Carolyn Wonderland

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Carolyn Wonderland:
A True Texas Guitar Hero(ine) Gets Her SXSW Due
By Michael May / American Public Media / March 15, 2008

It’s South By Southwest time in Austin, Texas. And right now, the streets are clogged with an event optimistically titled “The Million Musician March” — it’s a peace protest and wandering jam session that’s become an annual tradition.

Leading the march is Carolyn Wonderland, a singer, songwriter and mean guitar player who has a history of speaking out. She was kicked out of her high school for leading a protest.

But she’s all grown up now, and can do what she wants. She’s got a new album produced by Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson, and tonight at midnight she has her official South By Southwest showcase at the legendary club Antone’s.

Carolyn Wonderland Record Release for Miss Understood

Learning to Play Guitar

Well, I used to sneak around and play on my mom’s Martin when she wasn’t home, and I’d often get scolded or grounded for it if I hadn’t done my chores or if I hadn’t washed my hands after grubbing on it last time. I guess I was about 8 years old when I started really started writing songs on it, and wanting to play it every day. And I broke a string — I remember that very clearly, because I was so proud, I found the right gauge and strung it up. But I strung it up backwards. She didn’t find out for two days, and I never heard the end of that. So that Christmas, I got my own guitar.

An Attraction to the Blues

What first attracted me to the blues as a youngster playing guitar is that it was a chance to get to play with a group of people. You’ve only got so many chords, you’ve only got so many patterns you can do, but it’s what you do with those colors that make it. And that’s something that can’t be quantified in math, can’t be quantified on a chart — that’s your actual soul coming out… So that’s what attracted me to the blues.

Staying Close to Her Roots

It’s always been an evolution of the sound, always, but it’s never strayed from the first things that I heard. I mean, “Still Alive and Well” is one of the songs that we recorded on the new record, “Miss Understood,” and that’s one of the first guitar riffs that I ever went around the house on my mom’s guitar going, “Is this how it goes?” And she was like, “Why don’t you take up finger painting?”

Getting Kicked Out of School

I got thrown out of school for leading a protest on a campus after I was suspended for leading a protest at another campus. I was asked to leave right when I turned 17, they said, “Here’s the legal age where we can kick her out, and they did.” Getting kicked out of school? Well, it meant more time to devote to the guitar. I think it turned out OK. I don’t recommend it, but I think it turned out OK.

Hard-Headed Runs in the Family

My dad is about as hard-headed as I am. He was thrown out of school as well, so I guess it runs in the family. His advice was “Well, if you think you know everything, then you better get a job and prove it.” I was like, “OK.”

Playing in Biker Bars

A lot of the places that would hire me when I was underage were biker bars, by and far. It was never a consideration that I was a chick. And most of the folks there treated me like the dirty kid sister. Which was killer for me, I never had to wear make-up, I never had to do any of that crap. It wasn’t until I was on the road, I suppose, where I started to see a little change in treatment.

Always Something to Prove

Before you start playing, people might look at you odd — “Oh, great! Another strumming guitar chick… Don’t break a nail, honey!” Oh, boy howdy. But in a sense, there’s always something to prove to someone. So if it lights a fire under your butt, then good for it.

‘Van Full’ and Always on the Road

Part of living your dreams sometimes is realizing you have to live cheaply. And sometimes you go to extremes to prove something to yourself, and sometimes you put yourself out more than you have to and you give yourself the blues. For example, I was in my van for the better part of two years. It was partly by choice, and partly because there wasn’t a lot of money to be made making music. Or, at least, the way that I was going about it, I sure couldn’t find it. So that the result of that was just to go on tour all the time, and be OK with that. Even at the point where some people would have considered me homeless, I considered myself “van full,” because I always had wheels, and I was always on the road.

A Different Measure of Success

I love getting to play life. I love freaking out. When you’re playing, you don’t care. I really care more about what I sound like than what I look like on any given night. I’m not thinking. If it’s the end of the song, I always get surprised. “What song did we play? What song should play next?” I don’t usually have set lists, so sometimes I have to look around to the band. “We haven’t played this yet, right?” Because you’re outside of yourself. And to me, that’s success. It may never come with money, but it sure comes with that. You get to jump out there and do that all the time — it’s really lucky.

Source.

Carolyn Wonderland.

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No Longer a Nation – Just a Geographic Expression

Posted on March 16, 2008 by RagBlog

Inside Iraq – Iraq: Five years on – 14 Mar 08

Patrick Cockburn: Iraq is a country no more. Like much else, that was not the plan
Sunday, 16 March 2008

The death rate in Baghdad has fallen, but it is down to ethnic cleansing

‘It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam,” a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein said angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, might briefly venture into the city.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the US and the Iraqi governments claim that the country is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Mr Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armoured cars, each with three machine-gunners on the roof, raced out of the Green Zone through a heavily fortified exit, followed by sand-coloured American Humvees and more armoured cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bullet-proof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have been carrying Mr Maliki.

The precautions were not excessive, since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi Prime Minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party, to which he belongs and which are just half a mile outside the Green Zone, but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.

Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.

The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.

More than most wars, the war in Iraq remains little understood outside the country. Iraqis themselves often do not understand it because they have an intimate knowledge of their own community, be it Shia, Sunni or Kurdish, but little of other Iraqi communities. It should have been evident from the moment President George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein that it was going to be a very different war from the one fought by his father in 1991. That had been a conservative war waged to restore the status quo ante in Kuwait.

The war of 2003 was bound to have radical consequences. If Saddam Hussein was overthrown and elections held, then the domination of the 20 per cent Sunni minority would be replaced by the rule of the majority Shia community allied to the Kurds. In an election, Shia religious parties linked to Iran would win, as indeed they did in two elections in 2005. Many of America’s troubles in Iraq have stemmed from Washington’s attempt to stop Iran and anti-American Shia leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr filling the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The US and its allies never really understood the war they won that started on 19 March 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well-paid, well-equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home. Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burnt-out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.

The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously, Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. There was later to be much bitter dispute about who was responsible for the critical error of dissolving the Iraqi army. But at the time the Americans were in a mood of exaggerated imperial arrogance and did not care what Iraqis, whether in the army or out of it, were doing. “They simply thought we were wogs,” says Ahmad Chalabi, the opposition leader, brutally. “We didn’t matter.”

In those first months after the fall of Baghdad it was extraordinary, and at times amusing, to watch the American victors behave exactly like the British at the height of their power in 19th-century India. The ways of the Raj were reborn. A friend who had a brokerage in the Baghdad stock market told me how a 24-year-old American, whose family were donors to the Republican Party, had been put in charge of the market and had lectured the highly irritated brokers, most of whom spoke several languages and had PhDs, about the virtues of democracy.

There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader, who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shia wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power.

Later President Bush and Tony Blair gave the impression that overthrowing the Baathist regime necessarily implied occupation, but it did not. “If we leave, there will be anarchy,” friends in the occupation authority used to tell me in justification. They stayed, but anarchy came anyway.

In that first year of the occupation it was easy to tell which way the wind was blowing. Whenever there was an American soldier killed or wounded in Baghdad, I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark bloodstain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier, a man told me: “I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken.” Yet this was the moment when President Bush and his Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, were saying that the insurgents were “remnants of the old regime” and “dead enders”.

There was also misconception among Iraqis about the depth of the divisions within their own society. Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shia, but when I mentioned prominent Shia leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: “But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians.” Al-Qa’ida in Iraq regarded the Shia as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shia marketplaces and religious processions, slaughtering hundreds, and the Shia began to hit back with tit-for-tat killings of Sunni by Shia militia death squads or the police.

After the Sunni guerrillas blew up the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006, sectarian fighting turned into a full-blown civil war. Mr Bush and Mr Blair strenuously denied that this was so, but by any standard it was a civil war of extraordinary viciousness. Torture with electric drills and acid became the norm. The Shia Mehdi Army militia took over much of Baghdad and controlled three-quarters of it. Some 2.2 million people fled to Jordan and Syria, a high proportion of them Sunni.

The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the US, al-Qa’ida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time.

There is now an 80,000 strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the US but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.

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Eve Ensler : V-Day in Austin

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Author Eve Ensler:
Special Austin Production of Vagina Monologues

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / March 16, 2008

Vagina Monologues author, Eve Ensler, participated in a special performance in Austin on Friday, March 14th. Austin supported three productions, including one in Spanish, to mark the 10th anniversary of V-Day. The play has become a global catalyst in the movement to stop violence against women.

The Friday performance was particularly poignant with its focus on women in the US military who have been sexually assaulted and raped by fellow soldiers. According to Department of Defense statistics, one in three women in the military will be raped during their military service.

Friday’s production, organized by Sascha Tunney, drew several hundred to an outdoor venue called the Enchanted Forest. It raised funds for the Katrina Warriors Network, the Service Women’s Action Network and the Settlement Home for Children.

Five women spoke Friday about sexual assault and rape in the military – Dorothy Mackey and April Fitzsimmons, US Air Force, Suzanne Swift, US Army, with her mother, Sara Rich, and Ann Wright. Col. Wright spent 29 years in the Army and was one of three US diplomats who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. She is well known to many Austinites who spent time at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas.

Under the South Austin trees, musicians Carolyn Wonderland and Patrice Pike began the show. There were celebratory chocolate vagina pops and vagina stickers. In contrast, tables at the entrance struck a somber note, offering resources to victims of domestic violence. The monologues brought laughs and tears to the audience. The vagina stories of discovery, pleasure, brutality, and birth have moved millions around the world to take action to stop violence against women.

On April 12h, Eve Ensler will participate in a V-Day production in New Orleans.

The special Austin Performance of Vagina Monologues.

The Rag Blog

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A Thousand Spirited Marchers Fill Streets of Austin

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo by Nancy Simons / The Rag Blog

Million Musicians March:
Second-Line Style Musical Parade Protests Iraq War
By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / March 16, 2008

AUSTIN — On a balmy Saturday afternoon in Austin, Texas – the little sweet spot in the hilly heart of the Lone Star State – more than 1,000 musicians and peace activists gathered at the Texas State Capitol building, then snaked through the streets of downtown Austin and descended on City Hall for a three hour peace jam and concert, all in protest of the war in Irag on this, the fifth anniversary of the invasion.

Musicians, some on foot and others performing from floats, makeshift trains and art cars, played tubas and trumpets and bagpipes and drums. Groups of strolling guitarists strummed and sang, “We ain’t gonna study war no more.” Waves of demonstrators stretched for blocks – young people and old, students and Iraq vets and old hippies, with dogs and children, carried banners, waved signs and danced in the streets. One young man carried a placard proclaiming “The Beginning is Near!”

The Million Musicians March, from noon-4 p.m on Saturday, March 15, 2008, was organized by Instruments for Peace and endorsed by 15 other peace and justice groups from the area, including the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), CodePink and The Crawford Peace House, known for its anti-war vigils near President Bush’s ranch. The march was part of the monthly national Iraq Moratorium activities in opposition to George Bush’s Middle East occupation.

Led by the Jericho Marching Brass Band, who were joined by other musicians in traditional second-line fashion, they chanted and boogied down Austin’s famed Sixth Street strip, past blocks of bars and music venues where tourists and musicians packed the sidewalks. The crowds, in town for South by Southwest, Austin’s annual mega music fest, waved and flashed peace signs. And many joined the parade.

[South by Southwest is a massive yearly talent showcase and festival that this year has brought over 1,700 bands from all over the world and thousands of music aficionados to the streets and venues of Austin. Live music is shouting out from every conceivable club and hall in this music-crazed town, and from virtually any outdoor space large enough to accommodate a makeshift stage. This week’s SXSW has been highlighted by a showcase performance from the resurgent R.E.M. and a keynote speech by Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed.]

At Austin City Hall hundreds filled temporary bleachers to enjoy the music of Carolyn Wonderland, Barbara K (formerly of Timbuk 3), event prime mover Richard Bowden and other activist/musicians. And to mingle with friends, pick up literature and anti-war buttons, and buy silk-screened t-shirts, “Bring the Troops Home Now” yard signs and “Pets for Peace” dog tags.

Instruments for Peace is an Austin-based network of musicians who work with grass-roots activist organizations “in support of peace, justice and sustainability worldwide.” And, they say, “to have an effect on public dialogue.” To help create a “spin machine for truth.”

This year’s Million Musicians March is the latest sign of an increasingly energized peace and justice movement in Austin, long known as a center for progressive politics and alternative culture.


Photos by Bratten Thomason / The Rag Blog

And a Little Historical Perspective…

We are definitely back in charge. Reminds me of the Pull Out Dick daze parade when we wanted Nixon to get the troops out of Viet Nam. The chant was started by Bob Sternberg, a talented writer who is no longer with us.

My brother and I had large red marks-a-lot peace signs on the back of our t-shirts. It was hot. I think my back still has that peace sign on it. As I recall, we were maced when we arrived at the Capitol from the Drag. Jeff Friedman was our leader that day. He was later elected mayor of Austin. He is no longer with us. But we are out of Viet Nam. We Won!

I love this article. I hope you will add a blurb to the Rag Blog that includes “an attractive, strutting baton twirler led the peace parade.” The parade was on channel 8, in case you haven’t seen it!!!

Shelia Cheaney / The Rag Blog / March 16, 2008

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Terror Does Not Stop Terror

Posted on March 16, 2008 by RagBlog


Makeshift Patriot

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"Ouch," in So Many Remarkable Ways

Posted on March 16, 2008 by RagBlog

Stick it To Him Like He’s Been Sticking it to You
By Buck Batard

In case you’re one of the lucky few who’s still flush with cash, Amazon has just the ticket to deal with the problems facing the economy right now. Along with some other useful items. In case that doesn’t work, I know some good root doctors on the South Carolina coast who will be glad to help you out. Just in case voting doesn’t do the trick.

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Stop Denying Yourself a Meaningful Existence

Posted on March 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Presentation by Joe Bageant
St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas
Department of Ethics and Leadership
February 2008

I usually speak to political groups and literary groups and their awareness tends to be political or intellectual. The word spiritual is a big no-no in both circles these days. All solutions are supposed to be political or intellectual.

However, it is more than just a political or intellectual failure when we turn our backs on our own laboring people, denying them such things as basic health care and liberation from darkness through true education. Or when that quintile of our populace who are fortunate enough to be truly middle class and ehjoy all that entails, pretend there is no class system in America and that we are all equal.

What is left of the diminishing American middle class is at a critical juncture in history. We have become a nation whose survival and comfort depends not only upon the clothing and electronic sweatshops in the smoking trash heaps of Latin America, Africa and Asia, but also upon domestic denial of the gaping and widening disparities among our very own people. We let millions of Americas hardest toiling folks suffer sickness and go uneducated because we are in the middle class — the class that is paid to manage our little corner of the system, not to be our brother’s keeper.

As members of the fifth or so of Americans among America’s true middle class, we must decide whether to be selfish or to be unselfish. There is no middle ground. No acceptable level of misery for the elderly or poor, no acceptable level of ignorance for any American. It’s an ethical and spiritual problem every American should face up to and personally solve for himself or herself. Because if we fail to solve it, then our life has been a spiritual failure.

Now if this event is like every other one I’ve spoken at, someone is going to ask me: “Mr. Bageant, what can we do as citizens to . . .?” Blah blah, blah.

If I knew what YOU should do, I’d be God, or at least Dear Abby. But the fact that we all look to other people, politicians, police, supposed experts (even dumb rednecks like me who write a book) for answers or solutions shows how we have learned to be helpless. In fact, psychologists call it “learned helplessness.”

Yet, none of us is truly helpless. The truth is that at any given moment in any given day, we can simply do something to help someone else in need. Which also helps us and the world in the same process.

Let’s do this. Let’s all stand up.

Everybody standing up?

OK now don’t sit down until you have thought of something you are going to do to help a fellow human being, someone we actually know in real need, such as hunger or perhaps cursed by mental disorder — or homeless, or an ex-convict or drug addict trying to regain a hold on his or her life. And do this before you go to bed tonight. Find some small way to remove a little bit of misery from the world and the human race. Sit down when you have decided on something to do.

[People stand for 60 seconds. Some sit down.]

OK. Let’s sit down. Hard wasn’t it? Most of us probably had a tough time thinking of a truly needy person to help, much less a way to help them. Yet eliminating the world’s misery, as any Buddhist monk or Third World Catholic priest, can tell you, is done mostly face to face, people helping people one at a time.

And we do know people we can help. We meet them every day and are blind to them because we are in a different social caste. What about that young single mom with the tattoo and the bad teeth scrubbing out the steamer pans at the school cafeteria? What about that redneck Pentecostal fella with four kids who empties the waste basket in your office or classroom at night while you sleep?

“Oh, that’s a problem for social services,” we say. Or “I give to United Way,” or some such charity. Yet our social services are collapsing and nearly every major American charity has proven to be suspect at best.

So you see how learned helplessness works. Helpless people are conditioned to spend money instead of deal honestly and face to face with people and their problems: as in ‘I’ll write a check to Catholic Relief, then jump in my car and go grab an organic salad at the café.’ Helpless middle class Americans are helpless not because they are lazy, but because they are conditioned to believe they have no personal power to change the world, just the money to buy it. Or help sponsor the least offensive of the political candidates offered to us by the political machinery of the state. Anybody here really believe that Barack Obama or John McCain can overcome a bought and paid for Congress to give all Americans the same free health care and free higher education enjoyed by nearly every other developed nation on earth? — assuming they even wanted to do so. Then again, them thar’s mighty big problems — too big for the average guy to tackle.

When we have learned to tell ourselves that our fellow American’s problems are too big for us to deal with as individual human beings, we’ve thrown away our humanity. We’ve denied ourselves a meaningful existence. Exiled ourselves from the spirit.

There are an awful lot of smart people here tonight, and collectively, there is more intelligence on the other side of this microphone than I will ever possess. In truth — and this is no exaggeration — the solution to every one of America’s problems — whether it is the injustice of class in America or the dark poverty of ignorance — is in this room right now.

It’s not about political morality or good and evil. There is no evil but meanness, stupidity, insensitiveness, and lack of imagination — which has become active in human beings as fear, greed and cruelty: the fear of losing the obvious advantages of our middle class status, education, 401-Ks, etc.; the greed that is inherent in a consumer based society and culture; and the cruelty that comes with not only the denial of a class system in America, but the failure of the middle class to stand up and reject the televised spectacle and sham that has been substituted for politics in our nation because true politics is about class and always has been.

The antidote is personal non-media produced awareness. That and unsentimental compassion. I believe that every soul here tonight has at least a little of those to offer the world.

Thank you all for taking of your valuable time to be here tonight.

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Another Forgotten Victim of 911

Posted on March 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Dr. Sami Al-Arian vs Big Brother
by Eileen Fleming / March 15th, 2008

American Palestinian Professor Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, has spent the last five years behind bars although NO jury ever returned a single guilty verdict against him. On March 3, 2008 he began his third hunger strike in Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. after learning he would face a third grand jury, instead of being released and deported this April.

After losing fifteen pounds, the diabetic Dr. was moved to Butner Medical Center. I phoned the center [919- 575-3900] on March 14, 2008, seeking a condition update, but only got as far as leaving a voice mail.

I then phoned Melva Underbakke, who was driving to Phoenix to show the documentary USA vs Al-Arian.

Melva informed me, “I have known Sami for fifteen years, we both taught at the University of South Florida. When he was indicted he lost his tenure. We lived a mile from each other and were both on the educational committee of HOPE, a volunteer organization in the community that works to strengthen the community. Sami and I were both on the committee that helped the public schools develop an alternative to out of school suspension by keeping the suspended kids in the school system.

“After 9/11, Sami was instrumental in outreaching to the entire community by inviting the churches and all others to the mosque to express our shared grief and sorrow.

“Sami has won many awards for teaching. He worked to get people out to vote and he lobbied in Washington.

“It’s a big loss to our community–a big loss to our country to lose such a person as Sami.

“Even during his pretrial incarceration the conditions were very harsh. He was always behind a glass; no physical contact was allowed, even for his family. I think maybe once a year they were allowed to be in the same room with him. The last time I saw him was just after his second hunger strike. He was still joking and in good spirits. He was strong and it was a happy visit.

“Sami was always a big believer in the American system. He felt justice would be done. But, I think because this case goes all the way to Washington, and they have been loosing these terror cases, they want to save face and don’t want to give up persecuting Sami.”

Dr. Al-Arian has stated:

“To be patriotic is to be able to question government policy in times of crisis. To be patriotic is to stand up for the bill of rights and the Constitution in times of uncertainty and insecurity. To be patriotic is to speak up against the powerful in defense of the weak and the voiceless. To be patriotic is to challenge the abuses of the PATRIOT Act.”

“A great nation is ultimately defined and judged by its system of justice. When the system is manipulated by the powerful and tolerates abuses against the minorities or the weak members of society, the government not only loses its moral authority and betrays future generations, but will also be condemned by history.”

The diabetic Dr.’s first hunger strike, lasted 140 days, he survived on nutritional liquids and lost 45 pounds. In 2007, he went on a two month hunger strike, drank only water and lost 55 pounds. His third hunger strike began March 3, 2008 and he is refusing fluids.

The documentary USA vs Al-Arian that Melva is taking around the country, details “the absurdity of the show trial held in Florida and the hollowness of the government’s case against Al-Arian. When the film was awarded Best Nordic Documentary at the Nordic Panorama in Finland the jury wrote: ‘The film shows precisely how a common man becomes a victim of the situation in the contemporary world, where the Big Brother is watching you even when you’re ordering pizza.’”

The film is also “a close portrait of an Arab-American family facing terrorism charges leveled by the U.S. Government. The film shows a personal story of a family living in a society where fear of terrorism has resulted in increasing stigmatization and discrimination against Muslims. For years, Nahla Al-Arian and her children have been fighting to prove the innocence of husband and father Sami, a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years. In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was accused of giving material support to a terrorist organization and held in solitary confinement for over three years. His six-month trial ended without a single guilty verdict. The failure to convict Dr. Al-Arian was seen as a stinging rebuke for the federal government. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he has been targeted in an attempt to silence his political views. Because the jury hung on some of the counts, however, Dr. Al-Arian remained in jail as the prosecution threatened to retry him. In May 2006, he agreed to a plea bargain with the US Government in order to put an end to the ordeal and to be reunited with his family. A federal judge sentenced him to 57 months in prison and subsequent deportation… The case of Sami Al-Arian is one of the first major tests of the USA Patriot Act, a controversial law passed hastily after September 11, 2001.”

So far the American taxpayer has provided approximately $50 million dollars to persecute Dr. Al-Arian. “The government has called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to hundreds of hours of often absurd phone transcriptions and recordings made over a 10-year period, which the jury dismissed as “gossip.” Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian—including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad”—the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors disagreed on the remaining charges, with 10 of the 12 jurors favoring his full acquittal… Following the acquittal, a disaster for the government, especially because then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had announced the indictment, prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor, under duress, accepted a plea bargain agreement that would spare him a second trial, saying in his agreement that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a tepid charge given the high profile of the case.”

*****

USA vs Al-Arian
Contact Melva Underbakke to schedule a screening in your city.
Call (813) 215-3403
E-mail: melvau@earthlink.net

Eileen Fleming is the author of Keep Hope Alive and Memoirs of a Nice Irish American Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory and the producer of 30 Minutes With Vanunu. Email her at ecumei@gmail.com.

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When Will We Finally Stop Meddling?

Posted on March 15, 2008 by RagBlog

For God’s Sake, Don’t…!
by Dr. Haider Mehdi / March 15th, 2008

The news all over the media is that the US army “is developing a plan to send around 100 trainers to work with a Pakistani para-military force that is the vanguard in the fight against Al Qaida and other groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.” This report further states that “US trainers initially would be restricted to training compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions ‘to the point of contact’ with militants as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq.” Eventually, the Pentagon plans to build a training base and spend more than $400 million over the next several years on this project. US officials are giving the impression that all of this is being planned as a benevolent act of American altruism and generosity to help a friendly country (Pakistan) to fight a counterinsurgency that is threatening its very existence.

In other words, in America’s view (and of the apologists for Musharraf’s and the US perspective in Pakistan), Pakistan is facing so-called “extremism” and “terrorism” on its soil and the war against it will have to continue indefinitely. The implicit message is that the “war on terror” is neither only an American war nor one of General (retd) Musharraf’s exclusively designed political doctrine — it is Pakistan’s war, where a specific segment of its citizenry (especially Pashtuns in the northern area of the country) have gone ideologically berserk (because Islam is violent) seeking martyrdom for “hoors” (heavenly beauties) in the life hereafter. The road to this imaginary Heavenly Kingdom is sought by these misled miscreants by identifying Bush’s noble and cavalier America as the enemy. In addition, all those who support Bush’s so-called worthy enterprise of democracy and freedom are on the death list of these gone-mad Muslim terrorists.

Indeed, this whole approach is absurd. In fact, all this anti-Islamic propaganda is a set-up to plan American military presence in Pakistan that will expand gradually with time and finally give the Americans a permanent military base (or bases) from which to conduct its global agenda of economic-military-political expansion all the way to the Central Asian Islamic States. It is precisely for this reason that the Americans are supporting Musharraf’s presidency and prefer to deal with a dictator rather than a democratic establishment in Islamabad.

If Pakistan has to survive as a peaceful progressive democratic nation then four matters will have to be settled at once: First, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf will have to go immediately; this will deprive the Americans of their vital contact and present control over instant decision-making in Islamabad (in accordance with their dictates). Equally important is the need to develop political processes by which all matters relating to any kind of military or civil engagement with the United States will have to be decided in the Pakistani parliament by a competent and appropriate legislative body. Three, Pakistan’s military establishment from now on should have only an advisory role (through parliamentary hearings) even when business with the US is purely of a military nature. Fourth, in all matters pertaining to American engagement with Pakistan, the media’s involvement as a forum of debate will have to be an integral mechanism of political decision-making in this country. This will promote the democratic process and public input in national policy-making.

However, the immediate concern that Pakistan’s newly elected parliament should have is the Pentagon’s plan to send over 100 American trainers to the work with and train the Frontier Corps, paramilitary forces of nearly 85,000 members recruited from ethnic groups on the border. For God’s sake, don’t let this happen. It is a plan, if it materializes, that will have catastrophic effects and lasting impacts on Pakistan’s recently elected democratic establishment’s ability to promote its own independence, free of American pressures, and to pursue its national interests in all of its political-military decision-making vis-à-vis the US.

Read all of it here.

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South by Southwest : Music to the Ears

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Lou Reed photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired

1,700 Bands, Rocking as the CD Industry Reels
By Jon Pareles / New York Times / March 15, 2008

AUSTIN — “I don’t want to feel like I don’t have a future,” sang the Shout Out Louds, one of more than 1,700 bands that have been performing day and night at Austin’s clubs, halls, meeting rooms, parking lots and street corners since Wednesday.

The Shout Out Louds, from Stockholm, were singing about a romance, but they could have been speaking for thousands of people attending the 22nd annual South by Southwest Music Festival. It is America’s most important music convention, particularly for rising bands, gathering a critical mass of musicians and their supporters and exploiters from the United States and across the world. While major labels have a low profile at this year’s gathering, other corporations are highly visible, using sponsorships to latch on to music as a draw and as a symbol of cool.

Southwest is a talent showcase and a schmoozathon, a citywide barbecue party and a brainstorming session for a business that has been radically shaken and stirred by the Internet. For established recording companies, the instantaneous and often unpaid distribution of music online is business hell; CD album sales are on an accelerating slide, and sales of downloads aren’t making up for the losses. But for listeners, as well as for musicians who mostly want a chance to be heard, the digital era is fan heaven.

As major labels have shrunk in the 21st century, South by Southwest has nearly doubled in size, up to 12,500 people registered for this year’s convention, from 7,000 registered attendees in 2001, not including the band members performing. In an era of plummeting CD sales and short shelf lives even for current hit makers, the festival is full of people seeking ways to route their careers around what’s left of the major recording companies.

Sooner or later, public forums and private conversations at this year’s festival end up pondering how 21st-century musicians will be paid. For nearly all of them, it won’t be royalty checks rolling in from blockbuster albums. Musicians’ livelihoods will more likely be a crazy quilt of what their lawyers would call “alternative revenue streams”: touring, downloads, ringtones, T-shirts, sponsorships, Web site ads and song placements in soundtracks or commercials. Festival panels offer practical advice on all of them, for career-minded do-it-yourself-ers.

The key is to gain enough recognition to find an audience. Over its four days, SXSW, as the festival is called, is like MySpace moved to the physical realm: more music than anyone could possibly hear, freely available and clamoring to be heard.

Major labels used to help create stars through promotion and publicity, but their role has been shrinking. Multimillion-selling musicians who have fulfilled their major-label contracts — Radiohead, the Eagles, Nine Inch Nails — are deserting those companies, choosing to be free agents rather than assets for the system that made them famous.

Even a moderately well-known musician can reach fans without a middleman. Daniel Lanois, who has produced U2 and Bob Dylan and is also a guitarist and songwriter, noted during his set that he now sells his music directly online in high fidelity at the Web site redfloorrecords.com.

“We can record something at night, put it on the site for breakfast and have the money in the PayPal account by 5,” he said. “With all due respect for my very great friends who have come up in the record-company environment, it’s nice to see that technology has opened the doors to everybody.”

South by Southwest has insisted, ever since it started in 1987 as a gathering for independent and regional musicians, that major-label contracts have never been a musician’s only chance. Musicians who have had contracts are lucky if they recoup their advances through royalties. Lou Reed, who gave an onstage interview as a convention keynote, was terse about getting a label contract. “You have the Internet — what do you need it for?”

There’s never a shortage of eager musicians. Many bands drive cross-country by van or cross an ocean to perform an unpaid showcase at South By Southwest, and the most determined ones play not only their one festival slot but also half a dozen peripheral parties as well, hoping to be noticed. Sixth Street and Red River, two downtown streets lined with clubs, are mobbed with music-hopping pedestrians until last call.

Musicians make the trek even though discovering a local band from another town or another country is just a few clicks away. That spread of information opens new career paths, from tours stoked by blog buzz to recognition for a song tucked into a commercial or a soundtrack. South by Southwest draws like Ingrid Michaelson and Sia got big breaks through songs that appeared in television shows, while Yael Naim found an international audience through a MacBook Air commercial.

With music whizzing across the Internet, South by Southwest probably has fewer completely unknown so-called baby bands, but hundreds of more toddlers. They have unlikely allies now. If record labels can’t help them, corporations might. Few musicians worry about selling out to a sponsor; now it’s a career path. This year’s festival has brand-name sponsors everywhere, from Citigroup and Dell to wineries, social-networking Web sites and the chef Rachael Ray (who is the host of her own day party).

Read all of it here.


SXSW : The Return of R.E.M.
By Angela Watercutter / Wired / March 14, 2008

AUSTIN — It’s been almost four years since we’ve seen a proper R.E.M. studio album and it’s felt like a long time, even with last year’s live record to curb the hunger. And, frankly, the time span since the last really great R.E.M. record has felt even longer.

But if R.E.M.’s performance at Stubb’s for SXSW is any indication, the band seems to be be back in top form. “Seems to be” is important to note here because Michael Stipe and co. have always been an amazing live rock band, so judging their level of “back”-ness is hard because it’s easy to be sucked in to Stipe’s easy charisma and get swept away (the concert is available for streaming from NPR.org if you want to experience it for yourself).

That said, the new songs they played from their upcoming album Accelerate (out April 1) sound like classic R.E.M., but for the new millennium. In this clip from an interview with music site Mog, Stipe himself mentions that the band has been working better as a cohesive unit on the upcoming record and that level of tightness was definitely on stage at Stubb’s. This clip is the first of a few where the frontman discusses the new album, the rest are here.

Really what seems to be back with the new R.E.M. is their passion. During the set Stipe made quite a few references — in both words and song — to the state of the world, particularly the political climate in America. (New track “Houston,” for example, is a response to Barbara Bush’s comments following Hurricane Katrina. Stipe didn’t say which comments, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say these were the ones.)

“I know Austin came out strong for Barack Obama and I want to salute you for that,” Stipe told the cheering crowd at Stubb’s, becoming the latest rock star to throw his weight behind the presidential hopeful.

Not everyone appreciates rock stars telling them who to vote for or how to feel about the issues, but you have to admit when a band like R.E.M. is excited about something the music is better. And one of the things that R.E.M. does best is have a message without sounding overly preachy, so the new fire in the belly could be a strong indicator of good things to come.

Source.

Lou Reed : Shove it in a Cow!
By Daily Dish / SF Gate.com / March 14,2008

Surly Lou Reed admonished a fan when his cell phone rang during the rocker’s keynote speech at the South By Southwest Festival in Texas on Thursday.

The former Velvet Underground star, who inducted Leonard Cohen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, lost his patience before a packed Austin Convention Center when he heard the ringtone.

He barked, “What does ‘Turn off your cell phone’ mean in Texas? Do you have to say it differently, like ‘Howdy?’ Shove it in a cow.” AP Photo/Jack Plunkett

Source.

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Bush and Afghanistan Envy

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Napolean’s invasion of Egypt. Front lines. Very romantic.

Bush’s romantic notions about serving on the front lines.

By Fred Kaplan / Slate / March 14, 2008

If further proof were needed that President Bush resides in a dream world, he settled the issue on Thursday definitively.
Speaking by videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan about the challenges posed by war, corruption, and the poppy trade, the president unleashed this comment:

I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks.

Go ahead, dear reader, pour yourself a stiff one before trudging on.

Someone with such a jaunty vision of war—concocted from who knows what brew of Rudyard Kipling, John Wayne, and sheer fantasy—has no business leading young men and women into real-life battle, no business serving as the armed forces’ commander in chief.

It only compounds the insult to reflect that Bush, when he was younger and not employed anywhere, passed up his chance for a romantic fling with danger in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Many U.S. soldiers, Marines, and aid workers in Afghanistan (and Iraq) are proud of the work they’re doing. They volunteered for duty. They accept the hardships and tolerate the sacrifices to a degree that’s truly awesome to behold. But I suspect very few of these men and women see themselves as indulging in enviable adventures from The Green Berets or Gunga Din.

According to Reuters reporter Tabassum Zakaria, who was permitted to observe the exchange between Washington and Kabul, Bush sat at the head of a conference table in the White House, where he was flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and others. Neither of them had ever experienced combat, either. (Gates served in the Air Force, at a Minuteman ICBM base.) But one hopes, for their sake, that their jaws dropped at least a little.

The president and all other combat fantasists would do well to read Elizabeth Rubin’s chilling dispatch in the Feb. 24 New York Times Magazine, chronicling the not-at-all fantastic experiences of a Battle Company from the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan’s desolate Korengal Outpost.

If that doesn’t sober him up, there is a cure for his wistful envy. He won’t be employed in the White House for much longer. He is 62, too old, alas, to join the military. But a spot could probably be found for him on an A.I.D. mission, a Provisional Reconstruction Team, or, perhaps through his vice president, some contractor’s expedition. He put our soldiers over there, and, as we all know, there aren’t enough of them. If he pines for a taste, let him have one.

Fred Kaplan is Slate’s “War Stories” columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

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Tweet! Tweet!

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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