Month: January 2010

Many of BT readers probably recall that the only reports coming out of Gaza during the Israeli incursion exactly a year ago was from Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse.

Cast Lead

Apart from his work in Gaza, Professor Gilbert was recently also featured in CNN’s special “Cheating Death” with Sanjay Gupta.

Ten years ago, Anna Bagenholm was a 29-year-old Norwegian medical resident on a ski excursion when an accident landed her head first, in a freezing stream. In his book and documentary, Gupta recounts how Bagenholm’s core body temperature dipped to 56°F. She was clinically dead for three hours, yet doctors still managed to reviveher. Despite staggering odds, Bagenholm eventually made a full recovery. Gupta describes the “miracle” of her survival as not due to luck, but instead as the result of evidence-based calibrations and her experienced medical team, led by emergency physician Dr. Mads Gilbert.

Anyway, Drs. Gilbert and Fosse have now published a book on their experiences in Gaza during Cast Lead.

Exerpt from “Eyes in Gaza”

“The boy with the destroyed brain did not need anaesthetic; he could no longer feel anything. The other lay in an artificial coma with intravenous anaesthetic agents to soften the pain and allow the ventilator to work without resistance from the boy’s own breathing. A large bandage covered both his eyes. He could not see anyway. He was already blind.

Where could I cry out the despair and rage I felt for all this terrible fate we saw at such close quarters? Would the heavens hear? Will the world hear? They know that this is happening, after all. The numbers tick into the West every single afternoon, to the news agencies, to the intelligence services and to the diplomatic missions of the world’s most powerful nations, who do not even make an attempt to pull in the reins and control the wildness of the Israeli war machine.”

[This is a sneak excerpt from Dr. Mads Gilbert & Dr. Erik Fosse’ new book – “Eyes in Gaza” soon to be published in English.]

In the course of Israel’s 22-day-long military offensive on the Gaza Strip, 1,400 Palestinians were killed: very few of them armed men, but mostly civilians, including more than four hundred children. More than 5.500 were injured. The Palestinian community lay in ruins again. For a number
of days, the Norwegian doctors Erik Fosse and Mads Gilbert were the only Western eyewitnesses to this death and destruction. Their sober reporting contributed to a change in attitudes, in large parts of the Western world, towards one of the most prolonged and complex conflicts of our time.
      This book is about Fosse and Gilbert’s trip to Gaza and their stay there from 31. December 2008 to 11. January 2009. Despite Israeli authorities having seen to systematically filtering and shutting out people from this conflict zone, NORWAC (Norwegian Aid Committee), succeeds in getting its envoys into Gaza City while all other aid organizations and Western
journalists are left standing by the border.

Israeli authorities were obviously livid that outsiders were actually there to report on the atrocities they were inflicting on the Palestinian population and have campaigned incessantly to vilify the two doctors.

The book has already caused controversy. Especially since the Norwegian Foreign Minister wrote an afterword in the book with praise for Gilbert and Fosse. The Israeli government is “outraged” and strongly criticizes him for doing so.

Haaretz

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Haaretz that the book being endorsed by Jonas Gahr Store is “outrageous and borders on incitement made up of fabrication and lies.”

“It is problematic that a representative of a democratic government is praising such things,” Ayalon added.     Advertisement

The book in question is called “Eyes in Gaza,” written by Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse after their stay in the Strip during Operation Cast Lead last year.

Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said he was “deeply disappointed” by Store’s endorsement of “slanted and baseless libel.” “Norway, which I hope will continue to live far away from terrorism, needs to know that such statements feed and assist the terrorists,” Kantor said.

“As can be recalled, journalists and reporters were not allowed into Gaza,” a spokesperson for the Norwegian foreign ministry said when asked about the back-cover praises which Store wrote for the highly controversial book.

“When war rages, civilians are made mute,” Store wrote, adding that Fosse and Gilbert “told of what they saw. It was not their duty, but their responsibility. When military might fences out all voices, the few which remain become extra strong and important.”

Pretty rich “outrage” considering that the Israeli government and its “defense” forces most likely violated human rights and may have committed crimes against humanity.

Goldstone Report

The UN Fact Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone, released its long-awaited report on the Gaza conflict on September 15. The report concludes that there is evidence indicating that serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.

The report also concludes there is evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes as well as possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated launching of rockets and mortars into Southern Israel.

Professor Gilbert is about to start a tour of campuses across the US and Canada to present the book. Maybe you’ll have opportunity to participate.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Monday January 18th : Ottawa (UofO)

Tuesday January 19th: Sudbury (Laurentian)

Wednesday January 20th: Toronto (Ryerson)

Thursday January 21st: Kingston (Queens

Friday January 22nd: Hamilton (McMaster)

Monday January 25th: Waterloo University

Tuesday January 26th: Calgary (UofC)

Wednesday January 27th: Edmonton (UofA)

Thursday January 28th: Victoria, (UVIC)

Friday January 29th: Vancouver (UBC)

Monday February 1st: Chicago (Benedictine)

Tuesday February 2nd: Chicago (DePaul)

Wednesday February 3rd: New York (Columbia)

Friday February 5th: Montreal (McGill)

.
Astounishing, see video of discussion with citizens of Yemen. Apparently these people appreciate the U.S. giving them support. Clearly they have worse enemies of their state: Iran foremost and Saudi Arabia waging war on their homeland. Yemen is the poorest nation on the peninsula and are fighting multiple battles with secessionists and foreign meddling. They don’t need Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

More below the fold …

I’m a progressive critic of the lackluster (to put it kindly) efforts of the Democrats over the past year in fighting Republican obstruction and carrying through on the programs and promises they campaigned on in 2008 to turn out the vote and obtain the large majorities in Congress they now enjoy. Some “progressives” as disappointed as I have have called for opposition to the Democrats over various legislation, including the inadequate health care reform bills up for consideration. Others have gone so far as to suggest a “boycott” or stay home from the polls approach to the 2010 elections.

Much as I am frustrated with the Democrats in Congress, I believe that approach by progressives would be a terrible mistake. What follows are the reasons why I’ve come to this conclusion.

Here’s my quote of the day, to set the table as it were for the argument I’m going to make. It comes from an Iranian Fundamentalist Cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of Iran’s Guardian Council, which supervises all elections in Iran, among other powers it exercises. The quote comes in response to renewed unrest in Iran, and the declaration by opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, that he does not fear death as a martyr.

During Friday prayer services in the capital city, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a fundamentalist cleric who heads the powerful Guardian Council, called protesters “flagrant examples of corrupt on Earth” and effectively called for them to be executed as “in the early days of the revolution.”

Wouldn’t it be horrible to be governed by fundamentalist religious nuts who consider anyone who opposes them corrupt and who are more than willing to kill those who oppose their vision of of society ruled by God’s law? And you wonder why we on the left here in America (and by left I mean anyone who doesn’t swear allegiance to Sarah Palin) makes such a big deal about the secretive society of politicians and religious leaders known as “The Family” who also have some grand designs of their own regarding a government of the Godly, and only for the Godly, as they define them.

Two weeks into my stay, David Coe, Doug’s son and the presumptive heir to leadership of the Family, dropped by the house. […]

“You guys,” David said, “are here to learn how to rule the world.” […]

He walked to the National Geographic map of the world mounted on the wall. “You guys know about Genghis Khan?” he asked. “Genghis was a man with a vision. He conquered”—David stood on the couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern hemisphere—“nearly everything. He devastated nearly everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a finger across his throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated city he would call in the local headman and have him stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a wonderful meal. “And then, while the man suffocated, Genghis ate, and he didn’t even hear the man’s screams.” David still stood on the couch, a finger in the air. “Do you know what that means?” He was thinking of Christ’s parable of the wineskins. “You can’t pour new into old,” David said, returning to his chair. “We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.”

He reached over and squeezed the arm of a brother. “Isn’t that great?” David said. “That’s the way everything in life happens. If you’re a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything.

Anyone who doesn’t make the grade of course better watch their back. Just like the people of Iran who don’t get with the program. Liberals, intellectuals, moderates, Jews, and, of course Gays, which Iran’s fundamentalist religious leaders also believe homosexuality is a crime punishable by death.

And Outrage, in its release about the gay teens’ execution, noted that, “according to Iranian human rights campaigners, over 4000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979. Last August, a 16-year-old girl , [Atefeh Rajabi] was hanged [in the Caspian port of Neka] for ‘acts incompatible with chastity,’ [i.e., sex before marriage].”

The American media are quick to condemn the brutality of the religious extremists who govern Iran. Yet these people differ from the religious extremists in our own country in only one essential regard: they have control over the government of their country. Imagine what would happen if the Christian extremists in our land ever acquired that same power. We already know that many of these power mad individuals who espouse the most virulent and hateful form of Christianity have assumed control of much of the current Republican Party infrastructure at both the local and national levels.

That should be all you need to do to realize that as bad as the Democrats have been (and you know I have been more than critical of their failures both before and after Obama became President), abandoning support for them in the upcoming election cycle in 2010 is not a viable option. Unless you want the Rick Warrens or Doug Coes (or their lackeys) of the Christian Right in control of this nation’s fate. For that is what will happen if we stay away from the polls and let the pied pipers of Fox News and all the crazies in the GOP lead their deluded tea bagging followers to increase the representation of Republicans in the Senate and the House.

Remember, when the Weimar Republic fell, the Nazis controlled only 30% of the Reichstag. But that was enough, with the help of their conservative allies, to stall effective legislation that would have prevented the collapse of a Democratic country intyo tyranny and dictatorship and fascism. We may not like a lot of the Democrats who represent us in the House and Senate.

We may be disappointed by the performance of the Obama administration in rejecting or failing to actively promote much of the progressive agenda many of us believe is necessary to return this country to prosperity. We may be severely disappointed that the bitter, illegal and ineffective decade long wars that George Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld instigated are still being pursued by this administration.

But when you look at the makeup of the other major political party in this country, and the insane beliefs systems of many of its leaders, the only conclusion that a rational person can draw is to fight even harder. Fight harder for progressive policies. Fight harder to win the public relations battle. Fight harder to convince the White House to adopt the programs and legislative goals that most Americans want to see passed into law.

And that means we must also fight harder to elect Democrats, even ones we may not like very much. Why? Because the alternative is a recipe for chaos and stagnation and history teaches us that those conditions increase the potential that any nation will cease to be governed by the Rule of Law and fall into the hands of despots with radical beliefs. Beliefs that will not only destroy “our freedoms” but end up killing many, many innocent people, both here and abroad.

The Democrats are a deeply flawed political party. The Republicans, however, harbor within their ranks a theocratic despotism based on the most violent and ugly interpretation of Biblical scripture. Based on those facts, the decision to continue to elect Democrats, and to work with and for change within the Democratic party is an easy one.

Jerome a Paris wrote a provocative and interesting diary at Daily Kos yesterday. I have a few problems with its construction, which I’ll mention, but it’s worth looking at his overall point. My first problem is that he comes out of the box damning with faint praise by titling the essay Obama is better than the extreme-right. I don’t think this headline really reflects his point, but it does put anyone who might disagree with Jerome immediately on the defensive. He also makes a couple of logical leaps that aren’t supported. For example, he poses the following question.

…is the best way to meet progressive goals to be satisfied with whatever progress Obama is able to extract from an hopelessly conservative Senate, or to push for more, including by threatening such progress when it is on the table as a best-and-final offer?

My answer to this is that it isn’t an appropriate question. It assumes that your options are to be satisfied or to be destructive to the president’s agenda. It is quite possible to push for more, but to be satisfied with the final outcome in the narrow sense that you know you got something positive and did the best you could. To make this explicit, fighting for a better bill out of conference is something that all progressives support. The final product will fall short of what nearly all progressives desire. But it’s possible to be satisfied with what we get to the degree that you support its passage into law. That shouldn’t imply that you’re satisfied in the larger sense. After all, you didn’t get what you asked for. It just means that you support passing the bill rather than seeing the health care bill go down in flames at the last moment. Jerome sets up a false either/or here. But I understand his point, which is to ask us to ponder alternate strategies and how they might impact progressive goals in the longer term.

Jerome also makes another logical leap when he quotes me as saying, “The Republicans are fucking nuts and must be kept out of power for as long as possible,” and then adds this conclusion:

And thus you get Lieberman as the sane alternative to the Republicans – and Obama who nicely looks more liberal than Lieberman.

But there is no causal connection between me and my opinion and Joe Lieberman and his sanity. What Jerome is attempting to say is that somehow our fear of a Republican resurgence leads to the empowerment of Lieberman. Looked at closely, that assertion actually makes no sense. Joe Lieberman would have the same effective veto power if he caucused with the Republicans as he does now caucusing with the Democrats. We’d still need his vote to pass anything, and if not his vote, the vote of at least one other Republican. Lieberman’s power comes from the 60-vote cloture rule, and not from how he is treated by the president or the Democrats. Technically, the other 59 senators in the Democratic Caucus have the same ability to torpedo the president’s agenda, but only Lieberman campaigned for John McCain, and only Lieberman has deep-rooted resentments against the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Yet, despite these flaws, Jerome raises an interesting question in this essay.

But where is the “fucking nuts” left that scares the right to death and makes them want to compromise with Pelosi at all costs? Where are the people arguing for 90% marginal tax rates on the rich, and cancelling the banking licences of banks that charge usurious rates on credit cards, and closing down the insurance licenses of companies that deny care to anyone, and setting minimum wages at levels that allow for decent living standards, and putting taxes on imports from countries that let kids work or have no environmental rules (all things that get very real public support if you actually ask people rather than pundits and lobbyists)?

To be scary, you have to take decisions that have consequences. If you don’t fight for what you say you stand for, you won’t get results, and you won’t get respect. And without respect, you won’t get votes, ultimately.

You might expect a Eugene Debs or Huey Long to come along on the left during these difficult economic times, but we haven’t seen that. There is no political representation for the far left, or even what passes for the mainstream left in most of Europe. We’ve seen left-wing populism before in this country, so its present absence can’t be some cultural thing.

And what is the price we pay for not having our own legions of teabaggers?

These are interesting questions. I’m interested in what people have to say about it. I could see the value of a scary left for moving the country as a whole to the left in the same way that the teabag protesters appear to have moved the health care debate to the right. The problem, for me at least, is that I don’t want to join this hypothetical left-wing teabag equivalent if they are exhibiting the same dishonest and (often) delusional characteristics. To put it in historical terms, I would have seen some value in Huey Long, but I would have supported Roosevelt over Long if they had matched-up in 1936. And this would be particularly true if I felt Long’s candidacy was going to throw the election to Alf Landon. That doesn’t mean that I would have disagreed with Long about everything, but I couldn’t support him overall, and certainly couldn’t support his rhetoric, style, and honesty.

In any case, this country doesn’t have much of a far left and what little it has has no representation in Congress. It’s interesting to contemplate why that is, and why we’re not seeing too many signs of a revival of a populist left even in this economy.

I wonder about the seeming expansion of Muslim-on-Muslim suicide bombing we first saw in Iraq and are now seeing in Pakistan. Are there religious authorities that are sanctioning this? Most of these attacks are Sunni vs. Shi’a affairs or vice-versa, but some of it is now tribal or militia-on-militia.

A suicide bomber set off an explosives-laden vehicle on a field during a volleyball tournament Friday in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 25 people, police said.

The blast occurred near Pakistan’s tribal belt, and was the latest bloodshed to rattle the country since the army launched a military offensive against Taliban fighters in the South Waziristan tribal region…

Police said Friday’s bombing in Lakki Marwat city, not far from South Waziristan, was possible retaliation for local residents’ efforts to keep militants out of the area.

”The locality has been a hub of militants. Locals set up a militia and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be reaction to their expulsion,” local police chief Ayub Khan told reporters.

I’d think that such attacks are harder to justify on Koranic principles than even al-Qaeda’s attacks. Muslims killing other Muslims while they’re trying to play volleyball? Because they don’t want to host armed insurgents? I can’t imagine how they could justify it religiously. Is this something new? Or is it just an expansion on what’s already been going on?

A CD’s worth of the year’s best songs, generally from off the beaten path.

Introduction

Here are my favorite songs this year from my RSS feeds.  I use Sharp Reader as my aggregator but it requires the .NET framework, which older computers may not have.  Feed Reader doesn’t need it and is good too.  See the “Free MP3 sites” part of my Pruning Shears blogroll for my current feed list.

Most weeks I burn as many new songs as I can fit onto a rewritable CD and give it a thorough listen (usually five times), so in that spirit I keep the list under the same limit.  In a way 80 minutes is arbitrary, but it’s also respectful of listeners to show some restraint.  If you fall in love with my taste in music drop me a line and I’ll get you the rest of the songs I considered but didn’t have room for.

On the reckoning of time

I age songs by release date, not recording date.  Until I get my grubby little hands on it, it doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned.  When it first makes it out to the public it is new, no matter how long it may have been gathering dust somewhere.

Recommended albums

Singles dominate music like they haven’t since the glory days of the 45.  And just like then, technology is driving it.  This is the age of the 99 cent download and no one mourns paying $17.99 for a CD that has the song you really like and a bunch of crap.  Some artists can still knock out an album’s worth of quality music, though.  It’s a treat to listen to a longer exercise that hearkens back to the days when, as Roman Candle so poetically put it on another great 2009 song, “ten songs on a record sounded like a string of pearls.”  In addition to the ones mentioned in the list here are the albums I enjoyed listening to front to back in 2009:

Assembly of Dust – Some Assembly Required

Fruit Bats – The Ruminant Band

Lushlife – Cassette City

Amanda Blank – I Love You

Those last two are from Philadelphia, as is the artist at #2.  Did Philly just have a good year or is it officially A Scene now?

Hype of the year: Yo La Tengo

It would have taken the second coming of Sgt. Pepper to justify the raving that accompanied the release of what was basically an above average alternative rock album.  Maybe I’m just not hearing it, maybe it was herd instinct or maybe folks were afraid to appear too uncool to appreciate it, but I got more listening pleasure out of the prefab pop confection “Read Between The Lines” than most of the tracks on Popular Songs.  It’s a good album.  It has some very good songs.  Leave it at that.

Honorable Mention

I usually reserve an Honorable Mention spot for a longer song.  Most years there’s at least one 7+ minute song that I like quite a bit, but since I try to get lots of different artists on the list I don’t want a single tune to crowd out several other candidates.  When a longer song really blows me away (like “Bushels” by Frog Eyes in 2007) I’ll make room, but overall I prefer to keep my selections under five minutes or so.

“Colossus” – Lightning Bolt (Buy)
This year’s State of Metal address.  A nice mini-epic with a suitably outsized title.  Black Sabbath doesn’t get enough credit for its continuing influence; the sludgy, noisy beginning traces a fairly direct line back to them.  By the end they’ve made it all their own, though.  Drummer Brian Chippendale appears to have escaped from a mental ward.

For a slower, quieter Honorable Mention check out “Cruiser” by Red House Painters.  Fabulous.

The List

(And yes as proof of concept I burned them on to a CD using Winamp.)

21. “Sometimes” – Donkeyboy (MySpace page)
When I first listened to “Sometimes” I thought, this sounds really good; there’s no way it will hold up.  Not only did it hold up, it kept sounding better.

20. “Anyway” – Spady (Buy)
Swing for the fences sir, and Godspeed.

19. “Muscle Cars” – Wussy (Buy)
Ever since Pete Townshend introduced me to the joys of repetition I’ve tried to keep my ears peeled for it.  It can turn preference into desire, desire into urgency and urgency into desperation.  That’s just how Lisa Walker uses it in the chorus; it gets the feeling across without her having to wildly emote.  Between her tentative warble and a beat that chugs along just below top gear, it sounds not like an original as much as a cover by an earnest but raw tribute band.  Irresistible.

18. “Rev” – Elusive Parallelograms (Buy)
Fuck the beer.  This is Milwaukee’s best.

17. “Magic Show” – Electric Owls (Buy)
Has echoes of “Cinderella Man ” which means (see #1) that I never stood a chance.

16. “Falling Stars” – Sarah Siskind (Buy)
I can’t really improve on Jordan’s take.  Production this clean usually makes a song sound sterile, but Siskind makes it work.  The whole album is great as well.

15. “Blue Jeans” – Jessie James (Buy)
I like Christina Aguilera.  “Genie in a Bottle” is one of the best pop songs of the 90’s and her other singles always sounded good to me too.  She has a very full sounding voice, a good range, and enough restraint to not turn every song into an exercise in vocal pyrotechnics.  Those are all fine qualities for a diva, and a less common thing than it ought to be.  Jessie James sounds like a direct descendant, with the same rich tone that’s at times a dead ringer, a pretty straightforward approach to the vocals and a catchy hook.  The country/electronic sound is pretty darned creative too.  Long Live Aguilera (her influence, anyway).

14. “Teclar” – Os Mutantes (Buy)
I have no idea what the lyrics are.  I don’t really care though; they could be chanting “death to whitey” and I’d put it on the list.  A good hook is a good hook, baby.

13. “Smashed on Honey” – Coffinberry (Buy)
Maybe Cleveland pride is getting the better of my judgment here, but I think this is a first rate pop song.  It gets in and out in just over two minutes, has a nice driving beat propelling it forward, and singer Nick Cross has the kind of upper register wail that will make you believe in rock and roll.

12. “Gettin’ High” – Rapid Ric (MySpace page)
It’s all a big laugh right now, but in a few years my kids will be old enough to be influenced by delinquents like this.

11. “Fuzzabeth Crackleby” – Shogun Kunitoki (Buy)
Knocked me pleasantly off kilter, like a sneeze.

10. “Halo” – Rachelle Van Zanten (Buy)
By my rough calculation I listen to between 1,300 and 1,500 new songs every year, and over 1,000 different artists.  Very rarely a song will instantly grab me; on the first seconds of the first listen my neurons will go haywire and I’ll be like ZOMG THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!  That happened to me twice in 2009.  “Rev” at #18 is one, and this is the other.  (Is it me or do the drums have a Wattsesque kick to them?)

9. “Rarichama” – Machesa Traditional Group (Couldn’t find any purchase page or official site)
I know nothing about the Botswanese music scene.  There could be dozens of groups that could kick this one’s ass.  The Machesa Traditional Group may be Botswana’s equivalent of Nickelback.  I don’t know.  That said, I can’t imagine enjoying a song much more than this, from Botswana or anywhere else.  It has a great hook, the bendy vocal style that I do not know the name of but that I associate with south African music, and the lead singer has a terrific set of pipes.

8. “House Party Time” – Dan Zanes (Buy)
Probably no genre is more likely to be dismissed out of hand than children’s music.  All I can say is, don’t be too hip to give “House Party Time” an honest listen.  It’s a great song irrespective of its target audience.  The theatrical “hellooooo!” at the start of the bridge absolutely slays me.

7. “4 My Niggaz” – Paybak INC. (MySpace page)
Not just the best beat of this year, the best of the last several.  Crazy hot.

6. “Riddle” – Grey Anne (Buy)
Things to dig about Riddle:

• The way her staccato yelps puncture the wheezing, lumbering beat.
• The strategically deployed hand claps.
• “You don’t have to do what they tell you.”

That last one goes straight to my authority-hating heart.

5. “F KENYA RIP” – HIGHLIFE (MySpace page)
The reason I listen to songs five times before deciding on them is because sometimes it takes more than a few listens to get a feel for a song.  I’d say my instincts are at least 99% accurate after three listens, but it’s that last one percent that has the most exciting surprises.  I literally do not remember listening to F KENYA RIP the first three times; it made no impression, good or bad.  When it started on the fourth time around I immediately knew it was one of the best songs of the year.  A few “a ha!” moments like that every year justify a lot of listening in my book.  Anyway, don’t write this one off if it doesn’t do anything for you right away.  It’s worth giving a chance to.(There’s a personal story behind the song that I’ll drop in the comments for those who want to read it.)

4. “Oriental Uno” – Beats Antique (Buy)
Takes an exotic sound and gives it an indigenous makeover.  I absolutely love it when music surprises me like this.

3. “You Can’t Force a Dance Party” – Dent May (Buy)
From the 2009 Album of the Year.  Dent May is an anachronism, an ancient soul come to us through some tear in the fabric of space and time.  He recalls the time of troubadours, when musicians traveled the countryside and sang of the timeless themes of love, destiny, longing and the frustrations of aging tennis stars.  Whether for crowds of gentle folk in town squares or in royal courts for the mightiest in the land, Dent May and his soul mates would recount their tales for all who would listen, sharing with them the eternal truths of the human condition along with the occasional reminder that, truly, you cannot force a dance party.

2. “Jumpoff” – Jazmine Sullivan & Waajeed (feat. Coultrain) (Buy)
In the same way that you can’t blame Led Zeppelin for the avalanche of uninspired hard rock created by their would-be successors, it isn’t fair to think less of Aretha Franklin for unknowingly loosing a wave of screeching histrionics from marginally talented wannabes who thought they were nailing the next “Respect.”  Your imitators are your imitators and there’s not much you can do about it.  When one of them gets it right, though, you have to tip your hat in the original’s direction, and I think that’s the case with “Jumpoff.”  Sullivan has a big voice, but she resists the temptation to use it to make the point that I Have A Big Voice.  She belts out the verses, but keeps it in a range she can comfortably hit.  Then she pulls it back in the chorus, going a little lower and letting the fabulous beat grab a little spotlight.  Very nice.  I have no idea if the Queen of Soul has heard this song, but if she has I have to think she approves.

1. “That Song” – Tahiti Boy And The Palmtree Family (Feat. Tunde Adebimpe) (MySpace page)
In my musical taxonomy fans of an artist break down into one of the following categories:

• Fanboys/Fangirls: Like everything an artist has done; old, new, popular, unpopular, you name it.  I’m a Rush fanboy.  I’ve listened to all their studio albums from their first one through Power Windows at least a hundred times.  I know their appearances in popular culture are usually in the service of ironic hipster slagging, but I think Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures and Signals is as fine a three album sequence as any group not named The Beatles has produced.  Geddy Lee’s voice is at best an acquired taste, but I don’t care.  They are brilliant and I won’t hear a word against them.
• Casual fans: Like the hits and not much else.  I’m a casual fan of The Police.  I spent a good deal of time around Police fans, so I’ve heard all their stuff, but for some reason didn’t get the bug.  Give me Synchronicity and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and I have all the Police I need.  And please don’t say “oh but you never heard the really good stuff that no one ever talks about like ‘On Any Other Day‘!”  Yes I have.  All of them.  Over and over.  The charms of their early experiments in reggae/punk fusion are destined to elude me.
• Snobs: The most obnoxious of the bunch.  Snobs love the early stuff and have palpable disdain for the music that breaks it big.  Something about the experience of being in a small group of intense devotees gets wrapped up in liking the artist, and popularity degrades the music itself in snobs’ eyes.  It ceases being Art, they get all bent out of shape, and complain of their heroes going mainstream, selling out and other crimes against The Muse.  It never seems to occur to them that perhaps the unwashed masses declined to properly celebrate the earlier work not from having been unexposed to it or from a poverty of imagination but because they heard it and didn’t think it was all that!   I’ll admit to being a Peter Gabriel snob.  I loved all his work with Genesis and his first two solo albums, particularly the second (Frippertronics!)  But on the third one – the one with “Games Without Frontiers” and “Biko,” the one that finally began to break him to a wider audience – I wasn’t impressed; by the time So came along I thought he was just another pop star (though he’s still capable of a fine movie theme, which is more than I can say for some people).  Snobs ruin more listening experiences than all the other groups combined.
• Contrarians: The rarest group, and the quietest (even considering their small size).  Contrarians like the least celebrated work, usually in the phase that comes after the snobs are long gone and the casual fans have turned their attention elsewhere.  I’m a Grateful Dead contrarian; I like most of their stuff, but I think their best album is their final studio effort, Built To Last.  “Blow Away” and “Standing On The Moon” are my favorite songs from them.  I don’t know why I don’t like their earlier stuff better, but for some reason I don’t.  I don’t need any fans instructing me in the error of my ways either.  The desire to avoid just that kind of hassle is what usually keeps contrarians quiet.

Now, I went through all of that so I could write the following about the 2009 Song of the Year:

Sounds like Peter Gabriel before he sold out.

Welcome to Friday Foto Flogging, a place to share your photos and photography news. We were inspired by the folks at European Tribune who post a regular Friday Photoblog series to try the same on this side of the virtual Atlantic. We also thought foto folks would enjoy seeing some other websites so each week we’ll introduce a different photo website.

This Week’s Theme: Gates, Doorways, and Passages (h/t Knucklehead).

Website(s) of the Week: Critics Allege Wildlife Photo of the Year Was Faked, Steve Casimiro’s The Adventure Life.

AndiF’s Open Says Me

	Gate Click image for larger version
	Door Click image for larger version
	Passage (they hope) Click image for larger version

olivia’s gates, doors, passages

	Click image for larger version
	Click image for larger version

Jan 8 Theme: Aphorisms and Quotes (h/t keres).

Info on Posting Photos

When you post your photos, please keep the width at 500 or less for the sake of our Bootribers who are on dial-up. If you want to post clickable thumbnails but aren’t sure how, check out this diary:
Clickable Thumbnails. If you haven’t yet joined a photo-hosting site, here are some to consider: Photobucket, Flickr, ImageShack, and Picasa.

Previous Friday Foto Flogs

FFFs 1-36	Random	Skies	School’s Out
Flowers	Weather	Disrepair	Random
Simplicity	What is it?	Vacation, Staycation	Brown
Sparkle	Random	Purple	Differences
What moves you?	Colors	Random	What is It
Self-portraits	Up	Where work is done	Transitions
Random

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