My pal John McCrea’s band CAKE is putting out a new CD of “B-Sides and Rarities” soon. You can pre-order a limited “scratch-n-sniff” edition with a bonus track here. (This is a self-released project — they’re trying to figure out a model that will allow them to bypass record company nonsense — so you can bask warmly in the knowledge that your purchase is actually helping to sustain working musicians.)
I’ll have more on this in the next few weeks, including (I think) an exclusive download from the CD.
…here’s a perspective I’ve always appreciated, from the political organizer Ernesto Cortes:
“A good organizer must be angry,” he says. “Not irritated or enraged, but angry. In the dictionary you’ll find that it comes from the Old Norse angr, meaning loss or grief.”
Cortés says his grief — his anger, in the Nordic sense — stems from America’s failure to fulfill the promise of democracy, the promise that all citizens can play a meaningful role in their own governance.
What Cortes says about the root meaning of anger is, in fact, accurate:
anger
SYLLABICATION: an·ger
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old Norse angr, sorrow.
There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with being angry. In fact, the weird people are those who don’t feel sorrow over what’s happening to this country. (More on this topic here.)
“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
It turns out Frank Gaffney is not completely reliable
Recently Frank Gaffney, the poor man’s Michael Ledeen, was on the Alan Colmes Show with Glenn Greenwald. Gaffney explained that when we invaded Iraq in 2003, we found “a hot production line for chemical and biological agents…with the plans to ramp them up for use as terrorist weapons against the United States and Europe.” I explain in detail here how and why Gaffney’s brain made this mistake.
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — A U.S. soldier broke down in tears in court as he described his role in the gang rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family last year.
Paul E. Cortez, 24, wept Wednesday as he became the second U.S. soldier to plead guilty to charges in a case considered among the worst atrocities by U.S. military personnel in Iraq.
By pleading guilty to rape and four counts of felony murder, Cortez was spared the possibility of a death sentence and must testify against the three other soldiers charged in the case.
Under the agreement, Cortez will be sentenced to up to life in prison, plus reduction in rank and a dishonorable discharge. Whether he is eligible for parole will be decided at sentencing Thursday.
He said Wednesday he raped 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in her family’s home in Mahmoudiya last March, and that Spc. James Barker, 24, held her down.
‘’I lifted up her skirt and took off her stockings while Barker held her hands with his knees,'’ he said before admitting that he raped the teenager as she screamed. ‘’After I was done, myself and Barker switched spots.'’
Cortez offered no explanation for his involvement in the rape and murders, only saying that his intent was to rape the girl. The killing of the family was originally reported to be the work of insurgents.
Story here (h/t reader Michael S.). I assume it won’t be long before some right winger accuses me of hating the troops for posting this. Any discussion of the war must begin with the assumption that every single member of the U.S. military is an ascended being, personifying all that is good in the world and utterly beyond reproach. The reality is that they’re human beings in a tough situation, and like human beings anywhere, most of them are going to be fairly decent people doing the best they can, but some substantial minority are going to be total assholes. And of those, some are going to be psychopaths set loose in a land without apparent rules.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.
Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, right, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, talked last month about possible deployments to Iraq.
National Guard officials told state commanders in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio last month that while a final decision had not been made, units from their states that had done previous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan could be designated to return to Iraq next year between January and June, the officials said.
I’m sure it’s no accident that the new National Guard recruiting ad features a picture of the entire planet, with a tagline that says something to the effect that “If it’s happening here” — i.e., anywhere on the planet — “we’re there.”
(Recycling went out last night but if anybody has a scan of that ad, send it and I’ll post it.)
In another low moment for American justice, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that detainees held at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, do not have the right to be heard in court. The ruling relied on a shameful law that President Bush stampeded through Congress last fall that gives dangerously short shrift to the Constitution.
The right of prisoners to challenge their confinement — habeas corpus — is enshrined in the Constitution and is central to American liberty. Congress and the Supreme Court should act quickly and forcefully to undo the grievous damage that last fall’s law — and this week’s ruling — have done to this basic freedom.
The Supreme Court ruled last year on the jerry-built system of military tribunals that the Bush Administration established to try the Guantánamo detainees, finding it illegal. Mr. Bush responded by driving through Congress the Military Commissions Act, which presumed to deny the right of habeas corpus to any noncitizen designated as an “enemy combatant.” This frightening law raises insurmountable obstacles for prisoners to challenge their detentions. And it gives the government the power to take away habeas rights from any noncitizen living in the United States who is unfortunate enough to be labeled an enemy combatant.
Of course, let’s not forget what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales thinks of such a mere Constitutional technicality as the right to habeas corpus:
GONZALES: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by —
SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.
GONZALES: Um.
It’s astonishing to me that, six years into the Bush Administration, I still get email on a regular basis posing some variation on the question, why are you liberals so angry? As the saying goes, if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.
I’m trying to find some of that garbage/nonsense type art directors use to comp a layout, but I can’t remember what it’s called. Anybody know what I’m talking about?
Update: Lorem ipsum. And how great is it that I’m working on something at ten o’clock at night and have readers who can answer an off-the-wall question like that within minutes…?
