freakpowertix

One of my father's oldest friends, Charles "Ed" Donaldson, passed away on Sunday night because of an untreatable brain tumor.  Ed was a teacher/educator, like my father, & the two met over 50 years ago as California State University, Sacramento, getting their educations courtesy of the G.I. Bill.

I tried to google a photograph of Ed, but could only find this article online, in the Lake County Record-Bee:


Charles "Ed" Donaldson was born in Wellington, Texas February 8, 1931. He spent 44 years of his life in Lake County, and graduated from Kelseyville High School in 1948. He received his Master of Arts from San Francisco State College.

Ed joined the Air Force in 1950 and became an instructor of Electronics at Keesler Air Force base in Biloxi, Mississippi. He was a teacher at Ukiah High School, then became Superintendent/ Principal of Hopland High School. He was also assistant Superintendent/Business for Fall River Joint Unified School District.

Ed returned to Lake County in 1968 and became Superintendent and Superintendent/Principal of Kelsey-ville Unified School District. In 1985 he became Director of Special Classes for LCOE. In 1989 he became Assistant Superintendent Support Services for the Lake County Superintendent of Schools. The last eleven years he worked part-time for the LCOE.

Ed was very proud of the Donaldson Alternative School in Kelseyville which they named after him.

He enjoyed working on any project, including gardening, landscaping, making bird feeders, but his favorite pastime was reading, especially history.

Ed is survived by his wife Lyn (BKA Willie); son, Mark Donaldson and wife Janice; daughter Ann Barren and husband Troy; granddaughters Mary Beth Barker, Marcy Donaldson, Erin Donaldson, Lyann Williams, and Sydney Barron, nine great-grandchildren, and cousin Ken Yoakum.

He is preceded in death by his son Ross, grandmother Edna Cox, mother Betty Yoakum, and his aunt and uncle Iva and Leland Akers.

Graveside Services will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday, December 20, at Kelseyville Cemetery.

My parents unfortunately will not be able to attend the services, although they did see Ed & his wife Lyn recently.  I was just wanting to pay my respects to someone who had a huge impact on the lives of so many in his community.

Charles Ed Donaldson, rest in peace...

i was one of a group of people asked by yorrik to help protest certain ongoing problems within this online community.  many of them are technical -- server crashes, extended maintenance shutdowns, lost message boxes, the inability to comment for extended periods, exceedingly slow comment or posting delays, etcetera -- & others are not, having to do with certain business decisions that end up pushing celebrity & entertainment industry "imperatives" over what seems to be all else.

i must say that i am unhappy: as so many cool people from such amazingly diverse backgrounds, from all over the world, are making the decision to leave buzznet. & not just because they're getting out of the blogging game.  i mean, many of them, in groups, have chosen to rebuild our community within a competing website.

& i see that there are damn good reasons for them to leave, too, on so many levels.

it's such a shame, though, as there is so much potential to build (or rebuild) this community into something much more vibrant & intelligent & creative than the direction it is heading in.  something like what used to be here -- a year ago, not too, too many months ago -- before the attrition really started to be glaring.  but with all of the neat features that have been added in the past year, like video, audio, link, bulletin, & layout innovations.

the ownership & staffing prides itself on being active participants within the buzznet community.  they all seem to have profiles within the group, respond to messages & comments, are flesh & blood human beings, some of whom i have met.

with that context, on one level, one might think buzznet prides itself on being all about open dialogue & free expression.  and that is something i have found here. but on another level, buzznet is hitting far shy of the mark.

primarily, it seems that responses to users complaints or issues have been erratic, at best.  i've appreciated the many assists i've gotten, but have also been annoyed that measures that could have allayed peoples' general concerns haven't been implemented: that is, why is it that "tom" from myspace can post very specific, widespread technical updates for myspace users but parallel announcements of that type, within this community, are almost entirely unheard of? & people's issues are dropped or even ignored, it seems, too... 

it doesn't have to be that way.  isn't there some way to include a host of real & regular users more in the process of maintaining, growing, & developing this site?

can't we all get along?  :(

the kcsb fund drive is over in 2.5 hours.

snkkkt.

is to never have to look at one of these ever again.




i know that's probably unrealistic, but...

the average tenure of a development person, i was recently told, is 2 years.  i've been doing kcsb-fm development work for 6.

i am so freakin' exhausted right now. emotionally drained.

only 4 more days to go, out of 10 total.  we'd raised a very solid $14,500 by 530pm yesterday.  it tends to pick up a bit too, at the end.  w00t!

my goal?  survival.  have been a bit short-staffed through much of this campaign, plus all of that bother with moving.

bleh...

We (KCSB) have managed to raised $6,000 in 2.5 days.  I'm feeling purty good about things right now.  I am really tired & sorely looking ahead to midnight exactly 7 days from now.  But we have to keep the momentum moving forward!

here's a new ad we're going to start posting all over campus.  the campaign is beginning to take shape for us.



here's our official press release.

KCSB 91.9 fm is currently holding its annual fund drive, which runs from November 6th–15th, filling the airwaves with its usual mix of independent music, public affairs, and sports programming, while letting listeners know how they can support the only non-commercial, community radio station based in Santa Barbara County. KCSB 91.9 FM is known as one of the best student-run stations in the country, and this year is especially significant as it marks KCSB's 45th anniversary of programming.

KCSB's accomplishments during this past year include presenting a live broadcast of President Clinton and Paul Orfalea's recent sold-out event at the Arlington Theater, a lecture by "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman, the refurbishing of two more production studios at the station, and the revamping of our official website, in addition to our usual sponsorship of events in the Santa Barbara area, ranging from UCSB Arts and Lectures films to appearances by such artists as Lila Downs, the RZA, and The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower. Looking ahead, a 45th Anniversary Alumni Reunion is also in the works for the spring of 2007.

About the Fund Drive (Nov. 6-15th): For a minimum of $20 (students) or $45 (non-students), donors can claim gift certificates, books, CDs, videos, event tickets, KCSB t-shirts, and more as thank-you gifts for their support. Supporters can also donate online at http://www.kcsb.org (but are not entitled to thank-you gifts for those contributions). From Nov. 6th-15th, listeners will primarily be calling KCSB's fund drive hotline, (805) 893-2424.

About KCSB: KCSB offers a wide range of sounds and perspectives from Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The station gives year-round media training to individuals and groups who would not otherwise have access to radio resources. Students and community members learn to work as radio professionals in music, news, and public affairs. KCSB also runs popular shows such as "Democracy Now!" "Free Speech Radio News," and "Alternative Radio," among many others.

i just found out, reading rhiwena's last post, that nov. 5th is guy fawkes night.  it was also the occasion of a major dia de los muertos celebration in tucson.




nov. 5th is also jay's birthday.  it's strange i never knew about the historic connection to that date before.

turns out that nov. 7th was 'kicking bush's sorry ass' night.  the closest thing us good guys have gotten to a political "super bowl" victory in a loooooong while.




i hope that bush, cheney, rove, rumsfeld, rice & all of those muthafuckas are starting to get measurements on their fucking leg manacles, those muthafuckas.

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss *~@

"KA-POW!!!!"

awww... man!




what more to make me buzz-depressed?!?

:(

siiiiiighh...

i get a kick out of the creative energy that sean of "the original sean's team" brings to our university's intramural softball league.  for example, here's a taste of the 2 websites for "saving nolan ryan," the earlier incarnation of my softball team of this past year (1, 2).



here are a few select images from the two snl websites.







it tickles me too to play with san francisco giants fans! (haha...i spy not 1 but two s.f. gyros hats!)


i was the old man on the team, and it was a freakin' blast.  i even connected for one opposite-field home run during the summer session! 


w00t! w00t!

KCSB 91.9 FM has exclusive radio rights to broadcast a conversation between Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea, a visiting UCSB lecturer in Global Studies, with former President William Jefferson Clinton in less than two hours, from 1:15-2:15pm, on the topic, "Leadership for the Global Future."




I pretty much cannot stand that dude, on some levels. And on others, he's surely a breath of fresh air compared to that christian psycho currently occupying the white house.

If you're interested in some of his latest exploits, tune into the broadcast or check out our webstream!  One of our first live remotes of this type, and it's a biggun: the event sold out the 2000+-seat Arlington Theater really, really fast.

there's something very bad, very depressing happening in this town.

the owner of the local daily newspaper, wendy mccaw (by some reports a billionaire through her ex-husband's nextel fortune), has set into motion a chain of events that has gotten international attention. basically, mccaw took an award-winning commercial newspaper, owned previously by the new york times company and before that by a fairly respectable 'newspaper family,' and within a few short years engineered a vicious 'stalinist' type purge of about two dozen editors & reporters.

largely, this debacle was triggered by something one of their reporters published about mansion construction plans by area celebrity rob lowe: i kid you not...




i've been thinking about this awful situation more of late, in part because i took (& am just about to post) photos of a surreal press-conference held in mid-july by dissident news-press staffers, an event made under the dark cloud of a mccaw gag order (just stay tuned for some of those images to see what i mean about it being "surreal").  on top of that, there's a rally & fundraiser for former news-press staff happening this sunday afternoon here, preceding a news-press employee union election that is scheduled to be held the very next day.  the dissidents have also engineered a boycott campaign to give them further leverage to take back their newsrooom.

i've done a range of activist or cultural work over the years & have dealt with & even met a lot of the reporters who work or used to work at the santa barbara news-press.  i personally respect a number of these professionals. &, while i've always taken the paper's overall output with a grain of salt, -- have been known to call it the "news suppress" on occasion, like a lot of other lefties in this town -- i also grew to understand the mechanics for those biases in a more nuanced way (i.e., became aware over the years that reporters could get their stories dead-on, only to have these accounts warped as they wound their way through the publication process).  whatever my critiques, i'd readily concede that the news-press has historically played a hugely important role in the city of santa barbara: what's been going down there is a monumental tragedy for so many hardworking people (and their families), and for our community at large.

in the rest of this entry, i'm going to post an early account of the news-press story by local reporter nick welsh (from his column "angry poodle barbecue," which can be found in our weekly news & arts publication, the santa barbara independent), to help flesh things out for anyone who cares to read further.   & from there, i'll be posting & cross-linking some of my photos to this entry.

it's a situation that deserves attention, imho...

for more: savethenewspress.com

t.

---

"Angry Poodle: X-Dogs: The Last Stand

By Nick Welsh, July 6, 2006

GET ME REWRITE, GUT THE PRESS: Back when I was still a recovering Catholic, the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden used to infuriate me beyond belief. It seemed incredibly unfair that every human born since those two would come into the world indelibly stained with Original Sin just because Adam and Eve disobeyed the Almighty and ate the apple. Under this scenario, we’re all born with three strikes against us; we don’t even get a chance to screw up. But now that I am a fully recovered Catholic and these matters no longer get under my skin, I see the wisdom in such theological pessimism. Its basis — from which all else follows — is the infinite perversity of the human species. The original-sin scenario recognizes that even if we have within our grasp everything we need to be perfectly happy, we’ll mess it all up the very first chance we get.

This inescapably pathetic fact of life is now playing itself out behind the scenes at our daily newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press. From the outside looking in, that paper should be a journalistic Garden of Eden. In an era of corporate chain journalism, the News-Press enjoys the distinction of being locally owned — by reclusive billionaire Mrs. Wendy P. McCaw. Its executive editor Jerry Roberts, a former star with the San Francisco Chronicle, has put together an impressive team of talented and hardworking reporters. One might think life at the News-Press would be so hunky-dory that Mrs. McCaw could spend most of her days collecting and polishing awards for journalistic excellence. Those awards have, in fact, been streaming in, but they haven’t prevented life at the daily from degenerating into a living hell. It appears meltdown is just moments away. In this case, the straw that broke the camel’s back looks more like a heavy metal I-beam. For violating a policy that did not exist — specifically, offending Montecito movie star Rob Lowe — one beloved and respected high-ranking News-Press editor has just been effectively fired. For the same violation of the same non-existent policy, two other editors and one reporter have been seriously chastised, with letters of reprimand placed in their personnel files. It’s widely expected that when Jerry Roberts returns from vacation this week, he will either quit or be fired. Barney Brantingham, columnist-at-large since before forever, has reportedly already quit, depriving the News-Press of its most publicly recognized face and voice. In addition, as many as three other senior newsroom staffers are rumored to have written their resignation letters or have resigned already. In other words, it’s a self-inflicted blood bath.

Adding considerable insult to all this injury, Mrs. McCaw just appointed Travis K. Armstrong — the poison pen who infuses the paper’s editorials with so much caustic contempt — as the latest publisher. In addition, it appears Mrs. McCaw may have given Armstrong — who faithfully reflects Mrs. McCaw’s peculiar blend of environmental, libertarian, animal rights, and let-them-eat-cake antigovernment politics — unprecedented and exceptional authority. As publisher, Armstrong has reportedly been given the explicit right to edit and change news articles as he sees fit. It’s a given in any newspaper that publishers — who represent the paper’s business interest — are on occasion tempted to mess with news. Safeguards to prevent this sort of meddling are supposedly built into the system; to the extent these safeguards fail, papers lose credibility. Given the exceedingly bad blood between Armstrong and the news department (which had the temerity to publish a story on his recent drunk-driving arrest, though he managed to squelch the subsequent article about his guilty plea and sentencing), this new arrangement promises to be especially poisonous.

While trouble has been brewing at the News-Press for many moons, this latest episode began on June 21, when the Montecito Planning Commission narrowly approved Lowe’s request to build a mega mansion on a vacant parcel of land he bought for $8.5 million at 700 Picacho Lane. After a Hollywood career of successfully fusing the very cute and the very nasty, Lowe has settled down in Montecito, where, like everyone else, he got the itch to build his dream house. With all the bells and whistles — including pool houses, cabanas, garages, and guesthouses — it weighs in at about 15,000 square feet. Even by Montecito standards, that’s large. Lowe’s immediate neighbor Fred Gluck complained that the 24-foot-high fence Lowe proposed to construct for privacy purposes would substantially diminish the scenic views he now enjoys. Gluck, by the way, is no lightweight. After stints at Bell Labs and Bechtel, he’s become a major rainmaker for one of the world’s premier management consulting firms, even issuing a now-famous report on how the Catholic Church is on the fast track to nowhere if it can’t quell its feudal management culture. After settlement efforts by Gluck and Lowe’s attorneys went nowhere, Gluck appealed to the Planning Commission. There he argued (correctly) that Lowe’s plans exceed Montecito build-out guidelines by about 20 percent. But then it turned out, so did Gluck’s. Ultimately, the Montecito planning agency concluded that since everybody in Montecito is building castles these days — mansions are apparently the luxury homes of yesterday — it would be unfair to say no to Lowe. Aside from the wealth and celebrity of the players involved, this was a typical Santa Barbara land-use story. Certainly, News-Press reporter Camilla Cohee wrote it up as one, and that involved listing the address of the proposed development. Lowe was upset his address was mentioned and complained to the News-Press, presumably Mrs. McCaw or Mr. Armstrong. As a rich celebrity, it’s easy to imagine Lowe being concerned about his privacy. But the fact is, his address was listed on a vast quantity of public documents relating to this permit struggle. At the June 21 hearing, Lowe himself spoke, and I noticed he mentioned many of his neighbors by both name and address. At the public hearing, anyone who cared to watch — it was broadcast on government-channel, public-access TV — saw maps of the Lowe property from every conceivable angle.

Still, whatever outrage Lowe felt, Mrs. McCaw shared. (Notoriously media-shy herself, Mrs. McCaw nearly walked away from buying the News-Press from the New York Times five years ago when the Times published a paparazzi-style photograph of her.) The News-Press has no formal policy about listing addresses, though they are customary in planning stories, if not absolutely essential. One obvious purpose of reporting is to alert the general public to a broader controversy, so that citizens might become involved. In many land-use battles, it would be difficult to weigh in without knowing precisely what property was involved. Although Mrs. McCaw acknowledged the paper’s lack of any policy on the matter, she nonetheless sent stinging letters of reprimand to Cohee and the three editors she believed had a hand in the story: Jane Hulse, George Foulsham, and Michael Todd. She insisted their decision to include Lowe’s address constituted “a careless error of judgment.” All four reportedly wrote back in protest, Hulse insisting she had nothing to do with the story. Todd’s letter was reportedly a zinger. Shortly after he sent it, Todd — widely admired in the newsroom for his intelligence, work ethic, and skill — was placed on indefinite unpaid leave, pending the outcome of an investigation into a smartass remark he made to a News-Press employee many weeks before. The offending comment had to do with Todd and this employee running into each other on State Street, and was along the lines of, “I would have swerved to run you over, but you were with two friends at the time, so I didn’t.” Unless there’s a dark history between these two, this qualifies as a dumb joke, not atypical of the barbed banter heard in any newsroom in America.

All these events have left the News-Press office in an uproar. If someone as competent and popular as Todd could be fired, no one was safe. And to the extent there was a reason, it was to further a double standard by which the rich and famous receive preferential news treatment. Given Mrs. McCaw’s emphatic and overwhelming opposition to the Living Wage — designed to lift those on the bottom up a few rungs — and her rage at the Coastal Commission for securing the public’s absolute right to walk on the beach in front of her Hope Ranch estate, there are those both inside and outside the newsroom who question her empathy for the less fortunate. Perhaps to quell such concerns, Mrs. McCaw has issued a new sweeping edict decreeing that henceforth no addresses be listed in any News-Press article unless the subject — rich and famous or not — gives prior consent. Already, this policy has born ridiculous results. Last week’s front-page article about a possible location for a new police headquarters was conspicuously devoid of an address.

As the News-Press careens headlong into certain disaster, Mrs. McCaw and her betrothed, Arthur Von Weisenberger, have left town for a few weeks’ vacation — but not before issuing a few other edicts from on high. Henceforth, we are told, the word “blond” will always be spelled “blonde” (either as noun or adjective) when applied to females. And unless a woman specifically instructs News-Press reporters that she wishes to be referred to as “Ms.,” her name will be preceded by the more traditional designations “Miss” or “Mrs.” Finally, in another edict, anyone from the News-Press caught talking with me faces a range of penalties, up to and including immediate termination. I’m sure all these changes will be of great comfort to the community when what should have been a journalistic Garden of Eden explodes. In this case, it appears Adam and Eve aren’t waiting for the Almighty to chase them out of Paradise; they’ve decided to blow it up instead. And I don’t know if there’s any recovering from that.  — Nick Welsh"

from the CounterPunch political newsletter, edited by alexander cockburn & jeffrey st. clair:

Weekend Edition
September 9/10 , 2006

How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Slip Off the Hook

The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts -- -- the ones who say Bush and Cheney masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- in the first paragraph of the opening page of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor. “In many respects,” Griffin writes, “the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself… In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes… not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.”

The operative word here is “should”. One characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency, thus many of them start with the racist premise that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission. They believe that military systems work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work. They believe that at 8.14 am, when AA flight 11 switched off its radio and transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the National Military Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (this is from high priest Griffin) “the US Air Force’s own website”, that an F-15 could have intercepted AA flight 11 “by 8.24, and certainly no later than 8.30”.

They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because if they did they’d know that minutely planned operations – let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency -- screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality, weather and all the other whims of providence.

According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command, an impending Soviet attack would have prompted the missile silos in North Dakota to open, and the ICBMs to arc towards Moscow and kindred targets. The tiny number of test launches actually attempted all failed, whereupon SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence, defense contractor venality or… CONSPIRACY? (In that case, presumably, a Communist conspiracy, as outlined by ancestors of the present nuts, ever intent on identifying those who would stab America in the back.)

Did the British and French forces in 1940 break and flee a Wehrmacht capable of only one lunge, because of rotten leadership, terrible planning, epic cowardice, or … CONSPIRACY? Did the April 24, 1980 effort to rescue the hostages in the US embassy in Teheran fail because a sandstorm disabled three of the eight helicopters, because the helicopters were poorly made, because of a lousy plan or because of agents of William Casey and the Republican National Committee poured sugar into their gas tanks in yet another CONSPIRACY?

Have the US military’s varying attempts to explain why F-15s didn’t intercept and shoot down the hijacked planes stemmed from absolutely predictable attempts to cover up the usual screw-ups, or because of CONSPIRACY? Is Mr Cohen in his little store at the end of the block hiking his prices because he wants to make a buck, or because his rent just went up or because the Jews want to take over the world? August Bebel said anti-Semitism is the socialism of the fools. These days the 9/11 conspiracy fever threatens to become the “socialism” of the left, and the passe-partout of many libertarians.

It’s awful. My in-box overflows each day with fresh “proofs” of how the WTC buildings were actually demolished, often accompanied by harsh insults identifying me as a “gate-keeper” preventing the truth from getting out. I meet people who start quietly, asking me “what I think about 9/11”. What they are actually trying to find out is whether I’m part of the coven. I imagine it was like being a Stoic in the second century A.D. going for a stroll in the Forum and meeting some fellow asking, with seeming casualness, whether it’s possible to feed 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.

Indeed, at my school in the 1950s the vicar used to urge on us Frank Morison’s book, Who Moved The Stone? It sought to demonstrate, with exhaustive citation from the Gospels, that since on these accounts no human had moved the stone from in front of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, it must beyond the shadow of a doubt have been an angel who rolled it aside and let Jesus out, so he could astonish the mourners and then Ascend. Of course Morison didn’t admit into his argument the possibility that angels don’t exist, or that the gospel writers were making it up.

It’s the same pattern with the 9/11 nuts, who proffer what they demurely call “disturbing questions”, though they disdain all answers but their own. They seize on coincidences and force them into sequences they deem to be logical and significant. Like mad Inquisitors, they pounce on imagined clues in documents and photos, torturing the data –- as the old joke goes about economists -- till the data confess. Their treatment of eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence is whimsical. Apparent anomalies that seem to nourish their theories are brandished excitedly; testimony that undermines their theories – like witnesses of a large plane hitting the Pentagon -- is contemptuously brushed aside.

Anyone familiar with criminal, particularly death penalty defense – I had such an opportunity for a number of years – will know that there are always anomalies the prosecution cannot account for and that the defense teams can exploit, in hopes of swaying a jury either in the guilt or penalty phase of a trial. Time and again I would see the defense team spend days and weeks, even months, back-checking on a possibly vulnerable link in the evidentiary chain that could be attacked, at least to the all-important level of creating “reasonable doubt” in the mind of a juror. Expert witnesses would be imported at great expense –- unlike states such as Texas, the justice system of California is generous in the provision of money for death penalty defense -- to challenge the prosecution’s forensic evidence. Such challenges weren’t hard to mount. Contrary to prosecutorial claims, there is far less instrinsic certainty in forensic evaluation than is commonly supposed, as regards fingerprints, landing marks on bullets and so forth.

But minute focus of a death penalty defense team on one such weak link often leads to a distorted view of the whole case. I remember more than one case where, after weeks of interviewing witnesses at one particular crime scene, the defense’s investigator had collected enough witness reports to mount a decent attack on this aspect of the prosecution’s overall case. At least this is what I thought, hearing the daily bulletins of the investigator. But when, in such instances, the camera pulled back, so to speak, and I saw the prosecution’s whole case – chain of evidence, cumulative witness statements, accused’s own movements and subsequent statements – it became clear enough to me and, in that case to the juries , that the accused were incontestably guilty. But even then, such cases had a vigorous afterlife, with the defense trying to muster up grounds for an appeal, on the basis of testimony and evidence withheld by the prosecution, faulty rulings by the judge, a prejudiced jury member and so on. A seemingly “cut and dried case” is very rarely beyond challenge, even though in essence it actually may well be just that, “cut and dried”.

Anyone who ever looked at the JFK assassination will know that there are endless anomalies and loose ends. Eyewitness testimony – as so often – is conflicting, forensic evidence possibly misconstrued, mishandled or just missing. But in my view, the Warren Commission, as confirmed in almost all essentials by the House Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, had it right and Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Schoolbook Depository. The evidentiary chain for his guilt is persuasive, and the cumulative scenarios of the conspiracy nuts entirely unconvincing. But of course – as the years roll by, and even though no death bed confession has ever buttressed those vast, CIA-related scenarios -- the nuts keep on toiling away, their obsessions as unflagging as ever.

Naturally, there are conspiracies. I think there is strong evidence that FDR did have knowledge that a Japanese naval force in the north Pacific was going to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt thought it would be a relatively mild assault and thought it would be the final green light to get the US into the war.

Of course it’s very probable that the FBI or US military intelligence, even the CIA, had penetrated the Al Qaeda team planning the 9/11 attacks; that intelligence reports – some are already known – piled up in various Washington bureaucracies pointing to the impending onslaught and even the manner in which it might be carried out.

The history of intelligence operations is profuse with example of successful intelligence collection, but also fatal slowness to act on the intelligence, along with eagnerness not to compromise the security and future usefulness of the informant, who has to prove his own credentials by even pressing for prompt action by the plotters. Sometime an undercover agent will actually propose an action, either to deflect efforts away from some graver threat, or to put the plotters in a position where they can be caught red-handed. In their penetrations of environmental groups the FBI certainly did this.

Long before the Yom Kippur war, a CIA analyst noted Egyptian orders from a German engineering firm, and deduced from the type and size of equipment thus ordered that Egypt was planning an attack across the Suez canal. He worked out the probable size of the Egyptian force and the likely time window for the attack. His superiors at the CIA sat on the report. When the Egyptian army finally attacked on October 6, 1973 the CIA high command ordered up the long-buried report, dusted it off and sent it over to the White House, marked “current intelligence”. Was there a “conspiracy” by the CIA high command to allow Israel to be taken by surprise? I doubt it.

Bureaucratic inertia and caution prevailed, until the moment came for decisive CYA acitvity. The nuts make dizzying “deductive” leaps. There is a one particularly vigorous coven which has established to its own satisfaction that the original NASA moon landing was faked, and never took place. This “conspiracy” would have required the complicity of thousands of people , all of whom have kept their mouths shut. The proponents of the “fake moon landing” plot tend to overlap with the JFK and 9/11 nuts.

One notorious “deductive” leap involves flight 77, which on 9/11 ended up crashing into the Pentagon. There are photos of the impact of the “object” -- i.e., the Boeing 757, flight 77 -- that seem to show the sort of hole a missile might make. Ergo, the nuts assert, it WAS a missile and a 757 didn’t hit the Pentagon. As regards the hole, my brother Andrew -- writing a book about Rumsfeld and the DoD during his tenure -- has seen photos taken within 30 minutes of Pentagon impact clearly showing outline of entire plane including wings. This was visible momentarily when the smoke blew away[.]

And if it was a missile, what happened to the 757? Did the conspirators shoot it down somewhere else, or force it down and then kill the passengers? Why plan to demolish the towers with pre-placed explosives if your conspiracy includes control of the two planes that hit them. Why bother with the planes at all. Why blame Osama if your fall guy is Saddam Hussein? Why involve the Israeli “art students”.

The nuts simultaneously credit their targets – the Bush-Cheney “conspirators” -- with superhuman ingenuity and grotesque carelessness. In Webster Griffin Tarpley’s book “9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA” he writes that “in an interview with Parade magazine, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld also referred to the object which hit the Pentagon as a ‘missile’. Was this a Freudian slip by the loquacious defense chief?” (And, a nut might add, is it mere coincidence that Webster Griffin Tarpley shares one of his names with David Ray Griffin?

The demolition scenario is classic who-moved-the-stonery. The WTC towers didn’t fall down because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority, and because they were struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, they fell because Dick Cheney’s agents methodically planted demolition charges in the preceding days. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom –- party to mass murder –- have held their tongues ever since. The “conspiracy” is always open-ended as to the number of conspirators, widening steadily to include all the people involved in the execution and cover-up of the demolition of the Towers and the onsslaujght on the Pentagon, from the teams acquiring the explosives and themissile, inserting the explosives in the relevant floors of three vast buildings, (moving day after day among the unsuspecting office workers), then on 9/11 activating the detonators.

Subsequently the conspiracy includes the disposers of the steel and rubble, the waste recyclers in Staten Island and perhaps even the Chinese who took the salvaged incriminating metal for use in the Three Gorges dam, where it will submerged in water and concretye for ever. Tens of thousands of people, all silent as the tomb to this day.

Of course the buildings didn’t suddenly fall at a speed inexplicable in terms of physics unless caused by carefully pre-placed explosives, detonated by the ruthless Bush-Cheney operatives. High grade steel can bend disastrously under extreme heat. People inside who survived the collapse didn’t hear a series of explosions. As discussed in Wayne Barrett and Dan Collin’s excellent book Grand Illusion, about Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, helicopter pilots radioed warnings nine minutes before the final collapse that the South Tower might well go down and, repeatedly, as much as 25 minutes before the North Tower’s fall.

What Barrett and Collins brilliantly show are the actual corrupt conspiracies on Giuliani’s watch: the favoritism to Motorola which saddled the firemen with radios that didn’t work; the ability of the Port Authority to skimp on fire protection, the mayor’s catastrophic failure in the years before 9/11/2001 to organize an effective unified emergency command that would have meant that cops and firemen could have communicated; that many firemen wouldn’t have unnecessarily entered the Towers; that people in the Towers wouldn’t have been told by 911 emergency operators to stay in place; and that firemen could have heard the helicopter warnings and the final Mayday messages that prompted most of the NYPD men to flee the Towers.

That’s the real political world, in which Giuliani and others have never been held accountable. The nuts disdain the real world because, like much of the left and liberal sectors, they have promoted Bush, Cheney and the Neo-Cons to an elevated status as the Arch Demons of American history, instead of being just one more team running the American empire, a team of more than usual stupidity and incompetence (characteristics I personally favor in imperial leaders.) The Conspiracy Nuts have combined to produce a huge distraction, just as Danny Sheehan did with his Complaint, that mesmerized and distracted much of the Nicaraguan Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, and which finally collapsed in a Florida courtroom almost as quickly as the Towers.

* Footnote: I should add that one particular conspiracy nut, seeing that Roosevelt’s grandson Ford – a schoolteacher in Los Angeles – was for a while, some years ago, on the board of CounterPunch’s parent non-profit, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity – wrote an enormous onslaught on CounterPunch a while ago, “proving” to his own satisfaction that CounterPunch was a pawn of the Democratic Party, the CIA and kindred darker forces. I suppose the fact that CounterPunch attacked the Democratic Party and the CIA on a weekly basis was just one more example of our cunning in deflecting suspicion away from our true sponsors. The fact that from time to time that we also quite regularly attacked FDR – and posited his foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor – should again be taken as evidence of our cunning in deflecting suspicion away from Ford’s supervisory roile in our affairs. In fact we’d put Ford on the board in the hopes (vain, as they turned out to be) that he would persuade film stars to give CounterPunch money.

A much shorter, earlier version of the column ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Thursday.

yeah. i've been throwing together some vinyl (more vinyl than usual) & other possible selections all morning.




i'm going to be on from 2-4pm pdt on kcsb.

don't expect miracles, but i'm thinking it might be fun.

lates!

freakyT

did anyone watch this last night on hbo?



sometimes i do wish that i had time & cable television.

i think part two is tonight.  then repeats & dvd release... such an important story, no?

i've heard perfectly reasonable, peace-loving people the past couple of weeks get their backs all up in defense of what the israeli government is doing to the people of lebanon.

this article addresses the exploitation of their sentiments by the israeli government's propaganda machine.  it's time we started to stand up to, & expose, its distortions, i think.  at least i want to...

@}- -'- - -,- - - - -

 

Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the "blue line" between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line "on an almost daily basis" between 2001 and 2003, and "persistently" until 2006. These incursions "caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas". On some occasions, Hizbullah tried to shoot them down with anti-aircraft guns.

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation".

On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12.

There has been a heated debate on the internet about whether the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah that day were captured in Israel or in Lebanon, but it now seems pretty clear that they were seized in Israel. This is what the UN says, and even Hizbullah seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have been found sneaking around the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. Now it simply states that "the Islamic resistance captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine". Three other Israeli soldiers were killed by the militants. There is also some dispute about when, on July 12, Hizbullah first fired its rockets; but Unifil makes it clear that the firing took place at the same time as the raid - 9am. Its purpose seems to have been to create a diversion. No one was hit.

But there is no serious debate about why the two soldiers were captured: Hizbullah was seeking to exchange them for the 15 prisoners of war taken by the Israelis during the occupation of Lebanon and (in breach of article 118 of the third Geneva convention) never released. It seems clear that if Israel had handed over the prisoners, it would - without the spillage of any more blood - have retrieved its men and reduced the likelihood of further kidnappings. But the Israeli government refused to negotiate. Instead - well, we all know what happened instead. Almost 1,000 Lebanese and 33 Israeli civilians have been killed so far, and a million Lebanese displaced from their homes.

On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

A "senior Israeli official" told the Washington Post that the raid by Hizbullah provided Israel with a "unique moment" for wiping out the organisation. The New Statesman's editor, John Kampfner, says he was told by more than one official source that the US government knew in advance of Israel's intention to take military action in Lebanon. The Bush administration told the British government.

Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary. It is true that Hizbullah had been building up munitions close to the border, as its current rocket attacks show. But so had Israel. Just as Israel could assert that it was seeking to deter incursions by Hizbullah, Hizbullah could claim - also with justification - that it was trying to deter incursions by Israel. The Lebanese army is certainly incapable of doing so. Yes, Hizbullah should have been pulled back from the Israeli border by the Lebanese government and disarmed. Yes, the raid and the rocket attack on July 12 were unjustified, stupid and provocative, like just about everything that has taken place around the border for the past six years. But the suggestion that Hizbullah could launch an invasion of Israel or that it constitutes an existential threat to the state is preposterous. Since the occupation ended, all its acts of war have been minor ones, and nearly all of them reactive.

So it is not hard to answer the question of what we would have done. First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria. Second, stop provoking the armed groups in Lebanon with violations of the blue line - in particular the persistent flights across the border. Third, release the prisoners of war who remain unlawfully incarcerated in Israel. Fourth, continue to defend the border, while maintaining the diplomatic pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah (as anyone can see, this would be much more feasible if the occupations were to end). Here then is my challenge to the supporters of the Israeli government: do you dare to contend that this programme would have caused more death and destruction than the current adventure has done?

George Monbiot is a journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

###

perhaps one of the most dreamlike journeys of my life just ended.  they have increased in frequency, though... in moab, utah, in 2003.  smalltown masachussetts, philadelphia, & new york city last summer.  portland, oregon this past spring.  atlanta & louisville in may. &, most recently, wisconsin last weekend...

i am waaaaayyyyyy behind with my photos. i'm going keep posting them in chronological order, for the most part. after i clear something with my friend, digitalburning, though, i'll post one of the most classic of the pix we got last weekend with my camera... today, i also hope to post another one of another cool meetup i had, with ramirkriza, while in madison, wisconsin last weekend .

i think i'm like a month behind with my photos.  but my new buzznet blog heading, borrowed from william wordsworth's "preface to the lyrical ballads," reflects my attitude about all of this online work of late. 

i've been seeing this blog as generating a type of "poetry... the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

glad to be back.  at least i'm trying to be glad... part of me just wants the "dream journey" to continue...

going to the annual conference of the grassroots radio coalition in madison, wisconsin, this weekend.  it's hosted by wort-fm.

more adventures in store! stay tuned!

♥

♥

i just 2.5 hours, i will be hosting a set by reno-based hardcore punk band bafabegiya.




i really don't know much about them... will just make clear to them that they have to avoid "dirty words" (or at least to make sure that they are unintelligible).  ;)

from 9-10am, pdt on "the freak power ticket," kcsb 91.9 fm in santa barbara, california (www.kcsb.org).

here's the band bio, from their website:

"Over the past 3 years, Bafabegiya has been one of the most active bands in Reno's all ages DIY hc punk scene. Members of Bafabegiya have been in and are currently members of This Computer Kills (Substandard), Disconnect (Spacement), Crucial Attack (625 Thrashcore), Rad Times (Spacement), Young Lions (Lil Fist), Dog Assassin (Spacement), and Both Blind (Spacement). After a cassette demo, several vinyl releases, domestic tours, and countless local shows, Bafabegiya is planning to release a CD discographphy and embark on a full US tour (with Both Blind) in the Summer of 2006, record a full length LP in early Fall 2006 with Dan Rathbun at Polymorph studios, tour Mexico with Greyskull (Spacement Records, Crimethinc) in Winter 2006/2007, and tour the West Coast with the Brodeo (Greyskull, Acts of Sedition, and Parallax) on Spring Break 2007."

mebbe some of y'all will be able to tune in?

freaky

counterpunch.org

July 12, 2006

History is What Comes Next

Mexico Splits in Half: the Election Hits the Streets

By JOHN ROSS

A full week after the most viciously contested presidential election in its modern history, a Florida-sized fraud looms over the Mexican landscape and the nation has been divided almost exactly in half along political, economic, geographical and racial lines.




Mexico has always been two lands  "Illusionary Mexico" and "Profound Mexico" is how sociologist Guillermo Bonfils described the great divide between rich and poor. But now, should it be allowed to stand, right-winger Felipe Calderon's severely questioned 243.000 vote victory over left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will split the country exactly in half between the industrial north and the impoverished, highly indigenous south with each winning 16 states  although the southern states won by Lopez Obrador, who also won Mexico City by a million votes, constitute 54% of the population.

Moreover, the disputed election pits an indignant Indian and mestizo underclass that believes AMLO was swindled out of the presidency by electoral fraud against a wealthy white conservative minority that controls the nation's media, its banks, and apparently, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Mexico's maximum electoral authorities. Lopez Obrador charges the IFE and its president Luis Carlos Ugalde with orchestrating Calderon's uncertain triumph.

At a raucous July 8th rally that put a half million supporters in Mexico City's vast Zocalo plaza, the political heart of the nation, Lopez Obrador called upon his people to demand a complete vote by vote recount of the results. Speaking from a flatbed truck set up in front of the National Palace, the official seat of the Mexican government, the fiery, former Mexico City mayor characterized President Vicente Fox as "a traitor to democracy" and for the first time at a public meeting uttered the word "fraud", accusing the IFE of rigging the election to favor his opponent.

Indeed, fraud was the central motif of the mammoth meeting. Large photos of IFE president Luis Carlos Ugalde slugged "Wanted for Electoral Fraud" were slapped up on central city walls and tens of thousands of protestors waved home-made signs dissing the IFE official with such colorful epithets as "No To Your Fucking Fraud!" Throughout the rally, (which was billed as a "first informative assembly"), the huge throng repeatedly drowned out Lopez Obrador's pronouncements with thunderous chants of "Fraude Electoral!" At times, AMLO seemed on the verge of tears at the outpouring of support from the sea of brown faces that pressed in around the speakers' platform.

The gathering in the Zocalo signaled the kick-off to what is sometimes called "the second election in the street"; a mass effort to pressure electoral officials into a ballot-by-ballot recount that Lopez Obrador is convinced will show that he was the winner July 2nd. The IFE has resolutely resisted such a recount.

AMLO, a gifted leader of street protest, is always at the top of his game when he is seen as an underdog battling the rich and powerful and the next days will be heady ones here. This Wednesday (June 12th), the left leader is calling upon supporters in all 300 electoral districts across Mexico to initiate a national "exodus" for democracy that will converge upon the capital on Sunday, July 16th for a mega-march that may well turn out to be the largest political demonstration in the nation's history. Indeed, AMLO already set that mark in April 2005 when 1.2 million citizens surged through Mexico City to protest Fox's efforts to bar the leftist from the ballot  the president dropped his vendetta three days after the march.




But Lopez Obrador and his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) will not just do battle in the streets. Evidence of wide-spread ballot box manipulation in a third of the 130,000 polling places (including ballot-stuffing and duplicate numbers in thousands of them), malfeasance in the reporting of district totals to the IFE, inexplicable cybernetic confabulations in both the preliminary count or PREP (`3,000,000 mostly AMLO votes were removed) and the final tabulation in the districts, are being presented to the nation's top electoral tribunal (code-named the TRIFE) by Lopez Obrador's battery of attorneys in an effort to persuade the seven justices that a hand recount is the only way to determine who will be the next president of Mexico. Such recounts have recently been conducted in close elections in Germany, Italy, and Costa Rica as well as in Florida 2000 until ordered shut down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Felipe Calderon and the PAN and Ugalde's IFE consider AMLO's demands to open the ballot boxes an "insult" to the "hundreds of thousands of citizens" who were responsible for carrying out the election. "The votes have already been counted - on Election Day" Ugalde upbraids Lopez Obrador.

The TRIFE is an autonomous judicial body with powers to annul the presidential election it has annulled gubernatorial elections in Tabasco (AMLO's home state) and Colima and invalidated results in entire districts because of electoral flimflam in recent years. Lopez Obrador and the PRD have also petitioned Mexico's Supreme Court to invalidate the election because of Vicente Fox's apparently unconstitutional meddling on behalf of Calderon, and this reporter has learned that AMLO is considering calling upon all PRD elected officials not to take office December 1st if the ballots are not recounted, a strategy that could trigger constitutional crisis.

Despite the uncertainty about who won the July 2nd election, the White House and Ambassador Tony Garza, a Bush crony, have been quick to congratulate Felipe Calderon for whom they exhibited an undisguised predilection during the campaigns  President Bush actually called the right-winger from Air Force One and Garza has been lavish in his praise of the much-questioned performance of the IFE as proof of "a maturing Mexican democracy."

The U.S. embassy has a track record of intervening in Mexico's presidential selection  Ronald Reagan recognized Carlos Salinas as the winner of the stolen 1988 election within 96 hours of the larceny. In 1911, U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson signed off on the assassination of Mexico's first democratically elected president Francisco Madero, to whom Lopez Obrador has often compared himself.

Most of the U.S. Big Press has followed in lockstep with the White House  the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post all expressed editorial satisfaction at Calderon's coronation based on the results of the admittedly manipulated preliminary count. The New York Times, however, which 18 years ago, after free-marketeer Carlos Salinas stole the presidency from leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, called that tormented proceedings "the cleanest election in Mexican history", this time around was more cautious, voting for a ballot by ballot recount before extending its benediction to the winner.

As tens of thousands of AMLO's supporters, "the people the color of the earth" Subcomandante Marcos names them, march across the Mexican landscape on their way up to the capital to demand electoral justice, invoking scenes of the great movement of "los de abajo" (those from down below) during Mexico's monumental 1910-1919 revolution, the country holds it breath.

In Mexico, the past has equal value with the present and the memory of what came before can sometimes be what comes next. These are history-making moments south of the Rio Bravo. North Americans need to pay attention.

A shortened version of this piece appeared on the Nation.com.

John Ross is in Mexico City waiting to see How It All Turns Out so that he can write the epilogue to his latest opus "Making Another World Possible--Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" to be published in October by Nation Books.

o.k. i've spent the past few months looking for FM inspirato, & as a result haven't really felt compelled to call much attention to my radio program, "the freak power ticket." this summer, "the freak power ticket" will again be airing live from 9-10am (pacific daylight time) on 91.9 fm (in santa barbara & throughout california's central coast), while webstreaming worldwide at kcsb.org.

while i may have been neglecting making announcements about the show, over the spring, tomorrow is a bit different, though.  first off, i will also be subbing for the show after mine (it's called "rocket garden holiday").  as a result i'm going to have three hours of time to fill for people's listening pleaure. 




to start things off, my show tomorrow will feature a special guest, nick centino, who will be in charge of the musical programming during my first hour (9-10am pacific). nick has been involved with putting together a fundraising evening of 1940's-style jump blues & 1950's-style rockabilly music on july 14th at santa barbara's la casa de la raza (601 e. montecito st.): with special musical guests pep torres & pachuco jose y los diamantes.  the show is all ages, & costs $10 at the door.  proceeds benefit la casa de la raza youth center.

the radio program's 1st hour will feature the music of pep torres & pachuco jose, along with other chicano rockabilly & jump blues artists.

the content of my 2nd hour (10-11am) is currently up for grabs: i appear to have had an unofficial cancellation...




that said, in my 3rd hour (11am-noon) i will shine a spotlight on world/inferno friendship society, much talked about by me within this blog community.  world/inferno has a new album, "red-eyed soul," due to hit stores tuesday, july 11th (on chunksaah records), & the band is currently on a north american tour (playing the long beach warehouse also on friday night, july 14th).  a portion of that hour will feature an interview i just conducted with w/ifs accordianist & keyboardist franz nicolay (pictured, above, with red eye, appropriately enough), & perhaps other surprises are in store!

o.k. that's it for now. i have to resume my show preparations.  it's going to be a damn busy week.  some things are never as smooth as you hope for them to be, but at least my show seems exciting again to me!

: )

talk atcha later, y'all!