June 12, 2006 New York Times

By PETER GELLING

KINAHREJO, Indonesia, June 12 ó In this village, one of the closest to Mount Merapi’s ominous crater, sleep is often tenuous.

Darto, 50, slept only a half hour on Sunday, spending all night sitting cross-legged beneath a small window, out of which the peak of Merapi, mired in smoke and gas, glowed orange between two tall trees.

Next to him, in a jumble, slept his wife and three daughters, wrapped in thick blankets, keeping warm in the cold mountain air.

In the distance, the volcano, considered one of the most unpredictable and dangerous in all of Indonesia, thundered. Wide trails of lava and volcanic rocks tumbled down its southern slopes, sometimes coming within half a mile of Mr. Darto’s small, wood-framed house.

At about two in the morning, the crash of rocks grew loud, startling his wife, Sri Semiyati, 40, awake. With a motion of his hand and a nod of his head, Mr. Darto assured her there was no danger.

“I guess it is a heavy responsibility,” Mr. Darto said. “But I don’t think of it like that. This is my family and these are my neighbors. I simply have to protect them.”

Earlier in the evening, after a simple dinner of noodles and tea, Mr. Darto’s wife swept the kitchen, his son tinkered with the engine of his motorbike and his daughters studied for today’s final exams. Mr. Darto, a tiny man with a big smile, one that rarely leaves his face, sat watching the volcano, drawing on a hand-rolled cigarette.

“Merapi’s activity is not that high compared to past years,” he said. “But with all the media attention, people are becoming panicked. I think it’s been exaggerated.”

With that he stood up, his smile quickly departing and his eyes glaring at Merapi. His wife wandered out of the kitchen, his son looked up from his bike and his daughters abandoned their books. Together the family stood in the dirt courtyard, ash heavy in the air, watching to see which way a freshly ejected hot cloud would travel.

It went west, and without a word they all returned to their activities.

“The worst of it is over,” Mr. Darto said. “Merapi will begin calming down now in the next few weeks.”

Scientists, who are often at odds with mystics like Mr. Darto, seem to agree that the danger around Merapi is receding.

Subandriyo, head of the Merapi division of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology Center, said the alert remained at its highest level, but could be reduced if activity continues decreasing over the next few days.

Volcanologists have long feared an unstable lave dome, forming around Merapi’s peak, could suddenly collapse, sending millions of cubic meters of volcanic rock, lava and hot gas down the mountain’s slopes, threatening nearby villages like Kinahrejo.

Last week, however, a large piece of the dome slowly began to crumble, triggering a series of small eruptions. Its reduced size is now less of a threat, said Subandriyo who, like many here, uses only one name.

Mr. Darto’s family, along with about 100 other families living in this village, which is about three miles from the teetering lave dome ó well within striking distance ó have refused to heed government warnings to evacuate for months now.

Merapi first started showing increased activity on April 13.

The villagers believe they are well acquainted with Mount Merapi’s character, and will know when it is time to leave. And so they remain in their ash-covered houses, tending to livestock and guarding their homes from looters, lying awake at night, eyes and ears trained on the mountain.

Mr. Darto, one of the village elders who is respected for his intimate connection with the spirit world, is entrusted with the task of sounding the alarm in the event of danger, which would most likely arrive in the form of a fast-moving cloud of superheated gas, exceeding temperatures of 540 degrees Fahrenheit.

One such cloud, which Mr. Darto and his family remember well, burned 66 people alive here in 1994.

The villagers must depend on Mr. Darto, they said, because the government’s alarm ó which sounds like an air-raid siren echoing off the mountain’s valley walls ó comes too late.

The last time Mr. Darto hammered his steel bell, drawing everyone out into the street, was May 15, when numerous hot clouds danced around Merapi’s southern and western slopes.

In the street, the villagers quickly debated the seriousness of the situation and radioed for a flatbed truck to move the elderly, women and children to the safety of refugee camps, a mile and a half below, Mr. Darto said.

They all returned later that afternoon.

Many of the families living in this village have been here for generations. Fathers and grandfathers taught their sons how to read the signs of a coming eruption. Mr. Darto now teaches his 16-year old son, Mulyadi.

“Most importantly I teach my children to meditate, to exercise their spiritual power, so they will be better in tune with the nature around them,” Mr. Darto said.

Although most Javanese are Muslim, many still practice ancient animist beliefs. The kingdom atop Mount Merapi is considered one of the most important symbols in all of Javanese culture.

According to Javanese mythology, history is now entering a time of great torment, a time of darkness and evil. This explains, Mr. Darto said, the May 27 earthquake about 25 miles south of Mount Merapi that killed about 5,800 people, as well as the 2004 tsunami, claiming 170,000 victims in Aceh, Indonesia’s northernmost province.

Early Sunday evening, Mulyadi rushed into the kitchen to inform his father that the full moon had arrived ó a dangerous omen, the son said.

Indeed, scientists say the gravitational pull of a large moon can disturb the volcano’s liquid magma bubbling inside, increasing the chances of an eruption.

Nevertheless, Sunday night passed without incident. After morning prayers today, Mr. Darto crawled under a blanket beside his daughters and managed his half-hour nap, while Merapi continued to smolder outside the small window.

“We cannot protect ourselves from death,” Mr. Darto said later. “That is God’s will. We can only nurture our soul, respect our environment and pray that God will bless us in return.”

May 1, 2006 Chicago Sun-Times

BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter

The Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and Vice Lords were born decades ago in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. Now, their gang graffiti is showing up 6,400 miles away in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods — Iraq.

Armored vehicles, concrete barricades and bathroom walls all have served as canvasses for their spray-painted gang art. At Camp Cedar II, about 185 miles southeast of Baghdad, a guard shack was recently defaced with “GDN” for Gangster Disciple Nation, along with the gang’s six-pointed star and the word “Chitown,” a soldier who photographed it said.

The graffiti, captured on film by an Army Reservist and provided to the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights increasing gang activity in the Army in the United States and overseas, some experts say.

Military and civilian police investigators familiar with three major Army bases in the United States — Fort Lewis, Fort Hood and Fort Bragg — said they have been focusing recently on soldiers with gang affiliations. These bases ship out many of the soldiers fighting in Iraq.

“I have identified 320 soldiers as gang members from April 2002 to present,” said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department gang detective at Fort Lewis in Washington state. “I think that’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Of paramount concern is whether gang-affiliated soldiers’ training will make them deadly urban warriors when they return to civilian life and if some are using their access to military equipment to supply gangs at home, said Barfield and other experts.

Jeffrey Stoleson, an Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq for almost a year, said he has taken hundreds of photos of gang graffiti there.

In a storage yard in Taji, about 18 miles north of Baghdad, dozens of tanks were vandalized with painted gang symbols, Stoleson said in a phone interview from Iraq. He said he also took pictures of graffiti at Camp Scania, about 108 miles southeast of Baghdad, and Camp Anaconda, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Much of the graffiti was by Chicago-based gangs, he said.

In civilian life, Stoleson is a correctional officer and co-founder of the gang interdiction team at a Wisconsin maximum-security prison. Now he is a truck commander for security escorts in Iraq. He said he watched two fellow soldiers in the Wisconsin Army National Guard 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry, die Sept. 26 when a roadside bomb exploded. Five of Stoleson’s friends have been wounded.

Because of the extreme danger of his mission in Iraq, Stoleson said he does not relish the idea of working alongside gang members, whom he does not trust. Stoleson said he once reported to a supervisor that he suspected a company of soldiers in Iraq was rife with gang members.

“My E-8 [supervising sergeant] told me not to ruffle their feathers because they were doing a good job,” he said.

Stoleson said he has spotted soldiers in Iraq with tattoos signifying their allegiance to the Vice Lords and the Simon City Royals, another street gang spawned in Chicago.

“They don’t try to hide it,” Stoleson said.

Christopher Grey, spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, did not deny the existence of gang members in the military, but he disputed that the problem is rampant — or even significant.

In the last year, the Criminal Investigation Command has looked into 10 cases in which there was credible evidence of gang-related criminal activity in the Army, Grey said. He would not discuss specific cases.

“We recently conducted an Army-wide study, and we don’t see a significant trend in this kind of activity, especially when you compare this with a million-man Army,” Grey said.

“Sometimes there is a definition issue here on what constitutes gang activity. If someone wears baggy pants and a scarf, that does not make them a gang member unless there is evidence to show that person is involved in violent or criminal activity,” Grey said.

Barfield said Army recruiters eager to meet their goals have been overlooking applicants’ gang tattoos and getting waivers for criminal backgrounds.

“A friend of mine is a recruiter,” he said. “They are being told less than five tattoos is not an issue. More than five, you do a waiver saying it’s not gang-related. You’ll see soldiers with a six-pointed star with GD [Gangster Disciples] on the right forearm.”

Fort Lewis offers free tattoo removal, but few if any soldiers with gang tattoos have taken advantage of the service, Barfield said.

In interviews with the almost 320 soldiers who admitted they were gang members, only two said they wanted out of gangs, Barfield said.

None has been arrested for a gang-related felony on the base, Barfield said. But some are suspected of criminal activity off base, he said.

“They’re not here for the red, white and blue. They’re here for the black and gold,” he said, referring to the gang colors of the Latin Kings.

Barfield said most of the gang members he has identified are black and Latino. He has linked white soldiers to racist groups such as the Aryan Nations.

Barfield acknowledged that the soldiers he pegged as gang members represent a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of soldiers based at Fort Lewis in the period he reviewed. But he stressed that he only investigates a fraction of the soldiers on base.

Barfield said he normally identifies gang members during barracks inspections requested by unit commanders. He interviews them about possible gang affiliation when he sees gang graffiti in their rooms, photos of a soldier flashing gang hand signals or a soldier with gang tattoos.

“I know there is a lot more going on here,” he said. “I don’t inspect off-base housing or married soldiers’ housing.”

The Gangster Disciples are the most worrisome street gang at Fort Lewis because they are the most organized, Barfield said.

Barfield said gangs are encouraging their members to join the military to learn urban warfare techniques they can teach when they go back to their neighborhoods.

“Gang members are telling us in the interviews that their gang is putting them in,” he said.

Joe Sparks, a retired Chicago Police gang specialist and the Midwest adviser to the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said he is concerned about the military know-how that gang-affiliated soldiers might bring back to the streets here.

“Even though they are ‘bangers, they are still fighting for America, so I have to give them that,” Sparks said. “The sound of enemy gunfire is nothing new to them. I’m sure in battle it’s a truce — GDs and P Stones are fighting a common enemy. But when they get home, forget about it.”

Barfield said he knows of an Army private who fought valiantly in Iraq but still maintained his gang affiliation when he returned home.

The private, a Florencia 13 gang member from Southern California, spoke to Barfield of battling a 38th Street Gang member when they were civilians.

Then the 38th Street Gang member became a sergeant in the Army and the Florencia 13 member became a private. They served in Iraq together, Barfield said.

“They had exchanged blows in Inglewood [a city near Los Angeles], but in the Army, they did get the mission done,” he said. “The private is a decorated war veteran with a Purple Heart.”

The private still has his gang tattoos and identifies himself as a Florencia 13, Barfield said.

Barfield said a big concern is what such gang members trained in urban warfare will do when they return home.

He pointed to Marine Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, a suspected Norteno gang member who shot two officers with a rifle outside a liquor store in Ceres, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2005, before police returned fire and killed him. One officer died, and the other was wounded by the 19-year-old Raya, who was high on cocaine. Raya had spent seven months in Iraq before returning to Camp Pendleton near San Diego.

Photos of Raya wearing the gang’s red colors and making gang hand signs were reportedly found in a safe in his room.

Hunter Glass, a Fayetteville, N.C., police detective, said he has seen an increase in gang activity involving soldiers from nearby Fort Bragg. A Fort Bragg soldier — a member of the Insane Gangster Crips — is charged with a gang-related robbery in Fayetteville that ended in the slaying of a Korean store owner in November, said Glass, a veteran of the elite 82nd Airborne based at Fort Bragg.

He estimated that hundreds of gang members are stationed at the base as soldiers.

“I have talked to guys who say ‘I’m a SUR 13 [gang member], but I am a soldier,’ ” Glass said. “Although I see the [gang] problem as a threat, I do believe the majority of the military are good people and that many of those [military officials] that I have made aware of the situation have expressed concern in dealing with it. It is safe to say that I am less worried about a gang war in the sand box [Iraq] but more about the one on our streets upon its end.”

Glass has given presentations to military leaders in Washington, D.C., about gang members in the military.

A law enforcement source in Chicago said police see some evidence of soldiers working with gangs here. Police recently stopped a vehicle and found 10 military flak jackets inside. A gang member in the vehicle told investigators his brother was a Marine and sent the jackets home, the source said.

Barfield said he knows of civilian gang members in the Seattle area who also have been caught with flak jackets that he suspects were stolen from Fort Lewis.

Barfield said he has documented gang-affiliated soldiers’ involvement in drug dealing, gunrunning and other criminal activity off base. More than a year ago, a soldier tied to a white supremacy group was caught trying to ship an assault rifle from Iraq to the United States in pieces, he said.

In Texas, the FBI is bracing for the transfer of gang-connected soldiers from Fort Hood in central Texas to Fort Bliss near El Paso as part of the nation’s base realignments. FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons said gang-affiliated soldiers from Fort Hood could clash with civilian gang members in El Paso.

“We understand that [some] soldiers and dependents at Fort Hood tend to be under the Folk Nation umbrella, including the Gangster Disciples and Crips,” Simmons said. “In El Paso, the predominant gang, without much competition, is the Barrio Azteca. We could see some kind of turf war between the Barrio Aztecas and the Folk Nation.”

FBI agents have visited Fort Hood to learn about the gang activity on the base, Simmons said.

“We found most of the police departments say they do see gang activity due to the military — soldiers and dependents,” she said. “Our agents also have been in contact with Fort Bliss to discuss the issue.”

Simmons said investigators may conduct background checks on soldiers relocating from Fort Hood to Fort Bliss to assess the level of the potential gang problem.

Barfield said he welcomes the FBI’s scrutiny of gang members in the Army.

“Investigators as a whole across the military aren’t getting the support to remove gang members from the ranks,” he said.

But Grey, the spokesman for the Criminal Investigation Command, said the unit is open to any tips about gang activity in the Army.

“If anyone has any information, we strongly recommend they bring it to our attention,” he said.

Courtesy D. Reeves!

Department of Defense Announces Recruiting and Retention Number for May

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army said Friday it surpassed its recruiting goal for May, marking the 12th consecutive month of meeting or exceeding its target.

Before it began the streak in June 2005, the active Army had missed its target four consecutive months. And even though results improved during the summer months, it missed its full-year target for the first time since 1999. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve also fell short of their 2005 goals but are doing better now.

The regular Army signed up 5,806 new recruits last month, compared with its target of 5,400, and the Army National Guard and Army Reserve also exceeded their May goals, according to statistics released by the Pentagon.

Nonetheless, eight months into its budget year, the active Army is barely beyond the halfway mark of recruiting its goal of 80,000 new soldiers. Through May it had signed up 42,859, meaning that in the final four months of the period it will have to enlist an average of nearly 9,300 per month to reach the 80,000 target.

Last year, the only month the active Army came close to signing up 9,300 in a single month was August, when it got 9,452.

The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps also met their May recruiting goals, the Pentagon said.

June 9, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:55 p.m. ET

HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — Authorities raided the Dartmouth College fraternity that helped inspire the movie ”Animal House,” carrying off 10 crates, a computer and other items. Investigators refused to say what the search on the Ivy League campus was about.

Court documents on Thursday’s raid were sealed, and Hanover police said only that the search at the Alpha Delta house was part of a two-year investigation and that they expect to make arrests. Alpha Delta members turned a reporter away at the door Friday.

Dartmouth junior Joe Kutney, a member of the Tri-Kap fraternity, said Alpha Delta can be ”a pretty crazy house” whose members are proud of their party reputation. But he added that Alpha Delta is not the only Dartmouth frat with such a reputation.

”Animal House” portrayed fraternity debauchery at the fictional Delta House, whose members repeatedly thwart and embarrass the Faber College officials determined to banish them. One of the writers of the 1978 movie, Chris Miller, was a 1964 Dartmouth graduate and a member of Alpha Delta.

Police removed 10 crates, two bags, a videotape and a computer during the raid. Police Chief Nick Giaccone said a 19-year-old student was arrested at the house on a drug charge Thursday, but the arrest was not related to the investigation.

The police chief said the investigation began in October 2004 following an incident at the fraternity, which is owned by a group of its alumni called the Dartmouth Corporation of Alpha Delta.

George Ostler, lawyer for the fraternity members, would not comment except to call the search a ”major interruption.” The raid came as parents began arriving on campus for graduation Sunday.

Dartmouth spokesman Roland Adams said the school does not release disciplinary records for Dartmouth’s 24 single-sex fraternities and sororities or the three co-ed organizations. More than a third of the school’s 4,100 undergraduates are members of single-sex fraternities and sororities. Adams what not say what the investigation was about.

Frats and sororities are central to the social life on the rural campus, and some of them have a reputation for hard drinking and raucous behavior. Dartmouth has been trying for years to curb the drinking, reduce the role of fraternities and give students more things to do.

Last year, the Theta Delta Chi fraternity was indicted on charges it served alcohol to minors. And in 2001, the school banned the Zeta Psi fraternity for printing newsletters that detailed the sexual exploits of its members.

from The Independent

Al-Zarqawi: A life drenched in blood
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 09 June 2006

It was the end of a strange but murderous career. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a little-known Jordanian petty criminal turned Islamic fundamentalist fanatic until he was denounced by the US in 2003 as an insurgent leader of great importance.

This enabled him to recruit men and raise money to wage a cruel war, mostly against Iraqi civilians. In a macabre innovation, he staged beheadings of Western hostages such as Ken Bigley which were then uploaded to the internet to ensure maximum publicity.

His death in an air strike by American F-16s while in a house north of Baghdad with seven associates, is important in Iraq because he was the most openly sectarian of the Sunni resistance leaders, butchering Shias as heretics as worthy of death as any foreign invader.

His chosen instrument was the suicide bomber usually recruited from outside the country. Their targets were almost invariably young Shia men desperate for work, queuing for jobs as policemen or soldiers. Few of the 20,000 US soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq in the past three years have died at the hands of Zarqawi’s men, according to the US military.

George Bush and Tony Blair welcomed news of the death of the leader of al-Qa’ida in Iraq yesterday. But, paradoxically, among those most pleased by his elimination may be the other insurgent leaders. “He was an embarrassment to the resistance itself,” said Ghassan al-Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator. “They never liked him taking all the limelight and the Americans exaggerated his role.”

Zarqawi owed his rise to the US in two ways. His name was unknown until he was denounced on 5 February 2003 by Colin Powell, who was the US Secretary of State, before the UN Security Council as the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’ida. There turned out to be no evidence for this connection and Zarqawi did not at this time belong to al-Qa’ida. But Mr Powell’s denunciation made him a symbol of resistance to the US across the Muslim world. It also fitted with Washington’s political agenda that attacking Iraq was part of the war on terror.

The invasion gave Zarqawi a further boost. Within months of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the whole five-million-strong Sunni Arab community in Iraq appeared united in opposition to the occupation. Cheering crowds gathered every time a US soldier was shot or an American vehicle blown up. Armed resistance was popular and for the first time Sunni militants known as the Salafi, religious fundamentalists demonstrating their faith by religious war or jihad, had a bedrock of support in Iraq. Osama bin Laden and his fighters never had this degree of acceptance in Afghanistan and were forced to hire local tribesmen to take part in their propaganda videos.

The next critical moment in Zarqawi’s career was the capture of Saddam Hussein on 15 December 2003. Previously US military and civilian spokesmen had blamed everything on the former Iraqi leader.

No sooner was Saddam captured than the US spokesmen began to mention Zarqawi’s name in every sentence. “If the weather is bad they will blame it on Zarqawi,” an Iraqi journalist once said to me. <b .It emerged earlier this year that the US emphasis on Zarqawi as the prime leader of the Iraqi resistance was part of a carefully calculated propaganda programme. A dubious letter from Zarqawi was conveniently discovered. One internal briefing document quoted by The Washington Post records Brigadier General Kimmitt, the chief US military spokesman at the time, as saying: "The Zarqawi psy-op programme is the most successful information campaign to date." The US campaign was largely geared towards the American public and above all the American voter. It was geared to proving that the invasion of Iraq was a reasonable response to the 9/11 attacks. This meant it was necessary to show al-Qa'ida was strong in Iraq and play down the fact that this had only happened after the invasion.

In an increasingly anti-American Arab world hostility from the US made it easy for Zarqawi develop his own organisation and finance it. The siege of Fallujah in April 2004 and the storming of the city by US Marines in November the same year saw al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad), whose name was later changed to al-Qa’ida’s Organisation in Iraq, become a powerful force. The suicide bombing campaign had already begun in November 2003 and was from the beginning directed against Shias as much as foreign troops or officials.

Zarqawi’s war was devised to have the maximum political impact. There was the beheading of foreign captives shown on videos and broadcast via the internet. He was an enemy to America’s liking. Though US military officials in Baghdad openly admitted that few insurgents were non-Iraqi, Zarqawi’s Jordanian origins were useful in suggesting that the insurrection was orchestrated from outside Iraq.

There were always going to be sectarian and ethnic differences between Shia, Sunni and Kurd after the overthrow of Saddam. This would have given a constituency to Zarqawi whatever happened but he also did much to deepen sectarian hatred by killing Iraqi Shia whenever he could. This destabilised the Iraqi government and it also meant that his anti-Shia fanaticism was increasing acceptable in the Sunni community as the Shia retaliated in 2005.

His death may lessen Shia-Sunni sectarianism but it probably comes too late. Diyala, the province where he was killed, is already seeing a savage civil war in which Iraq’s communities hunt each other down and whoever is in the minority is forced to flee, fight or die.

Courtesy J. Coulthart

“lifted with thanks from Royal’s World Countdown Music Newspaper
gestetnered by The communication company (u.p.s.) 3/25/67”

HOW DID IT HAPPEN?
by Doc Stanley

The Electronic Age is upon us and magnificent and fantastic changes occur with alarming rapidity. As a poet frind of mine said, “The name of the game is CHANGE” and change it does. The rate of change is so greatly accelerated that some pessimists whisper that the only constant is change itself. News and information is transmitted with the speed of light and everywhere has become the same place. The interaction and inter-change at the speed of light has altered the nature of time and thus there is only HERE and NOW when it comes to the eternal questions of where and when. The level of information available has become so high that it is impossible to contain it all within words and pictures. No man can keep abreast of even the front edge of man’s knowledge and thus he must emply another method of understanding his environment. The other method of learning or developing understanding is feeling. When you can’t know, all you can do is feel. And this is the job of the contemporary music. Music makes you feel, and our brothers in Tibet go further and hold that music is a liberation. Music that contains life gives life to the listener. Music that contains love gives love to the listener. Whatever the music contains, this will be experienced by the listener and with the techniques of High Fidelity Sterophonic Recording every nuance and shading of emotion and feeling can be captured and reproduced anytime, anywhere. This is the magic of popular, contemporary electronic music. It is perhaps the strongest magic ever to be commonly available. It furthers one to view the changes which have occurred in our music, which is the standard of the world, from the point of power, poetry and presence. Its power is that of Hoover Dam. The waters of the Grand Canyon turn the turbines and distort the magnetic field of the earth and send as many kilowatts of power direct to as many stages of amplification as you care to put on the otherside of that precision keyfield which is your guitar. You can have as much power as you care to pay for. Poetry has been fused to power and the strength of the muse has been added to or mutliplied by the power of Hoover Dam. There is no better lyric poetry than modern lyrics in contemporary popular music. The greatest poets of this age are writing songs because the rewards are too great not to. A nickel a band on a million seller is a greater chunk of money than most poets of former generations ever saw in a lifetime. The presence is the immediacy, the here and now, and the ability to reproduce, not only the simular of the music but nine nines of reality, with every fraction of sound intact and distortion free. The key is in the feeling. That’s what the music does–it programs feeling. Harvey Miller said this when he said thet kids use the music to communicate with each other. Not the words or the ideas, that of course, but the feeling. It takes a lot of young girls calling the radio station to push a song on the play list into the top ten. There must be something in the song to motivate such a large number of persons to place a sufficient number of calls to make this thing happen. This something is the feeling produced by the song. Record executives, promoters, A & R men, DJs all have a saying, “If it has it in the grooves, it’ll be a hit.” That “it” in the grooves is the generation of feeling which is sought by the listener. Particular feelings arise in life; like all other similar vectors they will sum and the radio will feed those feelings which emerge as part of the common whole back into the listening populace, in phase which will produce an emotional resonance which is a breakout hit. Plato said it well in Book III of the Republic, “. . . Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward pieces of the soul on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace…”

“The Ghetto Gourmet began as an original underground dining experience in a basement apartment in Oakland, California. The Townsend brothers, Joe the chef and Jeremy the poet, cultivated a loyal following literally from the ground up. Every Monday night, 15-30 strangers gathered on their living room floor for a chance to make new friends and enjoy deliciously creative cuisine.

“What started out as an experiment has turned into a movement. Influenced by traditional salons and a growing communal dining trend, The Ghetto Gourmet is excited to offer a range of services producing and directing private dinner parties and supperclub events.

“The Ghetto Gourmet is proud and grateful to be a product of the vibrant East Bay underground community, and we welcome your support and assistance. And any chefs, artists or performers interested in collaboration are encouraged to get in touch.

“Hold on to your fork…”

COURTESY Y. KHAN!