonplace with coffins coming back from afghanistan on a near monthly basis that i never thought that such a ban was in place in the US. it makes more sense now why canadians are much more sensitive and think twice about sending troops abroad than the US do.

Monday, 06 April, 2009

==========================

hey hey abbas --

Try to get a mental image of me when I think about this business of forbidding the press from witnessing our neighbors' sons and daughters come home in coffins.

Maybe your image has me resembling Donald Duck going into one of his hissy-fits, but under the flying feathers, the anger and fury could not be more authentic.

It's one reason I ran this story straight, and didn't start with my usual lengthy Rant. Vleeptron is an Adult-Themed blog, but the words I would have used to describe this White House game of Hide-The-Coffins are Beyond Adult.

I was a newspaper journalist, and I'm a wartime Army vet. The Dover Blackout -- well, what else is it but

1. Kill our Soldiers

2. Don't Let the Citizens See our Dead Soldiers

At the top of the Dover post was a link to Russ Kick's Memory Hole website. Kick fought the Dover Blackout in the federal courts, charging that denying the American people the right to see military-taken photos of these ceremonies violated the Freedom of Information Act.

After years of litigation, one day, completely by surprise, he got a CD in the mail from the US Air Force: hundreds of photographs of the flag-draped coffins and the military rituals of their arrival. The Air Force continues to send Kick updated photographs of the ceremonies.

That's what you'll see if you click on his website.

The Pentagon knew he was eventually going to win his lawsuit, so they rolled over.

Even in Scoundrel Times, the USA has laws and an independent judiciary that demands their enforcement. Kick won the right to let Americans see the cost of their wars during the Bush 2 Administration.

Every war begins with a Big Parade and a Marching Band and thousands of waving flags. The soldiers marching off to war are in brand-new boots and uniforms, they're all young and fresh and clean and bright and handsome.

As Mamet's movie "Wag the Dog" put it: "It's a Pageant."

Flag-draped coffins coming home are the far end of every war. This is what our Rogue-in-Chief, our Scoundrel Commander, the Liar atop the Chain of Command, didn't want Americans to see. (He also never attended a single funeral of an American member of the military who was killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.)

My gratitude and admiration to Obama on this one war-related thing: He now permits Americans, through their agents in the free press, to see What We Have Done. What the coffins look like is no longer treated as Top Secret / Military Eyes Only, locked and hidden behind fences and armed guards.

My war sent back 58,000 flag-draped coffins and body bags. I knew some of them, they were my high school buddies, and guys I knew in the Army.

Canada, under the leadership of one of my great heroes, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, sat out the Vietnam War, and did not send Canadian military forces to assist the U.S. war effort. (Canada did send its military to the ferocious U.N. police action we call the Korean War today.)

Trudeau also used a loophole in the US-Canada extradition treaty to give sanctuary to Americans who fled to Canada to avoid being drafted/conscripted. Today -- except for some lingering funny accents -- they're Canadian citizens indistinguishable from your next-door neighbor.

All they had to do was flee the land of their birth.

I shouldn't have to remind any Canadian of this, but it takes Big Guts for a Canadian PM to give the finger to The Dangerous Giant Crazy Violent Rich Drunk south of the border.

Canada chose not to send troops to participate in the USA's whack, bogus invasion of Iraq. Canadian troops have been sent into harm's way in Afghanistan. As of today, here are the uniform fatalities:

............CANADA....USA
............=============
.......IRAQ..---.....4266
AFGHANISTAN .116......674
............=============.....====
.............116..+..4940..=..5056

(source: http://icasualties.org/ )

As sure as I know the Sun will rise tomorrow, I know some Canadian conservatives would have Canadians believe "116 isn't a lot, this isn't costing Canada much loss or trouble at all. Soldier on, lads!"

All through the ghastly Iraq War, U.S. conservatives -- the Fox-ic crowd -- have been saying, "This isn't like Vietnam at all. Look how few military deaths we've lost so far. This is a bargain. Surge on! We're winning! Victory's just around the corner!"

My least favorite bumper sticker about this issue:

FREEDOM ISN'T FREE

(i.e., it costs the young lives of our poor and disenfranchised neighbors. As the economy tanks, military recruitment -- the only guaranteed job for life, however short -- will reap the benefits.)

A very interesting family exercised their choice to allow the press to cover the return of Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers to Dover Air Force Base. The new policy gave them the right to exclude the press. They chose to bring their family member home in full view of their neighbors.

End American Combat Operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan Now

Stop the Wars

Bring our Women
and Men in Uniform
Home Safe Now

If Obama did this, I would hope Canada's leadership would do the same.

It is long past time to Get Real: Bullets, Bombs, White Phosphorous, Predator Drones, Up-Armored Humvees, Depleted Uranium Ordinance, Cruise Missiles, Torture Prisons, B-1 Bombers cannot make Asians behave the way proper citizens of Manitoba and Indiana wish they would behave. Decades ago the Soviet Union learned this. Now we're learning our lesson -- the lesson we were supposed to have remembered from Vietnam.

~ ~ ~

Folk Music Addendum

(the Peoples' History)

If you are addicted -- as you should be -- to the Civilized Marvel of CBC Radio, you may from time to time hear songs and interviews with the Canadian folksinger Jesse Winchester. His accent is a little odd; it's a Mississippi drawl. He has been in Canada, first as a conscription fugitive, eventually as a citizen of Canada, since 1967. On pain of arrest and criminal prosecution, he can never set foot in the United States again, he can never again visit the Mississippi of his birth.

(There being no draft in the USA anymore, US "volunteer" military who flee to find sanctuary in Canada -- dozens, scores, nobody has a really accurate count -- have no legal sanctuary from the Canadian government. If the Mounties find them, they send them back to the USA for court martial on desertion charges.)

On an album from long ago, Jesse Winchester sang a traditional African-American song from the 1940s. But he added some new verses of his own.

Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt

Tell me why you like Roosevelt, poor man's friend
That's why I like Roosevelt, poor man's friend
That's why I like Roosevelt, poor man's friend
Good God almighty, he's the poor man's friend

Cause in the year of nineteen and thirty-two
We had no idea just what we would do
All our finances had flowed away
Till my dad got a job with the WPA

That's why I like Roosevelt, poor man's friend
That's why I like Roosevelt, poor man's friend
That's why I like Roosevelt, poor man's friend
Good God almighty that's the poor man's friend
Good God almighty that's the poor man's friend

Tell me why you like Lester B
Tell me why you like Lester B
Tell me why you like Lester B
Good God almighty that's the poor man's friend
Good God almighty that's the poor man's friend

Cause in the year of nineteen and sixty-seven
I was a somewhat younger man
The call came to bloody glory came
And I would not raise my hand
Cause I'm baptized by water
So I'll pass on the one by fire
If you want to fight
Go on and fight if that be your desire

That's why I like Pierre Trudeau
That's why I like Pierre Trudeau
That's why I like Pierre Trudeau
Good God almighty that's the poor man's friend
Good God almighty that's the poor man's friend

© 1974 Jesse Winchester
From the LP "Learn To Love It"

press gets access to U.S. military casualty returning to Dover Air Base

Russ Kick's Memory Hole
Air Force photographs
of U.S. military casualties
returning to Dover AFB

The Associated Press (US newswire)
Sunday 5 April 2009

Media allowed
to witness return
of war casualty

by RANDALL CHASE

DOVER, Delaware USA (AP) — The media will be allowed to cover the arrival Sunday of an airman killed overseas, the first such opportunity since the Obama administration overturned an 18-year ban on news coverage of returning war dead.

After receiving permission from family members, Air Force officials planned to open Dover Air Force Base for the media to observe the return of the flag-covered coffin carrying the body of 30-year-old Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Va. Myers was killed April 4 near Helmand province, Afghanistan, after being hit from an improvised explosive device, the Department of Defense said.

Myers, a member of the 48th Civil Engineer Squadron, was awarded a Bronze Star in recognition for his efforts in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Department of Defense said. His body was expected to return at 11 p.m.

The new Pentagon policy gives families a choice of whether to admit the press to ceremonies at Dover, home to the nation's largest military mortuary and the entry point to the United States for service personnel killed overseas.

Critics of the previous policy had said the government was trying to hide the human cost of war.

President Barack Obama had asked for a review of the ban, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that the blanket restriction made him uncomfortable. The administration will let families decide whether to allow photographs.

For example, if several caskets arrive on the same flight, news coverage will be allowed only for those whose families have given permission.

The ban was put in place by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War. From the start, it was cast as a way to shield grieving families.

One objection to lifting the ban had been that if the media were present, some families might feel obligated to come to Dover for the brief, solemn ritual in which honor guards carry the caskets off a plane. Few families now choose to attend, in part because doing so means leaving home and the support system of friends at a difficult time. The sudden trip can also be expensive and logistically difficult to arrange.

It was unclear whether anyone from Myers' family would be at the ceremony.

- 30 -

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Wild Turkey (immoral) / Golden Eagle (moral) / Sarah Palin, Flying Huntress of Cookmeth Inlet / I'm a Good Humor Truck!

Click image for larger.

The illustration for the mockingbird (Mimus) which papa bought The Only Rich Baby In Town was by the Haitian-born American naturalist and painter John James Audubon (1785 - 1851).

Here are Audubon's Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) and Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo),

These Latin names are after the system devised by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus / Carl von Linné (1707 - 1778),

Golden Eagles I may never have seen soaring in the wild, but there's a metric shitload ( = 1.377 English shitoad) of Wild Turkeys around where I live in western New England.

Except during mating season (now), when the male's thinking and good judgment functions are temporarily transferred to its penis and gonads, Wild Turkeys are extremely intelligent birds. Even with assault rifle in a helicopter -- the hunting style beloved by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her Cookmeth Inlet kin, in-laws, neighbors and friends with privileges -- a hunter has to be very smart, experienced and lucky to come home with one of these for the table.

Unlike ptarmigan, which will stroll into a large warm skillet filled with sauteeing shallots and garlic, Wild Turkeys do not want to be adorned with cranberry relish and eaten by Dad, Mom, Junior, Sis and Grandma. Domesticated farmed turkeys are less intelligent than ptarmigan, and are said to hypnotize themselves and drown in their water bowls.

About two years ago I took a little trip and stayed for a few days in the old 19th-century National Landmark drummers' Hotel Coolidge across from the railroad depot in White River Junction, Vermont. (You should go. This hotel and this whole town rock and will smash you in the eyeballs with Vermont Postcard.)

One afternoon I went outside for a smoke on Main Street. My cell phone started ringing. I searched through all my pockets for it. I couldn't find my cell phone. The cell phone kept ringing.

I figured it had to be somebody else's cell phone. I looked up and down the sidewalk. No one was there. I looked through the window into the lobby. Nobody was there.

The cell phone kept ringing.

I looked up. About 2 stories up on a utility pole, there was an undistinguished bird of some sort singing The Ringing Cell Phone Song, which apparently was his very favorite song. In New England, he was probably a mockingbird.

On my block a few summers ago was a mockingbird who loved to sing The Lawn Mower Starting Song.

A number of passerine birds have no characteristic songs of their own, but have remarkable skills at mimickry, and take as their song, for attracting a mate and for announcing its territory, whatever sound they hear which strikes their fancy.

In the rain forest of New Zealand, David Attenborough crept up on one native bird and whispered: "Listen."

This extremely rare bird loved the song it had heard so often: The clicking of the 35mm SLR camera. And now it sang it over and over again, high in the trees.

Attenborough whispered, "Now listen to this --"

And the sound of a gasoline-powered chainsaw broke the silence of the forest. And again. He loved the sound of the machine which had driven the bird and his few remaining kind to the brink of extinction.

I think I've heard another in my neighborhood that mews like a cat.

Romance for such creatures must be very odd. Essentially the male calls out: "I'm handsome! I'm strong! I'm brave! I'm healthy! I'm a Good Humor Ice Cream Truck!"

A wonderful book with lots of stuff about the behavior of talking birds -- his house was always full of them -- is "King Solomon's Ring" by the Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz.

One fable says that King Solomon (Shlomo Melech) had a Magic Ring which allowed him to converse with the birds and animals as we chat with each other; Lorenz developed similar skills, and could eavesdrop on his bird and dog friends, and carry on quite complex conversations with them, relying on intimacy and observation rather than magic.

A common belief is that talking birds have no comprehension of the meaning of the phrases we coach them to speak, but Lorenz cites several instances where the bird understands, with deep emotional resonance, what the words mean.

Counting Crows takes its name from a famous story about a 16th-century nobleman who wanted to evict a murder of crows from a tower; they all flew away when he entered with his blunderbus, so he and a servant entered, waited several minutes, and then the servant walked out of the tower. The crows did not come back.

The nobleman and 2 servants entered, waited, then 2 walked out.
The crows did not come back.

4 men entered, waited, 3 walked out.
The crows did not come back.
5 men entered, waited, 4 walked out.
The crows did not come back.
6 men entered, waited, 5 walked out.
The crows did not come back.
7 men entered, waited, 6 walked out.
The crows did not come back.

After about 12, the nobleman gave up, and the crows resumed occupancy in their comfortable tower.

Crows and their cousins, the Corvines -- blackbirds, ravens -- are the Rocket Scientists of the bird world. Wildly curious and brazenly determined, they are a lot like Flying Raccoons. They are smart as individuals, and form even smarter teams and Task Forces.

The big brain under the sea seems to be the Cephalopods -- Octopus, Squid, etc. -- although what they think so much about, we can only imagine. Their interactions with humans range from Cudly and Playful to Mass-Murderous, although usually they flee and hide from us. They probably understand how much we love to eat them.

Their semi-quasi-mythological Kraken cousin likes to eat us, uncooked and writhing, fresh off the deck of a ship, 8 or 10 sailors at a time.

Through sheer brain power, they are almost impossible to keep in captivity; those without hard shells escape from almost every attempt to keep them trapped.

In the first few years of the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin (inventor of the Glass Harmonica which Mozart loved to compose for) strongly advocated for the Wild Turkey to be chosen as The National Bird, for its majesty in its mating plumage, and its great intelligence. The controversy that followed seems to have centered on the well-known Moral Failings of the Wild Turkey, and the Bald Eagle -- an extremely Moral bird that terrorizes rabbits and small rodents and salmon -- was picked instead. The Wild Turkey is a vegetarian.

some fools rave on happiness blissfulness togetherness / some fools fool themselves i guess

Love Hurts
by Boudleaux Bryant

first recorded by The Everly Brothers 1960

Live radio performance 1973
Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris & the Fallen Angels

Love hurts
love scars
love wounds and mars

Any heart not tough
nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain

Love hurts
Oooh ... love hurts

I'm young
I know
but even so
I know a thing or two
I've learned from you

I've really learned a lot
really learned a lot
Love is like a stove
burns you when it's hot
Love hurts
love hurts

Some fools rave on happiness
blissfulness
togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
But they're not fooling me

I know it isn't true
know it isn't true
Love is just a lie
made to make you blue
Love hurts
Oooh ... love hurts
Oooh ... love hurts

Oooh ... love hurts
Oooh ... love hurts

Free the Music Imprisoned in the Museum! Let the Past thrill the Future!

Click for larger

patfromch said...

This tune (via youtube) has been haunting me for one and half days now. Usually a sign that it must be good & signifiant. Bluegrass / Folk is usually not part of my musical diet (sice I am not a melancholic person per se), but broadening your horizon is always a good thing, thanks for that. And now I know that the Hooter[s] nicked one of their song ideas from a traditional...

Sunday, 05 April, 2009

==============

Hilfe! I have fallen into YouTube (and SeeqPod) again and I can't get out!

The problem with most performers of folk/traditional/Bluegrass etc. is that they feel obligated to be exclusively True and Faithful to the Past.

But real living people have done the most Natural thing that living people do: They have grown, and are moving forward in time. The Ramones are as much a part of their Soul as Woody Guthrie.

The biggest fistfight over this was what Wikipedia calls the Electric Dylan controversy when the crowd at the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival in July 1965 booed Dylan for "going electric." Until that moment, all his performances and recordings were strictly with his signature acoustic guitar and harmonica attached to his neck.

He was writing songs about The cultural and political Immediately Now, but performing them like his idol Woody Guthrie sang his Immediately Now songs in 1935.

Meanwhile, the revolt against racism, war and conformity was being waged with Electric Guitars (Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix etc.). Dylan wanted to explore that Future of his musical expression -- and his fans hated it. They perceived it as Betrayal and Blasphemy.

Two other Giant Figures in moving Country and Bluegrass and Traditional music into the future are Emmylou Harris (here singing Jesse Winchester's "Songbird", and the late Gram Parsons, with whom she recorded the most heavenly country harmonies.

The Horse Flies -- and the UK's Steeleye Span, to name just one other group -- are determined to lovingly carry the beloved past beyond the Present and into the Musical Future. (Everybody knows I'm a Dickhead -- an obsessive fan of the UK's Richard Thompson, a heroic bridge from Past to Future.)

Here's a kickass live performance of the classic "Kill All Scabs" pro-union songs, the English coal miners strike song "Blackleg Miner."

The original song dates to the late 1800s and a ferocious coal mine strike in Northumberland (just south of the Scotland border). A "blackleg miner" is UK-ish for a scab -- a non-union guy who works while the union is out on strike.

A great but more "museumesque" treatment by Ryan's Fancy, filmed by the CBC in Newfoundland, Canada.

I imagine deutsches has a rich vocabulary for union-vs.-scabs, strikes, picket lines, etc.

This music sickens and dies, and is lost and forgotten when it's imprisoned in the Museum. (Jazz is also always struggling to move into the Future and escape its Museumesque enshrined Past.)

But the music itself always retains the power to excite, thrill and anger -- when modern musicians realize they're singing it to modern people. The Young have just as much claim to music as the Old and the Long-Dead. Kids have to work with their Venerated Ancestors to keep this music Kick-Ass. Kids have to show the world how to give Mozart a shot of Reggae in his arse.

Blackleg Miner
(Northern England, traditional)

It's in the evening after dark,
When the blackleg miner creeps to work,
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt,
There goes the blackleg miner!

Well he grabs his duds and down he goes
To hew the coal that lies below,
There's not a woman in this town-row
Will look at the blackleg miner.

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place.
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a foot race,
To catch the blackleg miner!

So, dinna gan near the Seghill mine.
Across the way they stretch a line,
To catch the throat and break the spine
Of the dirty blackleg miner.

They grab his duds and his pick as well,
And they hoy them down the pit of hell.
Down you go, and fare you well,
You dirty blackleg miner!

Oh, it's in the evening after dark,
When the blackleg miner creeps to work,
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt,
There goes the blackleg miner!

So join the union while you may.
Don't wait till your dying day,
For that may not be far away,
You dirty blackleg miner!

========

duds: clothes
dinna gan near: don't go near
the heaps: mountains of dug-up waste from which coal has been extracted

1st Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron / "Still the Only Rich Baby in Town" / needlepoint sampler stamp (rare) / Dwingeloo-2 Lullabies

Click image for larger

First Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron / 53 zqrn
first in series: Lullabies of Dwingeloo-2 Galaxy
"Still the Only Rich Baby in Town"
Horse Flies 2009 tour
needlepoint sampler postage stamp (rare)

* Powdered wallpaper designed
* by William Morris, 1874.
* Repurposed as printed textile
* by Morris & Co. c. 1902.
* William Morris, England (1834 - 1896)

* Bovril ("liquid cow") advertisement:
* "Alas! my poor Brother"

* diamond ring
* Harry Winston, USA (1896 – 1978)

* dog named Rover

* mockingbird (Mimus)
* John James Audubon (1785 - 1851)

* billy goat

* looking glass

* horse and cart

* Heirloom Cradle made from Hemlock with a
Red Oak cradle base and Birch spindles.
This cradle can be custom designed.
Price: $650.00 CAD + shipping & handling.
Contact artist to discuss arrangements.

DISCLAIMER

The Vleeptron Group of Political & Industrial Activities (VGPIA) is in no way associated with this furniture artist or her/his distributor, and disclaim all knowledge of these artisans and entities. We just think it's pretty.

~ ~ ~

Hush Little Baby
(traditional lullaby from the album
"Human Fly" by the Horse Flies")

hush little baby don't say a word
papa gonna buy you a mockingbird
if that mockingbird don't sing
papa gonna buy you a diamond ring

if that diamond ring turns to brass
papa gonna buy you a looking glass
if that looking glass gets broke
papa gonna buy you a billy goat

ohhhhhh ohhhhhhh
ohhhhhh ohhhhhhh

if that billy goat don't pull
papa gonna buy you a cart and bull
if that cart and bull turn over
papa gonna buy you a dog named rover

if that dog named rover don't bark
papa gonna buy you a horse and cart
if that horse and cart fall down
still the only rich baby in town

ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
ah ah ah ah ah ah ah

if your billy goat don't pull
papa gonna buy you a cart and bull
if your cart and bull turn over
papa gonna buy you a dog named rover

if that dog named rover don't bark
papa gonna buy you a horse and cart
if your horse and cart fall down
still the only rich baby in town

woah oh
woah oh

the Horse Flies 2009 tour / jenny's on the main line jenny shoots smack jenny's never coming back / Still the only rich baby in town

Click image for larger

Baby in cradle (1917-18),
oil on canvas by Gustav Klimt
Mockingbird (Mimus)
by John James Audubon
Diamond ring by Harry Winston

The Horse Flies will be touring this Spring, Summer and Autumn, and have a new album/CD, Until the Ocean. They are remarkable and thrilling musicians; if you think you know their genre of music, they will bust far beyond that while they astonish you.

Judy Hyman is certainly one of greatest folk fiddlers on Planet Earth.

Here is the Horse Flies' video
of the traditional lullaby
Hush Little Baby.

Friday 10 April 2009
Historic Blairstown Theatre
Blairstown, New Jersey

Saturday 11 April
Arden Hall
Arden, Delaware

Friday-Saturday 17-18 April
GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance
Shakori Hills, North Carolina

Friday 15 May
Edinboro Festival of Music and Art
Edinboro, Pennsylvania

Saturday 16 May
Thunderbird Cafe
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Sunday 17 May
Elk Creek Cafe + Aleworks
Milheim, Pennsylvania

Friday 19 June
Castaways
Ithaca, New York

Saturday 20 June
Ellis Hollow Community Center
Concert Series
Ithaca, New York

Thursday 2 July
Live performance
Queen City Radio Hour
Flynn Theater
Burlington, Vermont

Friday 3 July
Champlain 400
International Waterfront Festival
Burlington, Vermont

Sat-Sun 4-5 July
Great Blue Heron Festival
Sherman, New York

Thu-Sun 16-19 July
GrassRoots Festival
of Music and Dance
Trumansburg, New York

Sat-Sun 25-26 July
FloydFest
Floyd, Virginia

Thursday 15 October
Berea College
Berea, Kentucky

Fri-Sat 16-17 October
Lake Eden Arts Festival
Black Mountain, North Carolina

=====================

Jenny on the Railroad
(traditional Appalachian fiddle air)
lyrics by the Horse Flies

tell me jenny what can it be
that makes you live your life so free

jenny is a junkie jenny shoots smack
jenny's on the main line never coming back
jenny's on the main line never coming back

tell me jenny what can it be
that makes you live your life so free
i'm born to live but I'm bound to die
my soul to rise

================

Hush Little Baby
(traditional lullaby)

hush little baby don't say a word
papa gonna buy you a mockingbird
if that mockingbird don't sing
papa gonna buy you a diamond ring

if that diamond ring turns to brass
papa gonna buy you a looking glass
if that looking glass gets broke
papa gonna buy you a billy goat

ohhhhhh ohhhhhhh
ohhhhhh ohhhhhhh

if that billy goat dont pull
papa gonna buy you a cart and bull
if that cart and bull turn over
papa gonna buy you a dog named rover

if that dog named rover don't bark
papa gonna buy you a horse and cart
if that horse and cart fall down
still the only rich baby in town

ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
ah ah ah ah ah ah ah

if your billy goat dont pull
papa gonna buy you a cart and bull
if your cart and bull turn over
papa gonna buy you a dog named rover

if that dog named rover don't bark
papa gonna buy you a horse and cart
if your horse and cart fall down
still the only rich baby in town

woah oh
woah oh

how men play the stock market / how women play the stock market / how men fucked Wall Street, Iceland & Planet Earth

Vanity Fair (magazine USA)

April 2009

From the article

Wall Street on the Tundra

by Michael Lewis

. . . Back in 2001, as the Internet boom turned into a bust, M.I.T.’s Quarterly Journal of Economics published an intriguing paper called “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment.” The authors, Brad Barber and Terrance Odean, gained access to the trading activity in over 35,000 households, and used it to compare the habits of men and women. What they found, in a nutshell, is that men not only trade more often than women but do so from a false faith in their own financial judgment. Single men traded less sensibly than married men, and married men traded less sensibly than single women: the less the female presence, the less rational the approach to trading in the markets.

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.”

Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”

It was with that in mind that I walked, on my last afternoon in Iceland, into the Saga Museum. Its goal is to glorify the Sagas, the great 12th- and 13th-century Icelandic prose epics, but the effect of its life-size dioramas is more like modern reality TV. Not statues carved from silicon but actual ancient Icelanders, or actors posing as ancient Icelanders, as shrieks and bloodcurdling screams issue from the P.A. system: a Catholic bishop named Jon Arason having his head chopped off; a heretic named Sister Katrin being burned at the stake; a battle scene in which a blood-drenched Viking plunges his sword toward the heart of a prone enemy. The goal was verisimilitude, and to achieve it no expense was spared. Passing one tableau of blood and guts and moving on to the next, I caught myself glancing over my shoulder to make sure some Viking wasn’t following me with a battle-ax. The effect was so disorienting that when I reached the end and found a Japanese woman immobile and reading on a bench, I had to poke her on the shoulder to make sure she was real. This is the past Icelanders supposedly cherish: a history of conflict and heroism. Of seeing who is willing to bump into whom with the most force. There are plenty of women, but this is a men’s history.

When you borrow a lot of money to create a false prosperity, you import the future into the present. It isn’t the actual future so much as some grotesque silicon version of it. Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven’t really earned. The striking thing about the future the Icelandic male briefly imported was how much it resembled the past that he celebrates. I’m betting now they’ve seen their false future the Icelandic female will have a great deal more to say about the actual one.

- 30 -

Dumb & Dumber / and Smart / legalize it / don't criticize it / judges smoke it / nurses smoke it / doctors smoke it ... (-- Peter Tosh)

Click image, it bigs up.

Springfield, Massachusetts is the home of Homer Simpson. DOH!

CLICK HERE
for Dick M. Evans'
cannabis legalization
& taxation advocacy website.

-----------------------

Letters to the Editor
The Daily Hampshire Gazette
(Northampton, Massachusetts USA)

To the Editor:

The Gazette's editorial "New Revenue Ideas" (26 March) is the Dumber that follows the Springfield City Council's Dumb enhanced, punitive, anti-Sin fines on adults caught with less than one ounce of marijuana.

Springfield has a long, consistent history of Dumb and dangerous drug policy decisions. Now The Gazette asks Northampton to follow Springfield's latest foot-shooting idea.

Any editorial writer who urges us to follow Springfield's lead should first wander Springfield on foot, by day and by night -- when gunfire, and police and ambulance sirens are heard most often.

These sounds are conspicuously absent from Northampton -- but, with The Gazette's editorial help, that can change.

Statewide, voters Just Said No to a lifelong criminal record for adult possession, loudly, with 65 percent voting Yes on Question 2. In Hampshire County (less Amherst), they said it louder: 70 percent.

Their votes embraced the $100 civil fine, but gave no sign of demanding higher fines, either as revenue boosters or (as the editorial wrote) as "a good way to discourage the public use of the drug."

Such "revenue ideas" confuse the fundamental "To Protect and Serve" mission of police with the task of raising revenue. Such mission perversion quickly leads to unspoken quotas, and to promotions of officers who write the most civil fine tickets.

Police pressured by money-desperate cities soon drift into a very different mission: "To Protect and Collect," as The Kansas City Star's groundbreaking investigation into such nationwide practices called it.

Resources raising revenue are resources stolen from protecting and serving.

But Dumb and Dumber was followed on the next day's Front Page by Authentically Smart: Northampton lawyer Richard Evans' proposed state law to legalize, supervise and tax adult marijuana use ("Bill filed to legalize, tax pot") -- exactly as we supervise and heavily tax adult alcohol and tobacco use today.

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, we took alcohol back from the violent criminal gangs who had paid no taxes on their huge profits. Prohibition had made law, law enforcement and government the nation's laughing stock. We stopped making criminals of every adult who drank a beer or glass of whiskey -- and Americans have been happy to pay stiff taxes to their governments ever since.

Hard Times are back, and governments are desperate for revenue. We can seek it the Dumb and Dangerous way -- or we can actually find the revenue we need the Smart way.

Robert Merkin
Northampton

=====
DUMB
=====

The Daily Hampshire Gazette
Northampton, Massachusetts USA
Thursday 26 March 2009

In Our Opinion:
New revenue ideas

Springfield may be on to something.

The city council this week voted to add $100-$300 to the state penalties for using marijuana in a park or other public place.

Last November Massachusetts voters made the possession of small amounts of marijuana a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $100 for those who are caught smoking pot in a public place. Cities and towns, which enforce the law, have the option of adding on additional fines, and that's what Springfield will do. It has raised some concerns among civil libertarians and may still need to be tested in court, but as a revenue-generating idea we think it has merit and deserve consideration. Amherst could make a windfall slapping fines on all the people who show up for the annual Extravaganja - the celebration of marijuana - on the town common. Hiking the fines is also a good way to discourage the public use of the drug.

Then there is Gov. Deval Patrick's proposal to extend the state's 5 percent sales tax to alcohol, candy and soda.

Right now food is exempt from the sale tax, which it should be, but candy, soda and booze are not among the major food groups for a healthy diet.

The governor has pitched this as a way to encourage "healthy choices" and raise $121 million for health programs, like substance abuse prevention. The governor argues that the tax "might discourage the consumption of empty calories." Obesity is a problem and soda and candy are big factors in making Americans overweight. Patrick is taking some heat from those who say he is imposing his idea of healthy eating habits on state residents.

Frankly, Patrick doesn't need to make the argument on health. The state needs revenue - along with greater efficiencies and a closer watch on wasteful spending. Tax candy, booze and soda for the money. If it promotes healthier lifestyles, all the better, but taxing discretionary products makes more sense than some of the other proposals being floated.

Extending the sales tax and raising fines for using marijuana in public are worth discussing.

- 30 -

======
SMART
======

The Daily Hampshire Gazette
Northampton, Massachusetts USA
Friday 27 March 2009
Page 1 / above the fold

Bill filed to legalize, tax pot:
Local petitioner highlights revenue

by Matt Rocheleau
Gazette Contributing Writer

A bill to legalize and tax marijuana in Massachusetts has been introduced to both the House and Senate, after a request by a Northampton man.

State Rep. Ellen Story, D-Amherst, and state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, each filed the bill by request from petitioner and Northampton resident Dick M. Evans.

Officials from both of the legislators' offices said they generally file all petitions they receive, which may be submitted by individuals, and said this is not necessarily an endorsement or sponsorship of a bill's content.

Evans, 65, an attorney, filed the bill as a private citizen and said the money generated through placing a sales tax on marijuana could be in the millions. According to Rosenberg's chief of staff Nick Puleo, the senator does not believe the bill has the support to pass through the Senate right now.

A similar bill to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana was recently introduced in California. The California Board of Equalization, which collects taxes, estimated California's potential revenue from doing so at U$1,300,000,000 per year.

During an online town hall-style meeting from the White House Thursday, President Barack Obama said one of the most popular questions submitted was whether legalization of marijuana would help the country's economy. Obama answered by saying he didn't think that it was a good economic policy, according to The Associated Press.

Besides being an attempt to earn the state more money, Evans said, the bill is meant "to prompt an open and honest debate about the wisdom and efficacy of marijuana prohibition."

"I'm not trying to legalize it; I'm trying to talk about it," said Evans. "I'm trying to open the door to discussion."

Rosenberg does not necessarily support the bill, said Puleo, but his decision on whether he would approve a vote on the bill in the Senate would depend on what the final draft looks like. Bills often change before reaching the Senate floor.

Evans was optimistic during a March 25 interview with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws [NORML], where he once worked on the group's board of directors.

"I'm confident that there will be widespread support for regulation and taxation," he said at the time. "I don't know anyone that opposes it, frankly."

Under Senate Bill 1801 and House Bill 2929, both filed on Jan. 16 and titled "An Act to Regulate and Tax the Cannabis Industry," possession or cultivation of cannabis by a person, over 21 years old, for personal use would be made legal.

Treated like alcohol

The legislation would also allow for marijuana to be sold. Selling marijuana would be taxed and legal to only licensed individuals and is modeled after Chapter 138 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act, which regulates the selling and taxation of alcohol.

There is no set timetable yet on bill's next step, being reviewed by committee.

Cannabis grown for personal use would not be taxed. Marijuana grown or distributed for a profit would be divided into three taxation classes based on how much tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive component of marijuana, each contained.

Cannabis with more than 1 percent but less than 5 percent THC would be Class C and taxed $150 per ounce. Marijuana with 5 percent or more but less than 10 percent THC would be taxed $200 per ounce as Class B. Class A, containing 10 percent or more THC, would be taxed $250 per ounce.

The percentages of THC would be determined by comparing the THC content to dry weight, without seeds.

The state-run Cannabis Control Authority would be created to supervise "the conduct of the business of cultivating, possessing, distributing, sale at retail and wholesale and importing cannabis, and also of the quality, purity and grade thereof."

Revenue generated by taxation would cover the costs associated with the authority, and excess funds would go to the commonwealth.

The authority would receive $2.5 million in initial funding from the state and would be responsible for licensing retailers, importers, farmers, processors and traders, and wholesale distributors. The cost of each license ranges from $1,000 annually for a processing license up to $3,000 for a trader license.

The bill comes at a time when dozens of towns in the state, including Springfield, are trying to increase the penalties for marijuana use, which were reduced statewide when nearly two-thirds of voters approved decriminalization legislation via a ballot question in November.

Meanwhile, bills looking to legalize growing marijuana for medicinal purposes are also under consideration by state legislators.

UMass Cannabis Reform Coalition said the group supports the idea of regulation and taxation, but currently is putting its focus on legalizing medicinal marijuana, according to CRC treasurer Alex Arsenault.

Medical might make more sense

"We did just pass Question 2 a few months ago," said Arsenault, who said that passing a bill for legalization might be tough because decriminalization was approved so recently. "The next logical step is legalizing medicinal marijuana."

"No living person is responsible for the prohibition laws," said Evans on a Web site, www.cantaxreg.com, that he created about the bill. "They were conceived three generations ago in a cultural and racial climate very different from our own, and very different from that to which we aspire. They are now, if anything, obsolete."

Evans said public officials who support continued prohibition efforts should explain how many more people need to be arrested, how much that will cost and where the money will come from.

"Absent any good answers to those questions, a productive discussion necessarily turns from whether to replace prohibition to how to replace it," he said.

Evans said states are not allowed to act on their own to create a system of taxation and regulation unless federal law allows it. However, states can repeal prohibition laws and leave enforcement up to federal -- not state -- officials.

"That would surely get the attention of Congress," said Evans.

Laws concerning the operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of marijuana would not be changed. The crime is punishable of a fine of up to $1,000 or imprisonment up to two years, or both, and may result in the loss of an offender's driver's license.

The current bill was first filed in the Massachusetts House in 1981, following a citizen petition. It was slightly modified and reintroduced this year.

- 30 -

Come, let's away to prison! / Shakespeare publishes his plays, pigs fly, Hell freezes / Hey Diddle-Dee-Dee / An Actor's Life for Me!

Click image, you can read every word.

My favorite speech from "King Lear," as printed in the world's first published version of William Shakespeare's plays, the First Folio. At the Stratford, Ontario Theatre Festival I had the thrill of seeing Christopher Plummer as King Lear.

Lear's wicked daughters, Goneril and Regan, are about to imprison their father and murder their sister Cordelia -- the virtuous, true daughter who truly loved her father. Lear's foolish vanity and pride have caused his downfall, his madness -- and now this.

~ ~ ~

SCENE III. The British camp near Dover.

Enter, in conquest, with drum and colours, EDMUND, KING LEAR and CORDELIA, prisoners; Captain, Soldiers, & c

EDMUND

Some officers take them away: good guard,
Until their greater pleasures first be known
That are to censure them.

CORDELIA

We are not the first
Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst.
For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;
Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown.
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

KING LEAR

No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.

EDMUND

Take them away.

KING LEAR

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;
The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve
first. Come.

Exeunt KING LEAR and CORDELIA, guarded

EDMUND

Come hither, captain; hark.
Take thou this note;

Giving a paper
go follow them to prison:
One step I have advanced thee; if thou dost
As this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way
To noble fortunes: know thou this, that men
Are as the time is: to be tender-minded
Does not become a sword: thy great employment
Will not bear question; either say thou'lt do 't,
Or thrive by other means.

Captain

I'll do 't, my lord.

EDMUND

About it; and write happy when thou hast done.
Mark, I say, instantly; and carry it so
As I have set it down.

Captain

I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats;
If it be man's work, I'll do 't.

Exit

Flourish. Enter ALBANY, GONERIL, REGAN, another Captain, and Soldiers

===================

patfromch has confessed that HE might have been wrong and VLEEPTRON might have been right! He has generously offered to trade places, lie comfortably on the ground, and let me drive a large tractor over him.

Did Shakespeare intentionally publish his own plays, or take any part in publishing The First Folio?

Vleeptron says: No Way, Jose!

====================

SENT: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 1:10 PM
SUBJECT: Shakespeare und seine Schauspieler

LOL, this was fun, but I have a bit of Real Work, with a Deadline (!), and I have to stop trying to research this Shakespeare stuff for now.

But here is the Back Story (I hate that dumb new phrase), the background.

In our times -- most of this begins around 1900 -- Shakespeare has become a Holy Figure, guarded and imprisoned by academic scholars and professors in great universities. So almost all of what we think and have been taught about Shakespeare is filtered through the minds of literature professors who have never been actors or theater directors, who have no experience with putting on a play, no experience whatsoever with the life, culture -- and commercial business -- of theater. Shakespeare for them has become entirely a matter of reading and interpreting the Sacred Words in ancient books and publications. Professors have kidnapped William from his beloved stage and locked him in dusty old books and monographs.

This was a world and tradition Shakespeare never had contact with. He was the equivalent of a high-school dropout from a farm town. Many such bright lads -- like Newton a generation later -- might have made their way to Oxford or Cambridge, but Shakespeare went straight to London to begin acting in the lively new theater scene.

What we've lost today is this sense of Theater As a Day-to-Day Ticket-Selling Business, with lots of Competitors -- plagiarists, thieves, "industrial spies."

After he began writing his own plays and forming a professional theater company, he was forced to guard his only business assets: His plays, the ones with his name on them.

If he was sloppy, actors would steal his scripts, and a few weeks later another theater would present "the Tragedie of Hamfat, the Duke of Sweden." Same plot, same thrilling sword fights, same ghost, same beautiful speeches. But somebody else's name on the play, and somebody else attracting the crowds and siphoning the money from Shakespeare and The Globe.

Shakespeare wrote the things down for only one reason: As scripts, for his actors. If you acted the role of Guildenstern, you probably only got the pages in which you appeared and had speeches. Ophelia's pages stopped the moment she jumped in the river. The pretty boy who played Ophelia never got to read the dialogue of the rest of the play.

Now I will shock you:

Actors and directors and playwrights are, as a general rule, psychos, narcissists (they spend 9 hours a day looking in the mirror), thieves, pervs, drunks. Women didn't appear as actresses until the 18th century, but when they did, they were immediately perceived as prostitutes and fortune-hunting mistresses of rich old men.

These are not Honorable or Dependable People. Most actors are constantly desperate for money, and don't care how they get it.

(I used to be an actor, and I loved it, and I loved the people, we threw The Best parties! But you don't want to get too close, and you don't want to bring a pretty actress home to meet your Mother.)

So Shakespeare had to guard every word he wrote. After every rehearsal, the stage manager would have very carefully collected every written page from every actor, and inventoried every page like the old family silver.

If he didn't, or if he got sloppy, these drunken bums would have smuggled them out of The Globe and started their own competing theater two blocks away and performed Shakespeare's slightly altered plagiarized stolen plays. They saw the big money Shakespeare was making, and knew that it all depended on his magical words and stories, which were proven crowd-pleasers and blockbusters.

(Actors consider "Macbeth" an unlucky play. It's short, and as violent, bloody and horrifying as a Sam Peckinpah movie. When a travelling theater troupe runs out of money far from home, and the locals aren't buying tickets, they put on "Macbeth," which always sells tickets, out of desperation.)

As long as he lived and remained active in the theater -- his second was Greyfriars, an old Catholic monastery seized and shut down by Elizabeth I's dad Henry VIII -- Shakespeare wasn't letting anybody read this stuff. He'd be happy to act or write a new play for anybody with money (I've seen the law chambers room where lawyers commissioned "Twelfth Night" for their Christmas party), but he wasn't spreading his magic words around for the reading public.

Get close to some Schauspielers. Act in a couple of plays with them, act in "Der Besuch" or in some Schiller. You'll have the time of your life! They throw the Best Parties! And if you have some talent and a few brains (most actors don't), you get to participate in some wonderful moments of beauty and genius.

But then you'll understand Shakespeare's world. These are all crazy bums, and they'll steal your wallet or your favorite sweater or your girlfriend or your microwave oven in a heartbeat. And if you're working on a play, and you leave it lying around next to your typewriter ...

B