(from The Nation, Ryan Devereaux, September 29, 2010. . . )
". . . As a candidate, Barack Obama opposed the Bush administration’s embrace of the state secrets privilege as tactic for deflecting litigation as part of his argument for greater transparency in Washington. He maintained the position, at least rhetorically, following his election. In a memo discussing the Freedom of Information Act in February 2009 the president wrote, “A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.”
In an 18-month review of President Obama’s record on human rights, national security and civil liberties entitled “TheNewNormal,” Jaffer and Wizner praise the early accomplishments of the administration—including its release of crucial information regarding the Bush administration’s torture regime—but they also warn of a potential pitfall on the horizon. “There is a very real danger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration. There is a real danger, in other words, that the Obama administration will preside over the creation of a ‘new normal.’”
The Obama administration has invoked the state secrets privilege for the second time in less than a month—most recently in an effort to shut down discussion on the targeted killing of a US civilian who has not been charged of any crime—the new normal may have just arrived. . . "
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
Visiting a local vineyard/winery this weekend which presented a show by a local Shakespeare repertory company (The Shakespeare Factory- a professional non-union ensemble company who employ the staging
conditions of Shakespeare’s time as closely as possible for each
production- see http://theshakespearefactory.com/). Wine tastings were offered as well as stews and artisan bread to enhance the 'period' atmosphere. I was 'tasting' the wines with the three, lovely ladies accompanying me for the production at one of the two, heavily attended tasting stations and attempting to allow the limited staff to attend to the willing tasters by grouping ourselves at the corner of the bar, myself at the bar and the others branching outward away from me and the bar and passing four glasses back and forth in attempt to allow the four of us to taste all six wines offered while leaving the remainder of the tasting station free for other tasters.
In the midst of an extremely enjoyable wine tasting experience (and the wines were quite good too) I noticed a rather sour looking gentleman at the far end of the crowd, the number of which I am not quite certain, who appeared to grow more perturbed as time passed.
Finally he stepped forward and said to ME, not to the person operating the tasting station, that 'you have monopolized this tasting' and not allowed others to partake and . . . (not really sure exactly what else he said) but he was clearly unhappy that he had not gotten HIS WINE! Guess you could say he was whining about his lack of wine. I responded only by stating the obvious fact that this was a 'wine tasting' and that I and three others were together tasting our allotted six samples of wine.
The obviously conscientious caretaker of the tasting station quickly spoke up and asked the gentleman what he would like and assured him that it would be served forthwith. The man, still clearly unhappy, took a glass (maybe two, I didn't really pay much attention to the details) and began to depart the station but in his befuddlement about the process of wine tasting and a possible desire to maintain his imaginary upper hand, he made it a point to mumble unmistakably in my direction. . . "ASSHOLE."
Who do you think was the asshole????. . . . (and do you think this tragic situation left him 'heartbroken'?)
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
. . . coughs as he ploughs the dough?? (Dr. Seuss)
No. . . it's OHO. . .
(from John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress and courtesy of wikipedia.com)
'This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.'
Assumption Parish, 45 miles south of Baton Rouge is home to fishermen, farmers and the oil and gas industry. In the spring of 2012, residents noticed what appeared to be boiling water in the bayou. Small earthquakes followed. State officials determined the bubbles were from a single, natural gas source such as a pipeline.
In early August, near a small residential community in Assumption, the earth beneath the Bayou Corne gave way resulting in a large, deep sinkhole filled with water, underground brines, oil and natural gas. At its largest, the hole covered about 8 acres.
300 residents were evacuated as the governor declared a statewide emergency. Geologists have never seen anything like it before.
Texas Brine, a drilling and storage firm is believed to be at the root of the sinkhole phenomenon in Assumption. The firm's salt cavern, used to produce salty brine which is needed to manufacture chloride and chemicals for plastics, collapsed from the side and filled with rock, oil and gas from deposits around the salt formation. The pressure caused a "frack out", much like "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) done by the oil industry to obtain natural gas from underground.
Texas Brine claimed the cavern collapsed from natural seismic activity and not the reverse, as determined by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and has not officially taken responsibility. USGS, nor the world, has ever faced such a situation and there is no clear path for cleaning it up. No one is sure when, or even if, residents will be allowed to return to their homes.
Texas Brine is now under state orders to pay a weekly $875 stipend to each evacuated household. The firm has also set up flaming torches to vent the natural gas contaminating the aquifer.
(read more at http://truth-out.org/news/item/13136-bayou-frack-out-the-massive-oil-and-gas-disaster-youve-never-heard-of)
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
In his seven-decade career, Dave Brubeck was an artistic and a commercial success, a pianist and composer who expanded the musical landscape and who crossed other borders as one of the world's foremost ambassadors of jazz.
He had an inventive style that brought international music into the jazz mainstream, but he was more than a musical innovator: He was an American original.
Mr. Brubeck died Wednesday at a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., one day before his 92nd birthday. His manager, Russell Gloyd, said Mr. Brubeck was on his way to a regular checkup with his cardiologist when his heart gave out.
Considered one of the greatest figures of a distinctively American art form, Mr. Brubeck was a modest man who left a monumental legacy. His 1959 recording "Time Out," with its infectious hit "Take Five," became the first jazz album to sell 1 million copies. He toured once-forbidden countries in the Middle East and in the old Soviet empire and was honored by presidents and foreign dignitaries.
He wrote hundreds of tunes, including the oft-recorded "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke." His quartet, featuring alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, was one of the most popular jazz groups in history, and he kept up a busy performing schedule into his 90th year.
He also composed ambitious classical and choral works, released nearly 100 albums and remained a charismatic and indefatigable performer into old age. In December 2010, the month Mr. Brubeck turned 90, his quartet won the readers' poll of DownBeat magazine as the best group in jazz, 57 years after he first won the poll.
A bespectacled cowboy who grew up on a remote California ranch, Mr. Brubeck was known for his complex rhythmic patterns, which he said were inspired by riding his horse and listening to its syncopated hoofbeats striking the ground.
He studied in the 1940s with the experimental French composer Darius Milhaud, who encouraged his interest in jazz. Mr. Brubeck was among the first jazz musicians to make wide use of polytonality, or playing in more than one musical key at a time. He was also an early advocate of "world music," adopting exotic sounds that he heard in his worldwide travels.
After forming his quartet in California in the early 1950s, he sought to branch out from the dank nightclubs of San Francisco and Los Angeles. His wife, Iola, suggested the quartet perform on college campuses, which produced a nationwide sensation, with record sales to match.
"We reached them musically," he told The New York Times in 1967. "We had no singers, no beards, no jokes. All we presented was music."
With their curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses, Desmond and Mr. Brubeck looked like professorial brothers and were unlikely jazz stars. The two had an instant musical bond and could anticipate each other's bandstand improvisations, as Desmond's ethereal, upper-register saxophone soared above Mr. Brubeck's driving keyboard attack.
With the release of "Time Out" in 1959, Mr. Brubeck had the first jazz album to sell more than 1 million copies. It reached No. 2 on the pop charts, and its eternally catchy signature tune, "Take Five," became a surprise hit.
The tune, written by Desmond but heavily arranged by Mr. Brubeck, built a memorable melody over a complex rhythm in the unusual time signature of 5/4. "Take Five" became a staple of his concerts and helped make the Dave Brubeck Quartet the most popular jazz group of the 1950s and '60s.
"Every once in a while," jazz historian and critic Ted Gioia wrote in an email exchange with The Washington Post, "jazz is blessed by one of those great figures who can do it all. They give us a body of work that is full of musical riches ... but the music also can appeal to the average listener. Dave Brubeck is one of those figures."
"Cool jazz"
Mr. Brubeck's position in musical history has often been debated. He was born the same year as Charlie Parker, the tortured genius of the bebop movement who brought a new rhythmic and harmonic sophistication to jazz in the 1940s, but Mr. Brubeck was never a true bebopper. He defied the raffish image of the jazz musician by being a clean-living family man who lived with his wife and six children.
He was considered a seminal force in the West Coast's understated "Cool Jazz" school of the 1950s, but he disdained the "Cool Jazz" label and preferred to forge an original musical path.
After early struggles, he was reportedly earning more than $100,000 a year by 1954, the year he became the second jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Time magazine (after Louis Armstrong in 1949).
Some musicians and critics resented his success, and others questioned his prominence in a form of music that was created primarily by black musicians.
But Mr. Brubeck was an outspoken advocate of racial harmony and often used his music as a platform for cross-cultural understanding. He once canceled 23 of 25 concerts in the South when local officials would not allow his African-American bass player, Eugene Wright, to appear with the rest of the group.
On a tour in the Netherlands in the 1950s, African-American pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith was asked, in Mr. Brubeck's presence, "Isn't it true that no white man can play jazz?"
Smith gestured toward Mr. Brubeck and said to the reporter, "I'd like you to meet my son."
In 1958, Mr. Brubeck and his quartet undertook an international tour for the State Department, spreading the improvisatory spirit of jazz to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Sri Lanka, among other countries. In Poland, they were among the first U.S. jazz musicians to perform behind the Iron Curtain.
In each new country, Mr. Brubeck mingled with musicians, absorbing local rhythms and melodies. Long before the term "world music" gained currency, he was writing compositions that borrowed elements he had heard in Mexico, Japan, Turkey, India, Afghanistan and other countries.
Cowboy childhood
David Warren Brubeck was born Dec. 6, 1920, in Concord, Calif. He and his family lived on a 45,000-acre ranch near Ione.
His father was a champion rodeo roper and his mother was a conservatory-trained pianist who had studied in London with concert star Dame Myra Hess. She gave her three sons a surprisingly advanced musical education, and his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, became music teachers and composers.
Because of early eyesight problems, Mr. Brubeck always had difficulty reading musical notation. He compensated by learning to improvise and to play by ear, which served him well in jazz.
At the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., he had planned to study veterinary medicine. But a zoology professor saw how much time he spent in the music department and suggested he change majors.
A dean called him a disgrace but allowed him to graduate after a professor pleaded on his behalf, calling him a budding genius.
In college, Mr. Brubeck proposed on his first date with Iola Whitlock, and the two were married in 1942.
During World War II, Mr. Brubeck was pulled from the ranks of an infantry unit by an Army colonel, who asked him to start a jazz band to entertain troops on the front lines.
After the war, he did graduate work at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., with Milhaud and wrote and performed avant-garde jazz.
Drummer Joe Morello joined Mr. Brubeck and Desmond in 1956, followed by Wright in 1958, forming a group that recorded dozens of records and found international acclaim. The quartet had a huge following until it split up in 1967.
Besides his wife, of Wilton, Conn., survivors include his four sons and a daughter.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Brubeck formed a new quartet, with which he toured until shortly before his death.
In 1996, he won a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement, and he was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2009.
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
“There but for the grace of God,' said John Bradford in the sixteenth century, on seeing wretches led to execution, 'go I.' What this apparently compassionate observation really means--not that it really 'means' anything--is, 'There by the grace of God goes someone else.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
. . . there was a 'plan'. The campaign had gotten nastier with time and, in spite of the opposition's lack of factual currency, began to lean in the other direction. And what a beauty of a 'plan' it was. Much like a past incumbency's 'wag the dog' scenario which was choreographed years ago without any serious consequences. If the required discretion could be maintained, it would be a coup.
A long, long-time international fugitive of the most despicable character, at least here at home, finally tracked down and killed, secretly, quietly, neatly, professionally; very James Bond-ian. How could he not secure re-election.
(Later) All went just as planned. Done, finished, complete, successful. A few minor snags with Navy Seals a little too loose-lipped afterward. But all was taken care-of without major incident. The election, by the way, also went in the planned direction. Four more years, integrity intact, no probing questions. But was the target, in truth, the long-sought after culprit of the worst terror attacks in the history of the world? Was an innocent person killed for political gain? Or was the whole thing 'staged'?
But in less than a week after election day, strange, unsettling, unusual, unbelievable news arose. The terrorist mastermind, so neatly disposed of, and whose assassination so neatly accomplishing its purpose, it was learned by the administration . . . had died ELEVEN YEARS AGO!
. . . or is it???
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
