Desolation row: Dylan signs with Starbucks
His protest songs made him the figurehead of the anti-establishment movement that defined America during the 1960s. But yesterday Bob Dylan was facing accusations of selling out after it emerged the singer had agreed an exclusive deal to sell some of his rarest tracks at Starbucks, the coffee shop chain targeted by anti-globalization protesters as a symbol of American cultural dominance. (Guardian UK)
Uncle Sam really wants you
The New York Times’ Bob Herbert on the when the Army goes to school
[Note that the so-called No Child Left Behind Act mandates each district that receives funds under NCLB comply with requests by military recruiters for high school students’ names, addresses, and telephone numbers, unless a parent has “opted out” of providing such information.
Districts receiving federal funds are also required to give military recruiters the same access to high school students as they provide to postsecondary institutions or to prospective employers. For example, if the school has a policy of allowing postsecondary institutions or prospective employers to come onto school property to provide information to students about educational and professional opportunities, it must afford the same access to military recruiters.]
June 16, 2005
Uncle Sam Really Wants You
By BOB HERBERT
With the situation in Iraq deteriorating and the willingness of Americans to serve in the armed forces declining, a little-known Army publication called the “School Recruiting Program Handbook” is becoming increasingly important, and controversial.
The handbook is the recruiter’s bible, the essential guide for those who have to go into the nation’s high schools and round up warm bodies to fill the embarrassingly skimpy ranks of the Army’s basic training units.
The handbook declares forthrightly, “The goal is school ownership that can only lead to a greater number of Army enlistments.”
What I was not able to find in the handbook was anything remotely like the startlingly frank comments of a sergeant at Fort Benning, Ga., who was quoted in the May 30 issue of The Army Times. He was addressing troops in the seventh week of basic training, and the paper reported the scene as follows:
” ‘Does anybody know what posthumous means?’ Staff Sgt. Andre Allen asked the 150 infantrymen-in-training, members of F Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment.
“A few hands went up, but he answered his own question.
” ‘It means after death. Some of you are going to get medals that way,’ he said matter-of-factly, underscoring the possibility that some of them would be sent to combat and not return.”
That’s the honest message recruits get once they’re in. The approach recommended by the recruiting handbook is somewhat different. It’s much softer. Recruiters trying to sign up high school students are urged to schmooze, schmooze, schmooze.”The football team usually starts practicing in August,” the handbook says. “Contact the coach and volunteer to assist in leading calisthenics or calling cadence during team runs.”
“Homecoming normally happens in October,” the handbook says. “Coordinate with the homecoming committee to get involved with the parade.”
Recruiters are urged to deliver doughnuts and coffee to the faculty once a month, and to eat lunch in the school cafeteria several times a month. And the book recommends that they assiduously cultivate the students that other students admire: “Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist.”
It’s not known how aware parents are that recruiters are inside public high schools aggressively trying to lure their children into wartime service. But not all schools get the same attention. Those that get the royal recruitment treatment tend to be the ones with students whose families are less affluent than most.
Schools with kids from wealthier families (and a high percentage of collegebound students) are not viewed as good prospects by military recruiters. It’s as if those schools had posted signs at the entrances saying, “Don’t bother.” The kids in those schools are not the kids who fight America’s wars.
Now, with the death toll in Iraq continuing to mount, it’s getting harder to sign up even the less affluent kids. So the recruitment effort in the target schools has intensified. Recruiters, already driven in some cases to the brink of nervous exhaustion, are following the handbook guidelines more rigorously than ever.
“If you wait until they’re seniors, it’s probably too late,” the book says. It also says, “Don’t forget the administrative staff. … Have something to give them (pen, calendar, cup, donuts, etc.) and always remember secretary’s week, with a card or flowers.”
The sense of desperation is palpable: “Get involved with local Boy Scout troops. Scoutmasters are typically happy to get any assistance you can offer. Many scouts are [high school] students and potential enlistees or student influencers.”
One of the many problems here is that adolescents should not be hounded by military recruiters under any circumstances, and they shouldn’t be pursued at all without the full knowledge and consent of parents or guardians.
Let the Army be honest and upfront in its recruitment. War is not child’s play, and warriors shouldn’t be assembled through the use of seductive sales pitches to youngsters too immature to make an informed decision on matters that might well result in their having to kill others, or being killed themselves.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Will court ruling stop file swapping?
Will the US Supreme Court ruling stop file swapping? … I doubt it.
US Supreme Court rules against file swapping
Nobody should be suprised that the US Supreme Court decision protects capitalists at the expense of users of peer-to-peer technology.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of studios and record labels Monday in the closely watched case on file-swapping. In a unanimous decision, justices said that peer to peer software companies should be liable for the copyright infringement of people using their products.
“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement,” wrote Justice David Souter in the majority opinion.
Big media interlocks with corporate America
The Project Censored research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants.
The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:
- New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi
Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody’s
Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels
The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo
News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments
GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble
Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo
Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America
Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi
AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton
Of course, this circumstance produces rich rewards for the corporate elite, with media executives leading the pack (of capitalist wolves).
There’s more than a bit of irony in the news this anniversary of the IWW!
Fellow workers …
Today is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.).
From: Susan Matson’s column in the Seattle Times:
THE founding congress of the Industrial Workers of the World was called to order in Brand’s Hall on Chicago’s North Side on June 27, 1905. Around 200 prominent union leaders and progressive thinkers, including “Big Bill” Haywood, Eugene Debs, Daniel DeLeon, Lucy Parsons and Mary Harris (aka “Mother Jones”), gathered to establish a labor organization “broad enough to take in all the working class,” one that would have “but one object and one purpose and that is to bring the workers of this country into the possession of the full value of the product of their toil.”
Also see:
Paul Buhle’s article on the “Legacy of the I.W.W.” in June issue of Monthly Review as well as Buhle and Nicole Schulman’s wonderful book: WOBBLIES!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Harry Slitonen’s The IWW–It’s First 100 Years
The war on work
Tom Hodgkinson, founder of the magazine The Idler, obviously has not been strictly adhering to his own advice as he has a new book titled … How To Be Idle.
Yesterday’s NYTRB reviews the book in a mostly positive way, but implies Hodginson is a bit lazy in the latter half, but isn’t that to be expected?
A NYTRB reviewer (and food critic) Jeffrey Steingarten notes:
The chief problem with modern life is not work in itself. It is jobs. In 1993 Hodgkinson founded the British magazine The Idler, on whose Web site he succinctly sums up the horrors of having a job: ”With a very few exceptions the world of jobs is characterized by stifling boredom, grinding tedium, poverty, petty jealousies, sexual harassment, loneliness, deranged co-workers, bullying bosses, seething resentment, illness, exploitation, stress, helplessness, hellish commutes, humiliation, depression, appalling ethics, physical fatigue and mental exhaustion.” Yes, that pretty much sums it up. On this we can all agree.
Agreed.
Moonlight was fleeting
June 29, 1905–exactly 100 years ago on Wednesday–Archibald Wright Graham made his lone appearance in the majors.
Moonlight was fleeting
Ben Walker
Associated Press
Saturday, June 25, 2005
He only played one game in the bigs, but Archibald ‘Moonlight’ Graham was still featured on a baseball card in his rookie year.
His big league career lasted all of one game, a few fleeting moments in right field.
He stood out there on a summer afternoon so long ago, on a patch of grass since paved over in Brooklyn. Yet many folks are certain Moonlight Graham was a made-up character from a movie, not a real-life ball player for the New York Giants.
“Field of Dreams was before my time,” said Willie Mays, the greatest Giant of them all. “That was a real thing? How come nobody told me?”
Yet the tale is true, at least most of it. Because on June 29, 1905 — exactly 100 years ago on Wednesday — Archibald Wright Graham made his lone appearance in the majors.
He never got to hit. Instead, he was left on deck. A late substitute in a lopsided 11-1 win, he played only two innings and there’s no proof he ever touched the ball.”Graham went to right field for New York” was his only mention in the local Evening Telegram’s play-by-play account. And, just that fast, the 28-year-old rookie described in the sporting press as being “quick as a flash of moonlight” was gone.
No wonder it took quite awhile for his story to get around — and for British Columbia author W.P. Kinsella to make Graham such a part of the poetry and romance that celebrate the lore of baseball.
More than a decade after Graham died in 1965, the prize-winning author was leafing through the Baseball Encyclopedia that his father-in-law had given him for Christmas a few days earlier. Among the listings for every player and their lifetime stats, Kinsella came across something that stopped him. “I found this entry for Moonlight Graham. How could anyone come up with that nickname? He played one game, but did not get to bat. I was intrigued, and I made a note that I intended to write something about him.”
A few years later, he did. His 1982 novel Shoeless Joe was adapted into the 1989 film Field of Dreams, and Moonlight was reborn.
Eventually, there was a band called Moonlight Graham, a couple of websites were dedicated to him and a scholarship fund established in his honour.
“I didn’t anticipate this happening,” Kinsella said in a phone interview from his home in Yale.
In the movie, Graham’s name mystically flickers onto the scoreboard at Fenway Park. Reflecting on the one at-bat he never got in the bigs, he says: “Back then I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be other days.’ I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”
And he asks, “Is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?”
Veda Ponikvar knew Graham for almost a half-century in Chisholm, Minn. He arrived around 1912 after the town placed a newspaper ad for a school doctor, and Ponikvar said he never boasted about his ballplaying — or explained his enchanting nickname.
“I think it was because by the light of the moon, he practised his game,” she guessed. “But some people said it was because he moonlighted as a doctor.”
No matter, she said, Burt Lancaster’s kindly portrayal was perfect. “I remember probably in the third grade when he inoculated me for scarlet fever,” she said. “I still have the mark on my arm. Growing up, I thought it was the most horrible thing. Later on, I thought, ‘Oh, Doc Graham, you’re pretty precious. You left your mark.”‘
Now in her mid-80s, she’ll be at the Metrodome on Wednesday to throw out the first ball before Kansas City plays Minnesota on Moonlight Graham Day.
All because of sheer luck.
When Kinsella thumbed through the Baseball Encyclopedia, he could have easily turned to the pages for Twink Twining, Goat Cochran or Steamboat Struss. Of the more than 16,000 players in major league history, they’re also among the 900-plus guys in the Elias Sports Bureau registry who got into only one game.
“I had no backup,” Kinsella said. “My approach to fiction writing is that when I need facts, I invent them. So I would have invented a background for Moonlight Graham, but I’m sure nothing as wonderful as the truth. It was a gold mine.”
OK, so what if he really didn’t play on the last day of the 1922 season, as in the movie? Or that he batted left-handed, rather than righty in the film? Or that he got sent down after his one big league game and spent three more years in the minors?
Those blue hats he bought for his wife, Alecia? “Absolutely true,” Ponikvar said.
Los Angeles Angels star Darin Erstad estimated he’s watched it 20 to 30 times.
“It’s a special thing because it’s a dream of a lot of kids out there, to have the opportunity to put on a big league uniform for just that one time. And that part of the movie really summed that up,” he said. “When you see guys who are career minor leaguers who get an opportunity to come up . . . they can always say that all that hard work they put in was worth it.”
Americans irk Canadians: study
And “survey says”… that Americans pretty much agree with the Canadians.
Seventy percent of Americans consider themselves as “greedy” and 40 percent say they are “immoral”. Hmm … primarily Republicans I bet!
Sixty-nine percent of Americans agree that they are “disliked” by others, so I guess that means the survey’s findings are self-confirming.
BTW, my closest Canadian “friend,” after of years of personal experience with one American in particular, confirms that Americans irk Canadians.
Seems we Yanks, while generally admired by our “Neighbors to the North” for our hardwork and inventiveness, are considered loud, rude, and obnoxious by quite, polite, and chaming Canucks.
My friend does disagree about a couple of survey findings (e.g., the “hardworking” and “inventive” parts) … but like most American I think I pretty much agree with her Canadian perspective.
Americans irk Canadians: study
Anti-U.S. sentiment has grown fastest here since 2002, survey of 16 countries suggests
By ALAN FREEMAN
Friday, June 24, 2005 Page A18
WASHINGTON — Canadians have an increasingly dim view of Americans, considering their neighbours as rude, greedy and violent, yet at the same time an overwhelming majority of Canadians smugly believe their country is beloved by people around the world.
The growing discontent of Canadians with the United States and its foreign policy was highlighted yesterday by a 16-nation attitude survey published by the Pew Research Center.
The institute said the survey shows anti-Americanism in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which surged after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, has shown some sign of moderating, but the United States “remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed.”
U.S. policy and President George W. Bush, in particular, remain distinctly unpopular in France, Germany and Spain, but the Pew Center says among traditional U.S. allies, it is in Canada that opinions of the United States have declined most markedly since 2002, when the survey was first taken.While a majority of Canadians still have a favourable view of the United States, that proportion has fallen from 72 per cent in 2002 to 59 per cent.
Only 45 per cent of Canadians now back the U.S.-led war on terrorism, while 78 per cent backed the war three years ago; 80 per cent of Canadians now say they are glad Canada stayed out of Iraq. And 75 per cent of Canadians say they have a less favourable view of the United States since Mr. Bush’s re-election.
“There’s no question there are negative feelings,” in Canada, said former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who co-chaired the survey. “Some of it has to do with the fact that we are the Big Foot to the south.”
She added that she believes it was primarily a “family squabble” and that views and values in both countries remain similar.
Canadians’ views of American personal attributes are more negative than residents of any other traditional U.S. ally.
While 77 per cent of Canadians surveyed believe Americans are hard-working and 76 per cent believe they’re inventive, 62 per cent say Americans are greedy and 64 per cent believe they are violent.
What the Pew institute found particularly remarkable is that 53 per cent of Canadians found Americans to be rude, compared with only 36 per cent of French respondents and 29 per cent of Britons.
Americans did not lack in self-criticism. While a large majority of Americans consider themselves to be hard-working and inventive, 70 per cent see themselves as greedy and 39 per cent see themselves as immoral.
Americans recognize they are unloved, with 69 per cent agreeing that “we’re disliked” by others, while only 26 per cent feel as if the United States is loved.
Canadians, on the other hand, are utterly convinced of their popularity, with a breathtaking 94 per cent believing Canada is popular with others and only 4 per cent believing it is not liked.
Among developed countries, only the Dutch at 83 per cent, come anywhere close to Canadians in their conviction that they are beloved in the world.
But Canada doesn’t win the sweepstakes as the world’s leading land of opportunity. Asked where a young person should emigrate to in order to “lead a good life,” Australia was picked by respondents in four countries, including Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Canada. Canada was chosen as the leading land of opportunity in three countries — France, the United States and China. Two countries picked Britain and Germany.
Many of those surveyed believe it would be a good idea for the U.S. to face some rivalry for pre-eminence on the world stage, with 85 per cent of French respondents believing it would be good if the European Union or another entity emerges as a military rival to the U.S.
Canadians share this desire for increased autonomy, with 57 per cent looking for a more independent policy from the United States, compared with 43 per cent in 2003.
The Pew survey was conducted among almost 17,000 people in 16 countries from April 20 to May 3
“Waging a living”
NYT film review of “Waging a Living,”
directed by Roger Weisberg
Tales of the Poor, Working to Survive in America
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
New York Times June 22, 2005
For most of the readers of this newspaper a 25-cent increase in hourly wage would hardly be cause for celebration. But for at least one of the subjects of “Waging a Living” – an eye-opening, often heartbreaking documentary about America’s working poor – that pittance could mean the difference between disaster and survival.
Filmed over a three-year period in the Northeast and California, “Waging a Living” tracks four ethnically diverse, low-wage workers as they struggle to bridge the gap between paycheck and expenses. “There’s no American dream anymore,” sighs Jean Reynolds, 51, a certified nursing assistant supporting three children and four grandchildren on $1,200 a month. In common with 78 percent of low-wage workers, Jean has no health insurance and faces eviction when she must choose between paying her rent and purchasing medication for her terminally ill daughter.Middle-aged divorc