The Last Days of Tarquinz

“The critically-acclaimed Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble invites you to the legendary city of Tarquinz. This metropolis may be famous for its ornate palaces and domes, reflected in the shimmering waters of its lagoon. But the people of Tarquinz are all harboring a secret; a mystery which is theirs alone and which will only be shared with a select group of visitors. Eccentrics, lovers, liars and clowns conspire to make your visit to Tarquinz unforgettable and astonishing.”

New York Times -April 23, 2006

Young Officers Join the Debate Over Rumsfeld

By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, April 22 ó The revolt by retired generals who publicly criticized Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has opened an extraordinary debate among younger officers, in military academies, in the armed services’ staff colleges and even in command posts and mess halls in Iraq.

Junior and midlevel officers are discussing whether the war plans for Iraq reflected unvarnished military advice, whether the retired generals should have spoken out, whether active-duty generals will feel free to state their views in private sessions with the civilian leaders and, most divisive of all, whether Mr. Rumsfeld should resign.

In recent weeks, military correspondents of The Times discussed these issues with dozens of younger officers and cadets in classrooms and with combat units in the field, as well as in informal conversations at the Pentagon and in e-mail exchanges and telephone calls.

To protect their careers, the officers were granted anonymity so they could speak frankly about the debates they have had and have heard. The stances that emerged are anything but uniform, although all seem colored by deep concern over the quality of civil-military relations, and the way ahead in Iraq.

The discussions often flare with anger, particularly among many midlevel officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and face the prospect of additional tours of duty.

“This is about the moral bankruptcy of general officers who lived through the Vietnam era yet refused to advise our civilian leadership properly,” said one Army major in the Special Forces who has served two combat tours. “I can only hope that my generation does better someday.”

An Army major who is an intelligence specialist said: “The history I will take away from this is that the current crop of generals failed to stand up and say, ‘We cannot do this mission.’ They confused the cultural can-do attitude with their responsibilities as leaders to delay the start of the war until we had an adequate force. I think the backlash against the general officers will be seen in the resignation of officers” who might otherwise have stayed in uniform.

One Army colonel enrolled in a Defense Department university said an informal poll among his classmates indicated that about 25 percent believed that Mr. Rumsfeld should resign, and 75 percent believed that he should remain. But of the second group, two-thirds thought he should acknowledge errors that were made and “show that he is not the intolerant and inflexible person some paint him to be,” the colonel said.

Many officers who blame Mr. Rumsfeld are not faulting President Bush ó in contrast to the situation in the 1960’s, when both President Lyndon B. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara drew criticism over Vietnam from the officer corps. (Mr. McNamara, like Mr. Rumsfeld, was also resented from the outset for his attempts to reshape the military itself.)

But some are furiously criticizing both, along with the military leadership, like the Army major in the Special Forces. “I believe that a large number of officers hate Rumsfeld as much as I do, and would like to see him go,” he said.

“The Army, however, went gently into that good night of Iraq without saying a word,” he added, summarizing conversations with other officers. “For that reason, most of us know that we have to share the burden of responsibility for this tragedy. And at the end of the day, it wasn’t Rumsfeld who sent us to war, it was the president. Officers know better than anyone else that the buck stops at the top. I think we are too deep into this for Rumsfeld’s resignation to mean much.

“But this is all academic. Most officers would acknowledge that we cannot leave Iraq, regardless of their thoughts on the invasion. We destroyed the internal security of that state, so now we have to restore it. Otherwise, we will just return later, when it is even more terrible.”

The debates are fueled by the desire to mete out blame for the situation in Iraq, a drawn-out war that has taken many military lives and has no clear end in sight. A midgrade officer who has served two tours in Iraq said a number of his cohorts were angered last month when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that “tactical errors, a thousand of them, I am sure,” had been made in Iraq.

“We have not lost a single tactical engagement on the ground in Iraq,” the officer said, noting that the definition of tactical missions is specific movements against an enemy target. “The mistakes have all been at the strategic and political levels.”

Many officers said a crisis of leadership extended to serious questions about top generals’ commitment to sustain a seasoned officer corps that was being deployed on repeated tours to the long-term counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the rest of the government did not appear to be on the same wartime footing.

“We are forced to develop innovative ways to convince, coerce and cajole officers to stay in to support a war effort of national-level importance that is being done without a defensewide, governmentwide or nationwide commitment of resources,” said one Army officer with experience in Iraq.

Another Army major who served in Iraq said a fresh round of debates about the future of the American military had also broken out. Simply put, the question is whether the focus should be, as Mr. Rumsfeld believes, on a lean high-tech force with an eye toward possible opponents like China, or on troop-heavy counterinsurgency missions more suited to hunting terrorists, with spies and boots on the ground.

In general, the Army and Marines support maintaining beefy ground forces, while the Navy and Air Force ó the beneficiaries of much of the high-tech arsenal ó favor the leaner approach. And some worry that those arguments have become too fierce.

“I think what has the potential for scarring relations is the two visions of warfare ó one that envisions near-perfect situational awareness and technology dominance, and the other that sees future war as grubby, dirty and chaotic,” the major said. “These visions require vastly different forces. The tension comes when we only have the money to build one of these forces, Who gets the cash?”

Some senior officers said part of their own discussions were about fears for the immediate future, centering on the fact that Mr. Rumsfeld has surrounded himself with senior officers who share his views and are personally invested in his policies.

“If civilian officials feel as if they could be faced with a revolt of sorts, they will select officers who are like-minded,” said another Army officer who has served in Iraq. “They will, as a result, get the military advice they want based on whom they appoint.”

Kori Schake, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who teaches Army cadets at West Point, said some of the debates revolved around the issues raised in “Dereliction of Duty,” a book that analyzes why the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed unable or unwilling to challenge civilian decisions during the war in Vietnam. Published in 1997, the book was written by Col. H. R. McMaster, who recently returned from a year in Iraq as commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment.

“It’s a fundamentally healthy debate,” Ms. Schake said. “Junior officers look around at the senior leadership and say, ‘Are these people I admire, that I want to be like?’ ”

These younger officers “are debating the standard of leadership,” she said. “Is it good enough to do only what civilian masters tell you to do? Or do you have a responsibility to shape that policy, and what actions should you undertake if you believe they are making mistakes?”

The conflicts some officers express reflect the culture of commander and subordinate that sometimes baffles the civilian world. No class craves strong leadership more than the military.

“I feel conflicted by this debate, and I think a lot of my colleagues are also conflicted,” said an Army colonel completing a year at one of the military’s advanced schools. He expressed discomfort at the recent public criticism of Mr. Rumsfeld and the Iraq war planning by retired generals, including Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, the former operations officer for the Joint Chiefs, who wrote, in Time magazine, “My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions ó or bury the results.”

But the colonel said his classmates were also aware of how the Rumsfeld Pentagon quashed dissenting views that many argued were proved correct, and prescient, like those of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff. He was shunted aside after telling Congress, before the invasion, that it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure and stabilize Iraq.

Others contend that the military’s own failings are equally at fault. A field-grade officer now serving in Iraq said he thought it was incorrect for the retired generals to call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation. His position, he said, is that “if there is a judgment to be cast, it rests as much upon the shoulders of our senior military leaders.”

That officer, like several others interviewed, emphasized that while these issues often occupied officers’ minds, the debate had not hobbled the military’s ability to function in Iraq. “No impact here that I can see regarding this subject,” he said.

from April 21, 2006 Los Angeles Times

Neil Young’s harsh words
The rocker assails Bush in a new collection. “I was waiting for some young singer to write these,” he says.

By Chris Lee
Special to The Times

To anyone who’s followed Neil Young’s socially crusading, four-decade musical career, it was hardly a surprise to learn earlier this week that he’s just recorded a 10-song collection that takes President Bush to task and sharply criticizes the war in Iraq.

The real surprise for Young loyalists is that it took him so long. As the veteran rocker explains it, he was finally moved to record the album, “Living With War,” in a two-week burst of creativity after his patience with Generation Next ran out.

“I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer 18 to 22 years old, to write these songs and stand up,” Young said. “I waited a long time. Then, I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the ’60s generation. We’re still here.”

The album’s explosive centerpiece is “Let’s Impeach the President.” Over an urgent, guitar-driven backdrop, Young sings:

“Let’s impeach the president for abusing all the power we gave him and shipping all our money out the door.

Let’s impeach the president for bending the facts to fit their new story of why we have to send our men to war.”

In Young’s view, the number is more than simply a political diatribe; it’s an affirmation of free speech.

“You’re always going to rub somebody the wrong way when you sing ‘let’s impeach the president,’ ” Young said. “But that’s what this country’s all about ‚Äî being able to express your views.” Warner Bros. Records executives heard the 10-song set for the first time this week. Though news of the aggressive anti-Bush tone had already led to a flurry of comments on blogs. (Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts, also played the CD for The Times.)

But “Impeach,” with its mocking use of Bush sound bites, represents only one side of Young’s emotional reaction to the war in the CD.

The collection is by turns empathetic toward soldiers’ families and scornful of runaway consumer culture. With a nod to ’60s protest music, Young shares his optimism and outrage ‚Äî at social ills including religious zealotry and patriotism run amok.

There is more anger, most notably the reference to Bush’s famous 2003 “one victory” remarks against the backdrop of a “Mission Accomplished” banner atop an aircraft carrier deck, which the singer ridicules in the song, “Shock and Awe.”

“Living With War” concludes with a deeply emotional version of “America the Beautiful,” with Young backed by a 100-member choir. Young, a Canadian-born longtime resident of the U.S. whose career started in the ’60s, joins other high-profile artists who’ve recently recorded politically minded pop songs. Pearl Jam’s “World Wide Suicide” addresses “a world of pain” in which “war has taken over.” The song recently topped rock radio.

The Dixie Chicks’ new single, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” takes up where group member Natalie Maines’ 2003 anti-Bush comment (about the group being ashamed that the president was from Texas) left off. And next month, Paul Simon, another ’60s crusader, will release his album “Surprise,” which includes the song “Wartime Prayers,” a disheartened meditation about psychic war wounds.

Last month at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Texas, conference organizer Roland Swenson recalled Young’s “Ohio,” written after the Kent State shootings. Addressing Young, who was the conference’s keynote speaker, he said, “Mr. Young, we need another song.”

And so he set out to do just that.

Rather than merely a protest, Young wanted “Living With War” to amplify the public sentiments he’s encountered.

“It’s the people I’ve been talking to: people in restaurants, people in cars,” he said. “Whenever the talk gets around to what’s going on in the world, people are saying what’s on this record.”

On his website he said he tried to draw upon the ’60s folk protest tradition of writers such as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, only framing some of the songs in a harder “metal folk” style.

The album’s “Flags of Freedom” is the most direct homage to that tradition, echoing the anthem-ish undercurrents of Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”

In Young’s song, he conjures the image of a girl listening to a Dylan song as she watches her brother march off to war.

“Have you seen the flags of freedom?

What color are they now?”

“Do you think that you believe in yours more than they believe in theirs?”

“I found Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan’s protest songs of the ’60s to be tremendously inspired,” Young said. “These people were writing from their souls about something that was happening in the country at that time. Civil rights, the injustices in society ‚Äî they were huge. It’s good to have a voice.”

Or 100.

Young said he enlisted that many back-up singers because he liked the metaphorical weight of having “100 voices from 100 lands.” One vocalist, Alicia Morgan, wrote about the atmosphere in the Los Angeles recording studio on her blog.

“The session was like being at a 12-hour peace rally,” she writes. “Every time new lyrics would come up on the screen, there were cheers, tears and applause. It was a spiritual experience.”

When Young and Roberts played the CD for the Warner Bros. staff, the closing “America the Beautiful” moved some of the group to tears, according to one executive present.

“Living With War” marks another turn in the restless rocker’s long and varied career, arriving on the heels of recent dramatic events in his life. Young’s 87-year-old father died last June, just as the singer was recovering from a brain aneurysm discovered in March 2005, which required emergency neuroradiology.

Asked about the difficulty of maintaining his idealism, Young remained sanguine — and committed as ever to the democracy of ideas.

“I’m eternally optimistic,” he said. “Change doesn’t have to happen tomorrow. Maybe the day after tomorrow. The endgame is, when people hear it, it’s up to them to think whatever they want. And I can say whatever I want. We seem to be losing track of that.”

FrontPageMagazine.com – April 18, 2006

Funding Anarchism as “Performance Art”
By Lee Kaplan

The Hallmark Corporation may seem like an unlikely sponsor of anarchist performance art, but it has done just that by providing the income for a member of the Hallmark family to patronize an anarchist ice cream truck.

What is the anarchist ice cream truck? It is the brainchild of Aaron Gach, a San Francisco Bay Area Ôø?artistÔø? and anarchist activist. Gach calls his vehicle the TICU, or Tactical Ice Cream Unit. Gach describes his truck in this way:

Ôø?equal parts SWAT van and ice cream truck (with functional and aesthetic flourishes borrowed from the apparatus of armored cars, military transport vehicles, urban hot-rods, and 1950Ôø?s-style milk trucks), the Tactical Ice Cream Unit is designed to attract, unsettle, amuse, disarm and engage the public with its strange brew of Good Humor gentility, Willy-Wonka wizardry, and Big Brother bravado. For many, a chance encounter with the TICU will feel like being chocolate-dipped in a sea of sugarcoated doubt. Ôø?

Not an everyday ice cream truck, the TICU doubles as a weapon, according to Gach. He describes it as Ôø?part ice cream truck and part urban assault vehicle.Ôø? It is also a propaganda machine. Gach uses it to distribute free ice cream as a lure to attract children and young people so that he can disseminate Ôø?literature from progressive organizations.Ôø?

TICUÔø?s treats include ice cream bars in flavors like honey vanilla, hibiscus and chili mango, GachÔø?s idea of anarchist flavors. Gach maintains that he only hands out pamphlets about effective anarchist activities that are peaceful, such as brochures for town hall meetings and political summits. But in fact he also hands out to children and students information for organizations such as the Black Panther Party, PROMO and the International Solidarity Movement, all anarchist-related groups that promote violent revolution of one kind or another, even terrorism against capitalist governments.

Inside the TICU is even more suspicious. One can find gas masks, police uniforms, video surveillance equipment and even military-grade armor. The front end of the ice cream truck has a built-in battering ram that can be used to take down police barricades or break down locked fences, tactics commonly associated with the more extreme elements of the anarchist movement.

TICU also boasts communications equipment inside and surveillance cameras Ôø? the TICU has 24/7 360 degrees video coverage and 16-channel video surveillance system and a remote control dish microphone, plus more than 1,000 GB of onboard data storage, a Global Positioning System and Wi-Fi.

Gach says he hopes to have a Ôø?fleetÔø? of such vehicles in the near future. The TICU is also equipped with first aid kits, sidewalk chalk, batteries and flashlights, toilet paper, towels, hand warmers and a disguise kit. (Volunteers from Stop the ISM obtained photographs from inside the vehicle.) In addition, documents from the San Francisco chapter of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) were found inside during a Midwest tour. The ADC is active in funding and training the International Solidarity Movement, whose leadership has admitted to working in cooperation with Palestinian terrorist groups. Other organizations mentioned in the literature include CAIR, which terrorism expert Steve Emerson testified before congress is a Hamas front. The ACLU is listed, along with the Muslim Lawyers Association. A document written in Arabic was also found, which tells Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI if they are questioned.

Ironically, this piece of putative Ôø?artÔø? is being funded by an heir to the Hallmark Card fortune, Margaret Hall Silva, thanks to generous funding from her Margaret Hall Silva Foundation. (Hallmark, of course, is a corporation that Gach and his anarchist cronies would probably like to see destroyed as part of their movementÔø?s goals.) The TICU was chosen for funding and realization by the not-for-profit art gallery Grand Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, as an example of Ôø?performance art.Ôø? It is not clear whether Margaret Hall Silva, the director of Grand Arts, was personally involved in choosing the project because the Grand Arts artistic director, Stacy Switzer, isnÔø?t talking.

Given all this information, the idea that Aaron Gach is merely a Ôø?performance artistÔø? is ludicrous. A review of GachÔø?s past activities, for instance, turns up several links to extremist groups. He was formerly involved with American groups that have been linked to terrorism, like Earth First! and the Black Panther Party, and has been active in the past with other American anarchist groups. Gach has even spent some time in Germany with European anarchists learning their radical trade. Gach is also a high-school classmate and a life-long friend of Joseph Smith, a.k.a. Joseph Carr, another anarchist from Kansas City, Missouri. Smith was involved in spinning the death of fellow anarchist and ISM activist Rachel Corrie, and once declared her death as well worth the price of Ôø?the revolution.Ôø?

Another clue to GachÔø?s extremist agenda comes from GachÔø?s own website. Gach writes of successful military deceptions throughout history. He also describes the destruction of corporate buildings and property (such as smashing the windows of chain stores or banks as was done by anarchists in Seattle in 1999) in euphemistic terms such as Ôø?putting a hexÔø? on a corporation.

Gach has been touring U.S. college campuses and high schools and is now on a West Coast tour starting with UCLA and branching out to other locations to spread anarchy and revolutionÔø?though he doesnÔø?t say so directly.

GachÔø?s organization, the so-called Center for Tactical Magic (CTM), has an equally radical mission. According to Gach, Ôø?CTM emphasizes nine key tactics used throughout history by ninjas and noblemen, magicians and magistrates, PIÔø?s and MPÔø?s alike. They are: stealth, surveillance, surprise, sabotage, infiltration, evasion, misdirection, subterfuge, and, of course, disguise.Ôø?

When asked whether Margaret Hall Silva was aware that Aaron Gach was heavily involved in the American anarchist movement, Grand Arts artistic director Stacy Switzer merely scoffed. When asked if she was aware the interior of the ice cream truck contained gear that had military applications, she abruptly hung up. Earlier, Switzer had told a reporter that, Ôø?For us, and this has always been the mission of Grand Arts, projects begin here and we know that the TICU has a life well beyond Grand Arts. IÔø?m excited to see where it goes after this.Ôø? No doubt she means other art galleries, and Gach is already scheduled at UC Riverside and other college campuses and private art galleries on the West Coast. But knowing GachÔø?s anarchist credentials, itÔø?s hard not to suspect that he may have other intentions for his controversial truck.

…

VH1.com

A track called “Eyes of the Insane,” [Tom] Araya said, is perhaps the most political song on the new Slayer album. The song was inspired by an article he’d read in an issue of Texas Monthly magazine.

“The song’s about the effects of war on some of these soldiers,” he said. “This article — and it was a pretty trippy article — it really affected me. The entire magazine was devoted to soldiers of this new Iraq conflict that’s going on. The effect that the war has had on some of these kids who’re coming home and having a tough time dealing with what they’ve seen — I mean, some of these kids are traumatized and mentally destroyed by what they’ve seen. The magazine also ran an entire list of the soldiers from Texas who’ve died. It was several pages with pictures of these kids. It blew my mind.”

“Shamans of the Amazon is a personal account of Film-maker Dean Jefferys returning to the Amazon with his partner and one year old daughter. They journey deep into the heart of the Ecuadorian rainforest to meet two Amazon Shamans, to learn about and experience the ancient ayahuasca ritual. The film will also show how this hallucinogenic ritual is being adapted and used in western cultures. You find the cd/dvd with a good quality original at: http://www.shamansoftheamazon. com/”

New York Times

April 19, 2006
MOVIE REVIEW
‘Sir! No Sir!’ Salutes Vietnam’s Dissenters in Uniform

By MANOHLA DARGIS
In March 1964 Robert S. McNamara opened a speech about South Vietnam with the statement that “the independence of a nation and the freedom of its people are being threatened by Communist aggression and terrorism.” Many words later, Mr. McNamara, the secretary of defense, concluded, in rosy terms that sound eerily similar to contemporary dispatches, that “when the day comes that we can safely withdraw, we expect to leave an independent and stable South Vietnam, rich with resources and bright with prospects for contributing to the peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia and of the world.”

Much happened in the bloody decade that followed, but one of the most memorable chapters of the Vietnam War has also long been one of the least revisited: the antiwar movement inside the military. Called the G.I. Movement, this resistance manifested itself in countless ways: in organized protests, in desertions and in the coffeehouses that sprang up across the country near military bases. In the early 1970’s the documentary filmmaker David Zeiger worked in one such coffeehouse, the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Tex., not far from Fort Hood. Named for a helicopter shock absorber, the Oleo Strut was where off-duty soldiers went to decompress and to check out the latest issue of one of the many underground military publications, like The Fatigue Press, that gave powerful voice to their dissent.

In his smart, timely documentary about the G.I. Movement, “Sir! No Sir!,” Mr. Zeiger takes a look at how the movement changed and occasionally even rocked the military from the ground troops on up. On one level the film serves as a corrective to the rah-rah rhetoric about Vietnam in such schlock entertainments as the 1980’s “Rambo” franchise, in which Sylvester Stallone’s veteran turned mercenary ritualistically wipes away the spit lobbed at him by a phantom antiwar protester. The image of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran, explains Jerry Lembcke, himself a Vietnam veteran and one of the persuasive talking heads who appears in the new film, helped maintain the important fiction that opposition to the war came strictly from outside the military.

During the 1960’s and 70’s American newspapers routinely reported a significantly different story than the one later cooked up by Hollywood and other revisionists. This film shows that as antiwar sentiment gathered strength in American streets, a parallel movement seized the armed forces. By September 1971 dissent among the ranks had become a front-page subject in this newspaper, with a headline that read “Army Is Shaken by Crisis in Morale and Discipline.” Soldiers were fed up and up in arms, and not always against the Vietcong. Desertions were on the rise, as were fraggings, named for the fragmentation grenades lobbed at superiors by their own men. By 1974 the Defense Department would record more than half a million incidents of desertion since the mid-60’s.

Mr. Zeiger fits so much into his 84-minute film that it’s hard not to wish he had spent more time on what happens when American soldiers break ranks with their leaders. John Kerry’s bid for president proved that long after fighting in Vietnam came to an end, a war of words continues to rage. It’s a war of words that finds Jane Fonda ó who performed for tens of thousands of troops in an antiwar revue, “Free the Army,” and makes a passionate appearance in the film ó still labeled Hanoi Jane. “Remembered as a war that was lost because of betrayal at home,” Mr. Lembcke has written, “Vietnam becomes a modern-day Alamo that must be avenged, a pretext for more war and generations of more veterans.” In “Sir! No Sir!,” Mr. Zeiger remembers that war and the veterans whose struggles against it are too often forgotten.

Sir! No Sir!

Opens today in Manhattan.

Written and directed by David Zeiger; directors of photography, May Rigler and Mr. Zeiger; edited by Ms. Rigler and Lindsay Mofford; music by Buddy Judge; produced by Mr. Zeiger, Evangeline Griego and Aaron Zarrow; narrated by Troy Garity; released by Balcony Releasing. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 84 minutes. This film is not rated.