We have met the enemy and it is U.S.
They've done it to us again.
What the hell are A-10 pilots taught to fire at? Specific targets or just anything that moves within a 100 miles of the assigned target? Why would they strafe a group of uniformed men in a rear area camped around an armoured vehicle, when the Taliban generally have neither uniforms nor armoured vehicles?
If I were a Canadian infantry commander in Afghanistan, I'd have second thoughts about calling in air support. Of the 32 Canadians killed in Afghanistan, Pte. Mark Anthony Graham is the fifth killed by U.S. aircraft. Once is an accident, twice is coincidence -- the third time it's enemy action.


UPDATE: Our troops are clearly a bit demoralized and pissed off by this latest incident

"We should spray-paint a big circle around us, with an arrow that says 'Not here, asshole,' " one soldier said, packing up his sleeping gear.

What book has changed your life? -- All of them
Having been tagged by Dana over at the Galloping Beaver with the latest Blog meme on books, I've had to do some quick thinking to narrow down my answers to a short list of titles in response to the survey. I don't read a lot -- I read constantly. In bed, on the toilet, on the train, at the breakfast table, in bars and restaurants, park benches, even while walking sometimes -- I'm more likely to leave the house without my cell phone or wallet than I am to leave without a book. I'm sort of on hiatus as a book critic at the moment, but I still manage to read a book a week or more and usually have several on the go at once.

A book that changed my life
As the title of the post says, all of them have played their part to a greater or lesser extent -- you never step into the same river twice blah blah blah-- but if I have to pick just one it would probably be the late great Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Twenty years ago I wanted to be Thompson. I acted like him, tried to copy his style of writing, even spent time typing out pages from his books to get the rhythm of how he wrote (A trick I learned from him, having read that he used to type out pages from the Great Gatsby for the same reason.) He was the first to make me realize that journalism could be fun, funny and intellectually dangerous. This book is one of the reasons I do what I do for a living. And it is funny as hell.

A book I've read more than once
Almost all of them. I often go back and reread favorite books, especially those by favorite writers, sometimes for the story, sometimes just for the quality writing. When reading stuff for review, I find I often need to read something lighter or heavier (or more often better) to cleanse the mental palate. Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" never fails to entertain and provoke and I used to make a point of rereading it once a year in my teens and twenties. But more often now I go back to what I consider the classics: Papa's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", Kerouac's "On the Road", all Raymond Chandler and J. D. Salinger's books and I've worked my way through Lord of the Rings four or five time and Patrick O'Brian's entire 20 volume Aubery-Maturin series.

What book would you take to a desert island?
A survival manual might be good idea. Dana already stole my idea of the complete works of Shakespeare. Dafoe's "Robinson Crusoe" is temptingly ironical, but if it has to be fiction I'd take either "Ulysses" or "Gravity's Rainbow." Either James Joyce's or Homer's "Odyssey" would do me fine as I've read both, but never really fully deciphered the former and the latter is one of the all time great stories. The Thomas Pynchon is one I have started several times and always got distracted by some shiny object halfway through and put aside to finish later. Later has not yet arrived.

A book that made me laugh
Spider Robinson's first two collections of pun-filled sci-fi bar stories "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and "Time Travellers Strictly Cash." While the series kind of went slowly downhill in later installments, I've read these two over and over again and still get dirty looks for sniggering to myself on the train. I've recently discovered the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse, which have been making people laugh for about 70 years and with good reason. Also Penn Gillette's "Sock" and Jerome K. Jerome's ageless "Three Men in a Boat".

A book that made me cry
Big, tough, cynical, macho Hemmingway-reading newspapermen who've seen it all don't cry.
Dave Eggers "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" brought tears to my eyes several times. The novel (and movie of course) "Old Yeller" made me cry as a kid. And I'm not allowed to read "The Velveteen Rabbit" to my kids anymore or they will start calling me a crybaby. I can't get past about the second page before the waterworks start, by the end I'm usually sobbing to hard to be understood when trying to read it out loud. And if it doesn't do the same thing to you, you must be some kind of souless cyborg with an icemaker for a heart. Now let us never speak of this again.

A book I wish had been written
"Manifest Destiny this, you fascist Yankee scum!
The Liberation and Annexation of the USA and how we solved all their problems" by the Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau

(some day, some day)


A book I wish had never been written
"Mein Kampf," "The Fountainhead" and anything published by Regnery.

Books I am currently reading
Paul Auster's "The Brooklyn Follies", Paul Krugman's "The Great Unravelling" and David Gilbert's "The Normals"

Books I've been meaning to read
"Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" has been sitting on my two foot stack of "books to be read soon" for about a year now, but I keep getting distracted by shiny objects like the latest Robert Parker Spenser novel or a suddenly discovered old copy of "Catcher in the Rye" in the same pile.

What turned me on to fiction
Like most kids, I had stuffed animals when I was little, but my favorite thing to sleep with, my verison of Linus' blanket was a well-chewed copy of my puppy book, the title of which I don't even remember. My mother still has it, but I think I may have chewed the cover and title page off. Other kids had soothers, I had this book. My parents read to me often and by the time I was in school, I was reading the Hardy Boys and Encylopedia Brown and comic books like an alcoholic locked inside a liquor store overnight. I'm surprised I don't have a permanent dent in my forehead from falling asleep with a book on my face.

Final thoughts
I love listening to music almost as much as reading and so the ipod that holds my entire music collection (I'm up past 7,000 tracks now, and most of my record collection is in storage in Canada and has yet to be downloaded to the archives) came as manna from heaven. I like vinyl and cassettes and was a slow convert to digital sound, but carrying around all the recordings I own in a box the size of a deck of cards and having access to just about anything else at the push of a button is pretty hard to beat. If Steve Jobs wants to lock in my vote for man of the millenium, he'll perfect an adaptation of the ipod for books. With solar batteries and access to the entire Library of Congress online with free downloads of stuff in the public domain. I love the feel of pages in my hands, the physical feel of a real book, but having my entire library stored in one book would be the best of all possible worlds.

I'll pass this poll/meme on to:
JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie
MD at Man Descending
Scout at Harper Valley
Mudhooks at the Mudpuddle
and of course the host of Friday Archeology Blogging, Bazz at Oi Thump

Karma's a bitch
Ah the glorious, glorious schadenfreude I feel when I read stories like this one: Ontario Court freezes Black's Assets
Apparently things are getting worse for the the former Canadian newspaper baron, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving pompous, thieving bastard.
The last line is especially telling: "He has also acknowledged in court filings that he has borrowed money from Lady Black."
Awww, poor Lord Tubby of Fleet Street. Remember that saying about being nice to people on the way up, because you're gonna meet them again on the way down? I guess they covered that idea at Upper Canada College after they tossed Connie out for stealing exams.

Viva Olbermann!

Keith Olbermann kicks Donald Rumsfeld's lying, facist ass around the block.

"For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve."

"Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?"

Hit'em with the chair, Keith!

the edjemacation president

From the Toronto Star:

Students told `Yale Shmale'
Lakehead unveils edgy PR campaign that takes aim at Bush's Ivy League roots
DANIEL GIRARD
EDUCATION REPORTER
Consider it a weapon of mass attraction.
Lakehead University is poking fun at U.S. President George W. Bush and his Ivy League alma mater in an edgy new guerrilla marketing campaign intended to lure students to its Thunder Bay campus.
Dubbed "Yale Shmale," the $100,000 promotion features an image of Bush — Yale University, Class of 1968 — on posters that will be plastered on construction sites and other outdoor locations across the Greater Toronto Area.
"Graduating from an Ivy League university doesn't necessarily mean you're smart," reads the second of two posters set for
release, "Choosing Lakehead does."

Why doesn't Yale use him for recruiting?
Probably because they have no trouble attracting students -- after all, there are a lot of legacy applicants from the families of wealthy alumni out there.
While it might be in poor taste to insult the leader of another nation in your advertising campaign,you have to hand it to Lakehead University for having the sheer brass as an institution to kick the president of the United States square in the nuts. You also have to wonder how someone with the nearly universal (The Assrocket and his ilk excepted) reputation as a moron necessary to make such a campaign effective - no one is looking at that picture and wondering what it says about W - could get elected.
How long before we see a post at Blogging Tories or in the Rightwing Wankosphere down south using this to "prove" that universities are packed with godless communists who hate America?

Thought Police polishing jackboots in Japan

It's amazing what you don't read about in the Japanese press. Anywhere else a newspaper's editorial complaining about political content of a magazine forcing the closure of the magazine, would be a story. Here, the papers barely mention the firebombing of the home of a critic of the prime minister, and the prime minister and his expected successor do not publically condemn the act. War atrocities -- down the memory hole!

Canadaville, La.
I've never been much of a fan of either Frank or Belinda Stronach, but I have to hand it to Frank Stronach for reaching into his admittedly deep pockets and helping out people who needed help. And this isn't some kind of self serving non-donation where all the money will have to be spent buying things from the company store, I don't how he gets anything for his $10 million but a warm feeling and a tax writeoff. Nice going Frank, The Woodshed salutes you.

In Your Ear

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS

Mommy Says No!

Buffalo Records, 2,500 yen

The eclectic Asylum Street Spankers--self-described as "God's Favorite Band"--have once again defied expectations and classification with their latest release. Admittedly, almost anything might have been expected from a band known for blending 1930s blues and jazz novelties, punk, country and even gangster rap into a heady acoustic string-band stew of hot licks and belly laughs. But for a band whose lyrical preoccupation with sex, drugs and booze led to albums with such titles as Nasty Novelties, Dirty Ditties and the Amsterdam-inspired Spanker Madness, an album of original children's music would have been low on the list of probabilities.

Though often delightfully juvenile in the past--earlier efforts such as "The Scrotum Song" spring to mind--the Spankers have never exactly purveyed kids music. Mommy Says No, while ostensibly a kids album full of songs about superheroes, closet monsters and training wheels, is eminently appealing to anyone who remembers their childhood.

Usually sultry and seductive songstress Christina Marrs plays against type and captures the innocent playfulness of children with the opening track "Be Like You," setting the tone for an album that stylistically covers the waterfront. Marrs' sweet voice also adds additional impact to the superhero love ballad "Sidekick." Marrs' coconspirator in fronting the Spankers, Wammo, leads the band through a handful of call-and-response tongue-twisters on "Lunchbox," kicks out the punk jams on the title track and explains what binds the universe together crooner-style on the hilariously over-the-top lounge jazz opus "Boogers."

Asked in an e-mail exchange what prompted the band to do a kids album, given their predilection for bawdiness, the ever sly singer and poetry slam champion wrote, "We figured people have been making kids to our records, so we might as well make one for the kids."

Wammo also doubled as producer and has done the band proud. Mommy Says No sounds crisp and warm, with a wagonload of smart musical touches, some subtle like the toy piano on "Be Like You," and others more obvious, such as the excellent use of Marrs' spooky musical saw on "Closet" and the romping New Orleans-style brass band led by clarinetist and longtime Spanker Stanley Smith. A compilation of Smith's best, Since I Met You Baby, will be released on the same label in September.

Instrumentally, the Spankers are in their usual superlative form, with relatively new member Sick showing off some serious fiddle and mandolin chops, and guitarist Nevada Newman indulging in some fancy, er...picking on "Boogers" and seizing the spotlight on the catchy "Super Frog."

If this album has a shortcoming, it may be that it's too cool for kids. But don't worry, they'll grow into it.

The Asylum Street Spankers will be touring Japan next month. (See Gig Guide.)

TOM PETTY

Highway Companion

Warner, 2,580 yen

There are plenty of nice jangly guitars on Tom Petty's third solo outing without the Heartbreakers and his first release since 2002's The Last DJ.

Highway Companion is built around a travel theme, with journeys--some mental, some emotional, some physical--providing the basis for each of the songs. While not as immediately catchy as Full Moon Fever or Wildflowers, the new album is more intimate and very much driven by Petty's guitar and raw voice. Former Traveling Wilburys bandmate Jeff Lynne has once again produced, but with more restraint this time around, letting Petty's simple guitar riffs and unpolished vocals stand on their own merits. Put the top down, crank up the volume and head out on the highway.

Special blog-only feature

God's favorite band
is coming to Japan

The Asylum Street Spankers will be making their triumphant return to the land of the rising sun in September. Quick, somebody call Kirin Breweries and tell them to start an extra couple of batches and book me a suite at the Betty Ford Clinic for October.

9.9.06 Saturday Sayama, Japan Hyde Park Music Festival
9.11.06 Monday Kanazawa, Japan Mokkiriya Jazz Bar
9.12.06 Tuesday Osaka, Japan Shinsaibashi Club Quattro
9.13.06 Wednesday Hiroshima, Japan Club Quattro
9.14.06 Thursday Kyoto, Japan Taku Taku
9.15.06 Friday Nagoya, Japan Tokuzo
9.17.06 Sunday Tokyo, Japan Shibuya Club Quattro
9.18.06 Monday Yokohama, Japan Thumbs Up

(Aug. 26, 2006)

Even broken clocks are right twice a day
Mark the day on the calendar, because you aren't likely to see me write anything praising WalMart very often, but they did the right thing this week in dumping former civil rights activist, UN ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young as a spokesman after he made unbelievably racist comments. Essentially, Young said it was a good thing that WalMart was squeezing out all the so-called mom-and-pop operations because those little shops were selling shoddy merchandise to blacks and were run by Jews, Koreans and Arabs. Young should be ashamed of himself for such bigoted bullshit and WalMart was right to end its relationship with him. Unless this becomes massive headline news, (which it won't as long as there are 10-year-old murder cases involving blond six-year-olds to obsess over) Wingnuts will use this to complain that the left doesn't police its own. Of course if Rush had said it and Walmart had fired his ass, they would screech "political correctness" until the cows came home or the chickens came home to roost or whatever.

Teh funny
What the wingnuts see when they see the New York Times

When the levy breaks
This should help the White House, FEMA and Michael Brown restore their reputation to the lofty heights they deserve - Spike Lee has made a four-hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina. I can't imagine it will be anything but complimentary and understanding of the difficulties faced by White House in leading the response to the crisis. Bush will be wishing he'd used Michael Moore's 9/11 film as a campaign ad by the time this movie is over.

And they wonder why we call them "wingnuts"
Uniform fetishist "Grim" on the Virtues of Killing Children

Tortured logic? check
Complete lack of self-doubt? check
Morally indefensible position? check
Tough guy warrior posing? check
Utter conviction that end justifies means? check
Condescesion to any who disagree? check
Strawman arguement? check

Conclusion: If it walks like a brownshirt and talks like a brownshirt, it doesn't much matter if there is copy of Mien Kampf on the bedside table or not.



Late hat tip to "a somewhat popular blogger" for having the stomach to read the wingnuts regularly and bring back the gems among the horseshit

"Don't mention the war"
The best similie I've heard today about this: Imagine you are a rich white man living in South Central L.A. or Harlem and every year on the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclaimation you dress in a Confederate Army uniform, go out on your porch with a megaphone and spend an hour singing "Dixie" and yelling "Nigger, nigger, nigger." Then you spend the rest of year complaining to your wife and family that the neigbours don't like you and you just can't understand why.

The sky is falling! The sky is fal....oh, uh, hang on a minute
Apparently we weren't is such imminent danger of having it rain 747 debris all over the North Atlantic as was previously suggested by the Chicken Little Brigade, I mean Homeland Security Agency.

U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests
British wanted to continue surveillance on terror suspects, official says

• Disagreement over terror arrestsAug. 12: U.S. and British authorities disagreed on when to break up an alleged plot to blow up airliners bound for the United States, officials say. NBC's Lisa Myers reports.

By Aram Roston, Lisa Myers, and the NBC News Investigative Unit
NBC News

LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.
A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.
In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

Yes, better safe than sorry, but at what stage will we be forced to fly fully sedated in paper hospital gowns and full four-point restraints? I like my mom's suggestion that they just roll all the passengers through a full MRI before boarding. Sure it might cost a few extra grand to fly to your cousin's wedding in Des Moines, but can we really put a price on safety?

No-mentum
Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee rip Joe Lieberman a new one,
the Raw Story has the video

Would you believe...the Jesus edition

• Holy hammerlocks
• I don't believe that this group exists
• He wants you to bang your head for Him, in the name of the father, the son and the holy shredding guitar solo
• Apparently these folks mean the programming language, not coffee, though Christ could probably use a cup.
• This guy's page reminds me of a famous story "Our Lady's Juggler" by Anatole France. Is it Satan's fault when he drops the balls?
• Do these guys have holy hawgs?
• The blue and grey way to salvation
• Jesus really wants you
• Riding point on the great herd in the sky with these Texans, might be interesting as long as they don't brand new converts

World's greatest small town police blotter

It would be worth the drive to Ponoka, Alta. just to meet the guy that writes these. Thanks to Cowboys for Social Responsibility (see blogroll) for bringing this red-coated ray of light into the darkness of our journalistic dreariness. Somebody get the officer a book deal, now!

How messed up is Japan?
If you go by what these three guys say, pretty messed up. While Znet is a scurrilous left-wing rag (and more power to them) and these guys are clearly very liberal westerners (which as Japanese will tell you, means that they cannot possibly understand Japan), they are also completely correct in almost everything they say.

Japan's conservative business, intellectual and political leaders are herding the rest of the country back toward nationalism and even militarism. Most Japanese today don't know much about World War Two that they didn't get out of a heavily censored revisionist school textbook. Hence you get reference to the "alleged Nanjing incident" and certain major newspapers denying the existence of so-called "comfort women".

The mass media in Japan engages in a shocking degree of self-censorship and selective coverage by Western standards, panders to popular prejudices and the notion of investigative journalism as we think of it in the West doesn't really exist here.

My point? It's not just a case of "don't believe everything you read" when reading about Japan in the mass media, it's more a case of "don't believe ANYTHING you read" about Japan in the mass media.

Still and all, it is a pretty safe, comfortable place to raise a family and should n't turn into a 21st century Wiemar too soon despite the best efforts of some of those steering the ship of state.

Kobi's Sakura

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away....well, okay it was Port Dover, Ontario in 1989 or '90 when I was just starting out in the newspaper trade, I interviewed a very old Japanese-Canadian gentleman by the name of Kobi Kobiyashi, who was one of the town's leading citizen. The occasion was a gift he was presenting to the muncipal government of a couple of dozen Japanese sakura cherry blossom trees. At the time it seemed to me to be a bit of an odd gift, though now that I live in Tokyo I realize what a big deal sakura are to the Japanese. They bloom magnificently in spring for about ten days, turning whole parks bright pink before the blossoms wither and fall. In Japanese culture, they are said to symbolize the transitory nature of life. Once I learned that Kobi's story made a lot more sense.

See, he paid for the trees with some money he got from the Canadian government. Shipping a couple of dozen trees from Japan is not a cheap proposition, but he had a few extra grand to spare. The federal government had just cut him a cheque for $21,000. Why? Because they had locked him up for four years, stolen his house, his business and everything else he owned, threatened to send him back to a country he had left 15 years earlier and treated him like a slave and a criminal --all because of the government of the country he had come from all those years ago had attacked Pearl Harbour.

I never liked Brian Mulroney, but the one thing he did do right was pay compensation to the Japanese interned in Canada during the Second World War. Those of you who have read David Neiwert's Strawberry Days know that Japanese internees in the United States often lost their homes, land and most of their belongings when they were sent to the internment camps. In Canada, the internees lost everything--all their property was forfeited to the Government. In the US, internees were provided with food and shelter in the camps, albeit meagre. In Canada, the internees were expected to pay for their own food and shelter, either out of their savings or out of the money raised by the government auctioning off their homes, businesses and personal property. In most cases families were split up with the men being sent to work as virtual slaves in road camps in the interior of British Columbia.

Kobi had come to California in the 1920s as a teenager after his family in Kyushu disowned him when he converted to Christianity. He eventually found work as a gardener and chauffeur for a wealthy widow that had a vacation home in Port Dover on the shores of Lake Erie --a popular summer spot at the time, Al Capone was another summer resident. When the old lady died, she left him a few dollars and he settled in Port Dover, opening a little grocery store on the main street of the small town.

The newspaper there, The Port Dover Maple Leaf, was (and still is) run by the Morris family. The editor had lost a leg in WWI and was as patriotic as the name of the paper implies. When Canada and Japan went to war after Pearl Harbour, he refused to let Kobi advertise in the newspaper, a measure he later felt ashamed of, according to his son - my boss at the paper. When Kobi was arrested a few weeks later, his store and his home and all his belongings were auctioned off and he was sent off to a road camp where he stayed for the duration. In 1946, about 6,000 of the 20,000 Japanese-Canadians internees, many of whom had become naturalized citizens or had been born in Canada, were shipped back to Japan.

Kobi was not among them. Despite the shabby treatment he had received in Port Dover at the outbreak of the Pacific War, he returned to the shores of Lake Erie, worked as deckhand on fishing boats and as a hired farmhand until he saved enough to buy a fishing boat of his own and eventually bought back his grocery store. He raised a family in town and, in time, became one of the village's leading citizens. But he never forgot the camp. When I spoke to him, he was in his 80s and shed bitter tears when he described the brutal conditions there. Inadequate clothing and shelter and sub-zero weather, working from dawn to dark, eating lousy food and not nearly enough of it -- and having to pay for it all out of his own pocket.

And yet....in time he was able to forgive. That's what the trees were all about. He told me that when they bloomed in spring they reminded him of Kyushu and his childhood, but also that no hardship lasts forever, nor does any good fortune and they we should all be thankful for what we have while we have it. Most of all, he hoped the trees would stand as monument to peace and as a reminder to to what had been done to so many people, so many years ago, in the hope that such a thing would never happen again.


You can read more about the internment in Canada here or listen to David Suzuki (from "the Nature of Things") talk about his terrible experiences as a child during the internment. To learn more about the effect of the internment in the US, there is no better book than Dave Neiwert's Strawberry Days.

(cross-posted at Firedoglake, where we will be discussing Strawberry Days on Sunday at 5 pm EST)