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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Scattered links this week, mostly Israel (but what else can one do?). Information is less forthcoming in the world's other hotspots -- Libya has emerged as one, alongside Syria and Iraq, and Ukraine. One thing I wonder about the latter is how intense the fighting has been as the central government attempts to beat down the seccessionists. It seems likely that Russia provided the latter with the BUK missile believed to have shot down the Malaysian Airlines plane, and that the rocket was fired by someone expecting Ukrainian military planes rather than a neutral airliner. The downed airliner should be a cautionary lesson for both sides, but instead has been up as a political tool, to villify Russia, making matters worse rather than better. I don't doubt that there is some amount of villainy on the Russian side, but the other side (Ukraine? Europe? America?) is hardly innocent either, and restarting the Cold War will only be worse for all. At times like this, one needs statesmen. Instead, all we got is Obama, hounded by spooks like Lindsey Graham.

Let's start with a couple twitter images, reportedly Gaza City's Sheijayia neighborhood before and after Israeli bombing. Not the same views, but you get the idea:

Meanwhile, back to the links:

• Mustafa Akyol: Turkey Can Teach Israel How to End Terror: Turkey had battled Kurdish separatists since 1984, their approach described by one of their generals as "killing all terrorists one by one." A couple years ago Turkey changed its approach, started negotiating with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, and has largely resolved the problem. (Was it a coincidence that Turkey's change coincided with the ending of their alliance with Israel?)

  The Kurds were not angry at Turkey because they were innately prone to violence. They were angry because Turkey had done something grievously wrong to them. And a peace agreement became possible only when the Turkish public and the state acknowledged this fact.

  If Israel is ever going to achieve peace, Israelis will have to overcome their own self-righteous hawkishness as well -- and abandon the intellectually lazy reflex that explains Palestinian militancy as the natural product of Arab and Islamic culture's supposedly violent nature.

• Uri Avnery: Once and for All!: Of course, it isn't really this symmetric, but the headline talking points could be solved easily:

  In this war, both sides have the same aim: to put an end to the situation that existed before it started.

  Once And For All!

  To put an end to the launching of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, Once And For All!

  To put an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt, Once And For All!

  So why don't the two sides come together without foreign interference and agree on tit for tat?

  They can't because they don't speak to each other. They can kill each other, but they cannot speak with each other. God forbid.

  This is not a war on terror. The war itself is an act of terror.

  Neither side has a strategy other than terrorizing the civilian population of the other side. [ . . . ]

  Both hopes are, of course, stupid. History has shown time and again that terrorizing a population causes it to unite behind its leaders and hate the enemy even more. That is happening now on both sides.

  Avnery didn't point out the greatest symmetry, which is that compliance with the other side's goals would cost nothing and actually benefit both sides. Despite the claims of Israel's most blinded supporters, there is no reason to think that Gazans take any absolute satisfaction in killing Israelis with rockets. Nor, if the rockets stopped, should Israel gain any succor watching Gazans starve. I'm not sure that any Israelis can articulate the real reason they've persisted in keeping Gaza locked up and down. Twice now, Israel has adopted policies which show that they have no long-term desire to keep Gaza: at the start of Oslo when they handed the whole Strip over to the PA, and in 2004 when they dismantled their last settlements in the Strip. One has to wonder why they didn't Cut Gaza Loose -- hand the Gaza Strip off to the UN to form an independent state, more or less as I proposed a couple weeks ago.

  I tried circulating my post around a bit, but got no interest or feedback whatsoever in it. Pro-Palestinians don't like it because they think that splitting off Gaza will make it that much harder to get any sort of independence for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and they may be right. (Assuming no right of return -- I think that's a totally dead prospect given Israel's strength and racism -- it tilts the demographics to the point where Israel might consider granting citizenship to all extant West Bank and Jerusalem Palestinians, although that's likely a long struggle away.) And pro-Israelis don't like it because most Gazans are Israeli refugees with a still legitimate right of return, so at the very least they fear that a Palestinian state might legitimize the refugees' moral case. (If this sounds kind of fishy, it's because it is, but Israelis are raised to see existential threats everywhere; that is, after all, the bedrock Zionism is founded upon.)

  Avnery only sees one way out of the mutual destruction of war-after-war, and that's to do something very similar to what I proposed. So I count him (and the Israeli peace camp) among the people who might advance such a plan. It should also appeal to liberal Zionists, especially outside Israel. It is, for instance, something that should make sense to Kerry and Blair but they can't currently grasp because of their phobia about Hamas and how they see Gaza and Hamas as one. And if they did embrace it, what rejoinder would Netanyahu have? He can't claim that Israeli control in any way benefits Gaza. Nor can he claim that Israel's past and current security efforts are the only way Israel can ensure its own security. The problem with nearly every scheme to resolve the conflict is that it would impose some unacceptable cost to Israel, but cutting Gaza loose doesn't have any costs: it's a scheme that even an implacable stonewaller like Netanyahu can't resist forever. And it would be a positive step, breaking the blockade/rockets cycle that resulted in Israeli escalation and war in 2006, 2008, 2012, and now 2014.

• Richard Silverstein: Israel's Slaughter, Based on a Lie: Evidently, at least one Israeli "official source" confirms that they realize that Hamas was not responsible for the kidnapping-murder of three Israeli teenagers back on June 12, the event that kicked off a series of events leading to Israel's latest intensive demolition of Gaza. The crime was, instead, the work of a "lone cell" in Hebron. However, Netanyahu sought to use the murders as an excuse to break up the unification deal between Hamas and Fatah. He sent 10,000 IDF troops into the West Bank where they ransacked thousdands of homes, arresting 500 Palestinians (mostly associated with Hamas, many of whom had been in Israeli prisons before being released in last year's prisoner exchange deal), and killing seven. When Hamas protested by shooting off some rockets from Gaza, Israel then began its bombardment and invasion of Gaza, killing well over a thousand more.

  This entire slaughter is based on a lie. And not just a small lie, but a huge, cancerous, evil lie. I do not like to make absolute moral statements if I can avoid it. But there is no doubt in my mind that Bibi Netanyahu is evil. While that doesn't necessarily mean all of Israel is evil, as long as they elect this megalomaniac to office, then all of Israel is culpable in his malevolence. [ . . . ]

  To return to Sheera's tweet, lest anyone question her source, the BBC's Jon Donnison is reporting that Israeli police spokesflack, Mickey Rosenfeld is saying the same thing explicitly.

  On a related matter, several thousand Israelis marched yesterday night in Tel Aviv against the Gaza massacre. It is not easy to do so when 90% of your fellow citizens believe you're being traitorous. I don't know if such protests are enough to exonerate the nation of war crimes. But they are some small solace.

  The lie at the root of the war gives this some resonance with the Bush invasion of Iraq, although lies leading to war are old hat -- the sinking of the Maine in 1898 and the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964 are two of the more notorious ones in US history. Nor is this anything new for Israel: the false rumors of Syria massing troops on the border in 1967, the assassination of Israel's UK ambassador in 1982 that was used as a pretext for invading Lebanon, and whatever that cockamamie story was in 1956, are just the first examples that jump into mind. Lies and wars go hand-in-hand, first as rationales then to cover up the dirty truth. The only thing remarkable about this war is how fast Israel's lies are being uncovered -- that's partly explained by the prevalence of media but also by how baldfaced the lies are. Sure, Netanyahu is vile, but that's not news either: he was the principal person responsible for destroying the Oslo framework and inciting the second intifada. Since returning to power he's sloughed off the Mitchell and Kerry iniatives and seems well on his way to kicking off a third intifada. But there's no originality in Netanyahu's evil, and little of the personal monstrosity you can find in Ariel Sharon (or Yitzhak Shamir or Menachem Begin or even Yitzhak Rabin, to limit ourselves to Israeli PMs): you can explain everything he's done as the dutiful son of his father, who was Vladimir "Iron Wall" Jabotinsky's secretary in exile in New York. Netanyahu has never enjoyed an original thought in his life. He is, rather, the slave of an old and profoundly wrong idea, which is that the only way Zionism can survive in Israel is by repeatedly beating Palestinians into submission. That idea is what's evil; Netanyahu's is merely its tool.

• More on Israel's latest war:

  • Kate: Six Palestinians are killed in West Bank in protests of Gaza slaughter: The title piece plus dozens of other reports
  • Helena Cobham: Absence of "peace process" might help Gaza ceasefire negotiations: Main point here is that Abbas has agreed with the Hamas ceasefire proposal, which insists that Israel release the prisoners covered in the Shalit deal who were arrested by Israel in their anti-Hamas sweep of the West Bank, and that the blockade of Gaza be ended. Israel supposedly can't negotiate these points with Hamas because Israel cannot talk to Hamas.
  • Annie Robbins: In Photos: Worldwide protest against Israeli attack on Gaza: Photos and videos of demonstrations from around the world. Also see: Martin Gajsek: Report from historic march on Qalandia checkpoint in solidarity with Gaza.
  • Richard Silverstein: Israel Murders IDF Soldier to Prevent His Capture: Explains the "Hannibal Directive," which basically says that if there is a chance that an IDF soldier might be captured and turned into a bargaining chip (like Gilad Shalit was), the IDF should kill that soldier first. As Silverstein reports, there has been at least one example of that during the present hostilities.
  • Rebecca L Stein: How Israel militarized social media: How the IDF put their best face on for Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • Al-Haq: Why Israel's legal justifications for 'Operation Proective Edge' are wrong: Israel has made a big deal out of their practice of phoning or other warnings, arguing that if they contact you (or at least try) and their attack subsequently injures you, they are not responsible. To say the least, this assumes they have the right to bomb, and hardly shows any concern for the consequences. Moreover, such calls can themselves be a form of terror. Or they could be misdirecting. This piece focuses mostly on international law, which Israel is in gross violation of.
  • Udi Aloni: The swan song of the Israeli left: Includes a link to the film Forgiveness.
  • Jonathan Freedland: Liberal Zionism After Gaza: A postscript following Freedland's review of Ari Shavit's My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel and John B Judis' Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict. In the latter piece I particularly appreciate Norman Finkelstein's quote on Shavit's "insights": "[they] comprise a hardcore of hypocrisy and stupidity overlaid by a tinsel patina of arrogance and pomposity. He's a know-nothing know-it-all who, if ever there were a context for world's biggest schmuck, would come in second." Shavit's the kind of guy who writes movingly about how Israel force-marched entire towns over the border and into permanent exile, then proclaims the atrocity worthwhile because it now lets him live in a fully Jewish state. (As opposed, I suppose, to a guy like Benny Morris, who uncovered numerous IDF atrocities, only to lament that there weren't more.) In this war as in so many others, liberal Zionists "shoot and cry": as Freedland translates, "the Israeli dove gets to win the admiration of the outside world, Jew and non-Jew alike, but the beauty and sensitivity of his conscience even as the behavior of his country, and the army whose uniform he continues to wear, does not change." And the order is essential: shooting first, by lining up for every war, he assures his comrades of his loyalty, even if he returns to humanity later.
  • Lisa Goldman: The Gaza war has done terrible things to Israeli society: For example: "Peaceful, unarmed [anti-war] demonstrators in Israel's two most liberal cities were physically attacked by ultra-nationalists wielding stones and bottles. In Haifa, nationalist thugs assaulted the Arab deputy mayor, slamming the middle-aged man down on the pavement. In Tel Aviv, they chased anti-war protestors into a cafe and smashed a chair over the head of one of them, even as municipal sirens wailed to announce an incoming rocket from Gaza. The police were ineffective in stopping the violence."
  • Melvin A Goodman: Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto: A reminder that Gaza resembles nothing so much as a classic ghetto, an open air prison locked down and patrolled from the outside. The most famous one was the Warsaw Ghetto managed by the Nazis in WWII -- one well known in Israel thanks to the valliant but doomed Jewish revolt there, long touted in Israel as one of the few cases where Jews fought back, like good Israelis do today. It is remembered elsewhere for the utter carnage of the Nazi "final solution": they killed over 300,000 Jews in putting the revolt down, laying waste to the entire ghetto. Israel hasn't approached that level of genocide, at least not yet, but they've killed thousands, destroyed uncounted homes and businesses and public buildings and key infrastructure. What keeps Israel from applying its own "final solution"? A mix of conscience, practicality, and concern for world opinion. All of those are wearing thin, especially conscience -- most obviously, Rabbi Dov Lior's ruling in favor of the "destruction of Gaza so that the south should no longer suffer."

Also, a few links for further study:

• Avi Shlaim: Cursed Victory: Review of Ahron Bregman's new book, Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories (2014, Allen Lane [UK]). The review is itself a good short history lesson, especially on Ehud Barak's ill-fated negotiations with Syria and Arafat. ("Bregman confirms the view I have long held -- that the two principal reasons for the collapse of the summit were Barak's intransigence and Clinton's mismanagement.") I doubt that there's much here we don't already know, although Bregman has a reputation for digging through the documents, which as Avi Raz's recent The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War made clear, show that Israel's opposition to any sort of peace initiative has been a consistent policy all along.

  Bregman describes Israel as "a heavy-handed and brutal occupier." He regards the four decades of occupation chronicled in this book as a black mark on Israeli, and indeed, Jewish history. He finds it depressing that a people that has suffered such unspeakable tragedies of its own can behave so cruelly towards another. The only sign of hope in this otherwise bleak picture is that the occupation may carry within it the seeds of its own demise. By forcing the Palestinians to live in squalor, Bregman concludes, Israel has "hardened those under its power, making them more determined to put an end to the occupation, by violent means if necessary, and live a life of dignity and freedom."

• On the slaughter of innocents: Unsigned (the author seems to have been involved in Human Rights Watch), but a long and impressive meditation that recounts the history of mass slaughter -- examples include the Mongol practice of sacking cities and similar desires by both sides in WWII -- but is written with Gaza in mind. A couple examples:

  The Israeli architect and philosopher Eyal Weizman has analyzed how groups like Human Rights Watch participate, inadvertently and from admirable aspirations, in the science of war: their "collusion . . . with military and political powers." Their methods involve a shift "from a focus on the victims of war to an analysis of the mechanism of the violations of law." Law itself, once broken, is treated as the chief victim; the individuals whose lives were at stake fade away in the descriptions of the offense almost as they did in the choosing of targets. This elision, however unwanted, is built into the methods. "Today's forensic investigators of violence move alongside its perpetrators, morphing into them," according to Weizman. "Humanitarianism, human rights and international humanitarian law," he writes, "have become the crucial means by which the economy of violence is calculated and managed."

  The Weizman book quoted is The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza (2012, Verso Books). I'm not familiar with that book, but have scanned through his Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (2007, Verso Books), one of the most deeply revealing looks at exactly how Israel manages its occupation system. The point about how human rights violations can be trivialized as violations of law is evident in all the reports which claim that Gazan rockets constitute a war crime, which in routine course balances off Israel's war crime -- its use of far more deadlier munitions. The real world difference, of course, is proportionality, which in the Israel-Gaza case is crudely visible in death and injury reports and would very likely be even more striking if you could convert the entire war efforts into some common measure of force.

  The focus on civilian casualties generates a strict, technical approach to the question of responsibility. The individual story is subordinated not just to the lawbooks, but to the slide rule. No side can ensure absolutely that it will prevent civilian casualties, as long as it's at war and killing people. So no side is completely devoid of guilt. But since the Geneva Conventions give a certain latitude for trying but failing, even killers can make a claim to innocence as well. The authority to evaluate such shades of inculpation gives enormous power to the human rights investigator and his organization, power over fine mathematical gradations of right and wrong: much greater power than simpler, starker, less technologically advanced modes of assessing morality could endow.

  But this focus buries other questions, broader ones, about responsibility for the conflict as a whole. [ . . . ]

  The aim of Israel's various "operations" in Gaza is not just to take out specific people, but to cow a population. (Even the famous text messages that supposedly warn residents a bomb is about to blast their home have, as Gazans can tell you, at least as much to do with showing off the invisible, terrifying omniscience of a military surveillance system. We know where you are.) Unleashed with that intent behind them, weapons -- however "smart" -- will terrorize, not just target; the very targeting is an aspect of terror, a reminder of superior knowledge as well as superior means, but spillover is equally intrinsic to the effect. The message inevitably exceeds the "purely" military purpose, and the collateral damage itself becomes the point: a sign of exultant excess, the means drowning the end. You can't go on talking about equivalence without acknowledging Israel's military domination, its unmeasurable ability to destroy. And to cap its technological triumph, it is (and has been for forty years) the only state in a thousand-mile radius with nuclear bombs.

  Much more in this piece, such as the line: "The confrontation between popular rebellion and a rapacious settler society isn't just an old, cowboys-and-Indians story that we can look on with disinterest or restrained amusement." (One might note that the US-Indian wars are still taught in the US military academies, and US troops frequently refer to counterinsurgency operations as operating in "Injun territory." Judging from scattered quotes, it would seem that part of Israel's hasbara toolkit is to remind Americans of their struggle to conquer the Indians -- ancient history in the US but a vivid analogy in Israel.)

In local news, sorry to hear that Randy Brown died: a longtime newspaperman, journalism professor, and political dabbler, certainly a positive presence in Wichita. And here's a sampler of his columns. In other Wichita news today, the Eagle published Sen. Jerry Moran's op-ed on why it would be better to let the lesser prairie chicken go extinct than to inconvenience any Kansas oil or gas producers. And in the big money 4th Congressional District primary, the Eagle endorsed vile Mike Pompeo (R-Koch) over evil Todd Tiahrt (R-Boeing). I can't find the candidate questions box, but Tiahrt's professed desire to be a public servant was almost touching, until he added that bit about standing up to special interests. In his sixteen years in the House, no one was a bigger corporate whore. The best you can say for him is that he sold himself cheap, and not a lot of the money stuck to his fingers, so you could buy into his sincerity thing, if only you were part of the public he so dedicated himself to serving. Curiously, Tiahrt's gained in the polls recently by attacking Pompeo's defense of the NSA -- a position he almost certainly wouldn't have thought of had Pompeo not been so rabid on it. If I could ask a debate question it would be about where they stand on the Export-Import Bank: the tea party (and most likely the Kochs) are all agitated against it, but the main beneficiary is Boeing -- and even though Boeing abandoned Wichita, I can't imagine "Tanker Todd" parting with them.

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Monday, July 21, 2014

Music: Current count 23527 [23501] rated (+26), 548 [534] unrated (+14).

When I got back from my aunt's funeral, there was a surprisingly large pile of new records waiting. I didn't get around to listing them last week, so this week's haul looks more robust than usual. I do, however, get the sense that I've fallen well out of the realm of being a mainstream jazz critic. This week's unpacking list doesn't quite prove my point -- there are a number of reputable artists there I recognize and welcome (Todd Bishop, Bobby Broom, Wayne Horvitz, Ryan Keberle, Greg Reitan, Steve Swallow, Ohad Talmor, Adam Nussbaum, Matt Ulery) most of the records I get these days are from unknowns, with the occasional cult favorite slipping in. (Two of the latter wound up with A- grades, and I doubt that you'll be reading much about either elsewhere.) Part of this is my fault, of course: formerly reliable publicists at labels like High Note and Sunnyside took my hint and stopped sending, and I've done a poor job following up on available downloads from labels like ECM -- I'm not even sure what I do or don't have there, but haven't had time (or curiosity) to sort that out.

When I got back, I didn't feel like facing the queue, so I took a look at my Penguin Guide list and started playing some old jazz from Rhapsody. First three records were high B+, which seems like par for the course. Then Charlie Haden died so I looked up his duet album with Chris Anderson, and the more I played it the more I was entranced. I then moved on to Earl Hines and Art Tatum -- one of the biggest chunks on the Penguin list was Tatum's Solo Masterpieces, which Morton & Cook love indiscriminately. I had long ago picked up Volume Four and Volume Five (both B+), plus I had a 2003 release, The Best of the Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces (A). So I spent a big chunk of time going through the other six volumes, then for good measure I gave the whole box a spin. Much of it is indeed remarkable, none of it without interest, and I didn't mind the time.

I think the reason I graded the box over its constituent volumes is that when grading the latter the question arises as to which discs are relatively better investments, and the way they are organized makes it impossible to say -- I gave Volume Six an edge mostly because of two or three especially striking songs as opposed to the dozen or so run-of-the-mill Tatums. On the other hand, the box does make sense as a whole, and it is a remarkable accomplishment both within Tatum's career and over the entire history of jazz. Given all that, my nitpicking wasn't enough to drop it below A-. Still, I much prefer The Standard Sessions, which offers livelier performances and concentrates more great songs. Only minor sonic issues, plus my general reserve about solo piano, held it below an A.

I didn't do The Art Tatum Pablo Group Masterpieces because I own and have long graded every one of them. Tatum mostly recorded solo, so the 1954-56 Granz sessions just added to an already huge legacy, but the group sessions are almost the only time Tatum ever appeared in groups -- at least with horns. They vary more in quality, but the best are really extraordinary, both as group efforts and by freeing Tatum from having to carry the rhythm he gets a chance to perform some of his most spectacular embellishments. The best are: Volume Eight (with Ben Webster: A+); Volume Two (with Roy Eldridge: A); Volume Seven (with Buddy DeFranco: A); Volume One (with Benny Carter: A-).

Tatum is as universally revered as Charlie Parker, which may be why I quibble. I'm always reminded of what Tom Piazza wrote in The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz: "Ask ten pianists to name the greatest jazz pianist ever and eight will tell you Art Tatum. The other two are wrong." I've made a career out of being wrong, so I don't mind telling you that my answer to that question is Earl Hines. He was easily the greatest pianist in 1928 when he (and Louis Armstrong) cut some of the most classic jazz sides ever, and he was dazzling when he toured with Armstrong's 1946 All-Stars. In between he ran a very important big band, and in the 1960s he led a wonderful quartet with Budd Johnson on tenor sax. Later still, he recorded many solo piano albums, including a couple listed below (Tour de Force is probably the first pick, at least the choice title, but these come close). That, in turn, led me to an obscure Johnny Hodges album which couldn't possibly go wrong.

After Tatum and Hines, I pulled out all those jazz vocal albums I've been avoiding and slogged through them. Poet Anne Waldman's album jumped out of that pile. It is a jazz/poetry album somewhat similar to the Rich Halley-Dan Raphael album Children of the Blue Supermarket, which was my favorite album in 2011, although vocally it reminds me more of Patti Smith, with the sax closer to Ornette Coleman (hence my tweet).

Looks like a pretty awful week coming up, both personally and all around the world. I have made some progress on the crashed server, but it's going to be a long while before it's all history.

Recommended music links:

• Pop Art by Robert Christgau: In It for the Art: debut of Christgau's Billboard monthly column, mostly intro material like he's greeting new readers.
• Liberation Chorus: Ethan Iverson collects "memorial thoughts" from many jazz musicians on the late bassist, Charlie Haden.
• Ryan Maffei: Ryan does the '70s Guide: Well, the A's anyway, much more thoroughly than I would, but I don't need to relive them.
• Michael Tatum: Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things.
• Michael Tatum: Monk Meets Mulligan.

New records rated this week:

• Al Basile: Swing n' Strings (2013 [2014], Sweetspot): cornet-playing blues singer with an air of Mose Allison, his idea of strings two guitars [cd]: B+(**)
• Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra: Shrimp Tale (2013 [2014], Crown Heights Audio Network): pianist, leads 17-piece big band on debut, sharp and contemporary, with a spoken word bit [cd]: B+(*)
• Jason Derulo: Talk Dirty (2014, Warner Brothers): I've heard dirtier, but rarely with more compelling melodies, hooks, beats, and succinct too [r]: A-
• Sherie Julianne: 10 Degrees South (2014, Azul Do Mar): Bay Area singer into Brazilian pop tunes, helpfully produced by pianist Marcos Silva [cd]: B
• Mark Meadows: Somethin' Good (2014, self-released): pianist, likes smooth jazz grooves, and sings some, mostly neo-soul moans and murmurs [cd]: B-
• Rent Romus' Life's Blood Ensemble: Cimmerian Crossroads (2014, Edgetone): alto/soprano sax, honors Arthur Blythe, incinerates Ornette Coleman [r]: A-
• Sia: 1000 Forms of Fear (2014, RCA): voice like Shakira, only no Latin tinge, just an Australian take on British semipop gloom [r]: B
• Donna Singer: Destiny: Moment of Jazz (2014, Emerald Baby): standards singer, enjoyable when the song is "Where or When," less so on "Yesterday" [cd]: B
• Isabel Stover: Her Own Sweet World (2010 [2014], self-released): standard singer's debut album, Taj Mahal an outlier, voice and band all contribute [cd]: B+(*)
• Anne Waldman: Jaguar Harmonics (2014, Fast Speaking Music): a beat era pot I should have known, imagine Patti Smith in a rush backed by Ornette Coleman [cd]: A-

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Enrico Pieranunzi/Marc Johnson/Joey Baron: Play Morricone 1 & 2: The Complete Recordings (2001-02 [2014], CAM Jazz, 2CD): [r]: A-

Old records rated this week:

• Duke Ellington and Ray Brown: This One's for Blanton (1972-73 [2000], Pablo/OJC): the pianist recalls what Jimmy Blanton changed, the bassist builds on him [r]: B+(***)
• Art Farmer: Out of the Past (1960-61 [1996], Chess): two Argo albums minus one cut each, one trumpet ballads with Tommy Flanagan, the other flugelhorn [r]: B+(***)
• Charlie Haden: Quartet West (1986 [1987], Verve): Mainstream Haden-style, straddling Ornette-Metheny, with Watts-Broadbent feeding the sentimantal [r]: B+(**)
• Charlie Haden/Chris Anderson: None but the Lonely Heart (1997, Naim): brittle Chicago pianist and sentimental assist open up touching duets [r]: A-
• Earl Hines: Blues in Thirds (1965 [1989], Black Lion): solo piano, near the top of his game (i.e., peerless), aside from two spots where he tries to sing [r]: A-
• Earl Hines: One for My Baby (1974 [1995], Black Lion): more solo piano, strutting and striding through seven marvellous Harold Arlen standards [r]: A-
• Earl Hines: Plays Duke Ellington, Volume Two (1971-75 [1997], New World): solo piano again, what's left after the 2-CD Volume One, swing with extra razzle [r]: B+(***)
• Johnny Hodges/Earl "Fatha" Hines: Stride Right (1966, Verve): two stars (plus Kenny Burrell) doing what comes naturally on songs that never grow old [r]: A-
• Art Tatum: Classic Early Solos (1934-1937) (1934-37 [1991], MCA): not really a stride pianist, too busy and ornate for that, but early on not so much so [r]: B+(***)
• Art Tatum: The Standard Sessions: 1935-1943 Transcriptions (1935-43 [1991], Music & Arts, 2CD): 2-CD of radio shots, 61 mostly great standards given the full Tatum treatment [r]: A-
• Art Tatum: The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces: Volume One (1953 [1992], Pablo/OJC): doing these one-by-one, but impressive as he is I find myself resisting, almost always at [r]: B+(***)
• Art Tatum: The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces: Volume Two (1953-55 [1992], Pablo/OJC): [r]: B+(**)
• Art Tatum: The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces: Volume Three (1953-55 [1992], Pablo/OJC): [r]: B+(***)
• Art Tatum: The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces: Volume Six (1953-55 [1992], Pablo/OJC): [r]: A-
• Art Tatum: The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces: Volume Seven (1953-55 [1992], Pablo/OJC): [r]: B+(***)
• Art Tatum: The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces: Volume Eight (1953-56 [1992], Pablo/OJC): [r]: B+(***)
• Art Tatum: The Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces (1953-56 [1991], Pablo, 7CD): [r]: A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week (plus):

• Laurie Antonioli: Songs of Shadow, Songs of Light: The Music of Joni Mitchell (Origin)
• Todd Bishop Group: Travelogue (Origin)
• Anthony Branker & Word Play: The Forward (Towards Equality) Suite (Origin)
• Bobby Broom: My Shining Hour (Origin)
• The Cellar and Point: Ambit (Cuneiform): advance, October 14
• Eliana Cuevas: Espejo (ALMA)
• Dave "Knife" Fabris: Lettucs Prey (Musea)
• Wayne Horvitz: 55: Music and Dance in Concrete (Cuneiform): advance, August 19
• Jazzhole: Blue 72 (Beave Music)
• Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: Zone (Greenleaf Music)
• Ricky Kej/Wouter Kellerman: Winds of Samsara (Listen 2 Africa)
• Greg Reitan: Post No Bills (Sunnyside): August 19
• Mitch Shiner and the Blooming Tones Big Band: Fly! (Patois)
• Street Priest: More Nasty (Humbler)
• Steve Swallow/Ohad Talmor/Adam Nussbaum: Singular Curves (Auand): advance, August 5
• Matt Ulery: In the Ivory (Greenleaf Music)
• The Bill Warfield Big Band: Trumpet Story (Planet Arts)
• Walter White: Most Triumphant (Summit)
• Tom Wolfe: Solerovescent (Summit)
• J.J. Wright: Inward Looking Outward (Ropeadope): August 19

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Sunday, July 20, 2014

This week's scattered links, but for one reason or another most still focus on Israel (for one thing, this weekend has been much bloodier than the previous week). Having recently read Stephen F Cohen's Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (2011), I expected to have more to say about the civil war in Ukraine and the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines airliner, but in my short time I didn't run across much that improved upon speculation (one of the worst pieces was Bob Dreyfuss: Vladimir Putin Should Take Responsibility for the MH17 Shootdown.) As someone who is inclined to suspect that Putin was responsible for the Moscow apartment bombings that he used as a pretext to re-open the Chechen War, there's not much I would put past him, but neither evidence nor logic is yet compelling, and the unfounded charge is actively being used to further estrange relations with Russia, which quite frankly Obama needs to mend even if that means giving up ground in Ukraine. As I wrote below, Obama has made a colossal error in re-entering Iraq, on top of making an almost utter hash of Syria, and the only way out of the latter is some sort of understanding with Russia. Cohen's book, by the way, is very prophetic about Ukraine -- not necessarily about the country itself but about the massive level of cold war hangover America's foreign policy nabobs suffer from and their utter mindlessness in facing anything having to do with Russia. I've long said that the whole neocon vision was for America to behave all around the world with the same reckless dominance fetish that Israel exhibits in the Middle East. In the last two months that's pretty much what we've been seeing. The only real surprise here is how pathetic it makes the leaders look: Netanyahu, for instance, is wailing about how Hamas is forcing Israel to kill Palestinians, as if he, himself, has no control over his government. Nor does Obama seem to be any more in control of his policies. It's really quite shameful.

Nor am I the only one saying these things. Just looking at my recent twitter feed:

Saree Makdisi: It's quite clear that Israel plunged into its bombardment, as usual, without any strategic plan in mind. Quite literally mindless violence.

Roger Cohen: John Kerry says Israel "under siege" by Hamas. Read that once. Read it twice. Three times. It doesn't get any better. We have a problem here.

Ali Abunimah: Remember, Israel could have had a ceasefire any time if it agreed to basic humanitarian conditions for people of Gaza. It refused.

Sana Saeed: In case you're keeping count: this is the third IDF offensive against Gaza since the Obama administration came into office.

[Actually, the third since Obama was elected president, but Operation Cast Lead occurred before Obama took office. I like to refer to it as Israel's pre-emptive strike against the Obama administration.]

Also as Michael Poage noted, today's Kansans for Peace in Palestine demo today in Wichita drew about 500 people. It led on the KWCH News, ahead of a fairly even-handed report on Gaza that put more emphasis on dead Palestinians than on live Israelis whining about rockets.

• Juan Cole: Falluja and Gaza: Why Counter-Terrorism fails when the Problem is Political: Yeah, but for a while counter-terrorism is a workable excuse to avoid talking about political problems. It simply declares that authorities can manage dissent with violence.

  Just as the enemies of the US ultimately prevailed in Falluja, so the enemies of Israel will prevail in Gaza.

  Oppression and occupation produce resistance. Until the oppression and the occupation are addressed, the mere inflicting of attrition on the military capabilities of the resistance will not snuff it out. Other leaders will take the place of those killed.

  If Israel really wanted peace or relief from Hamas rockets, its leaders would pursue peace negotiations in good faith with Hamas (which has on more than one occasion reliably honored truces). Otherwise, invading Gaza will have all the same effects, good and bad (but mostly bad) that the US invasion of Falluja had on Iraq.

  Also see Cole's Israel's Groundhog Day: Reverse Snowballs and the Horror of Lawn-Mowing.

• Annie Robbins: Israel is in a pickle:

  Israel is likely in a pickle. Its stated goal for this invasion is to stop the missile fire (and dismantle Hamas's control of the strip). To do that it must locate Hamas' weapons arsenal and thus far, it appears it is clueless as to where they are. Israel doesn't know the extent of weaponry Hamas has amassed, either in quality or quantity. All the blowing up of civilian infrastructure, including homes and hospitals, won't end the rocket fire because it's extremely unlikely any central stash of weaponry is stored in homes, schools, hospitals or mosques. The weapons are probably underground which is why it requires a ground invasion to find them. This is what "deal with the tunnels" means when Obama says "the current military ground operations are designed to deal with the tunnels."

  Rudoren claimed Netanyahu "won plaudits from Israeli leftists this week for embracing an Egyptian cease-fire proposal." Win plaudits from media pundits he did, but this was not an Egyptian proposal, it was a proposal cobbled together by Tony Blair after Obama had previously spoken with Netanyahu and offered to help broker a truce (without any input from Hamas). A ceasefire catering to Israel represents nothing more than a surrender for Palestine, a surrender worse than retreating to the status quo of endless occupation because hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who were freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap in 2011, were rearrested from the West Bank during a pogrom hyped as a response to the claim Hamas kidnapped the 3 Israeli youths, a claim that has never been backed by even a shred of evidence.

• Nathan Thrall: How the West Chose War in Gaza: Israel's assault on Gaza is really a war on Hamas, more specifically on the willingness of Hamas to participate in a "national consensus" government alongside Fatah.

  Yet, in many ways, the reconciliation government could have served Israel's interests. It offered Hamas's political adversaries a foothold in Gaza; it was formed without a single Hamas member; it retained the same Ramallah-based prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister and foreign minister; and, most important, it pledged to comply with the three conditions for Western aid long demanded by America and its European allies: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements and recognition of Israel.

  Israel strongly opposed American recognition of the new government, however, and sought to isolate it internationally, seeing any small step toward Palestinian unity as a threat. Israel's security establishment objects to the strengthening of West Bank-Gaza ties, lest Hamas raise its head in the West Bank. And Israelis who oppose a two-state solution understand that a unified Palestinian leadership is a prerequisite for any lasting peace. [ . . . ]

  Hamas is now seeking through violence what it couldn't obtain through a peaceful handover of responsibilities. Israel is pursuing a return to the status quo ante, when Gaza had electricity for barely eight hours a day, water was undrinkable, sewage was dumped in the sea, fuel shortages caused sanitation plants to shut down and waste sometimes floated in the streets. Patients needing medical care couldn't reach Egyptian hospitals, and Gazans paid $3,000 bribes for a chance to exit when Egypt chose to open the border crossing.

  For many Gazans, and not just Hamas supporters, it's worth risking more bombardment and now the ground incursion, for a chance to change that unacceptable status quo. A cease-fire that fails to resolve the salary crisis and open Gaza's border with Egypt will not last. It is unsustainable for Gaza to remain cut off from the world and administered by employees working without pay.

  The weird thing about this story is not so much what Israel has done as how the Obama administration has allowed itself to be paralyzed by the association of Hamas with terrorism. It's not even has if the US has never been willing to reclassify an organization once it wound up on the T-list -- Bush, for instance, made up with Ghaddafi's Libya. But where Israel is involved, Obama suddenly turns chickenshit. It's not just that Netanyahu has outfoxed Obama. It's more like Obama is suffering full-fledged Stockholm Syndrome.

• More Israel links:

  • 13 IDF soldiers killed in Gaza as Operation Protective Edge death toll climbs to 18: The Palestinian death toll is up to 435, although there is no recognition of that in this piece from the Israeli press. The numbers are increasing quite rapidly as Israel's "ground incursion" proceeds, and while they are still extremely lopsided, this is the first indication that Israel will pay a price for its aggression.
  • Massacre in Gaza: At least 60 killed in Shuja'iyeh, over 60,000 in UN Shelters: This seems to have been the most immediate Israeli response to the loss of 15 Israeli soldiers.
  • Mohammed Omer: Gaza Hospitals Can't Cope. No surprise here, but the problem isn't just increasing demand: it's power plants being disabled, vital supplies being blockaded, and the occasional Israeli bombing of hospitals.
  • Richard Silverstein: Gaza War, Day 14: 18 IDF Dead, 430 Palestinian Dead: Sums up the above, noting "it is precisely this mounting loss of its own soldiers which may cause Israelis to take stock of this bloody mess and step back from the brink. Clearly, Israelis have no sense of proportion or concern when it comes to Palestinian dead."
  • Hamas wants to pile up 'telegenically-dead Palestinians for their cause' -- Netanyahu, on television: Israel's propaganda line is that Hamas is not only responsible for all Palestinian deaths, that they crave more and more Palestinian deaths in their diabolical scheme to shame Israel. Not only is Netanyahu saying this, IDF puppet like David Brooks has put it even more succinctly: "Hamas has basically decided they want to see their own people killed as a propaganda coup." Or as Bill Clinton put it, "in the short and medium term Hamas can inflict terrible public relations damage by forcing (Israel) to kill Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas." Netanyahu has yet to explain why he fell for this dastardly plan, allowing his government and the IDF to be so manipulated by Hamas.
  • Hasbarapocalypse: Naftali Bennett says Hamas committing 'massive self-genocide': I think Bennett (Israel's Economy Minister, head of the second largest party in the latest Knesset elections) gets credit as the first person to describe what's happening in Gaza as "genocide." Most likely he just mangled the talking point, but maybe added a little wish fulfillment.
  • Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Why Israel Is Losing the American Media War: "If Netanyahu is so bothered by how dead Palestinians look on television then he should stop killing so many of them. But his complaint is in itself a concession." The author attributes this to social media exposing more of the actual battleground, but I suspect something that Robbins (above) aludes to: blockaded off as it is, Gaza is becoming increasingly opaque to Israel at the same time it is becoming more transparent to the rest of the world. Moreover, although Israel remains effective at manipulating key parts of the media -- I could assemble a half dozen links on how distorted coverage has been in the Washington Post -- there are just too many alternative sources of news and analysis for them to control. Moreover, there are too many people in the media who know better -- I'm not seeing the link now, but there was an amusing report about Barney Frank feeling he was being ganged up on defending Israel on a CNN interview.
  • Thalif Deen: Why No Vetoed Resolutions on Civilian Killings in Gaza? Partly because Russia and China have vetoed resolutions condemning Assad in Syria, so they don't have a lot of moral authority to go after Israel, and given that all they would get out of it is a bit of embarrassment for the US (a country which has already vetoed hundreds of resolutions on Israel) that's evidently not worth the effort. Turns out all the world's powers have axes to grind -- not with each other so much as with the various people unfortunate enough to fall under the thumbs of their deranged clients.
  • Dead Gazans Missing From Senate Endorsement of Israeli Invasion: All 100 US senators, including some you might expect to know better, voted in favor of an AIPAC-authored, which this piece quotes in toto. While taken as an endorsement of Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza, it actually says no such thing: it denounces Hamas rocket attacks (which currently threaten 5 million Israelis), declares them "unprovoked," reaffirms "Israel's right to defend its citizens and ensure the survival of the State of Israel," and demands that Abbas "dissolve the unity governing arrangement with Hamas and condemn the attacks on Israel." To the Senate's knowledge, no Palestinians have been harmed.
  • As Israel attacks Gaza, 110 Palestinians injured and 12 detained in clashes at Al-Aqsa compound: One of Kate's roundups of Israeli press reports, showing among other things that Israel has not let up on arrests in the West Bank, that settlers continue to run amok, and that protests against Israel's operations in Gaza are being brutally suppressed. Also more details on Gaza.
  • Lawrence Weschler: Israel Has Been Bitten by a Bat: Basically a rant, and a couple days old, but worth reading: "I know, I know, and I am bone tired of being told it, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is plenty of blame to go around, but by this point after coming on almost 50 years of Israeli stemwinding and procrastinatory obfuscation, I'd put the proportionate distribution of blame at about the same level as the mortality figures -- which is, where are we today (what with Wednesday morning's four children killed while out playing on a Gaza beach)? What, 280 to 2?" The title refers to rabies.

Also, a few links for further study:

• Hayes Brown: What You Need to Know About the Tunnels That Bring Life -- and Death -- Into Gaza: Some useful background on the Gaza tunnels that Israel is so desperately attempting to destroy. The key point is that since Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza after removing its settlements in 2005 -- Israel referred to this as "putting Gazans on a diet" -- the tunnels have become an indispensible lifeline, at least partly alleviating the suffering that Israel imposes:

  All told, what passes through the tunnels makes up a substantial portion, if not the vast majority, of the Gazan economy at this point. In October 2011, United Nations figures estimated that "800,000 liters (around 5,000 barrels) of fuel, 3,000 tons of gravel, 500 tons of steel rods and 3,000 tons of cement" passed through the tunnels daily.

  Of course, missiles and other contraband enter Gaza through the tunnels, but as long as the tunnels are needed for importing essentials like food and building materials there will be no popular support for shutting them down.

• Dahr Jamail: Incinerating Iraq: Probably the best journalist working in Iraq since the US invasion -- see his Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (2007) -- brings us up to date. From early on the US was responsible for stirring up Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq, and when things got out of hand the US was able to shift alliances, offering protection to Sunni tribal leaders willing to turn on "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" and thereby temporarily reducing the violence. When US troops left, they advised Maliki to ease up on the Sunnis, but true to form -- this was, after all, why the Americans installed him in the first place -- he kept pushing down the Sunnis and wound up with an explosion engulfing the northwestern third of Iraq and threatening Baghdad. If Obama had any sense, he would have backed away from Maliki, offering US aid to negotiate a diplomatic solution (preferably extending the talks to Syria, now that Assad isn't looking so awful). Instead, he reaffirmed his support for the discredited post-occupation Iraqi government, the only way Americans seem to know how: by sending bombers, "advisers," and special forces troops, a commitment that will convince Maliki that he doesn't have to reform a thing, that he can win outright, and one that puts Obama on the slippery slope of having to send more and more reinforcements in to stave off a face-loosing debacle. This was possibly the single dumbest decision in month chock full of foreign policy disasters (e.g., Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan/Pakistan).

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Saturday, July 19, 2014

Up-to-date information on Israel's latest major siege of Gaza -- dubbed Operation Protective Edge, at least in English (the Hebrew is closer to Solid Rock) -- is scarce and hard to sort out, especially since Israel sent ground troops into Gaza. The latest totals I have are that since July 8 Israeli forces have killed 303 Palestinians, while 1 Israeli soldier and 1 Israeli civilian have died. (The latter, by the way, would easily have met Israel's criterion for declaring a Palestinian a "militant" in the propaganda battles over who killed whom. The former was killed by an Israeli tank shell, "friendly fire." It's worth recalling that a third of the Israeli soldiers killed in 2008's Operation Cast Lead were killed by fellow Israelis.) [A later report now says 341 Palestinians have been killed, with 40,000 people "internally displaced" -- i.e., bombed out of their homes.] One of the more pointed stories I've read recently was reported here by Richard Silverstein:

Two days ago an Israeli navy artillery "sharpshooter" picked out a choice target. Little boys playing soccer on the beach, where their father earned his living as a fisherman. The first shell only killed one of them. The boys, their legs not yet muscled to run fast enough, flew as fast as they could to the beachside tent where foreign reporters congregated. The second shell, finely calibrated to hit them as they fled, struck them and killed another three. Killing children: fine sport in the Israeli navy.

Stories like that are going to be harder to come by since NBC pulled its correspondent from Gaza (who broke that story), Ayman Mohyeldin. CNN also pulled one of its reporters, Diana Magnay, after she reported on how Israelis camp out on hills near the Gaza border to watch and cheer the bombardment. That kind of damage control helps Israel avoid embarrassment, but only temporarily. [The uproar over Mohyeldin has since convinced NBC to send him back to Gaza.]

Past Israeli incursions (2006, 2008, 2012 -- the frequency is reflected in that choice Israeli phrase, "mowing the lawn") have always been met with appeals and pressure for ceasefire, but the Obama administration has been shockingly cavalier about the slaughter and destruction this time. Part of this may be the full court press of the Israel lobby, not least that Obama has been serially beat up by Israel for nearly six years now, but part may also be due to Obama's desire to escalate US involvement in the wars in Iraq and Syria, plus all the reckless hawkishness on Ukraine, plus the 15 people just killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan. They say, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Evidently, Obama is way too busy making war to spare a few moments to plead for peace. And if the US doesn't step up to restrain Israel, who else can?

It's wholly predictable how Israel's current operation will end. Like all of its predecessors going back to 2006, it will end in a ceasefire with Hamas as firmly in charge of Gaza as ever, with Israel in possession of the keys to a ghetto containing 1.8 million trapped, terrorized people. Many buildings will be destroyed, including critical infrastructure -- electric power, sewage treatment, water treatment, hospitals, roads, food resources. A few hundred Palestinians will have been killed, and a few thousand injured -- some intended targets but most just unfortunately in the way, and some like the children on the beach just capriciously targeted by bored soldiers who know that no matter what they do they'll never be punished.

Israel will have destroyed a few tunnels, and the rocket stockpiles will have been more or less depleted -- not that they were ever a threat anyway. (Both sides seem to tacitly agree that the symbolism of Gazans defying Israel and shooting rockets over the walls matters much more than the scant damage they cause.) But in the end the cumulative weight of atrocities will embarrass Israel, as should the increasingly genocidal emotions the war is stirring up among Israelis. Israel is on the verge of losing whatever sympathy and support they had built up -- especially in Europe, but even in the US (with the exception of Congress) they are losing their grip. So they'll wind up about where they started. At least that's Israel's best-case scenario. They could hit some world opinion tipping point -- like they did with Turkey in 2008. Or they could give in to their hawks and crank the war machine up, moving from hundreds to thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinian deaths. Or they could ignite a sympathetic intifada in the West Bank, which could link up with ISIS. You can't predict what will happen once you go to war.

One thing that's lost in all the chatter about rockets and atrocities is that there is a very simple solution to the Gaza problem (and hence to all those rockets and atrocities): just cut Gaza loose from Israel and let the people there fend for themselves. For many years, debate over how to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been divided between a "1-state solution" and a "2-state solution." In the latter there are separate Israeli and Palestinian states alongside each other, dividing up the land of the former British mandate of Palestine. Most scenarios call for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, and a Palestinian state to be created in the remaining 22% of the land: the small Gaza Strip on the west and the larger West Bank (including East Jerusalem) in the east. Other variations are possible, including "mutual land swaps" (which the "Clinton parameters" and the "Geneva Accords" specified) or Israel just keeping more (the de facto result of Israel's "illegal settlements").

In the "1-state solution" Israel keeps all the land, but also has to grant full and equal rights to all the people living on that land. This has the great advantage of avoiding dismantling the settlements or transferring any additional people, but means that Israel, which prides itself as "the Jewish state," would wind up with a rather large percentage of non-Jews, perhaps even a majority. Most Israelis -- at least most Israeli politicians -- don't like either "solution": as Levi Eshkol described the conquests of the 1967 war, "we received a very nice dowry [the land], but we don't really like the bride [the people]." Since then, Israel has devised a sophisticated system for taking the land while excluding the people, denying the latter even basic human rights, corralling them into ever tighter ghettos, and hoping they'll just go away. The cost of this system is that the conflict grinds on forever: for Israel, this means paying for a huge military and police state, engaging in a propaganda war that eventually turns self-deluding, and suffering the corrosive morality of militarism and racism; for Palestinians it means living under a system of extreme regimentation and regulation, one that degrades their humanity and denies them opportunities all people expect as a human right.

Most Israelis, in short, want no solution. They accept their lot as a people that has been oppressed for millennia because they believe that their state (and only their state) can defend them, and must do so now and forever more. Anyone well acquainted with Jewish history can appreciate that position, but most of us recognizes that we are not doomed to endlessly replicate the past: that conflicts can be resolved fairly and equitably, and that when they are they disappear into the depths of the past. The prerequisite for any solution is to see it as possible. Unfortunately, that's been the undoing of both "1-state" and "2-state" solutions: many Israelis reject the former because they can't stand the idea of sharing their state with so many Palestinians, and they reject the latter because they feel that would mean the end of the Zionist project of reclaiming their "promised land."

For some time, Palestinians have indicated they would be happy with any solution. Political elites may tend toward "2-state" because that would carve out a state they could control, while the less ambitious may just welcome the opportunity to participate in Israel's prosperous economy without the present discrimination and conflict. But either way they have been at the mercy of Israel's rejection of any sort of solution, at best hoping that some higher power (like the US) will weigh in to support their aspirations. They problem there is that at the US becomes ever more inequitable internally, it becomes ever less sensitive to the human rights of people elsewhere, and that leads to this current hideous stalemate.

On the other hand, there is no reason for stalemate on Gaza. In 2005, Israel (under Ariel Sharon) withdrew from and dismantled every one of its settlements in the Gaza Strip, and since then there has been no effort on Israel's part to recolonize Gaza. It should be clear to everyone that Israel has no interest in Gaza -- at least, other than the "security threat" an independent Gaza might create. The West Bank and Jerusalem are complicated places where it is hard (if not impossible) to resolve the conflict, but Gaza is simple: Israel doesn't want it, and any interest Gazans have in uniting with a Palestinian state in the West Bank is something that can be dealt with if/when such a state is created. Why not solve the one piece that can be solved now, and cut Gaza free of Israel?

This seems to obvious to me that I'm astonished that no one is pushing the idea. The closest I've seen to a discussion along these lines is the Hamas ceasefire proposal, which promises a 10-year truce in exchange for the following ten provisions:

1. Withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the Gaza border.
2. Freeing all the prisoners that were arrested after the killing of the three youths.
3. Lifting the siege and opening the border crossings to commerce and people.
4. Establishing an international seaport and airport which would be under U.N. supervision.
5. Increasing the permitted fishing zone to 10 kilometers.
6. Internationalizing the Rafah Crossing and placing it under the supervision of the U.N. and some Arab nations.
7. International forces on the borders.
8. Easing conditions for permits to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque.
9. Prohibition on Israeli interference in the reconciliation agreement.
10. Reestablishing an industrial zone and improvements in further economic development in the Gaza Strip.

Most of these points are completely reasonable, things that Israel should agree to in any case. They highlight that the basic problem that Gaza has faced since 2005 has been the stranglehold that Israel (and to some extent Egypt) have had over Gaza, and how that's been used to keep Gaza from developing a normal economy and everyday life. In exchange for a more normal life, Hamas is offering a truce -- which is to say, no rockets or mortar shells launched over the wall, and no tunneling under the wall. The demands fall short of sovereignty for Gaza, but they do try to substitute UN for Israeli supervision, and as such they offer some hints as to where Hamas would be willing to limit Gazan sovereignty. One can easily build an independence proposal on top of this ceasefire proposal, and reasonably expect that it would be agreeable to Hamas, the current de facto governor of Gaza.

This is a quick first draft, but this is what I'm thinking of:

1. This would have to be agreed to by Israel, Hamas, the US, the UN, and Egypt, with additional nations and organizations invited to sign on and participate. The problem here is that the US and Israel regard Hamas as a "terrorist organization," and use that as an excuse to avoid dealing with Gaza diplomatically. Instead, Israel insists on only engaging with Gaza militarily.

2. The agreement on Gaza should not be regarded as resolving any other issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of refugees. The Gaza Strip will be referred to as West Palestine.

3. The border between Israel and West Palestine will be based on the current wall between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Israel will retain ownership of the wall. West Palestine will exercise sovereignty over all the land on the Gaza side up to the base of the wall.

4. The UN would assume responsibility for directing the transition of West Palestine to independence within three months of agreement. This includes framing of basic governance law -- a constitution which follows common democratic practices, civil law, protections for basic human rights, and special legal oversight at stated below -- followed by parliamentary and municipal elections. To the extent practicable, existing governmental organizations will continue, subject to UN supervision, during the transitional period. Once a new government is formed, the UN role will be reduced and phased out (except as below). Once formed, West Palestine will join the United Nations, and will be free to join any other international organizations it wishes, and to negotiate and sign international treaties. It will not be allowed to file claims against any other government for acts prior to agreement.

5. The UN will charter a "development bank" which will manage contributions from donor nations to help rebuild West Palestine. The funds will also act as an insurance plan, with first claim on the funds to Israel to cover any damages caused by acts of terror originating in Gaza. (Conversely, any acts of terror originating in Israel will be judged and charged to Israel. The point here is that any lapses in the peace between Israel and West Palestine, either by government or by individuals, will be converted into cash awards and both governments will be incentivized to reduce any such claims.) The funds should be released at an economically responsible rate. The UN will maintain a special court to judge terrorism claims and to investigate and prosecute corruption.

6. West Palestine will have no armed forces. Its defense will be ensured by international agreement. Imports will be subject to inspection by the UN (until all agree that this function can be turned over to the West Palestine government). Various armaments, including missiles, mortars, and artillery, will be prohibited. Any illegal armaments currently in the country can be turned over for cash rewards during the first year after agreement.

7. All militias will be outlawed. All existing political parties will be disbanded (including Hamas and Fatah), and their old names will be disallowed, but political parties under new names can be formed. There will be a general amnesty for acts before agreement. Palestinian prisoners held by Israel will be repatriated to West Palestine, provided that's their request and the government of West Palestine agrees to take them.

8. The government of West Palestine will have full responsibility for its air and sea space, the latter out to at least 10 kilometers from shore line. Projects will be established for developing airport and seaport facilities. West Palestine will be free to exchange goods with any nations it desires, subject to UN review on prohibited items. Israel and Egypt are encouraged to trade with West Palestine through their land ports.

9. The UN may at its discretion install monitors on either side of the borders between West Palestine and Israel and/or Egypt. The monitors will have unimpeded access to report any suspected border violations, but will have no responsibility for actually patrolling the borders. The monitors will be withdrawn from a border when both countries (West Palestine and Israel or Egypt) agree.

10. West Palestine will issue appropriate papers, including passports, for its residents. All residents as of the agreement will be citizens of West Palestine. West Palestinian citizenship will not affect refugee status, although we recommend that Israel and West Palestine join on a program to settle the refugee status of Palestinians displaced from Israel, and to replace current "refugee camps" with permanent housing.

I think this covers six or seven of Hamas' ten points. It allows Gaza to develop a normal economy and civil society. There should be no cases where Israelis continue to hold power over residents of Gaza. Israel's security concerns are satisfied in several ways: by limiting the military power of the West Palestinian state; by outlawing a wide range of military hardware; and by imposing a substantial cost to the state for any acts by Gaza residents which actually harm Israeli life and/or property. On the other hand, Israel is similarly penalized for any hostilities against Gazan life and/or property. If these schemes prove insufficient, it's always possible that Israel could withdraw from the treaty and declare war on West Palestine -- the agreement does not in any way limit Israel's warmaking capability, nor for that matter does it reduce whatever deterrence Israel enjoys from its overwhelming firepower advantage. I didn't include anything about Hamas' demand that Israel back its tanks away from the border because I thought that level of regulation unnecessary -- all that is really necessary is that Israel not fire tank shells, or any kind of ordnance, into Gaza. As long as they are not used, where Israel parks its tanks is of little practical concern.

The imposed constitution is something Gazans may not appreciate, but it greatly expedites the transition to self-rule, and it provides reassurance in many ways that the resulting government will remain democratic and will respect individual rights of all its citizens. The constitution should be broadly open to a mix of capitalist and socialist approaches, to be determined by the legislature. (I suspect this will actually prove to be a bigger sticking point with American ideologists than the lack of a sharia foundation will be with Muslims, although the latter will likely get more print.) The constitution should eventually be amendable, although perhaps not for 10-20 years (subject to UN approval) to give it a chance to work.

The matter of donor money is also critically important, both because it is urgently needed and because it provides an elegant insurance system to reinforce the peace. Personally, I think a lot of that should come from Israel, which I regard as solely responsible for the destruction and degradation of life in Gaza especially in the last decade (although really going back to 1948), but fat chance of that, so the world needs to step up. Eventually, of course, the money will run out and West Palestine will need to stand on its own economy. It is important, therefore, that the government build an efficient tax system. I haven't said anything about currency, figuring that's a detail other people are more competent in. The other especially important thing I've left out is water. I wanted to minimize the burdens imposed on Israel, but some fair allocation of the miniscule Gaza watershed is essential.

There will no doubt be other technical issues to work out. Some may be best worked out bilaterally between Israel and West Palestine. Questions like permits to pray at Al-Aqsa certainly fall in that category. While that may be something Gazans care deeply about, it doesn't strike me as a war-or-peace issue. To gain any agreement, the international community (not least the US) is going to have to put pressure on a very recalcitrant Israeli government, and that's easier to do if the demands are minimal and separable. Israel's security policy regarding Gaza is both malicious and demonstrably ineffective, so that has to change. But while it would be a nice thing to allow more personal travel between countries, that isn't a necessary condition for peace. The only necessary conditions for peace are to stop the bombing, the shooting, the blockade, and to allow all people on all sides to live a normal life. That's what this proposal does.

The decision to disband Hamas in Gaza is largely cosmetic: it will simply make everyone more comfortable to bury past terrorism with the agreement. It also allows Hamas to go on in the West Bank, doing whatever it is they are doing. I thought about adding more strictures separating West Palestine groups from any sort of work in the West Bank. The fact is that after agreement the conditions will be very different and incomparable. The question of refugees is one that may need more thought, as it is one thing that remains a common problem for a free Gaza and an occupied West Bank, but it is a thorny problem, here at least best swept under the rug.

One reason no one talks about a Gaza-only solution is that at least some people on both sides have been seduced by the notion that it is possible to come up with a "final status" resolution. Arguing against this is the fact that no one has come close, but also the more general point that nothing is ever really final. So I think one of the basic principles of resolving this conflict is that we should always do what we can when we can do it, then take stock and consider problems remain and what else can be done about them. I have no doubt that a Gaza-only solution will help move all sides closer to an eventual West Bank solution.

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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

In 2010 Norman Finkelstein wrote a book about Israel's 2008 war on Gaza. His title was "This Time We Went Too Far": Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. Like Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon, their so-called Operation Cast Lead ended having accomplished nothing so much as the revelation of Israel as a serial committer of atrocities, of crimes against humanity -- acts they tried to cover up with a thin propaganda at once asserting their victimhood and threatening ever graver results should anyone defy or deny their omnipotence. The problem was not just that Israel far exceeded the provocation. The problem was that it was hard to discern any reason for Israel's actions other than to further poison the well. The only thing Israel's leaders fear is peace, so they stir up the pot every few years, hoping to reinforce the "no partner for peace" canard.

They're at it again, and again they've gone way too far -- at least for anyone paying the least attention. Their current operation's pretext dates to June 12, when three Israeli teenaged settlers of the West Bank were kidnapped and killed -- a crime certain to arouse sympathy for Israel even though that involves overlooking the much greater violence committed by Israel in 1967 when they invaded the Jordanian-held West Bank and the 57 subsequent years of military occupation. The best you can say for the "boys" is that they were unwitting pawns in Israel's effort to permanently secure the lands of the West Bank by settling their "chosen" people and privileging them over the people who lived and worked there before they were overrun by war and overwhelmed by police force. That does not mean they deserved to be kidnapped and killed, but neither have thousands of Palestinians who have met similar fates since 1967.

On July 6, I wrote a piece that reviewed what turned out to be the first of two stages (so far) in the current escalation: A Case of Kidnapping and Murder. In short, Israel's response to the crime was not to focus on the killers -- they identified as suspects two members of a Hebron clan that is well known for acting on its own to sabotage relatively peaceful periods in the conflict -- but to use the crime as a pretext for a systematic attack on nearly everyone affiliated with Hamas in the West Bank. Moreover, it should be obvious that Hamas' real offense was that they had agreed to form a unity government with Fatah. That should have been good news for anyone with the least desire for peace, as it meant that for the first time since the failed 2006 coup to overthrow Hamas in Gaza there would be a unified, broadly popular Palestinian representation. But since Israel (above all Netanyahu) hates peace, it became imperative to break the unity government up by showing that Hamas is still committed to terrorism, something which pinning the murders on Hamas would aid. So Israel proceeded to arrest hundreds of Hamas members -- the distinction between arrest and kidnapping here is no more than a thin legal veneer -- and soon had killed more than a dozen Palestinians, and soon enough Israeli racism was riled up so much that a group of Israeli settlers bent on revenge kidnapped and burned to death a Palestinian teenager.

That's about where my previous post ended. Most of this had been limited to the West Bank (although the revenge kidnapping took place in Jerusalem), but Israel was also making menacing gestures toward Gaza, which is still nominally controlled by Hamas. Since then, Israel has repeatedly attacked Gaza, and as a result have faced some measure of rocket fire from groups in Gaza (evidently including Hamas). While I've been on the road, this situation has continued to deteriorate. The following links are my attempt to catch up.

• A good place to start is by reviewing Richard Silverstein's daily posts:

  • Gaza War: Day 9, 202 Palestinians, 1 Israeli Dead: Israel's ceasefire proposal, rubber-stamped by Egypt and put out "under their letterhead as if it was their own"; Israel suffered its first fatality: "A man who'd collected food parcels at his West Bank settlement and trucked them to Erez Crossing to give to the troops, came under mortar attack and was killed." I've taken the liberty of revising Silverstein's title.
  • Gaza War, Day 8: 180 Palestinian Dead: first ceasefire proposal.
  • Gaza War, Day 7: 174 Palestinian Dead: more on Israel's botched commando raid, although it doesn't seem that Hamas killed any IDF soldiers.
  • In First Gaza Ground Battle, Israeli Commandos Repelled: "This is the same command unit which massacred 10 Turkish activists on the Mavi Marmara." "The air force bombed a rehabilitation center where two disabled women died. It also destroyed the home of Gaza's police chief and the next door mosque during evening prayers. Eighteen worshippers and family members were killed during services, four of them children. 50 more were injured."
  • Israeli Invasion to Begin in "Coming Hours"
  • Gaza War: Day 5, Palestinian Dead: 121: "Today marked the first demonstrations in major world cities against the assault. There was a large protest in London and other places. This must be only the beginning. The U.S. response has been shameful. The Obama administration released a statement denouncing the rockets attacking Israel while making no mention of Israel's indecent attack on Gaza's civilian population."
  • Gaza War: Day 4, 99 Gazan Dead, Half Women and Children, Ground Invasion Imminent: "In at least three separate instances, the air force has deliberately targeted private homes in which families sheltered. In some instances, all or most of the families were wiped out. Israel's claim is that it is targeting the homes of militant leaders. Though those killed were family members, Israel mendaciously claims they were 'human shields.'" "The very notion of calling this invasion by its Israeli bestowed name, Protective Edge, is racist. Why do we accept the IDF's nomenclature? What do Gazans call it? Does anyone care?"
  • Gaza War: Day 3, 72 Palestinians Dead, 13 Children: "Sheera Frenkel writes that the IAF concedes it has already bombed anything of military value in Gaza. Now it's pursuing 'secondary targets,' which it defines as residential homes!"
  • Gaza Invasion: Day 2, 27 Palestinian Dead: "Which begs the question: if Israel invaded the West Bank after three teenagers were murdered, arresting 500, killing 7, and ransacking hundreds of homes just for the hell of it -- after a Palestinian boy was murdered in equally, if not more brutal fashion, are the Palestinians not entitled to vent their rage? Or is it only Israel that has that right?" "The name 'Operation Protective Edge' has no relation to the original Hebrew name, Solid Rock (Tzuk Eytan). The army's hasbara department realized that 'Solid Rock' just would not due for the foreign audience. It connoted military strength, assertiveness and aggression. Those are all qualities that appeal to Israelis, but don't look so good to an international audience already predisposed to think the worst regarding Israeli militarism."
  • Operation Solid Rock, Gaza Invasion, Begins: "All of these deaths are needless of course. They're testimony not just to Israel's obduracy and rejectionism, but to the indifference of the international community which needs to come to its senses and intervene to stop the slow-mo decimation of peace, justice, and Palestinian sovereignty."

• Robert Naiman: Netanyahu's War: What Is It Good For?: A good short overview of the war, emphasizing that until Netanyahu started his "violent crackdown on Hamas supporters in the West Bank, Hamas hadn't fired a single rocket from Gaza and had largely suppressed fire by smaller jihadi groups."

  There is no plausible story that Netanyahu's war is a just war. As J.J. Goldberg recounts in the Jewish Daily Forward, the justification for Netanyahu's war on Gaza given by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military on July 8 was this: "We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard."

  That is not a just war. There is no just goal offered that killing is supposed to bring about. Killing itself is the goal.

  As Goldberg and Max Blumenthal note, the racist revenge frenzy in the Israeli political system to which Netanyahu's military escalation is purportedly responding was deliberately manufactured by Netanyahu himself.

  He also quotes Goldberg explaining that "The last seven years have been the most tranquil in Israel's history. Terror attacks are a fraction of the level during the nightmare intifada years -- just six deaths in all of 2013." Naiman adds, "The United States government has many levers on Netanyahu." He enumerates several of those, then notes that "All it [the Obama administration] lacks is sufficient public political pressure to use them to force an end to the killing." Still, despite Netanyahu's repeated humiliation of Obama and Kerry, and despite the complete mess they find themselves in over Iraq and Syria, I see no evidence that the US has the will to butt in, even discreetly.

• Phan Nguyen: How many people have died from Gaza rockets into Israel?: The chart also includes mortar fire from Gaza, so the total is now 28 (including an Israeli killed by mortar fire on July 15, the first and thus far only Israeli death since three Israeli settler teenagers were kidnapped and killed on or near June 12. Before this death, no Israelis were killed by Gaza mortar or rocket fire since November 2012. The piece provides a number of links. Notably, it questions numbers reported on Wikipedia as erroneous (64 deaths reported there). It's worth noting that rocket fire from Gaza varies enormously from year to year according to how restrictive Israel's blockade of Gaza is and how much firepower Israel directs at Gaza (factors that no one seems to keep track of). During 2013, for example, no Israelis were killed or injured by Gazan rocket or mortar fire (a total of 44 incidents). In other words, the factors that determine Gazan rocket fire are almost totally under Israeli control, even if the ultimate responsibility for firing the rockets isn't.

• Ira Glunts: Hamas offers Israel 10 conditions for a 10 year truce: All ten appear to be completely reasonable, with most focused on opening up trade and commerce in an effort to move Gaza from its current status as an "open air prison" to relative normalcy -- assuming all the points involving UN supervision don't turn onerous. Moreover, few in any way affect everyday life in Israel, although one -- "prohibition on Israeli interference in the reconciliation agreement" -- points toward a future peace settlement, something Israel dreads. It's easy to question the morality of Gazan rocket attacks, especially given how they play into Israel's hands, but if they didn't happen what other leverage would Hamas have to bargain with? Do you really think it would do any good to appeal to Israel's better nature? As for the ten year term, how can anyone believe that after ten years of economic growth and normalcy Palestinians will be eager to return to the old days of the siege? Just hopeless racists, of which Israel (and America) have no shortage.

• Philip Weiss: Netanyahu says there will never be a real Palestinian state: As far as Netanyahu is concerned, this is at most a bit more explicit than his usual weasel-wording, but he's never done anything to reassure American politicians that he has any interest in their "two state" fantasies, and he's rarely said anything that someone the least bit objective could misconstrue. Weiss also cites a piece by Jeff Halper, Israel's message to the Palestinians: Submit, leave or die, which sums up the deep attitude Netanyahu and many other Israelis have developed, one which has only surfaced more explicitly since early June:

  Operations Brothers' Keeper and Protective Edge represent the imposition of a regime of warehousing, of outright imprisonment of an entire people. The seemingly blind and atavistic destruction and hatred unleashed on the Palestinians over the past few weeks is not merely yet another "round of violence" in an interminable struggle. It is the declaration of a new political reality. The message is clear, unilateral and final: This country has been Judaized: it is now the Land of Israel in the process of being incorporated into the state of Israel. You Arabs (or "Palestinians" as you call yourselves) are not a people and have no national rights, certainly to our exclusively Jewish country. You are not a "side" to a "conflict." Once and for all we must disabuse you of the notion that we are actually negotiating with you. We never have and never will. You are nothing but inmates in prison cells, and we hereby declare through our military and political actions that you have three options before you: You can submit as inmates are required to you, in which case we will allow you to remain in your enclave-cells. You can leave, as hundreds of thousands have done before you. Or, if you choose to resist, you will die.

  Warehousing is worse than apartheid. It does not even pretend to find a political framework for "separate development," it simply jails the oppressed and robs them of all their collective and individual rights. It is the ultimate form of oppression before actual genocide, and in that it robs a people of its identity, its land, its culture and the ability to reproduce itself, it is a form of cultural genocide that can lead to worse. This is what Israel has left the Palestinians, this is the meaning of the bombing of Gaza, the terrorizing of the West Bank -- and the ongoing destruction of Bedouin and Palestinian homes within Israel.

• Noam Sheizaf: Netanyahu's Bankrupt Strategy:

  Launching military campaigns in Israel is easy: the public idolizes the army and tends to support whatever measures it takes, and the parliamentary opposition rallies behind the government at such moments. Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu's second campaign in Gaza as prime minister -- and the third the country has launched in less than five years -- was true to form, enjoying nearly unanimous support in Israel, despite heavy civilian casualties on the Palestinian side and the disruption to daily life caused by hundreds of rockets launched by Hamas, including at Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Israel's international airport. [ . . . ]

  If Israel does end the war now, Prime Minister Netanyahu will face attacks from his political base on the right and among the settlers. The hard right, with its echo chamber in the media, already senses an opportunity. Amos Regev, the editor of the pro-Netanyahu daily Yisrael Hayom, called in an editorial for bombing Gaza "back to the stone age." Avigdor Lieberman went as far as saying that Israel should seize direct control of the Strip again, and on the eve of the military operation he broke his political pact with Netanyahu and the Likud, though he remains a part of the government. [ . . . ]

  Netanyahu can only blame himself for his political troubles. By demonizing the Palestinian leadership -- Abbas just the same as Hamas -- he raised expectations in the Israeli public for a decisive victory and opened the door for attacks from the right. His refusal to commit to a meaningful political process with the Palestinians, along with his insistence on maintaining the status quo through military superiority alone, will pretty much guarantee that this cycle of violent escalations continues in years to come.

  But isn't that the plan? And in the end, Netanyahu can point out that he did much of what the right wanted, and still kept the US in line. On the US front, Phyllis Bennis sees some progress, just not a lot.

  Joshua Tartakovsky: Israel's Bombardment of Gaza: What Is Different This Time? answers the question with this list:

  What is different, however, this time, is that even some in the US mainstream media that traditionally tends to unquestionably adopt Israel's narrative, began to depict life in Gaza. The Washington Post, for example, posted a video of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip from the ground level, a perspective not often seen on the American press and issued a list of children killed. What is also different, this time, is that Israeli politicians have openly declared the entire Palestinian people to be the enemy, and radical right wing Israelis have staged demonstrations calling for "death to the Arabs." Indeed, the brutal burning to death of a Palestinian child, carried out by Israeli radicals, has indicated the degree to which the anti-Arab incitement has been that severe that the Israeli government may be losing control of the situation. Additionally, this time, unlike in earlier events, Hamas leader Khaled Masha'al issued a statement directly to Israelis arguing they should blame Netanyahu for their current predicament. This time too, unlike in previous attempts, an Israeli ground invasion in Gaza, and even a recapturing of the entire strip, is a realistic possibility. While it is hard to say whether Israel has escalated the situation because of its desire to get rid of Hamas or due to its interest in gas reserves found near the Gaza coast, Israeli citizens, who are rightfully fearful due to the constant rocket attacks, are for the most part still united behind the Israeli government's "Protective Edge" operation, just as they support "Pillar of Cloud" and "Cast Lead" although none of the previous operations has provided them with security or a lasting peace. To what degree the international community will continue to support Israel's actions in Gaza remains to be seen.

  The US has at least counselled against that ground operation, although Israel has "warned" 100,000 residents of Gaza City to evacuate their homes, and Lieberman has argued that "IDF must end operation with control of entire Gaza Strip." [link]

• David Sheen: Israeli calls for Palestinian blood ring at fever pitch: Just a taste of the hatred -- cataloguing it all would be so tiresome -- but here we have an Israeli Knesset member declaring "the entire Palestinian people is the enemy," advocating its "complete destruction, 'including its elderly and its women,' adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more 'little snakes.'" We have a Rabbi calling for "the killing of at least 300 Palestinians, and for scalping their foreskins and taking them as trophies." We have a municipal official in Jerusalem issuing "a similar barely-veiled call to mutilate and murder Palestinians." We have mobs of young Jewish thugs chanting "Death to Arabs" and "Death to Leftists." This outpouring of hatred is still shocking, although it's actually old news, as attested by the legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane, by the Rabbis who called for Yitzhak Rabin's head (and the dutiful Kahanist who obliged them), by the authors of books (cited in Max Blumenthal's Goliath) on when and why it is permissible to kill goyim. But it shouldn't be surprising: this sort of racist hatred occurs in every society where one social group arrogates itself to a cult of superiority over others.

• Chris Hedges: Israel Is Captive to Its 'Destructive Process': Cites Raul Hilberg on a well-known but not irrelevant case, then generalizes:

  The belief that a race or class is contaminated is used by ruling elites to justify quarantining the people of that group. But quarantine is only the first step. The despised group can never be redeemed or cured -- Hannah Arendt noted that all racists see such contamination as something that can never be eradicated. The fear of the other is stoked by racist leaders such as Netanyahu to create a permanent instability. This instability is exploited by a corrupt power elite that is also seeking the destruction of democratic civil society for all citizens -- the goal of the Israeli government (as well as the goal of a U.S. government intent on stripping its own citizens of rights). Max Blumenthal in his book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel does a masterful job of capturing and dissecting this frightening devolution within Israel. [ . . . ]

  When all this does not work, when it becomes clear that the Palestinians once again have not become dormant and passive, Israel will take another step, more radical than the last. The "process of destruction" will be stopped only from outside Israel. Israel, captive to the process, is incapable of imposing self-restraint.

• Paul Woodward: Israelis take pride in 'how few' Palestinians they kill: "True. And so what?" Given all the firepower Israel can muster, the fact that they've only killed a little more than 200 Palestinians in more than a week of bombardment interesting, and certainly a measure of restraint, even though the seeming randomness of who gets killed where and the conspicuously high concentration of women and children among the dead doesn't suggest much precision. On the other hand, one could say -- not that I've heard anyone even conjecture it -- that the inability of Gaza's rockets to hit anyone suggests that they are deliberately aimed at nowhere rather than ineptly targeted: that they are in fact meant to be nothing more than symbolic gestures. In some sense the military aspect of the conflict feels like Kabuki theater, where the status quo always returns:

  The current assault on Gaza, like previous ones, has little to do with destroying Hamas or establishing "quietness," as Benjamin Netanyahu puts it. It is a ritual beating whose purpose is to re-assert the authority of the Palestinians' military overlord. [ . . . ]

  On the other side, in spite of Israel's assertions that it exercises restraint, every day we witness new examples of senseless violence -- today with the deaths of Ahed Bakr, aged 10; Zakaria, 10; and two other boys from the Bakr family, both named Mohammad, aged 11 and nine. These children were struck down by an Israeli missile while playing on a beach.

  How can Israel which kills "so few" Palestinians, explain why so many are children and babies?

  Part of the reason is that war is sloppy so while Israel can regulate the overall level of carnage, they can't eliminate accidents, but also it's sort of a distinction without a difference. It's well known that Israel's war logic is to impose such a high price on rebellion that its "enemies" will eventually desist and give up. Part of that price is exacted by killing "militants" (often defined as any "military age" male), but there are many other ways of exacting that price, including house demolitions, expulsions, jail, and killing one's loved ones. The only downside to being so indiscriminate is that people may come to view Israelis as monsters, but as long as they are feared that doesn't seem to bother Israel much.

• Bob Dreyfuss: The Palestinians Must Put an End to Suicidal Hamas: Usually an astute critic of the Middle East, but I think Dreyfuss has missed the boat here, when he approvingly quotes Bret Stephens, "Israel has no stupider enemy than Hamas." Hamas was almost certainly not responsible for the kidnappings that escalated the current hostilities, and they were even more certainly targeted by Netanyahu in an effort to break up the unity efforts between Hamas and Fatah. It is true that Hamas has hurt its international image by escalating rocket attacks on Israel, and in doing so they've given Israel a widely accepted excuse to inflict massive suffering upon Gaza. On the other hand, they're not deeply compromised by complicity with Israel like Abbas, and as long as Abbas gets nothing for his obsequiousness -- which if Netanyahu gets his way will be forever -- Hamas will maintain its popular credibility. (And if you bother to read their proposed ceasefire terms they might even start to recover from the international smear campaign Israel and the US have waged against them.) They may, as Dreyfuss says, be a "useful boogeyman" to Israel, but he errs in concluding they're "Israel's useful boogeyman."

  For a contrary view on Hamas, see (which also has a lot on Kerry's pathetic diplomacy).

Finally, I want to cite one more piece: John Feffer: Mowing the Lawn in Gaza, which goes back to 2006, to the specific wrong turn that lead to today's seemingly intractable conflict. (Of course, it doesn't explain the entire conflict, which goes back much further, most critically to 1948, but the die was cast even earlier.):

Like the Algerians in 1990 and the Egyptians in 2012, Gazans went to the polls in 2006 and voted for the wrong party. Rather than supporting the secular choice, they cast their ballots for Hamas. Not all Palestinians are Muslim (6 percent or so are Christian). But by opting for the Islamic Resistance Movement -- Hamas, for short -- Gazans had effectively nullified their own ballots.

It didn't matter that the EU and other institutions declared the elections free and fair. The results were what mattered, and Israel's judgment carried the day. Even though the newly elected government extended an olive branch to both Israel and the United States, the Israeli government didn't consider Hamas a legitimate political actor.

"Israel stated that Hamas were terrorists and Western leaders did not challenge this line," writes Cata Charrett in an excellent piece at Mondoweiss. "On the contrary, they refused to meet diplomatically with Hamas leaders, they cut off all possible financing to the newly elected government, and they supported Israel's complete sanction and seizure of Gazan territory." A direct peace overture to President George W. Bush offering a long-term truce went unanswered.

Israel's political leadership -- the PM at the time was Ariel Sharon -- took this position because it wants to sustain a state of military occupation and it dreads any resolution to the conflict. The US political leadership -- that was G.W. Bush -- acceded to Israel because it was stupid (and because the Israel desk was run by foreign agents like Elliott Abrams). Hamas offered a fresh opportunity to work on resolving the conflict, especially if we had been willing to negotiate short-term accommodations (like truces for economic freedom) instead of focusing on "final status" issues, which had proved so difficult for both sides. Moreover, Hamas had credibility from not having been involved in the Arafat deals and decisions, and they offered the prospect of bringing a far greater degree of Palestinian unity to the table than Abbas could ever achieve on his own. However, by rejecting Hamas, the US allowed Sharon and his successors to ignore every US-backed peace proposal.

We should be clear here: while Israel has no desire for peace, the US has no future in the Middle East without it. In its efforts to form a unity government with Fatah, Hamas has offered the US a present, but in order to use it the US now has to stand up to Israel in favor of the sort of ceasefire that Hamas has offered. That's a tall order for Obama and Kerry, one that requires them to rise above their basic political cowardice.

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Monday, July 14, 2014

Music: Current count 23501 [23488] rated (+13), 534 [538] unrated (-4).

I got the news that my aunt Freda Bureman died Tuesday morning and drove to Independence, KS on Thursday afternoon. She had moved there about six years ago, living in Eagle Estates, where she could be closely attended to by her son, my cousin, Ken Brown. The funeral was Friday, with Ken and his older sisters, Lou Jean Fleron and Jan Barnes, giving touching and eloquent testimony to how much Freda meant to them, and really to us all. She was 99, had suffered from increasing dementia over the last few years, and had been unresponsive the last few weeks, essentially wasting away -- a slow fade into oblivion in stark contrast to how engaged I recall her at, say, her 90th birthday party. So I spent most of the week with my cousins, some of their children and many of their grandkids (the great-grand was among the missing), and as a result was pretty much off the grid -- my cell phone carrier didn't even provide coverage for Independence.

Hence, very little music to report below. Also, although I got back early enough today, a long nap and some TV kept me from getting the incoming packages logged. Things should return to normal, or to whatever the new normal is, next week.

I should also note that the dedicated server that I lease from Hosting & Designs was hosed a week ago. It crashed, and when they finally got it running again all of the configuration and data was erased. I've yet to receive an explanation of what happened, and don't have backups in any form that makes it easy to reconstruct, so it will be a while before I get that all running again (if indeed I do). Needless to say, I was very distracted last week. Hopefully I will be able to focus more this week.

New records rated this week:

• Bobby Hutcherson/David Sanborn/Joey DeFrancesco: Enjoy the View (2014, Blue Note): vibes on organ better than expected, sax somewhat less so [r]: B+(*)
• Jua: Colors of Life (2014, Chocolate Chi Music): [cd]: B-
• Roberto Magris Trio: One Night in With Hope and More, Vol. 2 (2008-10 [2013], JMood): sparkling piano trio resurrects vintage bebop treasures [cdr]: B+(**)
• Roberto Magris Quintet: Cannonball Funk'n Friends (2010 [2013], JMood): [cdr]: B+(**)
• Roberto Magris Septet: Morgan Rewind: A Tribute to Lee Morgan Vol. 2 (2010 [2014], JMood, 2CD): a pianist's tribute to Lee Morgan, two discs, gets rhythm right, but not trumpet [cdr]: B+(*)
• Roberto Magris Space Trek: Aliens in a Bebop Planet (2011 [2012], JMood, 2CD): pianist returns to the '50s, treating each touchstone as a find, with cool sax [cdr]: B+(***)
• Paul Marinaro: Without a Song (2014, Myrtle): [cd]: B+(*)
• Beata Pater: Golden Lady (2013 [2014], B&B): [cd]: B
• Sam Reed Meets Roberto Magris: Ready for Reed (2013, JMood): [cdr]: B+(***)
• Ellynne Rey: A Little Bit of Moonlight (2013 [2014], self-released): [cd]: B
• Nicky Schrire: To the Spring (2013 [2014], self-released, EP): [r]: B-

Old records rated this week:

• Chris Burn: Music for Three Rivers (1995-97 [1997], Victo): [r]: B+(*)
• Ron Carter/Herbie Hancock/Tony Williams: Third Plane (1977 [1983], Milestone/OJC): [r]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week (does not include end of week):

• Dee Alexander: Songs My Mother Loves (Blujazz)
• Drumheller: Sometimes Machine (Barnyard)
• Bob Mamet: London House Blues (Blujazz)
• Jochen Rueckert: We Make the Rules (Whirlwind)
• Vinnie Sperrazza: Apocryphal (Loyal Label): September 9
• Tilting: Holy Seven (Barnyard)

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Tuesday, July 8, 2014

I feel like I've been sleepwalking through the last 2-3 weeks. That hasn't stopped, or even slowed down much, sorting through these records. At least the numbers are strong. Hard to judge whether it has anything to do with the relative shortfall of A-list albums. I currently have 63 A or A- records on the 2014 list, which seems like about right for this time of the year, but it's possible that a couple of the non-jazz HMs might have clicked with more time -- best candidates are Kasai All-Stars, Popcaan, and War on Drugs.

I should note that Rhapsody Streamnotes has now passed the 5,000 album mark. That's a little more than 20% of my total rated count (as of this minute, 23498), and the RS count has been inflated somewhat this year since I started doing actual CDs here, but it shows how much streaming has helped broaden my ability to cover the whole semi-popular music spectrum. Also, as my review copy stream dries up, it keeps me from folding up my tent and quitting: more than half of my A-list records this year (32 of 63) were at least first encountered on Rhapsody or some other digital source. (Actually, the ratio in 2013 was even higher: 76/146. The three previous years were lower: 61/131, 62/132, 60/132.)

These are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody. They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on June 21. Past reviews and more information are available here (5017 records).

New Releases (More or Less)

Ab-Soul: These Days . . . (2014, Top Dawg): Rapper from the Black Hippy group, can't say as I can follow him very well, except for the 23:00 "W.R.O.H." -- sort of a beatless bull session, just the rapper with a small audience, probably some kind of bonus. B+(**)

Darren Barrett: Energy in Motion: The Music of the Bee Gees (2014, dB Studios): Trumpeter from Canada, studied and teaches at Berklee, won a Monk prize in 1997, not sure how serious to take him given how bad the idea of jazzing up the Bee Gees is. The melodies can hardly help but come through as muzak, while the disco effects can't help but be cheesy. B- [cd]

Darren Barrett dB Quintet: Live and Direct 2014 (2014, dB Studios): This shows Barrett to be an upbeat, fairly aggressive postbopper, and suggests that "dB" stands for loud as well as his monogram. Myron Walden plays tenor and soprano sax, Takeishi Onbayashi piano. The applause is ambivalent. B [cd]

Beat Funktion: Voodooland (2014, DO Music): Just what you'd expect, except from Sweden, where this probably qualifies as acid jazz. Second-rate disco is more like it, minus any attempts to move the dance floor. B- [cd]

Itamar Borochov Quartet: Outset (2011 [2014], RealBird): Trumpet player from Israel, father a notable musician and brother Avri plays bass here, first record, with Hagai Amir on alto sax and Aviv Cohen on drums. Close to hard bop at the start, varies more toward the end. B+(**) [cd]

Camper Van Beethoven: La Costa Perdida (2013, 429 Records): A very important band in the mid-1980s, broke up in 1990, returned a couple times since 1999, but this was their first since 2004. They get back a fair bit of their sound and some of their nonchalance, and a single called "Northern California Girls." B

Camper Van Beethoven: El Camino Real (2014, 429 Records): Similar artwork to last year's album, but they've made progress in getting their sound back, and have reinforced that with a handful of memorable songs -- a stark one about bigotry in "Sugartown," a good-natured invite in "I Live in L.A.," a tentative farewell in "Darken Your Door." B+(**)

Mark Charig/Georg Wolf/Jörg Fischer: Free Music on a Summer Evening (2010 [2014], Spore Print): Charig plays cornet and alto horn, a brass instrument which pairs with cornet much like the flugelhorn does with trumpet. Both horns are a bit scrawny in a rather scratchy avant context. B+(*) [cd]

Sébastien Chaumont Quartet: Still Walkin' (2011-13 [2014], ITI): French alto saxophonist, backed by piano-bass-drums. Not finding much info, even on the hype sheet -- presumably "Nice" is his home town and not a succinct review, although it would work: he has a rich tone and hits the sweet spot for a mainstream alto sax quartet. B+(**) [cd]

Jeff Colella/Putter Smith: Lotus Blossom (2013 [2014], The American Jazz Institute/Capri): Piano-bass duets, one original each, six covers including the title track from Strayhorn. Rather quiet, unimposing, all the lovelier for that. B+(**)

Ry Cooder/Corridos Famosos: Live at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco Aug 31-Sept 1, 2011 (2011 [2013], Nonesuch): A live sampler after forty-some years, with some songs dating back to his heyday as a folk revivalist in the early 1970s and others from his strong run of albums since 2005. B+(**)

Davina & the Vagabonds: Sunshine (2014, Roustabout): Minneapolis group led by singer Davina Sowers, who wrote 8 (of 11) songs, finishing with covers of Eddie Miller, Fats Waller, and Patty Griffin. Group has a blues orientation with more jazz feel, the instrumentation including trumpet, trombone, and vibraphone. B+(**) [cd]

Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence (2014, Interscope): Everything's slow and nothing's much fun, not that she doesn't drop many hints that she might be an interesting person, or at least one unique enough to bear watching. Sonically I should bump this up a notch, but I'm not sure I want to get to know her better. Love guns and roses? Even generically speaking, that's not true. B+(***)

Andrew Downing/Jim Lewis/David Occhipinti: Bristles (2013 [2014], Occdav Music): Bass, trumpet, guitar respectively, makes for low-key chamber jazz group, playing six joint pieces (probably improv) and six standards (Schwartz-Dietz, Mercer-Mandel, Styne-Cahn, Jobim). B+(*) [cd]

East India Youth: Total Strife Forever (2014, Stolen): Alias for William Doyle, young man with a synthesizer, first album, some nice rhythmic runs here but his efforts at ambient are far less pleasant. At best I'm reminded of early Eno, a reference his fans probably don't know, but then I think of the coming dark ages and all the other references being forgotten, as postmodern reverts into premodern. B

Kali Z. Fasteau: Piano Rapture (2014, Flying Note): From a very cosmopolitan (and as she says, "musical") family, Fasteau got into avant-jazz through husband Donald Rafael Garrett (1932-89), who had some connections with AACM and played on several late Coltrane albums. They toured the world together, and after his death she kept recording, playing dozens of exotic instruments and singing some, an eclectic mix that never led to very satisfying albums. But lately she's developed a rapport with a regular band -- Kidd Jordan (tenor sax), L. Mixashawn Rozie (soprano and tenor sax), J.D. Parran (alto flute and clarinet), and Ron McBee (percussion). Here she finally settles into just playing piano and turns in a surprisingly solid performance, centering horns which otherwise like to scatter chaotically. Still has some spots you wonder about, but overall remarkable. A- [cd]

Lee Fields: Emma Jean (2014, Truth & Soul): Soul singer from Georgia, a reissue of his 1979 album Let's Talk It Over showed him to be a worthy chip off James Brown. He's still around, and if the new one has lost a step, that just means more ballads, a strong point anyway. B+(**)

Danny Freyer: Must Be Love (2014, Blue Bend): Crooner, throwback to the 1950s trying to conjure up "That Old Black Magic" and tossing in a bit of "Yardbird Suite" (seguing into "Let's Make Babies Baby"). "Dean Martin looks and a Sinatra voice" sez the website -- one look at the picture makes you wonder if the voice is really as far off the mark. Pleasant enough with a jazz band, but the strings are really awful. B- [cd]

Ben Frost: Aurora (2014, Bedroom Community): Ambient sturm und drang, something else we didn't need, but all the banging around is not without its interesting, even industrial, moments. B+(**)

Future Islands: Singles (2013 [2014], 4AD): Synthpop band based in Baltimore, four albums, singer Samuel T. Herring takes a bit of getting used to but the songs stand up, not as singles so much as album building blocks. B+(*)

Mary Gauthier: Trouble & Love (2014, In the Black): Folk singer-songwriter from Louisiana, always has a finely detailed sense of her subjects. These eight songs move slowly, which gives them all the more resonance. A-

Brian Groder Trio: Reflexology (2013 [2014], Latham): Trumpet player, hangs in avant circles -- trio mates are Michael Bisio and Jay Rosen -- but doesn't sound so far out. Indeed, front cover shows a footprint with various points mapped to musicians, with Oliver Nelson out on a toe, Mingus and Joe Farrell at the arch, and Monk on the heel. B+(***) [cd]

Luke Haines: New York in the '70s (2014, Cherry Red): Former Auteurs/Black Box Recorder namechecks Alan Vega and Jim Carroll and proclaims "Dolls Forever" using tunes picked up wholesale from Lou Reed then dipped in starch and irony. B

Holly Hofmann: Low Life: The Alto Flute Project (2014, Capri): Flute player, 14 albums since 1989, few that I have heard have any appeal to me, but it helps here that she sticks to alto flute, also that in addition to longtime accompanist Mike Wofford (piano) she has a rhythm section that flows and sometimes even swings: Anthony Wilson (guitar), John Clayton (bass), Jeff Hamilton (drums). B+(*) [cd]

Bobby Hutcherson/David Sanborn/Joey DeFrancesco: Enjoy the View (2014, Blue Note): After the three principals, who each contribute two or three originals, we see "featuring Billy Hart." You don't run into many organ-vibraphone pairings but the combination works well here. As for Sanborn, he reminds you that he has the chops to be a well respected alto saxophonist, but you can never quite trust him. B+(*)

B.J. Jansen: Ronin (2013 [2014], ARC): Baritone saxophonist, from Cincinnati, now in New York, has a couple albums, this one backed by piano-bass-drums, fairly mainstream leaning toward quiet storm. B+(**) [cd]

Kasai Allstars: Beware the Fetish [Congotronics 5] (2014, Crammed Discs, 2CD): A large Kinshasa group, their band built with thumb pianos and makeshift percussion shared, at least in this series, with Konono No. 1. I find the vocals a bit rougher and less compelling, and the length wears you down, although disc-buyers will only play one half at a time. B+(***)

Seun Kuti + Egypt 80: A Long Way to the Beginning (2013 [2014], Knitting Factory): Fela Kuti's youngest son seems to have inherited the old band, probably because he's able to keep up the intensity, even more than the old days -- his main innovation is to introduce raps, which cut sharper than the still more common chants. B+(***)

Dawn Landes: Bluebird (2014, Western Vinyl): Singer-songwriter from Kentucky, at one time married to Josh Ritter, mostly quiet and personable guitar-and-vocals. B+(**)

Peter Lerner: Continuation (2014, OA2): Guitarist, from Chicago, second album, lists a large group but in two columns, suggesting that the core group consists of pianist Willie Pickens (listed as "featuring" on the cover) and bass and drums, with the second column -- three horns including Geof Bradfield on saxes and flute plus Joe Rendon on percussion -- supplementary. Still, they all fit together nicely -- I'm tempted to use the word "slick" but that would raise some false connotations. I haven't run across Pickens before, but he earns his feature. B+(***) [cd]

The John A. Lewis Trio: One Trip Out (2014, Valarteri): Pianist, originally from Dallas, studied at SMU, played trumpet in R&B bands, has been a musician "for over thirty years"; website only shows this one record, a nice mainstream piano trio. B+(*) [cd]

Roberto Magris Trio: One Night in With Hope and More, Vol. 2 (2008-10 [2013, JMood): Pianist from Italy, rooted in 1950s bebop styles, which this album (and its predecessor) pay tribute to. Trio, some cuts with Tootie Heath on drums. Terrific bonus track with Paul Carr on tenor sax, and 4:25 of "audio notebook." B+(**) [cdr]

Roberto Magris Septet: Morgan Rewind: A Tribute to Lee Morgan Vol. 2 (2010 [2012], JMood, 2CD): A broad selection of tunes by the hard bop trumpet great plus two African-influenced pieces by the pianist-leader. They work hard to get the rhythmic feel right and build up the harmonics, but don't expect Hermon Mehari to make you recall, much less forget, Morgan. B+(*) [cdr]

Roberto Magris Quintet: Cannonball Funk'n Friends (2010 [2013], JMood): The subject of this tribute is Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, although only one song originates with him -- other sources include Duke Pearson, Frank Rosolino, Walter Booker, Oscar Pettiford, and Eddie Vinson, plus two originals by pianist Magris. Emphasizes funk beats over bebop, and Hermon Mehari's cornet shines more than Jim Mair's alto sax. B+(**) [cdr]

Roberto Magris Space Trek: Aliens in a Bebop Planet (2011 [2012], JMood, 2CD): Concept is an alien discovering bebop and working through it, with covers of Fats Navarro, Sir Charles Thompson, Kenny Clarke, "The Gypsy," and "Giant Steps," and originals venturing as far as fellow space traveller Sun Ra. Magris' piano is up to the demands, but I'm often even more entranced by saxophonist Matt Otto, who has a lock on the cool. Eddie Charles' three vocals are neither here nor there. Paul Collins' "audio notebook" is a fully overblown review. B+(***) [cdr]

MARS 4-Tet: The Blind Watchmaker (2014, Summit): Acronym for Don Murray (bass), Jeff Antoniuk (sax), Frank Russo (drums), and Donato Soveiro (guitar). First album, although Antoniuk has a couple previous efforts, and shares the songwriting with Soveiro. Solid mainstream group, one you'd be delighted with if you walked in on them with no expectations. Covers: Monk, Jarrett, "Black Dog" (a Led Zeppelin blues). B+(**) [cd]

The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Strength in Numbers (2013 [2014], Summit): Trombone player and sometime singer (three tunes here), working with a big band here -- mostly familiar New York names, with pianist Mike Holober (a big band specialist) notable. Many striking passages, the vocals more an acquired taste (e.g., "You Don't Know What Love Is"). B+(*) [cd]

Willie Nelson: Band of Brothers (2014, Legacy): Billed as Nelson's first album of "mostly original" songs since 1996's Spirit, most are co-credited to Buddy Cannon, and 5 (of 14) don't have Nelson's name on them. A while back Legacy included Nelson in their Valentine's Day release of Love Songs, inadvertently showing that no country singer in our memory has pitched less woo or waxed less romantic than Nelson, but he tops himself time and again here -- if "Used to Her" and "Wives and Girlfriends" seem too witty, there's "I Thought I Left You," where he compares his beloved to measles and the whooping cough. The warmest he comes is "I love you because you're crazy like me," but he didn't write that. Nor did he write "it's hard to be an outlaw who ain't wanted any more" -- that's Billy Joe Shaver's line. But he did write "I can't forget the shit you put me through, and of course I can't forgive you because that's just what I do" ("I've Got a Lot of Traveling to Do"). A-

Conor Oberst: Upside-Down Mountain (2014, Nonesuch): Singer-songwriter, has a knack for pop melodies although these are less cut and dry than usual. B+(**)

Beata Pater: Golden Lady (2013 [2014], B&B): Jazz singer, mostly standards but nothing from the standard songbooks save Jobim, not the only nod toward Latin America. B [cd]

Matt Pavolka: The Horns Band (2013 [2014], Fresh Sound New Talent): Bassist, second album, formed this group around three horns -- Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Loren Stillman (alto sax) -- with Mark Ferber on drums. Not the brightest sound, but the post-whatever shuffle is worth keying on. B+(**) [cd]

Felix Peikli: Royal Flush (2013 [2014], self-released): Clarinetist (including bass), from Norway, first album, quintet with guitar, piano, bass, and drums, plus guests, some "special," some not. His speed is impressive in a group that can keep up with him, like Ralph Peterson's Fo'tet, but can be overly lush, especially when the guests add vocals and/or flute. B [cdr]

The Ralph Peterson Fo'tet Augmented: Alive at Firehouse 12: Vol 2: Fo' n Mo' (2013 [2014], Onyx): I didn't get Vol. 1, with a group drummer Peterson calls the Unity Project. Peterson's Presents the Fo'Tet appeared in 1989 and that's been rubric for his small group ever since: currently Felix Peikli (clarinet, bass clarinet) and Joseph Doubleday (vibes). The "Mo'" is Steve Wilson (soprano sax) and Eguie Castrillo (percussion), and they help plenty, but the core group is impressive too. B+(***) [cd]

Popcaan: Where We Come From (2014, Mixpak): Jamaican singer, came up doing dancehall although this strikes me as more idiosyncratic than that. B+(***)

Rallidae: Paper Birds (2013 [2014], self-released, EP): Vocal trio, where Angela Morris also plays tenor sax, Scott Colberg bass, and Alex Samaras just sings. Group name refers to the family of coots, crakes, and gallinules (collectively rails), mostly small birds found in wetlands. Four songs, 23:24. The vocals fall out of the classical art-song tradition I generally despise, but the instruments are jazz. B- [cd]

Andrew Rathbun Quartet: Numbers & Letters (2012 [2014], SteepleChase): Saxophonist (credited here "reeds, voice"), from Toronto, lists George Russell and George Garzone among his tutors, a postbop guy. Backed by a veteran piano trio here -- Phil Markowitz, Jay Anderson, Bill Stewart -- with two guest spots for Taylor Haskins on trumpet. Starts off bold, but in going through the various phases and changes loses impresses more than interests. B+(**) [cdr]

Sam Reed Meets Roberto Magris: Ready for Reed (2011 [2013, JMood): Alto saxophonist from Philadelphia, childhood friend and protégé of Jimmy Heath, has been around long enough to have a story about Charlie Parker asking him to hold his horn between sets, but only has side credits to my knowledge: Teddy Pendergrass, but also Odean Pope's Sax Choir. Relaxed, very charming mainstream set with a full band, led by pianist Magris but including a trombone. Record ends with an "audio notebook" -- an interview where you get to know a bit more about Reed. B+(***) [cdr]

Jefferson Rose Band: Feel Like Dancing (2014, self-released): Seattle group led by bassist Rose, second album, describe themselves as "a tightly honed ensemble of world music players," although at first blush they sound like a salsa band -- losing that spell only when singer Alex Kitchen takes up a lyric in English. Upbeat enough to justify the title. B [cd]

Harold Rubin/Barre Phillips/Tatsuya Nakatani: E on a Thin Line (2009 [2014], Hopscotch): Clarinetist, also notable as a visual artist, b. 1932 in South Africa, moved to Israel in the 1960s after running afoul of the Apartheid regime, has at least 10 albums since 1990 (AMG counts 2). This is the first I've heard, and I'm struck by his distinctive avant approach. B+(***) [cd]

Saxophone Summit [Dave Liebman/Ravi Coltrane/Joe Lovano]: Visitation (2011 [2014], ArtistShare): The first such "summit" was in 2004 with Liebman, Lovano, and Michael Brecker -- their Gathering of the Spirits was awful, even with the comic relief of their wood flute special. Coltrane is a more compatible replacement, and the first thing you notice is how tightly the horns fit together, then how ably the rhythm section -- Phil Markowitz, Cecil McBee, and Billy Hart -- help out. Six pieces, one from each, each for all. B+(***) [cd]

Bobby Selvaggio: Short Stories (2013 [2014], Origin): Alto saxophonist, has seven albums over the last decade. Quartet here, with Aaron Goldberg on piano. Reminds me of Donny McCaslin with his fast, swooping, virtuosic sax runs, which dominate this album. B+(**) [cd]

Sonny Simmons: Leaving Knowledge, Wisdom and Brilliance/Chasing the Bird? (2006-14 [2014], Improvising Beings, 8CD): This arrived in a water-soaked plastic bag, the cardboard box destroyed, so it was unclear just what the title was, some web sources suggesting 80th Anniversary Box Set. Other web sources, and the now dry remains of the box, lean toward the title above. Simmons started on alto sax with ESP-Disk in the mid-1960s, recorded little in the 1970s and 1980s, cut a couple major label albums in the mid-1990s (Warner Bros.), and then from 2001 on has had a remarkably productive stretch flittering around avant spots in Europe -- his main labels Norwegian, Polish, and now French. The music here follows from a fairly basic concept even though it's been elaborated into more than seven hours of variations: Simmons plays alto sax and cor anglais, backed by amplified Indian instruments, guitar and/or keyboard, and percussion. Extravagant exotica, randomly replayable. Don't know how I was so fortunate to get a copy, especially at a time when Sony can't be bothered to answer my email. B+(***) [cd]

Sonzeira: Brasil Bam Bam Bam (2014, Talkin' Loud/Virgin): British DJ Gilles Petersen assembled various Brazilian stars for this (as well as ringer Seun Kuti) and mixed the results, an Afro-Brazilian dance tape with attractive quirks. B+(***)

Storyboard [David Boswell/Alex Locascio/Rod MacDowell]: Hello (2014, My Quiet Moon): Guitars/synth, drums, electric bass. Boswell cites Pat Metheny as a formative influence, and McDowell cites Jaco Pastorius, but all they wind up with is a basic groove album. B [cd]

Strand of Oaks: Heal (2014, Dead Oceans): Indiana singer-songwriter Timothy Showalter, second album, don't know if the first is amped up like this one, which starts with a dense guitar scream and rarely descends below heavy, except to declaim something intensely emotional. B-

Sun Kil Moon: Benji (2014, Caldo Verde): Mark Kozelek group, although the extremely personal first person songs and simple arrangements don't allow for much group. Blue collar confessionals, mostly about family, some about work, not much of a love life -- no idea whether this is Kozelek's norm, but I'm touched and fascinated. B+(***)

Swans: To Be Kind (2014, Young God, 2CD): Michael Gira's group dates back to 1982 with a breakup from 1997-2010. Before the breakup they were an obscure postrock/noise band (titles included Soundtracks for the Blind and Public Castration Is a Good Idea). Since regrouping they've become a "critics band" -- this one is currently the top-rated Album of the Year. With one piece topping 30 minutes, others filling out more than two hours. B

Allison Adams Tucker: April in Paris (2012 [2014], Allegato Music): Jazz singer, from San Diego, second album, one original, eight standards including a Jobim and a Beatles song, several in Romance languages (Italian, French, Portuguese; her website also has a Japanese version, as she lived in Japan at some point). She nails "It Might as Well Be Spring" but wanders after that. B [cd]

Paul Tynan & Aaron Lington: Bicoastal Collective: Chapter Four (2013 [2014], OA2): Trumpet and baritone sax, plus their ever-shifting collective, this time just guitar, organ, and drums. The organ gives them a nice little boost. B+(*) [cd]

Sharon Van Etten: Are We There (2014, Jagjaguwar): A critically hailed singer-songwriter although I can't tell you why: slow, heavy, one could even say leaden, presumably effects that set up the melodrama, if indeed that's what it is. B-

Cornelius Veit/Eugen Prieur/Jörg Fischer: Stromraum (2012-13 [2014], Spore Print): Guitar trio, Prieur playing electric bass; second group album, the first in 2005, the trio going back as far as 2000. Even scratchier than Fischer's trio with Marc Charig, but the cohesiveness of the sound helps frame the invention. B+(***) [cd]

Brahja Waldman Quintet: Sir Real Live at Resonance (2013 [2014], self-released): Two-sax quintet, the leader on alto, Adam Kinner on tenor, with piano (Damon Shadrach Hankof), bass, and drums. Live vamp pieces, the repetition easy on the ears but with points to jump off from. [Limited vinyl.] B+(**) [cdr]

The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (2014, Secretly Canadian): Currently the number three highest ranked album this year over at Album of the Year (behind Swans and St. Vincent; a while back it was number one). I love the guitar textures, but notice the singer flinging lines out like Dylan, only with none of them sticking. B+(***)

Walt Weiskopf: Overdrive (2013 [2014], Posi-Tone): Tenor saxophonist, 16 albums since 1989, a mainstream player with a lot of drive, gets more help then he needs here -- piano (Peter Zak), guitar (Yotam Silberstein), vibes (Behn Gillece), bass and drums -- a little clutter, which the fast ones only scatter. B

Wild Beasts: Present Tense (2014, Domino): English art rock/deam pop group, fourth album, the slack beats and falsetto vocals conjure up that dream effect and it's pretty tolerable while it lasts. B

Reissues, Compilations, Vault Discoveries

Dexter Johnson & Le Super Star de Dakar: Live à l'Étoile (1969 [2014], Teranga Beat): The leader was a saxophonist, born in Nigeria and based in Senegal at the time, later in Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. Songs have a crude ska-like feel, more likely derived from soul (there's a Wilson Pickett cover) and boogaloo (the Latin tinge is pronounced), the vocals par for the period but they bounce off the sax in captivating ways. B+(***)

Oscar Peterson/Ben Webster: During This Time (1972 [2014], Art of Groove): Recorded in the NDR studios in Hannover, backed by Neils-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and Tony Inzalaco on drums, this was just a year before the tenor sax great's death, although I find him playing faster than anything I've heard by him in the previous five years, and just slightly off his finest ballad tone -- a pleasant surprise even though you'd expect the pianist to perk up anyone. Packaged with a DVD. A-

Old Music

Air: Open Air Suit (1978, Novus): An important avant jazz group from the mid-1970s, with Henry Threadgill on various saxes (and too much flute), Fred Hopkins on bass, and Steve McCall on drums. Four pieces, titled as if selected from five, meant to imply something larger. B+(**)

Chris Burn: Music for Three Rivers (1995-97 [1997], Victo): English pianist, records infrequently with avant musicians like John Butcher and Lol Coxhill, plays solo here, two long pieces and a bunch of short ones. Not much momentum, hard to get a handle on this. B+(*)

Gerry Hemingway Quartet: Devil's Paradise (1999 [2003], Clean Feed): The BassDrumBone trio (Mark Dresser, Hemingway, and trombonist Ray Anderson), which date back at least to 1987, plus tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin -- a dream group, although the latter fits in awkwardly, the choppiness a trademark of the trio. B+(***)

Joe Henderson: Our Thing (1963 [1995], Blue Note): The tenor saxophonist's second album, a typically strong showing with trumpeter Kenny Dorham sharing the front line and writing half the songs (3 of 6). Pianist Andrew Hill is often the most interesting player here, mixing up what otherwise would be a hard bop outing. A-

Joe Henderson: Joe Henderson Quintet at the Lighthouse (1970 [2004], Milestone/OJC): With Woody Shaw on trumpet and George Cables on piano, these tracks were initially released on several albums and lost a track in the squeeze when they were belatedly reassembled. The trumpet raises Henderson's competitive blood, but that's not necessarily a plus. B+(**)

Joe Henderson: Joe Henderson in Japan (1971 [2006], Milestone/OJC): Tenor sax quartet, the leader picking up a sprightly rhythm section led by Hideo Ichikawa on electric piano (with Kunimitsu Inaba on bass and Motohiko Hino on drums, the latter a name I recognize). Four cuts, the spaced-out solos most impressive. B+(***)

Joe Henderson: Relaxin' at Camarillo (1979 [1993], Contemporary/OJC): Tenor sax quartet, pieced together from two sessions with different bass-drums, but Chick Corea plays sparkling piano throughout, and the leader is in fine form. A-

Joe Henderson: Joe Henderson Big Band (1992-96 [1997], Verve): Riding high on a major label comeback, the fourth (of five) albums Verve released, with three early tracks produced by Don Sickler, the other five by Bob Belden with a huge list of musicians, few common to both sessions. Buries the star, but has some snap as Belden albums go. B+(*)

Art Hodes: Keepin' Out of Mischief Now (1988, Candid): Born in Russia, moved to Chicago as an infant, mastered stride piano and recorded in trad jazz groups from the 1940s. He was 84 when this solo set was cut, a batch of songs he'd spent his life with, nothing fancy, nothing to rush him, all the more poignant. A-

New Air Featuring Cassandra Wilson: Air Show No. 1 (1986 [1989], Black Saint): The "New" signifies that Pheeroan Aklaff has replaced Steve McCall on drums; otherwise, bassist Fred Hopkins and alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill (also flute and banjo) carry on. Wilson is an effective singer here. B+(**)

Oscar Peterson et Joe Pass: À La Salle Pleyel (1975 [1997], Pablo/OJC, 2CD): Piano and guitar, Pass has mostly recorded solo, calling an early album Virtuoso and mostly adding numbers onto subsequent efforts. The record starts with Peterson solo, then adds a solo Pass set, then finally six duets. Peterson is a formidable solo performer too, but even better when socializing. A-

The Michael Jefry Stevens/Dominic Duval Quintet: Elements (1994 [1996], Leo): The leaders play piano and bass, but this is more of a group effort, with all but two Stevens pieces attributed to the group, including Mark Whitecase (alto sax), Dom Minasi (guitar), and Jay Rosen (drums). B+(*)

Notes

Everything streamed from Rhapsody, except as noted in brackets following the grade:

• [cd] based on physical cd
• [cdr] based on an advance or promo cd or cdr
• [bc] available at bandcamp.com
• [sc] available at soundcloud.com
[os] some other stream source
• [dl] something I was able to download from the web; may be freely available, may be a bootleg someone made available, or may be a publicist promo

Ask a question, or send a comment.

July 7, 2014

Music: Current count 23488 [23459] rated (+29), 538 [539] unrated (-1).

Cut this off Sunday night, so I don't have Monday's mail in the unpacking. Main reason I fell short of thirty records was that I spent two days playing almost nothing but the Sonny Simmons box. Main reason I even came close to thirty records was that I went through Album of the Year's The Highest Rated Albums of 2014 and played a lot of things on Rhapsody that I had missed. The notebook has a table of the top 100 records with my grades where I have them. Thus far I've heard 40 of those 100, pretty concentrated toward the top of the list (18 of top 20, 24 of top 30, 27 of top 40, 32 of top 50, only 8 of the next 50 (Sharon Jones, Dolly Parton, Laura Cantrell, Schoolboy Q, Future, Luke Haines, YG, Lykke Li).

AOTY's list isn't very useful for prospecting. Only 6 of those top 100 albums are on my 63-album A-list (Todd Terje, Cloud Nothings, Ought, Parquet Courts, Miranda Lambert, Laura Cantrell -- I haven't heard the UK-only Paul Heaton/Jacqui Abbott record at 56, although Michael Tatum and Jason Gubbells have convinced me I'll love it ), 11 more as high HMs (St. Vincent, The War on Drugs, Sun Kil Moon, Neneh Cherry, Carla Bozulich, EMA, Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, Isaiah Rashad, Tinariwen, Sturgill Simpson, Fear of Men).

Most of my missing A-list is jazz, but skipping the non-vocal jazz records, the following records on my A-list didn't make AOTY's top 100: Lily Allen, The Strypes, Jenny Scheinman, The Hold Steady, Old 97's, Pharrell Williams, Shakira, Barbara Morrison, Rodney Crowell, Deena, Big Ups, Mary Gauthier, Grieves, Catherine Russell, Jon Langford, Wussy, Company Freak, The New Mendicants, Willie Nelson, Dave Alvin/Phil Alvin, Leo Welch, Amy LaVere, and Supreme Cuts. I'm partial, of course, but it strikes me that the difference between these artists and the AOTY ones I downgraded is personality (and maybe brains).

For a second opinion, I checked Michael Tatum's grades, skipping compilations. He has 10 AOTY 100 records graded A- or above (Against Me!, Laura Cantrell, Cloud Nothings, EMA, Freddie Gibbs/Madlib, Paul Heaton/Jacqui Abbott, Bob Mould, Parquet Courts, St. Vincent, Tinariwen -- two records there I haven't heard); and 22 A-list albums not in the AOTY 100 (Lily Allen, Katy B, Toni Braxton/Babyface, Company Freak, Deena, Drive-By Truckers, Hold Steady, Chrissie Hynde, Kool AD, Kool and Kass, Amy LaVere, Steve Malkmus, Modern Baseball, The New Mendicants, Conor Oberst, Old 97's, The Roots, Shakira, Withered Hand, Wussy, Young Thug/Bloody Jay, Young Thug/Gucci Mane -- I had 23).

I didn't bother writing up tweets for many of the AOTY records. Some of them I just played and felt next to nothing, they were so instantly forgettable. Some, like Ab-Soul or Conor Oberst, weren't so bad but left me feeling I had little to say. I've promised in the past to do better on that, but this week I slipped up a bit.

Some personal things are very much up in the air right now. My last remaining aunt, Freda Bureman, appears to be dying. If/when that happens, I'll have to drop whatever I'm doing and take care of some things. Also, the server I lease looks to be dead (and the support staff doesn't seem too healthy or alert either). I had a bunch of work I wanted to do on that machine, so that's totally up in the air. Indeed, I may wind up having to reconstruct everything previously stored there (at best, a lot of unpleasant work; at worst, impossible).

Barring disaster, I should post Rhapsody Streamnotes later this week. (I currently have 77 records in the draft file.) I hope to get through the Roberto Magris records by then. Meanwhile, the incoming queue has dried up so severely I could remove one (maybe two of three) baskets from my floor. Perhaps it's time to buckle down, clean up, put all this crap behind me.

Recommended music links:

• Michael Tatum: A Downloader's Diary (39): July 4, 2014

New records rated this week:

• Ab-Soul: These Days . . . (2014, Top Dawg): [r]: B+(**)
• Beat Funktion: Voodooland (2014, DO Music): Swedish acid jazz group plays rudimentary disco, groove without purpose or even much fun [cd]: B-
• Sébastien Chaumont Quartet: Still Walkin' (2011-13 [2014], ITI): alto saxophonist, rich tone, hits sweet spot with mainstream piano-bass-drums [cd]: B+(**)
• Ry Cooder/Corridos Famosos: Live at the Great American Music Hall, San Fransicsco Aug 31-Sept 1, 2011 (2011 [2013], Nonesuch): [r]; B+(**)
• East India Youth: Total Strife Forever (2014, Stolen): [r]: B
• Kali Z. Fasteau: Piano Rapture (2014, Flying Note): after playing scads of instruments, turns out she's one helluva pianist, with usual reed freaks [cd]: A-
• Lee Fields: Emma Jean (2014, Truth & Soul): James Brown wannabe, had a terrific debut in 1979 reissued last year, follows with new one, a bit slower [r]: B+(**)
• Ben Frost: Aurora (2014, Bedroom Community): [r]: B+(**)
• Future Islands: Singles (2013 [2014], 4AD): [r]: B+(*)
• Luke Haines: New York in the '70s (2014, Cherry Red): [r]: B
• B.J. Jansen: Ronin (2013 [2014], ARC): baritone sax, backed with piano-bass-drums, goes mainstream, even a bit romantic on the ballads [cd]: B+(**)
• Seun Kuti + Egypt 80: A Long Way to the Beginning (2013 [2014], Knitting Factory): Fela's youngest son cranks his Afrobeat band to the max, mixes in raps [r]: B+(***)
• Dawn Landes: Bluebird (2014, Western Vinyl): [r]: B+(**)
• The John A. Lewis Trio: One Trip Out (2014, Valarteri): veteran pianist out of Dallas, possibly his debut, leads a nice, soulful piano trio [cd]: B+(*)
• Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Strength in Numbers (2013 [2014], Summit): trombonist/singer runs a big band, some striking passages, three vocals [cd]: B+(*)
• Willie Nelson: Band of Brothers (2014, Legacy): wrote some new songs, mostly about women he's had once and is done with now, and the bile helps [r]: A-
• Conor Oberst: Upside-Down Mountain (2014, Nonesuch): [r]: B+(**)
• Matt Pavolka: The Horns Band (2013 [2014], Fresh Sound New Talent): bassist with cornet-trombone-alto sax and drums, not bright but the post-whatever shuffle entices [cd]: B+(**)
• Jefferson Rose Band: Feel Like Dancing (2014, self-released): Seattle "world music" group offers an upbeat groove album with Alex Kitchen singing [cd]: B
• Sonny Simmons: Leaving Knowledge, Wisdom and Brilliance/Chasing the Bird? (2006-14 [2014], Improvising Beings, 8CD): extravagant indulgence, 8CD of quasi-Indian exotica [r]: B+(***)
• Strand of Oaks: Heal (2014, Dead Oceans): [r]: B-
• Sun Kil Moon: Benji (2014, Caldo Verde): [r]: B+(***)
• Swans: To Be Kind (Young God, 2CD): [r]: B
• Sharon Van Etten: Are We There (2014, Jagjaguwar): [r]: B-
• The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (2014, Secretly Canadian): rock band, vocals flung out w/not much sticking, but the tuneful guitar layering appeals [r]: B+(***)
• Wild Beasts: Present Tense (2014, Domino): [r]: B

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Dexter Johnson & Le Super Star de Dakar: Live à l'Étoile (1969 [2014], Teranga Beat): Senegal doowop-boogaloo cross, led by sax man who gets his licks in [r]: B+(***)
• Oscar Peterson/Ben Webster: During This Time (1972 [2014], Art of Groove): no DVD, but tenor sax great in fine form a year before death, perked up by pianist [r]: A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Al Basile: Swing n' Strings (Sweetspot)
• Drew Ceccato/Adam Tinkle: Eidolon (Edgetone)
• The Equity & Social Justice Quartet: The Whisper of Flowers (Edgetone)
• Sherie Julianne: 10 Degrees South (Azul Do Mar)
• Vincent Lyn: Live in New York City (Budo)
• Terry Marshall: Arrival (self-released)
• Rent Romus' Life's Blood Ensemble: Cimmerian Crossroads (Edgetone)
• Paul Shapiro: Shofarot Verses (Tzadik): advance
• Donald Singer: Destiny: Moment of Jazz (Emerald Baby)

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Monday, June 23, 2014

Music: Current count 23423 [23394] rated (+29), 559 [568] unrated (-9).

Most of what follows showed up on Saturday's Rhapsody Streamnotes column -- Mary Gauthier's lovely little record is an exception, as are several of the "old music" entries, including two Joe Henderson sets. (More Henderson next week -- such splits are what you get with arbitrary cutoffs.) With Henderson, I've started to go beyond Penguin Guide 4-stars (Our Thing) to pick up a few 3.5 stars (Relaxin' at Camarillo, which by the way I think is the better of the two, probably because he's more comfortable as the sole horn). The unrated 4-star list was already 950 long and I was in no worry about running out (even with Rhapsody's omissions cutting that list way down). It just seemed likely that I would find some of the 3.5-star records more appealing -- indeed, I know that's often the case. I've started to put an unrated 3.5-star record list together, and it will have a bit more than 4000 records. I doubt that I'll put much effort into tracking them all down, but when I hit an artist I'm inclined to explore further (like Henderson, or the late Horace Silver) I'm likely to delve a bit deeper down the list.

Finished painting my basement steps, and that looks like a real improvement. Probably the next step is to paint a segment of basement wall that I want to build some new storage in and around. At some point I want to cover up the cement floor with something nicer, but it will take a number of steps to get there, and that wall is the start. On the other hand, the real critical project is reducing the clutter around my workspace -- a bummer, I'm afraid, every time I enter and try to work on something. Not just hideous but ridiculous.

Note that the incoming mail practically dried up this week. Indeed, only two (of five) records were by names I recognized -- one of those by a recently deceased flute player. Sorry I haven't been able to keep up with tweeting all the old music grades. I need to hit them more in real time to avoid clustering.

Recommended music links:

• Michael Tatum: A Downloader's Diary's Guide to ABC
• Michael Tatum: Talking Heads: 77

New records rated this week:

• Darren Barrett: Energy in Motion: The Music of the Bee Gees (2014, dB Studios): trumpeter, a little postbop on melodies that can't escape muzak [cd]: B-
• Darren Barrett dB Quintet: Live and Direct 2014 (2014, dB Studios): postbop trumpet, Myron Walden on sax, try running fast and wild but not far [cd]: B
• François Carrier/Michel Lambert/Alexey Lapin: The Russian Concerts (2013 [2014], FMR): also sounds unique but keeps growing, the pianist helps too [cd]: A-
• Andrew Downing/Jim Lewis/David Occhipinti: Bristles (2013 [2014], Occdav Music): bass-trumpet-guitar chamber jazz trio, polite standards and light improv [cd]: B+(*)
• Mary Gauthier: Trouble & Love (2014, In the Black): folk singer-songwriter from Louisiana, moves slowly through eight songs, deepening their truth [r]: A-
• Paul Giallorenzo's GitGo: Force Majeure (2013 [2014], Delmark): Chicago pianist with the fun horns of the original V5 (Jeb Bishop, Mars Williams) [cd]: B+(***)
• Brian Groder Trio: Reflexology (2013 [2014], Latham): trumpet trio with Michael Bisio and Jay Rosen, avant-jazzers working within the tradition [cd]: B+(***)
• Chrissie Hynde: Stockholm (2014, Caroline): past pretending to be a Pretender, sounds unique as ever but never was so great that's all she needs [r]: B+(*)
• Ideal Bread: Beating the Teens: Songs of Steve Lacy (2013 [2014], Cuneiform, 2CD): quartet (Josh Sinton, Kirk Knuffke, Tomas Fujiwara) dedicated to Steve Lacy plays on (and on) [cd]: B+(***)
• Dolly Parton: Blue Smoke (2014, Sony Masterworks): terrific Dylan cover, amusing French-speak, nice one about old friends, hot up front, then cluttered [cd]: B+(*)
• Adam Schroeder: Let's (2013 [2014], Capri): baritone saxophonist, fine contrast to Anthony Wilson's guitar, with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton [cd]: B+(***)
• The David Ullmann 8: Corduroy (2014, Little Sky): guitarist leads an octet with four name horns (Stillman, McGinnis, Knuffke, Drye) and vibes [cd]: B+(**)
• Peter Van Huffel's Gorilla Mask: Bite My Blues (2013 [2014], Clean Feed): avant-grunge trio (sax and electric bass), plays at ugly, gets serious at ugly [cd]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Sleepy John Estes with Hammie Nixon: Live in Japan (1974 [2014], Delmark): grizzled oldtime blues whiner from Tennessee w/hometown harpist, served raw [r]: B+(***)

Old records rated this week:

• Air: Open Air Suit (1978, Novus): [r]: B+(**)
• Gil Evans: Gil Evans & Ten (1957 [1989], Prestige/OJC): [r]: B
• The Gil Evans Orchestra: Into the Hot (1961 [1999], Impulse): [r]: B
• Gil Evans/Steve Lacy: Paris Blues (1987 [1988], Owl): [r]: B+(**)
• Gerry Hemingway Quartet: Devil's Paradise (1999 [2003], Clean Feed): looks like a dream group (Ray Anderson, Ellery Eskelin, Mark Dresser), but not quite [r]: B+(***)
• Joe Henderson: Our Thing (1963 [1995], Blue Note): equally a showcase for Kenny Dorham, but look out for Andrew Hill's piano bubbling under it all [r]: A-
• Joe Henderson: Relaxin' at Camarillo (1979 [1993], Contemporary/OJC): tenor sax quartet, Henderson enjoys the sole horn slot, and Chick Corea is at his best [r]: A-
• New Air Featuring Cassandra Wilson: Air Show No. 1 (1986 [1989], Black Saint): [r]: B+(**)
• The Horace Silver Quintet: The Tokyo Blues (1962 [2009], Blue Note): one of the few Blue Notes I missed and for no good reason: catchy, funky, transcendent [r]: A-
• Horace Silver: Paris Blues: Olympia Theater, Paris, 1962 (1962 [2002], Pablo): live shot, repeats two Tokyo Blues tunes, adds three classics, stretched out a bit too much [r]: B+(**)
• Horace Silver: The Hardbop Grandpop (1996, Impulse): big time comeback album, the rush of stars (Michael Brecker, Steve Turre) missing the point [r]: B+(*)
• Horace Silver: Jazz Has a Sense of Humor (1998, Verve): last album, a new quintet young like the old ones, the old pianist feeling young too [r]: B+(***)
• Terrell Stafford: Centripetal Force (1996 [1997], Candid): [r]: B+(**)
• The Michael Jefry Stevens/Dominic Duval Quintet: Elements (1994 [1996], Leo): [r]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Alan Chan Jazz Orchestra: Shrimp Tale (Crown Heights Audio Network)
• Wayne Coniglio/Scott Whitfield: Fast Friends (Summit)
• Kali Z. Fasteau: Piano Rapture (Flying Note)
• Sam Most: New Jazz Standards (Summit)
• Anne Waldman: Jaguar Harmonics (Fast Speaking Music)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

June 20, 2014

I read Jill Lepore's The Disruption Machine: What the Gospel of Innovation Gets Wrong with great interest and a little nostalgia. Her subject is Clayton M. Christensen, who became an instant business guru with his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business. From 1980 through 2000, I worked in a variety of businesses -- two large typesetting equipment manufacturers, a prepress software startup, and an operating systems spinoff -- as a software engineer and product manager. Almost from the beginning, I had unusually close access to top management, in part because I always tried to look at the big picture, at how the business worked and what it needed to survive and grow. In this I was often informed by reading business management books, although I often took them with a grain of salt.

The first big fad book I ran into was In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies (1982), by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. The executives at my company at the time, Varityper, were much taken with the book, taking great pains to list out all the areas where their own management could be rated excellent. There was, in fact, little evidence for their conceit. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how they even managed to stay in business, and eventually came up with an understanding of how a company with mediocre products and service could muddle through. But the relevant lesson here was realizing how fickle top management could be, how readily they could fall for the flattery of self-appointed business gurus.

Christensen's book had a similar impact when I was working for SCO much later. Like In Search of Excellence, The Innovator's Dilemma attempts to promulgate a set of general lessons from a handful of carefully selected case studies. Lepore goes back and reviews those cases, showing how arbitrarily they were selected and how systematically they were misanalyzed, effectively demolishing the book's research claims. But like Peters, who parlayed his fame into a lucrative consulting business (and continued to churn out increasingly ecstatic books, including: Thriving on Chaos, Liberation Management, The Pursuit of WOW!, and after Christensen came around, Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age), Christensen moved to cash in almost immediately.

The notion of "disruption" made a certain intuitive sense to anyone in the computer industry. The essential fact of electronics since the advent of integrated circuits has been radically falling costs and increasing capacity. The central challenge that high-tech companies faced was to find new markets for newly cost-effective technology, and often as not this was done by startup companies. By definition, their success was innovative, and that contrasted with the staid "cash cow" management strategies popular in "mature" industries. Christensen's innovation was to add the word "disrupt" to management vocabularies, which made him a big hit with managers flattered by this swashbuckling identity.

Christensen's book set off a great snark hunt for "disruption." SCO's business was selling UNIX operating systems ported to Intel microprocessors. They mostly sold OS licenses for about $1000 per machine through VARs, who would combine relatively inexpensive PC hardware, UNIX, and their own applications software into some kind of turnkey system which would be price/performance competitive against offerings from Sun and other UNIX-based "workstation" vendors. You could make an argument that SCO's business model was disruptive, and indeed companies like Sun would lose a good deal of business in the following decade. Moreover, SCO's business plan called for them to continue to profit as ever-faster-and-cheaper Intel chips powered larger-and-larger "enterprise" computers. SCO's management hired Christensen to speak at one of their gatherings, and sure enough he blessed their business plan as "disruptive."

However, when I read the book, I drew a different lesson. I saw that SCO was increasingly vulnerable to Linux, the "open source" UNIX-like operating system that anyone could use and work on for free. Companies that adopted it could add features that they needed. They just couldn't keep those features exclusively, but sharing the code reduced their costs and helped Linux grow rapidly for larger and more powerful computers. (At the time, I often quipped that SCO could sell UNIX to people who were too smart for Microsoft, or to people who were too dumb for Linux, but not both at the same time.) Needless to say, despite their endorsement from Christensen, SCO got disrupted before they could disrupt anyone. They enjoyed record revenues leading up to the Y2K drop dead rate, then collapsed and were effectively out of business a couple years later.

I don't really think that Christensen's original research and thesis were as bad as Lepore makes out. I did get several useful insights from the book: particularly, a reminder of how desperately managers cling to existing margin models. (Not really news to me: I recall Varityper's VP of Marketing explaining to me that he would like to sell a publishing front end based on Apple's $10k Lisa computer but couldn't afford to sell one based on Apple's then-forthcoming $1.5k Macintosh. The former turned out to be an overpriced stepping stone, while the latter turned out to be the desktop publishing platform that ate the entire typesetting industry. We were, by the way, fully aware of DTP start-ups like Aldus, but we were petrified by our business model.) But what I find indefensible about Christensen is how he turned his research into a business, and how easily he perverted that research into paid advertising.

My academic background was in sociology, and my focus there was in understanding how sociological research is perverted to reproduce the assumptions of its practitioners. Happens all the time, even when the researcher isn't the least bit corrupt or deceitful. But sociology at least aims at being a science. The same can't be said of whatever you call what business departments do: like, say, seminaries, they train people to fulfill a function (e.g., CEO) and to that end provide some common cultural information, scattered skills, and contacts. I don't know what all goes into the making of an MBA -- I imagine one popular course would be "Sports Clichés for Managers" but it could be that everyone in the program would test out of that -- but the essential insight MBA programs aim for seems to be that money is everything (at least all that matters). That's the environment that produces con men like Christensen.

Some other posts commenting on Lepore's piece:

• Paul Krugman: Creative Destruction Yada Yada
• Andrew Leonard: The emperor of "disruption theory" is wearing no clothes

Krugman makes the best point, which is that not only does the cult theory of disruptive innovation flatter rich high-tech entrepreneurs, it lets them be more insensitive to the plight of others (the people commonly known as losers. Krugman also recalls how Schumpeter's famous definition of capitalism as "creative destruction" has the same effect, hence its popularity among capitalists.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

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