Schmaltz

Schmaltz, Chicken Fat, Used To Make High Yield Biodiesel Fuel By U Of Arkansas Engineers.Cooks everywhere have long used schmaltz, the Yiddish word for chicken fat, as the basis for chicken soup, a tasty power dish reputed to cure the common cold, but soon drivers might find themselves cooking, so to speak with schmaltz as fuel in their gas tank. Researchers say they have found a way of converting schmaltz to turn it into high-yield biodiesel fuel for vehicles.To read the full article, see:http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009509960

Yiddish Beatles

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=6vAMgbGEDTY

This is me with California Klezmer /The Lost Tribe, doing A Hard Day's Night,A Schvereh Togedikeh Nahkt, synched up to the Beatles on YouTube.

Translation by Gerry Tenney and Khane Yakhness

Alley In San Francisco 2

Mural In San Francisco Alley

Cheney O' Lantern

Jack O' Lantern By Leslie Tenney.

Photo By Gerry Tenney

Atlanta Aquariuum

Photo By Gerry Tenney

Armenian Holocaust And Jewish Response

Jews Face the Armenian Genocide * By Dr. Stephen Scheinberg .Dr. Scheinberg is emeritus professor of history,Concordia University, and co-chair of Canadian Friendsof Peace Now. His editorials can be heard on Montreal'sRadio Shalom 1650AM on Monday at 7:15A.M. and Wednesday at 6:14P.M..There is a controversy raging among American Jews which may get even hotter in the coming days. The issue arises because the U.S. Congress will once again beasked to vote for a bill recognizing the Armenian genocide of 1915. One might think that this would notbe a difficult issue for the Jewish community butunfortunately several of the major Jewish organizationsin the United States have seen fit to intervene against the bill.First, let me explain to those of you who are not well acquainted with the events of 1915 that an overwhelming number of historians recognize that the Turkishgovernment of the day engaged in the pre-meditated murder of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians. Jewish holocaust scholars including Raul Hilberg, Elie Wiesel, Yehuda Bauer, Daniel Goldhagen and Deborah Lipstadt have all signed ads urging the Congress to pass there solution. The scholarship is overwhelming; including even some Turkish writers, but the Turkish government persists in its refusal to acknowledge responsibility.Armenian genocide denial is close kin to holocaust denial and as morally reprehensible.The current bill in the Congress was introduced inJanuary 2007 by Representative Adam Schiff ofCalifornia and has wide Jewish support in both theHouse and Senate, from Democrats and Republicans.However, it is not clear if or when the bill will cometo a vote. The Turkish government has been active in supporting opposition to the bill, hiring prominent lobbyists and meeting with Jewish leaders. This leadership was obviously reminded, at a meeting with the Turkish Foreign Minister Abdula Gul, of Turkey's good relations with Israel as well as with the UnitedStates, her support for her own Jewish community numbering approximately 40,000, and her record as asanctuary for Jewish refugees over the centuries. It is difficult to say whether it was Turkish lobbying, theirown sentiments, or possibly direct intervention fromIsrael which led the Anti-Defamation League, B'naiBrith International, the American Jewish Committee andthe Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs topass along to members of Congress a letter from TurkishJews opposing the resolution, thus implicitly takingthe side of Turkey.It was the ADL's Abraham Foxman who was the mostoutspoken of the Jewish leaders, declaring that "this is an issue that needs to be resolved by the parties,not by us. We are neither historians nor arbiters." One has never heard Foxman, a child survivor of the holocaust, make such a cavalier reference to the deathof six million Jews. He has given further fuel to his critics by firing the ADL's New England regional director who had urged that the organization recognize the genocide. A former ADL regional board member condemned the firing as "a vindictive, intolerant, and destructive act" by an organization and leader whose"fundamental mission - is to promote tolerance." Foxman has subsequently, following much criticism and a conversation with Elie Wiesel, recognized that the events of 1915 constituted genocide but continues to oppose the bill as counterproductive.For her part, Israel has not made any public reference to the Armenian genocide and has carefully deleted such references from text books and even withdrawn support from international conferences at which the genocide would have been a subject for discussion. Before a trip to Turkey then-foreign minister Shimon Peres said of the genocide, that it was "a matter for historians todecide." There are many prominent Israelis who deploret heir government's failure to act on a significant moral issue. However, in the case of a nation state,realpolitik often triumphs over morality. Israel obviously considers that her relations with Turkey are too important to be possibly undermined by taking the moral road, though Israelis from across the political spectrum have disagreed on the consequences of such actions.Nevertheless, the American Jewish leadership is not and should not be tied to Israeli realpolitik. Individual morality cannot be waived in the interest of Israel,the United States or Canada. Perhaps if the Armenian genocide resolution is again defeated these same community leaders will be at pains to deny the influence of the Jewish lobby. Neither Israel nor theAmerican Jewish community will be well served by a community leadership that abandons elementary standards of behavior for a misguided assessment of the needs of Israel or Turkish Jewry. Perhaps they should recall the infamous words attributed to Adolph Hitler, calling on his troops to pursue their destructive work, he stated:"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" As Jews, we are obliged to speak, and our voices must be heard on the side of justice and morality.* Credit : Wikipedia - The Armenian Genocide Memorialin the Marcelin-Wilson Park in Montreal.(c) 2007 Tolerance.ca(R) Inc. Tous droits de reproductionreserves.Toutes les informations reproduites sur le site dewww.tolerance.ca (articles, images, photos, logos) sontprotegees par des droits de propriete intellectuelledetenus par Tolerance.ca(R) Inc. ou, dans certains cas,par leurs auteurs. Aucune de ces informations ne peutetre reproduite pour un usage autre que personnel.Toute modification, reproduction a large diffusion,traduction, vente, exploitation commerciale oureutilisation du
2. Turkey and the Armenians / Today's Denial Is Tomorrow's Holocaust By Yossi Sarid http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/912094.html Congressman Adam Schiff, who proposed the resolution to name the Armenian massacre a genocide, is Jewish.The Jewish nation should be grateful for Schiff'sinitiative, for he has saved Jewish honor in America,Israel and everywhere. He restored our humane image,in contrast to the cynics and genocide deniers who are forever demanding payment for being perpetual victims.Congressman Schiff is following in the footsteps ofanother Jew, Henry Morgenthau, who served as U.S.ambassador in Turkey in those days. He called the massacre "the greatest crime in modern history."AdvertisementSchiff is also the student of another Jew, FranzWerfel, who on his way to the Land of Israel stopped in Damascus and was appalled to see "the starving,mutilated and sick Armenian refugee children." Hepublished the novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh"(1933), which shocked the world.In 1918 Shmuel Talkovsky, then secretary of HaimWeizmann, wrote with Weizmann's approval: "Is there any nation whose fate is more similar to ours than the Armenians?"But in Israel today there are Jews who are less than Jewish and Zionists who are less than Zionist -including heads of state and heads of government.Denying another nation's Holocaust is no less uglythan denying ours. It is also dangerous. Today'sdenial is tomorrow's Holocaust. The Armenian genocidewasn't the first in this era. The German imperial armyslaughtered 100,000 Namibians in 1904. In 1915, theArmenian genocide began; the Ottomans killed 1.5million of them in various ways. If the world hadrisen up in protest against the genocide of theNamibians and Armenians, the Holocaust of the Jewsmight also have been averted. This is not a mereassumption; it's probably a fact. A week before invading Poland, Hitler addressed his officers (August24, 1939): "It's a matter of indifference to me what aweak western European civilization will say about me... I have ordered my Death-Head Formation to killmercilessly and without compassion men, women andchildren of Polish derivation and language. Who, afterall, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"Such was Hitler's calming message to his troops.The next time some Israel hater - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,for example - denies the Jewish Holocaust, and we raise a hue and cry about it, there will be someself-righteous Gentiles ready to say, "You're right,but we have our own Turkeys."As natural and historic victims, we should be the ones to spread the message from one end of the world to another: what happened to us can happen again, to us and to the people of Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, Sudan, Burma.There is no need to compare between holocausts to recognize other nations' suffering.

Hillary Clinton And The Democratic Party

A pessimistic view from the Progressive Review follows, which I mostly share.
Sam Smith: If the latest Washington Post poll proves accurate, the Democratic Party as a serious alternative to the GOP is finished. It is not just that a perennially dissembling and once almost prosecuted candidate came in miles ahead of Barrack Obama and John Edwards. The real tragedy is to be found in the reasons respondents gave for their support.For example, Democrats favored Hillary Clinton to deal with health care by a two to one margin over Obama and Edwards combined - an absurd judgment given her previous health care legislation that was laughably incompetent and confusing as she attempted to conceal its gifts to the insurance industry. There are only two possible explanations for such a masochistic choice: deep denial or deep ignorance and they probably both play a role.57% of Democrats said HR Clinton has the best chance of being elected even though current polling has all three front runners coming out about the same. For example, the heavily pro-Clinton Washington Post headlined her 8 point lead over Giuliani without mentioning that Edwards had scored a 9 point lead in another recent poll.Further, Clinton's supposed electability is based on the assumption that the GOP will not mention all the dirty laundry in HRC's past - including matters now hidden in Justice Department files. The Republican strategy - which the media has given great aid and comfort - is to keep quiet until the Democrats are irretrievably in the Clinton trap. In fact, some on the right are already having a hard time hiding their enthusiasm: Matt Drudge featured Clinton's wipe out lead in the Post poll with big type and red ink and George Bush is even sending her advice on how to handle Iraq.By 52% to 39% Clinton beats both Obama and Edwards as the one best able to deal with Iraq, even though she is clearly the one with the worst record of doing so this far.By the same margin, she is the one who Democrats think best represent the core values of the party. This may be tragically true in contemporary terms, but before her husband took office the party had dramatically different - and better - values.The only First Lady ever to face possible criminal indictment even farcically leads the others as the one best able to deal with corruption in Washington.And worst of all, not only is she considered more inspiring than Obama and Edwards but she is considered more trustworthy.This is a party that doesn't need a candidate; it desperately needs a therapist.If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination it will be the end of the modern Democratic Party - the period of both its greatness and its popularity. Her husband began the serious dismantling of the party - particularly its commitment to social democracy - and produced for it the greatest loss of elected offices under an incumbent president since Grover Cleveland.Hilary Clinton will complete the job. If she wins the nomination there will no longer be a real Democratic Party; it will be reduced a subculture of de facto Republicans who support abortion and affirmative action.Just look at those round her: there isn't one major figure directly involved in her campaign who represents the spirit or the substance of a decent and progressive Democratic Party. It is a cadre of cynical manipulators and fund raisers with dubious pals.This incredible destruction of the party took place in less than two decades, in part thanks to a number of factors beyond the Clintons:- The rise of the delusional myths of neo-robber baron capitalism that, among other things, taught voters to choose between competing political CEOs rather than among real issues.- The trivialization of politics by television and other media in which the future of our nation and our planet was reduced to just another game show or daytime serial.- A sycophantic Washington press corps that brazenly boosted those politicians with whom it felt socially and culturally most compatible. The media has repeatedly covered up for the Clinton, most recently by failing to inform its audience of HRC's sordid past.- The stunningly incompetent handling of Congress by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.- The underlying force driving many Democrats in office: fear. Fear of the Christian right, fear of seeming weak, fear of Karl Rove and so forth. By their words they try desperately to seem not afraid, but by these same actions they confirm the critics' view that they are cowards.But the Clintons played a major part as well, primarily because they have been the preeminent political con artists of modern times.The Clintons belong to a long American tradition of snake oil salesmen, road gamblers and fake evangelical prophets. The thing these all had in common: those they purported to help or deal fairly with invariably came out the short end. With card sharks or door to door hustlers, the culture suffered but did not shake. But the Clinton as the first of the disreputable breed to actually run the country.Bill Clinton at least came by his skill naturally. When Bill Clinton is 7, his family moved from Hope, Arkansas, to the long-time mob resort of Hot Springs, AR. Here Al Capone was said to have had permanent rights to suite 443 of the Arlington Hotel. Clinton's stepfather was a gun-brandishing alcoholic who lost his Buick franchise through mismanagement and his own pilfering. His mother was a heavy gambler with mob ties. According to FBI and local police officials, his Uncle Raymond -- to whom young Bill turned for wisdom and support -- was a colorful car dealer, slot machine owner and gambling operator, who thrived (except when his house was firebombed) on the fault line of criminality.The media forgot to tell you this, but knowing it helps one understand why Bill Clinton is such a better con artist than his wife and why Hillary Clinton constantly gets caught in petty dishonesties, cheap machinations and artificial cackles. It wasn't natural; she had to learn the trade from Bill.Now, one could go on for 500 more pages on this topic but here's the problem: hardly any of those Democrats who think HR Clinton is the most honest of the major candidates would absorb the information and alter their opinion because the Democratic Party has transformed itself from a political organization into a sort of EST for political junkies.So it looks like it may be over. Yes, an unanticipated scandal could still emerge. The good people of Iowa and New Hampshire could take the Democratic Party back. HR Clinton might move from embarrassing cackles to indefensible contortions.But if nothing major happens, you can say good bye to the modern Democratic Party the day that HR Clinton is nominated. You will then be faced not with a choice, but a threat - not unlike one from the capo who tells you: stick with us and your friends and family will be safer and we won't take as much from you as the other mob. This isn't politics; it's thuggery. And that's what our politics have become.

Going South

It's The Oil Stupid

From Energy and Capital:

Are You Sure You Can Handle the Truth?
Petraeus Report Cooks the Books with Deft Kabuki Spin. Benefactor: Big Oil.
September 11, 2007. Reading the General Petraeus report on the Iraq debacle reminded me of nothing so much as Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men yelling, "You can't handle the truth!"
The Petraeus report goes to great lengths to paint a picture of progress in Iraq, but the truth is a far different story. As the New York Times and the Washington Post have reported, the declining number of deaths in Iraq that General Petraeus cites depends on a few accounting tricks: like not counting a death as an assassination if you're shot in the front of the head, and not counting deaths by car bombs.
So, what are we really doing in Iraq?
We're building and maintaining permanent military bases from which our military will ensure a near-monopoly of the world's second-largest oil reserve. All this... for a small cadre of corporate fatheads, including the top members of Bush, Inc. The American taxpayer will be burdened with footing the bill for security in Iraq ($2 billion PER DAY!) to provide stable working conditions for Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Halliburton, not to mention the dozens of corporations feeding off the military spend bosom.
But this White House clearly believes you can't handle the truth.
Well, those of us in the energy world can handle it, and here it is: because the U.S. could not tolerate the possibility that the second-largest oil bonanza on Earth might be held beyond our reach by a dictator who hated us.
The fact is, the U.S. uses fully one-quarter of the world's oil, but we possess only about two percent of its reserves, and we rely on imports for about 60% of our consumption.
Meanwhile, Peak Oil is either just behind us, or nearly upon us...
Without guaranteed access to Iraq's oil, we absolutely could not maintain our military and economic dominance of the world. Vice President Cheney has known this, even spoken publicly about it, for many years. And why else would he have convened a meeting of Big Oil representatives within his first month in the White House to pore over maps of Iraq's oil fields, as if that were the top priority of the administration?
We at EnergyAndCapital.com have prepared a full report, called "The Truth about Oil," and we're happy to share these truths with you.
To get our new report, simply sign up for the free Energy and Capital e-Letter, a daily advisory on the fast-moving realities in the energy and oil sector, written and edited by energy and natural resources investing expert Chris Nelder.
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Pavoratti and James Brown RIP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCIyzNISw1Q James Brown and Pavoratti

Fighting Terorism Since 1492

San Pablo Ave. Oakland California.

Photo by Gerry Tenney

Wall Hanging: My Ties

Photo By Gerry Tenney

Bo Diddley Live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrYhRFOcgg4

A Proper Send Off

Balence and The Middle East

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/893537.html

American Capitalism and Vacation

REPORT: AMERICA IS THE 'NO VACATION NATION' REUTERS - As Europe's workers take a few weeks of holiday this summer, their American colleagues will be lucky to get a few days off work, says a report published by the European Trade Union Institute. Finland, followed by France, offers working people the most statutory vacation, at more than six weeks per year, the report, an international snapshot of how much paid leave people get by law and in practice in 21 countries, says. The United States is the only country where employees have no statutory leave, and they get about half as much time off in reality as Europeans get, according to the report, compiled by the Washington-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. "The United States is in a class of its own," the report says. "It is the no-vacation nation."http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSL0522341220070705

Capitalism And War

PRIVATE CONTRACTORS OUTNUMBER U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQT. CHRISTIAN MILLER, LA TIMES - The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns. More than 180,000 civilians -- including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis -- are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-private4jul04,1,6564316.story?ctrack=4&cset=true

See Sicko

Sicko will perhaps be the catalyst to change our criminally negligent health care system.
http://www.reelzchannel.com/moviedetail.aspx?movieid=226829&gclid=CMWPh-S1g40CFRuNYAodHjYAiQ

Einstein Speaks

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. Albert Einstein

Iraq Labor Movement

Iraq's Workers Strike to Keep Their Oil By David Bacon t r u t h o u t Columnist, Saturday 09 June 2007http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060907A.shtml The Bush administration has no love for unions anywhere, but in Iraq it has a special reason for hating them. They are the main opposition to the occupation's economic agenda, and the biggest obstacle to that agenda's centerpiece - the privatization of Iraq's oil. At the same time, unions have become the only force in Iraq trying to maintain at least a survival living standard for the millions of Iraqis who still have to go to work every day, in the middle of the war. This week, Iraqi anger over starvation incomes and oil ripoffs boiled over. On Monday, June 4, the biggest and strongest of the Iraqi unions, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, launched a limited strike to underline its call for keeping oil in public hands, and to force the government to live up to its economic promises. Workers on the pipelines carrying oil from the rigs in the south to Baghdad's big refinery stopped work. It was a very limited job action, which still allowed the Iraqi economy to function. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded by calling out the army and surrounding the strikers at Sheiba, near Basra. Then he issued arrest warrants for the union's leaders. On Wednesday, June 6, the union postponed the strike until June 11. Labor unrest could not only resume at that point, but could easily escalate into shutdowns on the rigs themselves, or even the cutoff of oil exports. That would shut down the income stream that keeps the Maliki regime in power in Baghdad. Some of the oil workers' demands reflect the desperate situation of workers under the occupation. They want their employer - the government's oil ministry - to pay for wage increases and promised vacations, and give permanent status to thousands of temporary employees. In a country where housing has been destroyed on a massive scale, and workers often live in dilapidated and primitive conditions, the union wants the government to turn over land for building homes. Every year, the oil institute has miraculously continued holding classes and training technicians, yet the ministry won't give work to graduates, despite the war-torn industry's desperate need for skilled labor. The union demands jobs and a future for these young people. But one demand overshadows even these basic needs - renegotiation of the oil law that would turn the industry itself over to foreign corporations. And it is this demand that has brought out even the US fighter jets, which have circled and buzzed over the strikers' demonstrations. In Iraq, the hostile maneuvering of military aircraft is not an idle threat to the people below. This standoff reflects a long history of actions in Iraq, by both the Iraqi government and the US occupation administration, to suppress union activity. Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and its puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after 1958. Saddam Hussein later drove its leaders underground, killing and jailing the ones he could catch.
When Saddam fell, Iraqi unionists came out of prison, up from underground and back from exile, determined to rebuild its labor movement. Miraculously, in the midst of war and bombings, they did. The oil workers union in the south is now one of the largest organizations in Iraq, with thousands of members on the rigs, pipelines and refineries. The electrical workers union is the first national labor organization headed by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein. Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders. President Bush says he wants democracy, yet he will not accept the one political demand that unites Iraqis above all others. They want the country's oil (and its electrical power stations, ports and other key facilities) to remain in public hands.
The fact that Iraqi unions are the strongest voice demanding this makes them anathema. Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than a paper commitment to the democratic process. Iraq's oil was nationalized in the 1960s, like that of every other country in the Middle East. The Iraqi oil union became, and still is, the industry's most zealous guardian.Holding a no-bid, sweetheart contract with occupation authorities, Halliburton Corporation came into Iraq in the wake of the troops in 2003. The company tried to seize control of the wells and rigs, withholding reconstruction aid to force workers to submit. The oil union struck for three days that August, stopping exports and cutting off government revenue. Halliburton left. The oil and port unions then forced foreign corporations to give up similar sweetheart agreements in Iraq's deepwater shipping facilities. Muhsin's electrical union is still battling to stop subcontracting in the power stations - a prelude to corporate control. The occupation has always had an economic agenda. Occupation czar Paul Bremer published lists in Baghdad newspapers of the public enterprises he intended to auction off. Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam bitterly observed, "War makes privatization easy: first you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it." The Bush administration won't leave Iraq in part because that economic agenda is still insecure. Under Washington's guidance, the Iraqi government wrote a new oil law in secret. The Iraq study commission, headed by oilman James Baker, called it the key to ending the occupation.That law is touted in the US press as ensuring an equitable division of oil wealth. Iraqi unions say it will ensure that foreign corporations control future exploration and development, in one of the world's largest reserves. Hassan Juma'a Awad, president of the IFOU, wrote a letter to the US Congress on May 13. "Everyone knows the oil law doesn't serve the Iraqi people," he warned. The union was banned from the secret negotiations. According to Juma'a, the result "serves Bush, his supporters and foreign companies at the expense of the Iraqi people." The union has threatened to strike if the law is implemented. Like all Iraqi unionists, Juma'a says the occupation should end without demanding Iraq's oil as a price. "The USA claimed that it came here as a liberator, not to control our resources," he reminded Congress. Congressional opponents of the war can only win Iraqis' respect if they disavow the oil law.
Whatever government holds power in Baghdad at the occupation's end will need control of the oil wealth to rebuild the devastated country. That gives Iraq's working people a big reason to fight to ensure that happens.
Two Iraqi union leaders, Faleh Abood Umara and Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, are speaking in the United States about their situation in Iraq. For details about times and places, contact US Labor Against the War:
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=12200
For more articles and images on Iraq's unions, see http://dbacon.igc.org/Iraq/iraq.htm
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US, Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html--
__________________________________David Bacon, Photographs and Storieshttp://dbacon.igc.org__________________________________

Bush Democrats Shame on You

http://www.democrats.com/events_cat/Democratic+Primary+2008

Above is a link to the list and an effort to create a more progressive Democratic Party. Good Luck

Four Years Later

George Tenet Maureen Dowd

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------May 2, 2007, NYT Op-Ed Columnist Better Never Than Late By MAUREEN DOWD Instead of George Tenet teaching at Georgetown University, George Tenet should be taught at Georgetown University.There should be a course on government called "The Ultimate Staff Guy." A morality saga about how much harm you can do as a go-along, get-along guy, spending so much time trying not to alienate the big cheese so he doesn't can you that you miss the moment where you have to can him or lose your soul.If Colin Powell and George Tenet had walked out of the administration in February 2003 instead of working together on that tainted U.N. speech making the bogus case for war, they might have turned everything around. They might have saved the lives and limbs of all those brave U.S. kids and innocent Iraqis, not to mention our world standing and national security.It would certainly have been harder for timid Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards, to back up the administration if two members of the Bush inner circle had broken away to tell an increasingly apparent truth: that Dick Cheney, Rummy and the neocons were feverishly pushing a naïve president into invading Iraq with junk facts.General Powell counted on Slam Dunk - a slender reed - to help him rid the speech of most of the garbage Mr. Cheney's office wanted in it. Slam, of course, tried to have it both ways, helping the skeptical secretary of state and pandering to higher bosses. Afterward, when the speech turned out to be built on a no-legged stool, General Powell was furious at Slam. But they both share blame: they knew better. They put their loyalty to a runaway White House ahead of their loyalty to a fearful public. Slam Dunk's book tour is mesmerizing, in a horrifying way. "The irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing," Slam said of Saddam on "Larry King Live" on Monday night, adding, "And he didn't know we weren't." Mr. He-Man Tenet didn't understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East? Slam couldn't take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?If he was really running around with his hair on fire, knowing the Osama danger, shouldn't he have set off alarms when W. and Vice went after Saddam instead of the real threat? Many people in Washington snorted at his dramatic cloak-and-dagger description of himself to Larry King: "I worked in the shadows my whole life."He was not Jason Bourne, lurking in dangerous locales. He risked life and limb on Capitol Hill among the backstabbers and cutthroat bureaucrats - from whom he obviously learned a lot. He spent nine years on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, four as staff director. When Bill Clinton appointed him to run the C.I.A. in 1997, the profile of him in The Times was headlined "A Time to Reap the Rewards of Being Loyal." It observed that old colleagues had said "he had an ability to make many different superiors feel at ease with him."Six former C.I.A. officials sent Mr. Tenet a letter via his publisher - no wonder we're in trouble if spooks can't figure out the old Head Spook's home address - berating him for pretending he wrote his self-serving book partly to defend the honor of the agency and demanding that "at least half" of the profits be given to wounded soldiers and the families of dead soldiers (there needs to be a Son of Slam law). One of the signers, Larry Johnson, told CNN that Slam "is profiting from the blood of American soldiers.""By your silence you helped build the case for war," the former C.I.A. officials wrote. "You betrayed the C.I.A. officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld." They also said, "Although C.I.A. officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered Bin Laden an enemy ... you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda. ..."In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence." They concluded that "your tenure as head of the C.I.A. has helped create a world that is more dangerous. ... It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated." Thus endeth the lesson in our class on "The Ultimate Staff Guy." If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off.

Another thanks to BT for sending me this.
GT

New Island

GREENLAND'S NEW ISLAND IS ALARMING SIGN OF CLIMATE CHANGE MICHAEL MCCARTHY, INDEPENDENT, UK - The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming. Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland's remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea. . .The second-largest ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica), if its entire 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 meters, or more than 23 feet. That would inundate most of the world's coastal cities, including London, swamp vast areas of heavily-populated low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh, and remove several island countries such as the Maldives from the face of the Earth. However, even a rise one tenth as great would have devastating consequences.http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2480994.ece

Compromise And The War by Howard Zinn

By Howard Zinn May 2007 Issue of The Progressive: As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration's "surge" of troops, and the Republicans' refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them.That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, "like many of us, don't think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war."Ironically, and shockingly, the same bill appropriates $124 billion in more funds to carry the war. It's as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite-provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence-they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home.It is four years since the United States invaded Iraq with a ferocious bombardment, with "shock and awe." That is enough time to decide if the presence of our troops is making the lives of the Iraqis better or worse. The evidence is overwhelming. Since the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, about two million Iraqis have left the country, and an almost equal number are internal refugees, forced out of their homes, seeking shelter elsewhere in the country.Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. But his capture and death have not made the lives of Iraqis better, as the U.S. occupation has created chaos: no clean water, rising rates of hunger, 50 percent unemployment, shortages of food, electricity, and fuel, a rise in child malnutrition and infant deaths. Has the U.S. presence diminished violence? On the contrary, by January 2007 the number of insurgent attacks has increased dramatically to 180 a day.The response of the Bush Administration to four years of failure is to send more troops. To add more troops matches the definition of fanaticism: If you find you're going in the wrong direction, redouble your speed. It reminds me of the physician in Europe in the early nineteenth century who decided that bloodletting would cure pneumonia. When that didn't work, he concluded that not enough blood had been let.The Congressional Democrats' proposal is to give more funds to the war, and to set a timetable that will let the bloodletting go on for another year or more. It is necessary, they say, to compromise, and some anti-war people have been willing to go along. However, it is one thing to compromise when you are immediately given part of what you are demanding, if that can then be a springboard for getting more in the future. That is the situation described in the recent movie The Wind That Shakes The Barley, in which the Irish rebels against British rule are given a compromise solution-to have part of Ireland free, as the Irish Free State. In the movie, Irish brother fights against brother over whether to accept this compromise. But at least the acceptance of that compromise, however short of justice, created the Irish Free State. The withdrawal timetable proposed by the Democrats gets nothing tangible, only a promise, and leaves the fulfillment of that promise in the hands of the Bush Administration.There have been similar dilemmas for the labor movement. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that unions, fighting for a new contract, must decide if they will accept an offer that gives them only part of what they have demanded. It's always a difficult decision, but in almost all cases, whether the compromise can be considered a victory or a defeat, the workers have been given some thing palpable, improving their condition to some degree. If they were offered only a promise of something in the future, while continuing an unbearable situation in the present, it would not be considered a compromise, but a sellout. A union leader who said, "Take this, it's the best we can get" (which is what the MoveOn people are saying about the Democrats' resolution) would be hooted off the platform.I am reminded of the situation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, when the black delegation from Mississippi asked to be seated, to represent the 40 percent black population of that state. They were offered a "compromise"-two nonvoting seats. "This is the best we can get," some black leaders said. The Mississippians, led by Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses, turned it down, and thus held on to their fighting spirit, which later brought them what they had asked for. That mantra-"the best we can get"-is a recipe for corruption.It is not easy, in the corrupting atmosphere of Washington, D.C., to hold on firmly to the truth, to resist the temptation of capitulation that presents itself as compromise. A few manage to do so. I think of Barbara Lee, the one person in the House of Representatives who, in the hysterical atmosphere of the days following 9/11, voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to invade Afghanistan. Today, she is one of the few who refuse to fund the Iraq War, insist on a prompt end to the war, reject the dishonesty of a false compromise.Except for the rare few, like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, and John Lewis, our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be "realistic."We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress."

Thanks again to Bob T. for this.

SDS Documentary.

sds documentary "Rebels with a cause", available on google: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3748224138549545719

I did some of the incidental music for this film.

The Pragmatism of Prolonged War Norman Solomon

The Pragmatism of Prolonged War
by Norman Solomon

The days are getting longer, but the media shadows are no shorter as they cover the war in Iraq through American eyes, squinting in Washington's pallid sun.
Debated as an issue of politics, the actual war keeps being drained of life. Abstractions thrive inside the Beltway, while the war effort continues: funded by the U.S. Treasury every day, as the original crime of invasion is replicated with occupation.
More than ever, in the aftermath of the Scooter Libby verdict, the country's major news outlets are willing to acknowledge that the political road to war in Iraq was paved with deceptions. But the same media outlets were integral to laying the flagstones along the path to war -- and they're now integral to prolonging the war.
With the same logic of one, two, and three years ago, the conformist media wisdom is that a cutoff of funds for the war is not practical. Likewise, on Capitol Hill, there's a lot of huffing and puffing about how the war must wind down -- but the money for it, we're told, must keep moving. Like two rails along the same track, the dispensers of conventional media and political wisdom carry us along to more and more and more war.
The antiwar movement is now coming to terms with measures being promoted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi and Reid have a job to do. The antiwar movement has a job to do. The jobs are not the same.
This should be obvious -- but, judging from public and private debates now fiercely underway among progressive activists and organizations, there's a lot of confusion in the air.
No amount of savvy Capitol-speak can change the fact that "benchmarks" are euphemisms for more war. And when activists pretend otherwise, they play into the hands of those who want the war to go on... and on... and on.
Deferring to the Democratic leadership means endorsing loopholes that leave the door wide open for continued U.S. military actions inside Iraq -- whether justified as attacks on fighters designated as Al Qaeda in Iraq, or with reclassification of U.S. forces as "trainers" rather than "combat troops." And an escalating U.S. air war could continue to bomb Iraqi neighborhoods for years.
The position being articulated by Reps. Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and others in Congress is the one that the antiwar movement should unite behind -- to fully fund bringing the troops home in a safe and orderly way, while ending the entire U.S. occupation and war effort, by the end of 2007.
We're urged to take solace from the fact that Washington's debate has shifted to "when" -- rather than "whether" -- the war should end. But the end of the U.S. war effort could be deferred for many more years while debates over "when" flourish and fester. This happened during the Vietnam War, year after year, while death came to tens of thousands more American soldiers and perhaps a million more Vietnamese people.
Pelosi is speaker of the House, and Reid is majority leader of the Senate. But neither speaks for, much less leads, the antiwar movement that we need.
When you look at the practicalities of the situation, Pelosi and Reid could be more accurately described as speaker and leader for the war-management movement.
A historic tragedy is that the most hefty progressive organization, MoveOn, seems to have wrapped itself around the political sensibilities of Reid, Pelosi and others at the top of Capitol Hill leadership. Deference to that leadership is a big mistake. We already have a Democratic Party. Over time, a vibrant progressive group loses vibrance by forfeiting independence and becoming a virtual appendage of party leaders.
Last week, while MoveOn was sending out a mass e-mail to its 3.2 million members offering free bumper stickers urging "End This War," the MoveOn leadership was continuing its failure to back the efforts of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for "a fully funded, and systematic, withdrawal of U.S. soldiers and military contractors from Iraq."
There are rationales for uniting behind practical measures, and sometimes they make sense. But the MoveOn pattern has been unsettling and recurring. Power brokerage is not antiwar leadership.
The U.S. Constitution and the federal courts are clear: Only through the "power of the purse" can Congress end a war. It's good to see MoveOn churning out bumper stickers that advocate an end to the Iraq war -- but sad to see its handful of decision-makers failing to support a measure to fund an orderly and prompt withdrawal from the war.
On Capitol Hill, most Democrats seem to have settled on a tactical approach of simultaneously ratifying and deploring the continuation of the war. The approach may or may not be savvy politics in a narrow sense of gaining temporary partisan political advantage. But it is ultimately destructive to refuse to do the one thing that the Constitution empowers Congress to do to halt a U.S. war -- stop appropriating taxpayer money for it.
In retrospect, such congressional behavior during the Vietnam War -- while attracting sober approval from much of the era's punditocracy -- ended up prolonging a horrific war that could have ended years sooner. Now, as then, pandering to the news media and other powerful pressures, most politicians are busy trying to pick "low-hanging fruit" that turns out to be poisonous.
"Somehow this madness must cease," Martin Luther King Jr. said 40 years ago about the Vietnam War. "We must stop now."
Was the situation then essentially different from today? No.
"We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy," King said. And: "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late."
When King denounced "the madness of militarism," he wasn't trying to cozy up to the majority leader of the Senate or impress the House speaker with how he could deliver support. He was speaking truthfully, and he was opposing a war forthrightly. That was imperative in 1967. It is imperative in 2007.
Norman Solomon's latest book is "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
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Article About Ben Goldberg A Great Clarinetist

I've done a bunch of casuals with him over the years. He's great to play with.


http://www.themonthly.com/up-front-03-07.html

Jim Harrington on Don Nelson and Ralph Stanley.

What does Golden State Warriors Coach Don Nelson do to relieve a little stress after his team losses a big one? Well, on Sunday (Feb. 25), mere hours after the W’s dropped a game to Kobe Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers at Oracle Arena, Nellie took in Ralph Stanley’s concert at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Coach Nelson was one of many music lovers that turned out to celebrate Stanley’s 80th birthday (see show review in today’s Bay Area Living). Nellie said he enjoyed Stanley’s concert _ but he really seemed to be having a blast during the opening set by Berkeley’s Laurie Lewis. It was charming to see the coach dance in the back of the church while Lewis performed her upbeat brand of bluegrass. Charming, yes _ but let’s just say that Nelson won’t be a cast member on “Dancing With the Stars'’ anytime soon. No word yet on whether Nelson will adopt Stanley’s classic “O Death'’ as the official theme song for the Warriors’ push for the playoffs.

A Good Review Of Why The Left Was Right ( Correct)

A dose of nostalgia, truth and a call to action. B. Thanks to Bob T once again .http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/16/135644/137From: "Mike Kramer"

Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ewY_mYqt0

Don' Mourn Organize

Great Driscoll Cartoon

Molly Ivins

Thanks to Bob T.If you like this article, please consider subscribing to The Nation atspecial discounted rates. You can order online athttps://ssl.thenation.com/sumo/EMAILARTLINK or call our toll-free numberat 1-800-333-8536.Thought you would be interested in this article from The Nation. Remembering Molly Ivins by John Nichols Washington Correspondent, The Nation Molly Ivins always said she wanted to write a book about the lonely experience of East Texas civil rights campaigners to be titled No One Famous Ever Came. While the television screens and newspapers told the stories of the marches, the legal battles and the victories of campaigns against segregation in Alabama and Mississippi, Ivins recalled, the foes of Jim Crow laws in the region where she came of age in the 1950s and '60s often labored in obscurity without any hope that they would be joined on the picket lines by Nobel Peace Prize winners, folk singers, Hollywood stars or senators.And Ivins loved those righteous strugglers all the more for their willingness to carry on.The warmest-hearted populist ever to pick up a pen with the purpose of calling the rabble to the battlements, Ivins understood that change came only when some citizen in some off-the-map town passed a petition, called a Congressman or cast an angry vote to throw the bums out. The nation's mostly widely syndicated progressive columnist, who died January 31 at age 62 after a long battle with what she referred to as a "scorching case of cancer," adored the activists she celebrated from the time in the late 1960s when she created her own "Movements for Social Change" beat at the old Minneapolis Tribune and started making heroes of "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers.""Troublemaker" might be a term of derision in the lexicon of some journalists--particularly the on-bended-knee White House press pack that Ivins studiously refused to run with--but to Molly it was a term of endearment. If anyone anywhere was picking a fight with the powerful, she was writing them up with the same passionate language she employed when her friend the great Texas liberal Billie Carr passed on in 2002. Ivins recalled Carr "was there for the workers and the unions, she was there for the African-Americans, she was there for the Hispanics, she was there for the women, she was there for the gays. And this wasn't all high-minded, oh, we-should-all-be-kinder-to-one-another. This was tough, down, gritty, political trench warfare; money against people. She bullied her way to the table of power, and then she used that place to get everybody else there, too. If you ain't ready to sweat, and you ain't smart enough to deal, you can't play in her league."Molly Ivins could have played in the league of the big boys. They invited her in, giving her a bureau chief job with the New York Times--which she wrote her way out of when she referred to a "community chicken-killing festival" in a small town as a "gang-pluck." Leaving the Times in 1982 was the best thing that ever happened to Molly. She settled back in her home state of Texas, where her friend Jim Hightower was about to get elected as agricultural commissioner and another friend named Ann Richards was striding toward the governorship. As a newspaper columnist for the old Dallas Times Herald--and, after that paper's demise, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram--Molly began writing a political column drenched in the good humor and fighting spirit of that populist moment. It appealed beyond Texas, and within a decade she was writing for 400 papers nationwide.As it happened, the populist fires faded in Texas, and the state started spewing out the byproducts of an uglier political tradition--the oil-money plutocracy--in the form of George Bush and Dick Cheney.It mattered, a lot, that Molly was writing for papers around the country during the Bush interregnum. She explained to disbelieving Minnesotans and Mainers that, yes, these men really were as mean, as self-serving and as delusional as they seemed. The book that Molly and her pal Lou Dubose wrote about their homeboy-in-chief, Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (Random House, 2000), was the essential exposé of the man the Supreme Court elected President. And Ivins's columns tore away any pretense of civility or citizenship erected by the likes of Karl Rove.When Washington pundits started counseling bipartisanship after voters routed the Republicans in the 2006 elections, Molly wrote, "The sheer pleasure of getting lessons in etiquette from Karl Rove and the right-wing media passeth all understanding. Ever since 1994, the Republican Party has gone after Democrats with the frenzy of a foaming mad dog. There was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, not to mention the trashing of both Clinton and his wife--accused of everything from selling drugs to murder--all orchestrated by that paragon of manners, Tom DeLay.... So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners."Given Bush's record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face," Ivins continued, in a column that warned any Democrat who might think to make nice with President and his team that "These people are not only dishonest--they're not even smart."Her readers cheered that November 9, 2006, column, as they did everything Molly wrote. And the cheers came loudest from those distant corners of Kansas and Mississippi where, often, her words were the only dissents that appeared in the local papers during the long period of diminished discourse following 9/11. For the liberal faithful in Boise and Biloxi and Beaumont, she was a lifeline--telling them that, yes, Henry Kissinger was "an old war criminal," that Bush had created a "an honest to goodness constitutional crisis" when it embarked on a program of warrantless wiretapping and that Bill Moyers should seek the presidency because "I want to vote for somebody who's good and brave and who should win." (The Moyers boomlet was our last co-conspiracy, and in Molly's honor, I'm thinking of writing in his name on my Democratic primary ballot next year.)For the people in the places where no one famous ever came, Molly Ivins arrived a couple of times a week in the form of columns that told the local rabble-rousers that they were the true patriots, that they damn well better keep pitching fits about the war and the Patriot Act and economic inequality, and that they should never apologize for defending "those highest and best American ideas" contained in the Bill of Rights.Often, Molly actually did come--in all of her wisecracking, pot-stirring populist glory.Keeping a promise she'd made when her old friend and fellow Texan John Henry Faulk was on his deathbed, Molly accepted a steady schedule of invites to speak for local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in dozens of communities, from Toledo to Sarasota to Medford, Oregon. Though she could have commanded five figures, she took no speaker's fee. She just came and told the crowds to carry on for the Constitution. "I know that sludge-for-brains like Bill O'Reilly attack the ACLU for being 'un-American,' but when Bill O'Reilly's constitutional rights are violated, the ACLU will stand up for him just like they did for Oliver North, Communists, the KKK, atheists, movement conservatives and everyone else they've defended over the years," she told them. "The premise is easily understood: If the government can take away one person's rights, it can take away everyone's."She also told them, even when she was battling cancer and Karl Rove, that they should relish the lucky break of their consciences and their conflicts. Speaking truth to power is the best job in any democracy, she explained. It took her to towns across this great yet battered land to say: "So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."This article can be found on the web at:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070219/molly_ivinsVisit The Nationhttp://www.thenation.com/Subscribe to The Nation:https://ssl.thenation.com/

Tradition

During a service at an old synagogue in Eastern Europe, when the Shema (this is perhaps the key prayer of the service) prayer was said, half the congregants stood up and half remained sitting. The half that was seated started yelling at those standing to sit down, and the ones standing yelled at the ones sitting to stand up. The rabbi, learned as he was in the Law and commentaries, didn't know what to do. His congregation suggested that he consult a housebound 98 year old man who was one of the original founders of their temple. The rabbi hoped The elderly man would be able to tell him what the actual temple tradition was, so he went to the nursing home with a representative of each faction of the congregation.The one whose followers stood during Shema said to the old man, "Is the tradition to stand during this prayer?"The old man answered, "No, that is not the tradition."The one whose followers sat said, "Then the tradition is to sit during Shema!"The old man answered, "No, that is not the tradition."Then the rabbi said to the old man, "But the congregants fight all the time, yelling at each other about whether they should sit or stand."The old man interrupted, exclaiming, "THAT is the tradition!"

Pete Seeger 1947 Film

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1585962456964293309&q=to+hear+your+banjo

Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2286920372780429587&q=pete+seeger&hl=en

Itche Goldberg, Yiddish Advocate, 102, Dies

By ARI L. GOLDMAN New York Times
Published: January 3, 2007
Itche Goldberg, a champion of Yiddish who wrote and edited and taught his beloved language in the face of all those who said keeping Yiddish alive was a lost cause, died last Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 102.

He died of complications of cancer, his son, David, said.
Passing on the Yiddish tradition to future generations was the passion of Itche Goldberg’s life. He promoted the language in every conceivable form: writing poetry, librettos, children’s books and essays and running Yiddish schools and summer camps. His book “Yiddish Stories for Young People” is still used in the shrinking network of secular Yiddish schools.
Mr. Goldberg’s final collection of essays in Yiddish, “Essayen Tsvey” (“Essays Two”), was published in 2004 on his 100th birthday.
In secular Yiddish circles, Mr. Goldberg is best known as the editor of one of the longest-running journals of Yiddish literature, Yidishe Kultur. He served as editor from 1964 to 2004, when he published the journal’s final issue.
Mr. Goldberg was a veteran of the heated ideological wars of the 20th century over Judaism, Yiddish, socialism and communism. He quit a job at a Yiddish summer camp in Canada in the 1920s after a fight with the anarchist Emma Goldman over the Sacco and Vanzetti case. And he was no fan of the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978. He published an essay criticizing Singer as failing to reflect the humanist and social ideals that Mr. Goldberg felt were the central themes of Yiddish culture.
He never stopped championing Yiddish, in whatever form, even in the face of evidence that fewer and fewer people were interested in it.
“We’re dealing with a language that is about 1,000 years old and a literature that is 600 or 700 years old,” he once said. “What developed was an extraordinary and profound modern literature which would become the equivalent of French or German literature.”
Yiddish is a Germanic language that developed as the lingua franca of the Ashkenazic Jewry by incorporating Hebrew and borrowing liberally from the different European lands where Jews lived. The use of Yiddish has greatly diminished, with the notable exception of its use among Hasidic Jews who continue to speak the language of the European Jewish communities from which they sprang.
Mr. Goldberg was decidedly secular. But as he told an interviewer not long ago, “Just because I’m secular doesn’t mean I’m antireligious.” What was important about Judaism, he said, was its progressive values and not its religious rituals. He pushed for more Jewish content in the Yiddish schools of his day, including more study of the Bible and of Jewish holidays, to the dismay of some of his anti-religious colleagues.
Isaac Goldberg was born in Apt, Poland, on March 22, 1904. From early childhood everyone called him Itche, a diminutive form of Isaac. In 1920 he moved to Toronto, where he taught Yiddish at the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring School, which promoted a socialist ideology. Later, when he moved to New York, he broke with Workmen’s Circle and embraced communism, seeing the Soviet Union as the salvation for Jewish national and social problems. He became the cultural and national school director of the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order, a branch of the pro-Communist International Workers Order.
Mr. Goldberg repudiated Communist ideology in the 1950s when the Stalinist regime’s horrors became apparent, particularly the execution of Jewish writers in 1952.
Although he was threatened with deportation because of his Communist activities, Mr. Goldberg was able to remain in the United States, and eventually became an American citizen. From 1970 to 1985, he was a professor of Yiddish language and literature at Queens College.
Two years ago, in honor of his 100th birthday, a group of Jewish musicians performed an adaptation of I. L. Peretz’s “Oyb Nit Nokh Hekher” (“If Not Even Higher”), with a libretto by Mr. Goldberg. It was one of more than 20 works that he wrote with the composer Moyshe Rauch.
In addition to his son, who lives in Manhattan, Mr. Goldberg is survived by his wife of 67 years, the former Jennie Wilensky, who is 101; a daughter, Susan, of Manhattan; two granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren.
Mr. Goldberg fought to keep his magazine Yidishe Kultur alive right to the end of his life.
In an interview in 2004 he said: “I only have two dreams. One dream is that someone will knock on the door and I will open it and they give me a check for $150,000 for the magazine. Second dream is that someone knocks at the door and I open it up and he gives me a corned beef sandwich. Those are my only two dreams. I’m not asking for much. Really, I’m not. And I think they’re both reachable.”
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