R.I.P. PAUL JONES
PAUL JONES
July 1, 1946 – October 9, 2005
We are sad to announce that Paul Jones died of cancer on Sunday, October 9, in Jackson, MS.
A memorial service will be held at 1 o’clock this Saturday, October 15 at the elementary school gym in Belzoni, MS.
THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN No. 0026
“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” -THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN
NUMBER 26 of 1,750
OCTOBER 4, 2005
I. “The Wild Women of East Tenth taught me a valuable lesson that carried me all the way through the rest of the decade. I tended to be morose and always worried about things. Events, projects and decisions swirled around me in terrible turbulence. Nobody had any time to sleep. Everybody had five careers. What I learned from them was the Dickens Principle–it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but it was OUR times, and we owned them with our youth, our energy, our good will, our edginess. So let’s party. Under the Dickens Principle everything was a party. Poetry was a party. Work was a party. Fugs rehearsals were a party. Even demonstrations and long meetings planning the revolution.” — from “Tales of Beatnik Glory” by Ed Sanders
II. ARTHUR FOR PRISONERS.
Arthur regularly receives written inquiries from inmates at U.S. prisons requesting complimentary subsciptions to the magazine. We are now keeping a list of such requests, all of which we hope to fufill at no charge to the prisoners themselves.
We are inviting Arthur’s readers to participate in this program and help it grow.
Please remember that over two million people — one out of every 142 Americans is now in prison. Almost 500,000 Americans are in jail for drugs-only offenses. According to a 2003 Human Rights Watch report, since 1980 “nearly three quarters of new admissions to state prison were convicted of nonviolent crimes.” The same report stated that “although black Americans account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black.”
The easiest, quickest way you can help us get Arthur into U.S. prisons is by buying a one-year, $30 gift subscription on a prisoner’s behalf.
III. LOVELY ARTHUR T-SHIRTS NOW IN STOCK.
Remember the “Tuff Wizard” Arthur T-shirts designed by Arik Moonhawk Roper we had on sale a while ago? Yes? No? In either event, they’re back in stock– one could say “new and improved” with a straight face because now they’re in stylish Royal Blue & Yellow, and it also says “Magazine” under the wizard so people won’t ask you, “So what is Arthur”? Now they will know straight off: it’s a magazine. Also, we’ve found a few more of the Earth & Mustard ones, so those are on offer now as well. Both look good with a grin. $18.95US postpaid. Ordering info at www.arthurmag.com
IV. “2 MILLION TONGUES” FESTIVAL COMPILATION CD AVAILABLE NOV. 1.
To commemorate the second annual Plastic Crimewave-curated, Galactic Zoo Dossier/Arthur-presented Million Tongues festival at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, occurring this year on two stages from November 3-6, Arthur’s Bastet imprint will be releasing 2 Million Tongues, spotlighting work by artists performing at the festival, on Nov. 1.
Track listing:
1. MOUNTAINS – “Speaking”
2. NO NECK BLUES BAND – “Pulse”
3. MIMINOKOTO – “Tokedasu”
4. TIM KINSELLA & AMY CARGILL – “Song for Josh”
5. MICHAEL CHAPMAN – “The Northern Lights”
6. JOSEPHINE FOSTER – “Wondrous Love”
7. CHRIS CONNELLY – “Pray’r”
8. PEARLS AND BRASS – “Waterfall”
9. TRAVELING BELL – “Apparitions”
10. THE SINGLEMAN AFFAIR – “Good to Be With You Again”
11. JACK ROSE – “Hey Fuck You Rag”
12. TAR PET – “Takeit Heri”
13. BIRDSHOW – “Pilz”
14. TONY CONRAD – “Bowstring 1”
15. HOTOTOGISU – “Blues for Steve K”
16. HAPTIC – “Indifference -> Building On Fire”
17. LUX – “Need Fade In + Out”
18. HARDSCRABBLE – “Sail It Away”
This CD is limited to 1,000 copies.
Ships Nov. 1
$12 US, $14 Can, $17 world, postpaid. Or free with new subscription order.
Ordering info at
V. PRESS REVIEWS OF ARTHURFEST.
* “ArthurFest yields an eclectic and bountiful crop, with Yoko Ono particularly vibrant.” –Los Angeles Times
* “Two days of transcendental psychedelia and mind-expanding musical machinations… There was the vibe, a commonality between so many bands looking to higher goals. The event definitely reverberated with a high-minded and spiritual and community-oriented, living-off-the-grid feeling so rare in the city of angles.”– San Francisco Bay Guardian
* “At Arthur Magazine’s inaugural gathering, youth and experience, the rough-hewn and the preening, dissonance and harmony all rubbed comfortably against each other.” — Pitchfork
* “But for all the range, there was a unifying intelligence holding the festival’s 41 acts together: a devotion to following their muses to the extreme and a near complete disregard for commercial appeal.” — Variety
* “For two days at least, Arthurfest provided a relatively unruffled respite from the city below.”– Billboard
* “Ono, the weekend’s de facto veteran of disorder, seemed wholly nonplussed. After roughly sixteen hours soaking in ArthurFest’s vivid goon-age daydream — this spectrum of sublimity in the face of such a greater, tumescent ignorance — so was everyone else. And all were better because of it.” — Dusted
* “Looks like we’ve got an instant, de rigueur classic on our hands.” — LAWeekly
* “This was the most peaceful and carefree festival I have ever attended.” — Valdas Kiralis, IceCreamMan.com
One thousand ArthurFest photos are online at
http://www.icecreamman.com/festivals/arthurfest2005
bless,
Arthur Social Pleasure Society
Los Angeles, California
THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN No. 0025
“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” -THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN
NUMBER 25
SEPTEMBER 13, 2005
Hey sweeties,
- YES WE WENT TO ARTHURFEST BLAH BLAH BLAH
ArthurFest reviews, photos and more are now being linked from — and posted at — the website and its now extremely active Forum. Just go to
Thanks to everyone who made the festival happen: the performers, the audience, our lovely and able publicist Judy Milller at Motormouth and OF COURSE a big hug of super-appreciation to Mitchell Frank, Liz Garo, Jessica and TK and everyone else at Spaceland, all of our volunteers, Councilman Eric Garcetti and his staff, the Barnsdall folks, Lance Bangs & his film crew, many many other people who toiled behind the scenes before during and after the show, and a big hoorah to the weatherlord who made it clear blue and not-too-hot all day long for two days in a row. It was worth the work. THANK YOU!
2. OUR NUCLEAR BOMB FUTURE.
Regarding the following article excerpt from this past Sunday’s Washington Post.
Now that the Neo-Cons know that the American public won’t support never-ending wars across the planet, they are pursuing a new way of extending American power: by authorizing the president to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively against anyone anywhere in the world who the president believes is preparing an attack using weapons of mass destruction. It follows that if this had been official policy in 2002/2003, President Bush, who at the time mistakenly believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was preparing to use them (or was thinking about using them), would have been justified to authorize dropping nuclear weapons on Iraq. We know now that were no WMDs. But, if Bush had used the nuke option, we would never have found out that Iraq didn’t have WMDs. In other words, innocent Iraqis would have been nuked without even the justification that Bush provided, and further, there would be no ability to hold Bush accountable — because any evidence that Bush had been wrong in his assumptions about what Iraq was up to would likely have been vaporized.
In this way the use of nuclear weapons by a paranoid hyperpower justfiies itself; and the problem of facing eventual substantive internal political dissent over a misguided policy disappears along with it. Most of all: it’s easier — less costly in every way — to drop a nuclear bomb than it is to invade and indefinitely occupy a hostile, foreign land. A preemptive nuclear strike is the final Neo-Con solution and the most evil of all.
Is this the initial step in justifying US nuclear strikes on Iran, Syria and North Korea in 2006 and 2007?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001053_pf.html
Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan
Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons
By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 11, 2005; A01
The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
The document, written by the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and procedures governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002. The strategy was outlined in more detail at the time in classified national security directives.
At a White House briefing that year, a spokesman said the United States would “respond with overwhelming force” to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its forces or allies, and said “all options” would be available to the president.
The draft, dated March 15, would provide authoritative guidance for commanders to request presidential approval for using nuclear weapons, and represents the Pentagon’s first attempt to revise procedures to reflect the Bush preemption doctrine. A previous version, completed in 1995 during the Clinton administration, contains no mention of using nuclear weapons preemptively or specifically against threats from weapons of mass destruction.
Titled “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations” and written under the direction of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the draft document is unclassified and available on a Pentagon Web site. It is expected to be signed within a few weeks by Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of the Joint Staff, according to Navy Cmdr. Dawn Cutler, a public affairs officer in Myers’s office. Meanwhile, the draft is going through final coordination with the military services, the combatant commanders, Pentagon legal authorities and Rumsfeld’s office, Cutler said in a written statement.
A “summary of changes” included in the draft identifies differences from the 1995 doctrine, and says the new document “revises the discussion of nuclear weapons use across the range of military operations.”
The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using “or intending to use WMD” against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations…. [more]
3. A SPECIAL OFFER.
The DKT/MC5 folks are extending a special discount offer to all Arthur Mailing List members:
Saturday, September 17 – Royce Hall at UCLA – Los Angeles – 8pm – $15
DKT/MC5 (Michael Davis, Wayne Kramer, Dennis Thompson) featuring Gilby Clarke (guitar), Lisa Kekaula (vocals), Dr. Charles Moore (trumpet), Buzzy Jones (sax), Phil Ranelin (trombone), Handsome Dick Manitoba (vocals) + Greg Dulli (vocals)
With special guests
SUN RA ARKESTRA directed by Marshall Allen
BARBEZ
Call 310.825.2101 or go to the link
to get your tickets for only $15…..
Enter Special Offer Code: MC515.
Auf Wiedersehen,
Arthur Ecstatic Peace Corps
Los Angeles, California division
THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN No. 0024
“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” -THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN
NUMBER 24
AUGUST 30, 2005
Hey! Fancy meeting you here,
LET’S ANNOUNCE SOME HOT PRE-ARTHURFEST GIGS, SHALL WE?…
EARLY Thurs, Sept 1 at The Echo // $7.00 // 18 and up
7:00pm: doors open
7:30pm: MAGIK MARKERS
8:30pm: SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN
Friday, Sept. 2 at The Echo // $10 adv; $12 dos / 18+
8:30pm: doors
9pm: THE MOON UPSTAIRS
10pm: DARKER MY LOVE
11pm: DEAD MEADOW
EARLY Sat Sept 3 at The Echo // $10 / 18+
7pm: doors open
7:30pm: THE RED ONIONS
8:30pm: T-MODEL FORD
Sat, Sept. 3 at Spaceland // $10 // 9pm // 21 & over
WOLFMOTHER
LATE Saturday, Sept. 3 at The Echo // 10 PM / $10 / 18+
10pm: doors open
10:30 PM: POLE
11:30 PM: THE JUAN MACLEAN
Info and Ticketweb links for all these shows at
The levee broke,
ArthurFest Royal Benevolent Society
Los Angeles, California
THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN No. 0023
“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” -THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN
NUMBER 23
AUGUST 23, 2005
Hello you,
1. ARTHURFEST — SEPT. 4-5 IN LOS ANGELES — NEWS/ALERT/CAUTION.
If you haven’t got tix for the festival yet, don’t dawdle and be left outside. Barnsdall Park is a small outdoor/indoor venue with a capacity of just 2,000. The LATimes, LAWeekly, KTLA Channel 5 (?!) and other major local TV/radio/newsprint media outlets are all doing major features on ArthurFest in the days just prior to the big event. ArthurFest will sell out. If you’re planning on showing up on the day of the show, you might not get in. And we wouldn’t want that.
We are selling tickets online thru Ticketweb, which charges much lower handling fees than Ticketmaster. Right now, for a limited time, we are offering a $10 discount on the ArthurFest Two-Day Pass to Arthur Mailing List Bulletin members. Take us up on this offer before they’re gone.
Go to
http://www.ticketweb.com/user/?region=socal&query=detail&event=611985&interface=
For the type of ticket, choose: 2 DAY PASS (PROMOTION)
For promotion code, enter: ROGER
The discount price is $65 (instead of $75) for a two-day pass. Sorry, there are no discounts on the one-day tickets, which go for $40.
Of course, the ** cheapest ** way to buy tickets is IN PERSON at one of the following fine record stores in Southern California: Amoeba Music (Hollywood), Aron’s Records (Hollywood), Benway Records (Venice), The Brat Store (Santa Monica), Fingerprints (Long Beach) and Sea Level Records (Echo Park). Addresses/phone numbers are for these stores are available at arthurmag.com
2. NEW ARTHUR OUT THIS WEEK/END.
It’s our “Border Crossing” issue… at least that’s the loose them… look for the striking cover illustration by PAUL POPE…. inside:
* John Payne visits with a true master: JON HASSELL, composer, trumpeter and visionary theorist-enacter of a sensual new kind of music. Plus, a beginner’s guide to Hassell by John Adamian, and a provocative new essay by Hassell himself. Photography by W. T. Nelson.
* Stricken by skin cancer, David Reeves journeyed to IQUITOS, PERU. There, he found witchdoctors, ayahuasca, deluded gringos, fears of American ‘facepeelers,’ the legacy of the CIA, the boat from Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, a shantytown built on water and more. Photography by Simon Lund.
* Could it be that SERIAL MONOGAMY is at the root of all of our civilization’s problems? Columnist DANIEL PINCHBECK is on the case.
* Swedish psych-pop wunderperson DUNGEN and Earth’s finest living crooner RICHARD HAWLEY get to work in their respective kitchens.
* Arthur assembles its knights for a Round Table discussion on the gems worth checking out in THE GRATEFUL DEAD’s vast catalog. Up for the task are members of Animal Collective, Comets On Fire, Brightblack Morning Light and the Duna Records braintrust as well as Barry Smolin, Erik Davis, Michael Simmons, The Seth Man and Daniel Chamberlin.
* ALAN BISHOP of Sun City Girls speaks with Brandon Stosuy about terrorism, travel, clueless Americans and curating the cut-up world music collages of his Sublime Frequencies label.
* Oliver Hall encounters AFRIRAMPO, Osaka’s number one freedom paradise rock duo in downtown Los Angeles. Photography by W.T. Nelson.
* New full-page comics by Keith Jones (“Bacter-Area”), Vanessa Davis (“Preparation Information”), Chris Wright (“Letter to Rachel”) and David Lasky (“Diary of a Bread Delivery Man”).
* New artwork by John Lurie, Able Brown and Dennis Culver.
* After a controversial sabbatical, 85-year-old bluesman T-MODEL FORD returns to the counselor’s desk.
* Columnist DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF wonders if some techniques of persuasion are so inherently wrong that they should never be used, no matter how noble the purpose.
* “Bull Tongue” columnists BYRON COLEY & THURSTON MOORE review the latest emanations from the underground, including new stuff from Picks & Lighters, Zaika, The Friday Group, Christina Carter/Andrew MacGregor, My Cat Is an Alien, Sun Ra: The Immeasurable Equation book, Richard Youngs, Andrew Paine, Alexander Neilson, Trinie Dalton, Vee Dee, Karate Party, Human Eye, Klyd Watkins, Charles Potts, Ex-Cocaine, Wayne Rogers, Marco Fursinato, Paul Metzger, Paper Rodeo mag, Roktop mag, Modern Arf mag, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Leprechaun Gathering, Whysp, French Sex Murders dvd, Dangerous Seductress dvd, Lady Terminator dvd, Samara Lubelski, Bummer Road, Nemo Bidstrup, Dream Magazine, zine, Prague Literary Review, La Societe des Timides a la Parade des Oiseaux, Legendary Pink Dots, Ka-Spel, Current 93, Kemialliset Ystavat, Maniacs Dream and Paul Flaherty/Chris Corsano.
* C & D come to important understandings about new audio and video recordings, including new makings from Ween, Shel Silverstein, Devendra Banhart, Silver Jews, Sinead O’Connor, Terry Reid, The 88, Flamin Groovies, The Time Flys, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Chris Cunningham, Bjork, Birds (feat. Cotton Casino, ex-Acid Mothers Temple), August Born, Coco Rosie, Modey Lemon, Sonny Sharrock and Earthless, plus a quick look at the Dick Cavett Rock Icons DVD set featuring Sly & the Family Stone, David Bowie and Janis Joplin.
3. “Bread, Beard & Bear’s Prayers” CD EXPERIENCES PRODUCTION HICCUPS
A long time ago, Ethan Miller of Comets On Fire gathered 13 gnarly tunes from high and low, and lower still: bloody nose street folk, dangerous shit rock, drunken cosmic slop and some true goneria. We speak here of Albert Ayler, Monoshock, Colossal Yes, Ghost, Electric Six Organs of Admittance, Michael Yonkers, Shit Spangled Banner, Brother JT, Joshua, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, August Born (Six Organs and L), Dark Inside the Sun and Comets on Fire. Then Ethan got the idea to have each sleeve silk-screened, with a booklet bound in by hand. Well, this takes time, more time than any of us realized. So far we’ve gone through 150-plus out of the 500 that Ethan’s sent us. All orders will eventually be filled, hopefully on the sooner side, so…all orders through last week have been filled, and any orders since then will be filled as soon as possible. Trust us, for 12 bucks American and some patience, you will be rewarded with a one-of-a-kind (okay, one of 500) object that you will treasure. Again we apologize for any delays and headaches and heartyearnings this delay may have cause you. And that’s the double truth, Ruth.
We love you all and there’s nothing you can do about it,
ArthurFest Preparation Committee
Los Angeles, California
THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN No. 0022
“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” -THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN
NUMBER 22
AUGUST 11, 2005
A. YOUR CHANCE TO FIGHT THE POWER. LITERALLY.
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/
America Supports You ‘Freedom Walk’ to Commemorate 9/11, Celebrate Freedom
By Steven Donald Smith / American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Aug. 9, 2005 The Defense Department today announced the first “America Supports You Freedom Walk” to honor the victims of 9/11 and America’s military personnel, as well as to celebrate freedom….
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made the announcement today at the Pentagon….
“Every year since the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans have commemorated that anniversary. This year the Department of Defense will initiate an American Supports You Freedom Walk. The walk will begin at the Pentagon and end at the National Mall. It will include many of the major monuments in Washington, D.C., reminding participants of the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation that have so successfully defended our freedoms,” Rumsfeld said.
The Freedom Walk will begin at 10 a.m. Sept. 11 in the Pentagon South parking lot, near the site where the airliner crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. The walk route will consist of a two-mile trek through Arlington National Cemetery, over the Potomac River, and will end by the reflecting pool on the National Mall, where a free concert featuring country music star Clint Black will take place.
“I am proud and honored to be part of the America Supports You Freedom Walk to honor the victims of 9/11 and to support our men and women in uniform,” Black said.
ARTHUR HQ SEZ: This is our chance to directly confront the military at their own parade, on their own turf. This chance may never happen again. So: don’t protest. JOIN the parade. Sign up as an event volunteer. Register to walk (and get a free t-shirt? Seriously, check out the form.) Get every anti-war/anti-neo-con person you know to do the same thing. When militaries start throwing parades for themselves, it’s a sign that the public is in danger, and is being reminded of who really has the power. Remember the Nuremberg rallies of 1936 in Germany; remember the Soviets in the Red Square. We have to stop this now before it’s Krew Kut Klan time again. Celebrate your freedom to live without fear of militarism.
Sign up at
https://www.penfed.org/freedomwalk/register.asp
B. BEHIND A RED DOOR, DOWN A BLACK STAIRCASE
Inventing an Anti-War Culture event #2
hosted by the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest
Friday August 12, 2005
8:30 pm at beta-level in Chinatown area of Los Angeles
Does culture shape politics, or is it the other way around? How do you build, sustain, or incubate a culture?
Jay Babcock, the editor/co-owner of the free national counterculture bimonthly Arthur magazine, will address these topics, sideways. This means talking about: why Arthur does what it does; what Jay’s found in our past and present for inspiration; why he has (some) hope for the future.
Free copies of certain back issues of Arthur will be available to all in attendance.
Directions to beta-level (formerly c-level):
1. Find yourself in front of “FULL HOUSE RESTAURANT” located at 963 N. Hill
Street in Chinatown.
2. Locate the alley on the left hand side of Full House.
3. Walk about 20 feet down the alley (away from the street).
4. Stop.
5. Notice dumpster on your right hand side.
6. Take a right and continue down the alley.
7. Exercise caution so as not trip on the wobbly cement blocks underfoot
8. The entrance to Betalevel is located 10 yards down on left side, behind
a red door, down a black staircase.
9. You are here. (But then, you always are, aren’t you?)
C. ARTHURFEST ON THE RADIO….
L.A.”s “Indie 103” station will broadcast an hour of music and discussion about ArthurFest and Arthur Magazine this Sunday, August 14, from 8-10pm on the “Dead Air” show. Arthur editor Jay Babcock will guest.
D. ARTHURFEST GROWS.
We’ve added some more artists to the bill. They are:
Day One: Sept. 4
* THE NIGHT PORTER (ex-Geraldine Fibbers/Ethyl Meatplow singer Carla Bozulich’s new rock band)
* DOS (L.A. punk legends Kira & Mike Watt in bass duet action)
Day Two: Sept 5
* POLE (German godfather of minimalist dub)
* YOUNG JAZZ GIANTS (jazz quartet from South-Central L.A.)
* plus a TOP-SECRET & PRESENTLY UNANNOUNCEABLE guest
One-day and two-day tickets are still available from ticketweb.com and stores around Southern California. More info at arthurmag.com
Ta,
Arthur Love Squad
Los Angeles, California
Clinton Gives New Funk
Clinton Gives New Funk
Colorful music legend celebrates fifty years in the biz
George Clinton will celebrate his fiftieth year in the music business with a new album, How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent, due August 23rd. The funk legend — who started out with a vocal group called the Parliaments in 1955 — will be joined by members of his bands P-Funk All-Stars and Parliament Funkadelic, as well as superstar disciple Prince, on the double-disc set.
“It’s one of the best records we’ve ever done,” says Clinton.
Clinton will hit the road this summer, beginning at Los Angeles’ Greek Theater. The tour features an opening act composed of Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins, bassist Me’Shell Ndegeocello and R&B man Raphael Saadiq, with a revolving door of special guests.
“Flea will play at some of the shows, and Big Boi from OutKast, Snoop, Redman, Flavor Flav, Chuck D, Gwen Stefani, Lenny Kravitz, Fishbone, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Musiq, the Black Eyed Peas and the Roots.”
Clinton has further reason to celebrate. Last week he won a court ruling that gave him the rights to the master recordings of four classic Funkadelic albums: Hardcore Jollies (1976), One Nation Under a Groove (1978), Uncle Jam Wants You (1979) and The Electric Spanking of War Babies (1981). The catalog is a goldmine, as Funkadelic samples have been staples of blockbuster hip-hop records, most notably Dr. Dre’s 1992 The Chronic.
Subcommandante Marcos Emerges to Scorn Mexican Candidates
Marcos says he won’t back any of the ‘shameless scoundrels’ running for president.
From Reuters
August 7, 2005
SAN RAFAEL, Mexico : Masked rebel leader Subcommander Marcos emerged from the jungle for the first time in four years Saturday to castigate Mexico’s presidential candidates as “shameless scoundrels” and said he would back none in next year’s election.
The Zapatista rebel leader’s appearance at a meeting of activists in southern Mexico’s Chiapas state seemed to be aimed at reclaiming a political role for the rebels before the election next July.
“They’ll pay for everything they have done to us. They are a bunch of shameless scoundrels,” Marcos said from behind the black ski mask he has worn in public since the Zapatistas first burst from the jungle in 1994.
“The decomposition of the political class is so great that we can do nothing,” said Marcos, smoking his trademark pipe.
He reserved special ire for presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a member of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, calling him a false leftist. “They say, ‘Maybe Lopez Obrador doesn’t steal.’ But his team has shown its ability and appetite to do so,” Marcos said.
In a video widely broadcast last year, one of Lopez Obrador’s closest advisors was secretly filmed accepting money and stuffing a briefcase full of cash.
Marcos has said the rebels will embark on a cross-country tour aimed at uniting workers, students and activists around a leftist agenda.
The Zapatistas shocked the world when they declared war on the Mexican government and attacked police and army positions on New Year’s Day in 1994, demanding rights for indigenous tribes.
About 150 people died as the rebels seized towns and clashed with security forces in the first few days, but there has been little fighting since then and the Zapatistas have turned increasingly to civic action.
In 2001, they crisscrossed Mexico in a two-week tour to drum up support for an Indian rights bill. They were received like rock stars, were allowed to address Congress and drew about 100,000 supporters to Mexico City’s main square.
Marcos’ identity has never been confirmed, but he is widely believed to be a non-Indian Mexican academic and political activist.
Learn from the past.
Film Echoes the Present in Atrocities of the Past – New York Times
August 9, 2005
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 8 – Like a live hand grenade brought home from a distant battlefield, the 34-year-old antiwar documentary “Winter Soldier” has been handled for decades as if it could explode at any moment.
Now, the 95-minute film – which has circulated like 16-millimeter samizdat on college campuses for decades but has never been accessible to a wide audience – is about to get its first significant theatrical release in the United States, beginning on Friday at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. (Other bookings, including Chicago, Detroit, Hartford and Minneapolis, can be found at http://www.wintersoldierfilm.com.)
Its distributors say that the war in Iraq has made the Vietnam-era film as powerful as when it was new, and its filmmakers are calling it eerily prescient of national embarrassments like the torture at Abu Ghraib.
Seldom has a film seen by so few caused so much consternation for so many years.
When it was made at a three-day gathering in 1971 of Vietnam veterans telling of the atrocities they had seen and committed, major news organizations sent reporters but published and broadcast next to nothing of what they filed – prompting the veterans to organize what would be a pivotal antiwar demonstration in Washington a few months later.
When the film was finished a year later, it was shown at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals, at theaters in France and England, and on German television. But in the United States, the television networks would not touch it, the film never found a distributor, and it disappeared for decades after playing a week at a single New York theater and a one-time airing on Channel 13.
When one of the veterans – John Kerry, who was seen on screen for less than a minute – ran for president last year, the old film turned up as propaganda on both sides of the partisan divide: Mr. Kerry’s friend, the filmmaker George Butler, used footage from “Winter Soldier” to lionize him in a biographical film underwritten by Democrats called “Going Upriver.” His political enemies on the right, meanwhile, created a Web site called Wintersoldier.com and made a film of their own, “Stolen Honor,” to assail him as a traitor and a fraud.
“The context is why we wanted to do it,” said Amy Heller, co-owner with her husband, Dennis Doros, of Milestone Films, perhaps best known for re-releasing Marcel Ophuls’s 1971 masterpiece on the Nazi occupation of France, “The Sorrow and the Pity.”
“We have a 9-year-old son,” Ms. Heller said, “but if he were 19 and wondering what he should do with the next stage of his life, I sure would want him to see this film before considering going into the military.”
The relevance of this grainy, ancient documentary comes from descriptions of abuse that could have been ripped from contemporary headlines, notwithstanding the changes in today’s professional soldiers and their evolved, high-tech methods of warfare.
Listen, for instance, to the former Army interrogator as he describes using “clubs, rifle butts, pistols, knives” to extract information – “always monitored” by superiors or military police, he says – and recounts his superiors’ overriding directive: “Don’t get caught.”
Or hear the former Marine captain, speaking of “standard operating prtocedure,” describe how easily individual transgressions, overlooked by superiors, became de facto policy: “The general attitude of the officers was – I was a lieutenant at the time – ‘Well, there’s somebody senior to me here, and I guess if this wasn’t S.O.P., he’d be doing something to stop it.’ And since nobody senior ever did anything to stop it, the policy was promulgated, and everybody assumed that this was right.”
Mr. Doros said he hoped the film would be shown on cable television, where anyone could see it, particularly today’s troops and tomorrow’s. “They should see that war isn’t always what they imagine from movies and books and modern media,” he said. “That the atrocities, the gore, the daily horror of bombs bursting out and bullets riddling your friends’ bodies next to you, have been glossed over.”
What gives “Winter Soldier” its power, he and Ms. Heller said, is not merely what is said on screen – accounts of Vietnamese women being raped or mutilated, children being shot, villages being burned, prisoners being thrown alive from helicopters – but who is saying it, and how they are shown.
It introduces us to Rusty Sachs, a handsome, curly-haired former Marine helicopter pilot, who recalls with an ironic smirk how his superiors instructed him not to “count prisoners when you’re loading them on the aircraft – count them when you’re unloading them,” because, he says flatly, “the numbers may not jibe.” He describes contests to see “how far they could throw the bound bodies out of the airplane.”
And it introduces us to the gentle-sounding, Jesus-like Scott Camil, a former Marine scout and forward artillery observer, who in a whispery voice relates his personal journey from rah-rah patriot to trained killer to medal-winner to self-preservationist Angel of Death. “If I had to go into a village and kill 150 people just to make sure there was no one there to kill me when we walked out, that’s what I did,” he says.
Like other veterans, Mr. Camil – whose testimony at the Winter Soldier Investigation inspired Graham Nash’s song “Oh, Camil!” – conveys how desensitized they became, and how dehumanized the Vietnamese became in their eyes. “Whoever had the most ears, they would get the most beers,” he says of his comrades’ corporeal trophies. “It became like a game.”
This was being filmed, it should be emphasized, before the advent of rap groups and the confessional culture, before people routinely unburdened themselves on television or an Oprah granted absolution every afternoon. And it was happening at a stage in the war when the invasion of Laos was still a secret, when Agent Orange was unheard of, and when the public was still struggling to make sense of My Lai.
Yet the decidedly low-tech film does nothing to explicate what it records. It has no narration, except for an opening quotation from Thomas Paine, whence its title: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summertime soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
Nor is there any clue given to who made this film. And yet it was the product of an extraordinary collective of 18 unknown but up-and-coming documentarians, several of whom would have distinguished film careers: Barbara Kopple, who went on to direct the Oscar-winning documentaries “Harlan County, U.S.A.” and “American Dream”; Nancy Baker, editor of the Oscar-winner “Born Into Brothels” and of “Vanya on 42nd Street”; Lucy Massie Phenix, editor of the Oscar-nominated “Regret to Inform,” about widows of the Vietnam War; Bob Fiore, co-director of “Pumping Iron”; and David Grubin, for many years the directing partner of Bill Moyers.
Working with borrowed equipment and donated stock – much of it “short ends” left over from low-budget pornographic films – the group shot more than 100 hours over a three-day weekend, then spent six months editing it into what remains a raw and unadorned artifact, allowing the camera to gaze patiently as each witness tells his story.
But the group effort, Mr. Fiore said, meant no one could claim to be its auteur. “So it didn’t have anybody pushing it, the way Michael Moore goes around,” he said. “At the time, it seemed really important, it was a political statement. I wanted the film to be for and about the vets. But as a filmmaking and distributing ploy, it was a failure.”
Though “Winter Soldier” was invited to Cannes and shown at several other film festivals, the group’s efforts to have it shown on American television went nowhere. “We did a screening at NBC,” said Fred Aronow, one of the filmmakers. “We got the reply back that this was incredibly interesting material that the American public should see, and it’s unfortunate that NBC cannot broadcast it. They did not give a reason.”
The film languished largely unseen, except for private and classroom viewings, until a retrospective at Berlin early last year. When Mr. Butler paid for rights to use footage from it, Mr. Fiore said, the filmmakers hoped that his lawyers would prevent anyone from using it to assassinate Mr. Kerry’s character. But the producers of “Stolen Honor,” an attack on Mr. Kerry that was shown on Sinclair Broadcasting stations last fall, did use excerpts from “Winter Soldier,” and a veteran who testified, Kenneth J. Campbell, is suing them for defamation.
As polarizing as the film has proven to be, the filmmakers say they hope that a year removed from the context of a campaign, “Winter Soldier” will be seen the way it was originally intended.
First, of course, they are hoping it will get an audience, at all.
“It’s not any fun to see,” Ms. Phenix conceded, in an understatement. “But the whole society needs to hear about that part of us, because that’s part of us, too. The whole society includes these people who are having to kill and be killed, and maim and be maimed.”
Arthur Magazine 