For those of us who still care about bands like Zeppelin, this post is for you.
Their one-off reunion took place last night in London at the tribute concert for Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. The reviews and YouTube videos are starting to pour in. NME's review covered the two hour set (set list below the fold). Yowsa! They've also dedicated a blog post to concert videos that are making the circuit.
Below is a video that someone was kind enough to shoot during the show - all of Kashmir. Enjoy!
Set List:
'Good Times Bad Times' 'Ramble On' 'Black Dog' 'In My Time Of Dying' 'For Your Life' 'Trampled Under Foot' 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' 'No Quarter' 'Since I've Been Loving You' 'Dazed And Confused' 'Stairway To Heaven' 'The Song Remains The Same' 'Misty Mountain Hop' 'Kashmir' 'Whole Lotta Love' 'Rock And Roll'
The defense of the destruction of the interrogation tapes is gearing up, and it looks like Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr, the CIA official named as the person who ordered them trashed, is saying that the lawyers said it was okay. From the New York Times:
Lawyers within the clandestine branch of the Central Intelligence Agency gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two lieutenants from Al Qaeda, according to a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode.
[...]
The involvement of agency lawyers in the decision making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department. Any written documents are certain to be a focus of government investigators as they try to reconstruct the events leading up to the tapes’ destruction.
The former intelligence official acknowledged that there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them. But the official said that C.I.A. officials had continued to press the White House for a firm decision, and that the C.I.A. was never given a direct order not to destroy the tapes.
“They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’” he said. “If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them.”
I'd like to hear from any lawyers out there who can come up with a reasonable explanation as to why the agency lawyers would give their written approval to destroy the tapes. And I wonder if there's anyone in any of these agencies who might think that even if the lawyers said it was okay to destroy the tapes, it didn't occur to them that perhaps the lawyers might be wrong... or trying to cover up for another crime. It's not like lawyers aren't capable of breaking the law; after all, most of the people that went up the river for Watergate were lawyers.
At some point you would think that common sense would kick in and say, "Hey, these tapes are, like, you know, evidence...and there are laws against destroying the evidence...and if someone finds out that we destroyed them, the shit is gonna hit the fan." Well, shit, meet fan. (Yeah, I know; common sense in a bureaucracy. What am I thinking?)
It also makes you wonder what kind of mindset would think that they could get away with it. Kevin Drum has a few thoughts on that:
Let me get this straight. The White House had been in the loop for two years. The CIA had received letters from both the Justice Department and congressional leaders arguing that the tapes shouldn't be destroyed. The CIA's top lawyer had been involved for the entire time. And yet we're supposed to believe that, in 2005, a mid-ranking agency lawyer suddenly decided the tapes could be destroyed and the head of the clandestine branch then gave the order to do so without anyone else being involved? Really? Does anyone actually believe this story?
In the wake of a tragic shooting stretching between a missionary training school and a Colorado Springs megachurch, which ended only when a church parishioner-and-security guard killed the shooter, take the earliest possible opportunity to say something hateful (and totally wrong) about Muslims and share a report that the shooter "hated Christians," labeling the whole thing a hate crime against Christians.
Ignore—whatever you do, ignore—information about the shooter like this:
Murray, 24, was home-schooled by his family and raised in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household.
Also ignore that the shooter had been sending the missionary program hate mail after having been kicked out because the "program directors felt that issues with his health made it inappropriate for him" to stay.
A devout Christian quite likely suffering from untreated mental illness is not exactly the picture you want to paint, so do whatever you can to make it sound like a coldly calculating anti-Christian committed the terrible deed. Sure, you'll look like an asshole later, but you'll rise again—your peers don't care how stupid you are, anyway. Just keep feeding their insatiable prejudices.
End note: Bonus points if you help delay the long overdue conversation the nation ought to be having about how we regard, diagnose, and treat mental illness.
Former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby this morning gave up the appeal of his perjury and obstruction convictions in connection with the CIA leak case, his attorney said.
Libby, whose 30-month prison sentence was commuted by President Bush just before he was to begin serving it, continues to maintain his innocence, attorney Theodore V. Wells Jr. said in a statement. But, Wells said, "the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear."
As a result, Wells said, Libby filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington today to dismiss the appeal.
Since Bush gave him a free pass, what does he care about "complete vindication"? It's not like he's got a whole lot of scruples let to stand up for anyway.
Anyway, now that the Libby case is over, what does the White House have to say since its no longer before the courts? Dana?
From ThinkProgress, an interesting quote from Mike Huckabee about why we're even dealing with him now:
I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives. […]
I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.
As Shakesville Heeb Laureate, I can say that this will not happen. Christ never wanted the country, and he doesn't want you to take it back. Leave it where it is and the way it is. If you like, we can arrange a mass evacuation of all psychos to be dropped off on some island to make your very own Christ Isle.
And while you're at it, you may want to review who Christ hung out with (i.e. the sick, "teh sinnerz") before you start ranting about quarantining people, in Christ's name.
Today is the final day of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence, during which I suppose I have blogged exactly as often as always about violence against women, in America and abroad. Sometimes it feels like it's all I ever write about; sometimes it feels like I can't possibly write about it enough to do the issue justice; often, those feelings exist within me simultaneously. All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon.
So really, the best thing—indeed, the only thing—I can do to honor International Human Rights Day and the conclusion of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence is this: I promise to keep working my teaspoon, even when my arms are tired.
It's no mystery that Bush has some issues with the act of diplomacy. This petulant behavior of refusing to meet other leaders that he has a problem with reminds me of a child not wanting to come out of his room when company comes over.
With North Korea, the best he has been able to come up with is a simple letter with some priceless doodling. Yea, sure. That will get Kim Jong Ill running to the table with reckless abandon.
Well, it looks like some other people have taken the opportunity to do Bush's work for him: The New York Philharmonic.
New York's Philharmonic Orchestra will make a historic trip to North Korea in February, it has announced.
Orchestra president Zarin Mehtat said it would play in the capital Pyongyang on 26 February.
The reclusive communist country's ministry of culture sent an invitation to the orchestra in August.
This is the first US cultural visit to North Korea, and it is being seen as a breakthrough in the countries' tense relationship.
Bush is doing such a great job on the North Korean front that they have chosen to deal directly with the NY Philharmonic instead of him. Can't say I blame them. I would much rather listen to beautifully performed classical music than the discordant cacophonous spewing of lies and bullshit that come from Bush and his administration.
"We have more in common with a male dog than we do with a woman in [the commitment] department. This may be male chauvinism in a certain context. But, baby, it's also science."—Jack Nicholson.
Mr. Shakes and I have many things in common, but our talent at locating things is not one of them. I'm the kind of person who remembers where I saw that little piece of paper with the number to that place that fixes the things that so-and-so recommended to us six months ago; at any given moment, I can tell him that this is in the second drawer of the kitchen and that is sitting on the work table on the far side of the garage and his shoes (him, always with the "Have ye seen my shoes?") are just inside the back door.
I remember one of Roseanne's earliest stand-up bits was about how men think women's uteruses are homing devices, and I suspect mine may actually be one, as my body has adjusted, much as it would to a catastrophic injury, to being married to someone who not only can't find things, but can't remember where he puts things, and never puts anything in the same place twice, even if it has a natural, logical home. Why put the meat scissors in the knife block when you can put them on the desk in the office, or the toolbox, or just leave them on the dining room table after using them to trim an errant thread off your trousers?
If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. Fates save me, I actually find his absent-mindedness endearing. It's the being such a dreadful Finder of Things that has the capacity to drive me 'round the bend, as I try to magically divine in what random place he might have left something the last time he used it. I have, after all, found milk in the cupboard and flour in the laundry room cabinet.
Worse yet, he seems patently incapable of finding something even, and perhaps especially, when it is directly in front of his face.
"Where is the ketchup?" he implores, stooped and hovering in front of the open refrigerator door. I peer over his shoulder and tell him it's there, right there, on the top shelf, center, right under your bleedin' nose. He laughs sheepishly and grabs it. "Ooh! Thanks, babe."
Where is the remoote? Where is my wallet? Have you seen the case foor this DVD? Right in front of you. Ooh! Thanks, babe.
Sometimes I marvel at the sheer implausibility of it. I ask him how it's possible that the unconcealed visibility of something inevitably informs in direct proportion his inability to see it. It's evolution, he tells me with a cheeky grin, just to wind me up. "Men were built tae be hoonters. The soorvivial oof the species was dependent oon my having superior peripheral vision, soo I coould detect the beasties I was hoontin', even little boonies and that."
"Yes," I reply dryly. "I can see the obvious evolutionary value in being able to detect a teensy wee rabbit off to your side but fail to notice a giant moose in front of your face."
"Noo you're beginning tae oonderstand the delicate coomplexities oof manhood, wooman," he tells me, and as my eyes begin to roll, he can do nothing, then, but laugh.
Last night, he couldn't find who-remembers-what-now, and I had occasion to note, once again, that it was right in front of him. "Ooh! Thanks, babe."
"I swear sometimes I worry that if my life depended on your phoning 911, I'd die for wont of your being able to locate the phone," I say.
"Why woould I need tae call nine-woon-woon?" he asks.
"I don't know. Like, say I fell down the stairs and broke my neck or something."
"Ye'd be deed as soon as yoor neck brooke," he tells me matter-of-factly.
"Not everyone who breaks their neck dies!" I exclaim.
"Moost," he says.
"Wev!" I sigh exasperatedly. "The point is that I worry you won't be able to find the bloody phone."
"I will!" he protests. "I'm great in a crisis. Quick thinkin' oonder pressure."
"You are," I say. "But finding things is a different story."
"I'm good at findin' things!" he says, despite the impetus for this entire conversation being that he is, in fact, patently not.
"No you're not," I laugh.
He grins. "I am soo!"
"No, you're really, really not," I laugh.
"Boollshit," he sniffs, putting a serious look on. "I can always find impoortant things."
"Oh, really?"
"Aye. I foond yoo. And ye weren't easy tae find! Foour toosand miles away and that! But I foond ye, didn't I?" He grabs my hand and kisses it.
I laugh shake my head at him. "You think you're pretty cute, don't you?"
The mind, so easily distracted by things mauve and lemon yellow, strays from more pressing concerns to ponder the sartorial: How many pantsuits does Hillary Clinton have in her closet? And does she ever wear them in the same combination more than once?
The pantsuit is Clinton's uniform. Hers is a mix-and-match world, a grown-up land of Garanimals: black pants with gray jacket, tan jacket with black pants, tan jacket with tan pants. There are a host of reasons to explain Clinton's attachment to pantsuits. They are comfortable. They can be flattering, although not when the jacket hem aligns with the widest part of the hips (hypothetically speaking, of course). Does she even have hips?
I have probably read a more supercilious article about a presidential candidate, but I can't remember when.
Everyone's talking about Oprah's big show on behalf of Barack Obama this weekend. Petulant's got a short clip here, and the full remarks and link to transcript here, if you're interested.
The most interesting part was when Oprah claimed she's voted for just as many Republicans as Democrats over the years. Really? I find that incredibly hard to believe. I don't know if her main residence, and hence voting district, is Chicago or NW Indiana (where she's got that farm), but, either way, there haven't been any Republicans worth voting for in either district since the Pleistocene era.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday's Live magazine to promote his latest film I Am Legend – where he plays a survivor of a man-made plague – he said: 'I'm going to be President of the United States.
"I always wanted to be the first black president but Barack Obama stole my idea. That's OK with me. Barack can go first and then I'll take my turn."
The actor, a Democrat, revealed he had already decided which social issues he would address if he came to power. He said: "Once I'm in, I'll start changing a few things that urgently need changing.
"The basis of human sanity is physical survival, right? So I'd start with universal healthcare and shelter. I can't see that happening under Bush."
Ya think?
When I read this item to Mr. Shakes, he started to laugh, then said, "Well, why noot? Look at Schwarzenegger."
"And Reagan," I said.
"Aye."
"At least Will Smith's a better actor," I said. "And he'd be a better president than Bush."
If gender-stereotypes don't exist anymore . . . why am I still getting called "Sir"?
In recent discussions of my "Overheard at Safeway", some commenters said that they had been raised "gender-neutral" (one even referred to the "gender-neutral police"). Others posited that their male and female offspring were "just different" from day one, which seems to support the concept of innate differences between biologically male and biologically female humans.
Now, I am definitely "biologically female". I check out chromosomally and everything -- so why am I still getting called "Sir"?
Exhibit A -- this is a photo of me snapped in September of this year (for Kate Harding's very excellent BMI illustration project):
Looking at this photo, you will undoubtedly notice right away that I am "obese" (I kid, of course -- but the BMI doesn't-- I'm obviously at death's door -- OK, I kid, again. Sorry -- this shit just cracks me up!).
You may have also noticed that I have short hair, and that I have a rather noticeable set of tatas (those are the things that are making bulges outward from my upper torso, and which gave rise to the now-infamous TWH[tm] -- "Titty-Wrap Hug").
For those of you not "in the know" lesbionically, I am what is known as a "butchy" dyke.
Let me make it clear here that I am not a "stone butch", but I'm pretty butchy, and I always have been pretty butchy. It's been reported that I am "not butchy enough" for some dykes, and "too butchy" for others.
Que sera, sera.
(As a side-note, I just realized that when you include the word butchy many times in a single paragraph, it starts to look very strange. Butchy. Butchy. Butchy.)
There's the set-up.
The other day, when I was at the store, I was called "sir". Again.
(One image below the fold may be NSFW)
As is usually the case, the person who sirred me, upon hearing me speak, became instantly flustered, apologized quickly, and then looked away -- as hard as they could.
This is not the first time that I have been called "sir" (nor, I imagine, the last). I used to get this a lot more than I do now, and I've pondered whether it was because my hair is slightly longer now than it used to be, whether I dress ever-so-slightly less butchy than in the past, or whether, since I gained weight, my tatas are even less avoidable than they were when I was a skinny little shit.
However, I don't think any of that is really the source of the gender-projection dysphoria that I seem to produce in strangers.
Here are some pictures of me from my past (click to enlarge):
During the time that these pictures were taken, I was sirred at least once a month (on average), even when I had hair down to my ass.
What you cannot see in any of these photos are these:
Face it -- they're kind of hard to miss, and they have been with me since age 13, at approximately the same size and shape (disclaimer: altitudinal coordinates have changed over time).
Do not click to enlarge this photo -- it's just not necessary.
My hypothesis is that it is not my hair, facial construction, or body type that results in me being genderized by strangers via a "masculine" form of address.
I am very short, my voice ranges from high-pitched to "annoyingly-squeaky" (depending on how much I've been smoking and how excited/upset I am), and my fashion choices (I'm using the term "fashion" very loosely here) are decidedly gender-neutral -- usually sweat-pants and a fleece shirt -- 90% of the time (OK, I'll come clean -- more like 97% of the time)
So, I don't think it is my physical appearance or dress -- I believe it is my manner and my mannerisms.
I speak loudly. I am brash and direct. My natural stance is "feet apart, arms akimbo" (think "Stands-with-a-Fist" -- but only if you can avoid thinking of Kevin Costner at the same time). I tend to look people directly in the eye, to stomp when I walk, and my stride is long and forward-moving rather than short and side-swaying.
And it's always been that way:
So how did this happen?
Nature? Nurture?
I've decided that it simply cannot be "Nurture": I was raised in a culture and a time when gender roles were far more stringently applied than they are today.
I was constantly admonished to keep my legs/feet together (even though no one bothered to explain to me that to do otherwise was either an open declaration of my slutitude, or an attempt to emulate a man).
I was repeatedly lectured on the appropriate toys/activities/body postures/vocal tones that fit with the following descriptors: "Feminine", "Girl-Stuff", and "Lady-Like".
Somehow, it just didn't take.
I'm going to argue again that the gender roles and expectations that many people would like to attach to chromosomal sexual status CAN NOT be scientifically proven as genetically pre-disposed -- even if you do extensive studies about how humans are supposed to be able to identify gender by gait patterns -- because gender-expectations and gender-roles are cultural, Cultural, CULTURAL!!!
(Oh, and have I mentioned that they're cultural?)
Let's take a fairly external item: Clothing.
Even though fashion in clothing is a phenomenon which is incredibly mercurial, changing literally year-to-year within our culture, there remain clothing-based stereotypes which invoke gender-roles and expectations, such as: "Who wears the pants in this family, anyway?"
Ask any English-speaking person in western culture what that means. They can probably tell you. (Hint: It has to do with Patriarchy.)
Even though pants are relatively new to western culture (introduced in Europe as an evolution of the "hose" worn by men in the 15th century), it has only been within my lifetime that the thought of women wearing pants in the US was down-graded from scandalous/possibly-culture-destroying to acceptable-but-not-really-feminine. (The demurely crossed ankles that you see in the photo above -- the one with me pouting on the porch -- are those of my grandmother in 1964, who wore "slacks" exactly once in her lifetime -- and only after my grandfather passed away, cuz God knows that would have killed him.)
You may want to say: "Oh, hey, Portly Dyke -- now that's 'a bridge too far'! ;) No one really thinks that pants are reserved for men anymore!"
Wanna bet?
Google the phrase: "women wear pants", and take a look at the ongoing debate about whether good Xtian women can wear a specific article of clothing without incurring God's wrath by violating Deuteronomy 22:5.
Oh, and just for good measure? Why don't you suggest to some "Masculist" that he "get back to his roots" and put on a pair of tights? I double-dog dare you.
Never mind that, at the time Deuteronomy 22:5 was written, the men in question weren't wearing pants (not to rub it in or anything, but they were wearing dresses), and a woman wearing pants wouldn't have had a problem with being mis-identified as a man and being punished for cross-dressing, so much as being annihilated because she was mistaken for a Scythian.
See, it's cultural. It's Cultural. It's CULTURAL!!!!!!
Gender identification/roles/expectations are incredibly flexible constructs. They change from generation to generation, from country to country, and from tribe to tribe.
We all know that graceful, swaying motions, make-up to enhance the eyes and mouth, elaborate jewelry and headdresses are the province of women, don't we?
Tell it to the Wodaabe:
I "read" as "sir" in this culture, because of this culture's gender-role coding. I don't "cue" correctly for this culture's expectation of what a woman is supposed to sound like, walk like, act like, dress like. I don't cross my arms over my breasts when a man stares at them. I'm more likely to stare back and when he finally looks up, say: "Are you lookin' at me?" in my best DeNiro.
Truth be known, I don't even mind being "sirred" -- in fact, I prefer it to being "ma'amed" (which I think, sadly, testifies to my own internalized and culturally-coded misogyny).
I want to repeat again, in case anyone hasn't gotten this yet -- I'm not saying that it is impossible that there may be innate differences between biological males and biological females. I am saying that, until we can really perceive and understand our own cultural biases, assumptions, and projections about gender-roles, I don't believe that there is any way to perform empirical research on what, if any, those differences might be.
Which probably means that we need to have an extra-terrestrial to do the research for us:
It's bad enough when an opposition party merely fails to effectively oppose, or when they are give tacit approval to a criminally corrupt majority party's radical policies with passive indifference, but when they are active supporters of extremist departures from the nation's most basic principles, they make themselves complicit in the coup by a thousand cuts. Per Lambert, no wonder Pelosi took impeachment off the table:
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
…[L]ong before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.
As Glenn Greenwald explains, the Democrats have also been engaging in quite the charade with their supposed outrage about the Bush administration's torture policy, given that they have retained in the leadership roles tasked with investigating Bush's intelligence abuses the very people who signed off on those abuses.
Jay Rockefeller was one of the key Democrats briefed on the torture methods who never objected. But it's far worse than that. In September, 2006, Rockefeller was one of 12 Senate Democrats to vote in favor of the Military Commissions Act, one of the principal purposes of which was to explicitly authorize the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program" to proceed (even though it continues to be illegal under the Geneva Conventions). Thus, not only did Rockefeller remain silent when continuously briefed on illegal torture methods by the CIA, he then voted to legalize those methods by voting in favor of one of the most Draconian laws in modern American history. That law also retroactively immunized government officials from any liability for past lawbreaking.
Rockefeller is not just any Democrat. He is the individual whom the Democratic Senate caucus thereafter elected -- and still chooses -- to lead them on all matters relating to intelligence. Just consider how compromised he is and they are when it comes to investigating abuses by the intelligence community over the last six years. Rockefeller was complicit in all of those abuses, and the Democrats voted for him -- and still support him -- as their Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. How can Rockefeller possibly preside over meaningful investigations into conduct and policies -- including the destruction of the videotapes and the conduct which those videotapes would reveal -- of which he approved? And how can Senate Democrats pretend to be outraged at such policies when the leader they chose supports them?
Rockefeller's counterpart in the House, Rep. Jane Harmon, "disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program," but did not publicly air her apprehensions because she was held by the Intelligence Committee's oath of secrecy and therefore not able to disclose the information underlying her concern.
A member who believes he or she is in possession of evidence of crimes being committed and covered-up through illegitmate [sic] classification ought to seriously consider civil disobedience: calling a press conference, stating the facts, and accepting responsibility for the consequences. The White House could, of course, then turn around and seek to prosecute a member for violating classification laws, and the member could argue justification and we'd have it out. That's a tough call to make, clearly. But our political leaders have responsibilities to the country and to the constitution and I've never seen a candidate for office say something like "I'm the one who likes to abdicate responsibility, decline to make the tough calls, and then when someone else gets to the bottom of things try to make sure that my ass was covered.
Yglesias is frankly more forgiving than I am. Her oath to protect the Constitution obligated her to do that very thing. She should not have considered civil disobedience an option, but her only option, once aware that the administration had intent to violate the Geneva Conventions and deceive the populous about that decision.
All along the way down this dark road we've traveled the past six years, there have been people in positions to say something, to do something, to take a stand and say no, enough, stop. And if any one of them had publicly done so, had taken that risk in service to the country we're supposed to be, we might still be that country.
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