Musical Hair's Musings

In an attempt to put in one place the blogs I've written that I actually think are worth reading, I'm typing this blog. Right click them and read if you've really got nothing better to do.

My Abortion Blog:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=215981&search=the" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=215981&search=the" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...%20abortion%20blog

My comparison of the fall of Byzantium and the current status of our own Empire:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=209249&search=Byzantium " title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=209249&search=Byzantium " target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Corporations as a non-human entity:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=252515&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=252515&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

A collection of my criticisms of the way Bush ran the Iraq war:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=217558&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=217558&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

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Fundamentalism as the real enemy:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=210881&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=210881&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

The Heart as an Extention of the Mind:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=186856&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=186856&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...


The Nuclear Family:

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More Issues with Bush and his Gang:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=144346&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=144346&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

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The Right vs Center:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=171002&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=171002&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Modern VS. Traditional Army:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=177908&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=177908&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Lies in Politics:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=153558&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=153558&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Stupidity and Sheepishness in Politics:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=138172&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=138172&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Just some ideas:

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Janet Jackson and "Music"

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Indigo children and the Chrysalides:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=166797&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=166797&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

More dislike for both parties:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=295144&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=295144&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Service:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=282839&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=282839&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

Unaniminity for the 9/11 report-- which I need to address again as the final report feel far shorter of even my meager expectations:

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=207248&search=musicalha ir" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=musicalhair&stati c=207248&search=musicalha ir" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

The USS Liberty:

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Here are some links to right click and read and explore:

http://www.bushtax.com/" title="http://www.bushtax.com/" target="_blank"http://www.bushtax.com/

The break it down state by state, here is my state:

http://www.bushtax.com/?q=node/view/44" title="http://www.bushtax.com/?q=node/view/44" target="_blank"http://www.bushtax.com/?q=nod...

Another analysis of the tax cuts:

http://www.cbpp.org/9-21-04tax-fact.htm" title="http://www.cbpp.org/9-21-04tax-fact.htm" target="_blank"http://www.cbpp.org/9-21-04ta...

And here is a Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6117 8-2004Aug12.html" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6117 8-2004Aug12.html" target="_blank"http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Now, as an ex-Republican that thinks the only hope for the future of our country is the Green Party, we can understand why the Republicans would suppor this. They treat our federal government as their business' seed-money and our troops as their business' aquisitions department, and our Inteligences services as their business' insurance policies. They dup the majority of their voters with meager cuts while giving to themselves the lion's share. They don't care about new roads because their cuts will by new cars each year-- will yours? They don't care about better schools because their cuts will also pay for the best privates schools which in my area are about 20,000 a year for grammar school. The ruling class gave themselves that with the tax cuts. Did you get yours? Did it get you a new DVD player or maybe let you expand your home's deck if you did the labor? Then consider yourself lucky.

Why did the democrats go along with it? Couldn't they have made an issue of it and site the same things the articles above site. In an election year where the Democrats must show what elitist scum the Bush cronies are, they just went along. This is why we need a Green Party: to step up for the common people where the two major parties can't.

The failure of this nation starts where the Democrats and Republicans agree. Every pot hole you bounce over this winter, thank your representative for the tax cut. Every dead soldier, every child in poverty, every new asthma case: thank your representative, Democrat or Republican. Thank them, for showing you why you need to help organize a Green Party in your town.

Bush made sure he weaseled out of serving in Viet Nam by leaping over thousands of people on a waiting list to get into the Texas Air National Guard-- see, this is family values. Their family is more valuable than mine or yours, and thus they don't have to serve even in a war they supposedly support. Then, he doesn't even attempt to meet the requirments of that kind of "service", and where anyone else would have been bounced of the the "Champagne Unit" and into combat he didn't suffer any consequences. This is because the so-called tough-guy Texans were whipped in line by preppy oil executives from Connecticut. The confusing paper trail that should detail "W"'s disdain for service is obediantly missing many details, the best of it was put and in a sense wasn't put their by Alabama and Denver guard officals that didn't role-over so compliently as the good-ole-boys in Texas. Then while skipping out on his service-- essentially being AWOL-- he wears a bomber jacket around his business school. So, he won't actually serve, but he'll wear the jacket to see if it helps him pick-up babes: classy guy. Of course he didn't have to worry about a real vet kicking his ass for it, how many vets ended up in that school?

Then while running for congress in guilable Texas he lied about about having served in the Air Force. The distinction between actually serving in the Air Force and not actually serving in the Air National Guard is remarkable, and he should have been laughed out of town for it, but he wasn't.

While running against Sen McCain, the Bush campaign questioned McCain's sanity due to his being a prisoner of war and then questioned his patriotism because as one of his puppets said "how patriotic is it to be a prisoner of war?" And that was a guy that actually served in a war that Bush supposedly supported.

Now, they rip Kerry's valient service and at their convention they disgustinly made light of the Purple heart-- and this wasn't just Bush it was the Republican convention.

I'm quite sick of punk-ass rich bastards goofing on the millitary men and their service that is supposed to protect our country but instead enriches the ruling class. It is disgusting; and for anyone to see it as anything other than elitism and hypocracy and false patriotism then they'll get the government that they deserve. They'll get a government that cuts veteran's benefits while going to war, send 1/2 the troops needed to fight the war, and then send them with out body armour or armoured vehicles. They'll get a ruling class that goofs on the vets and makes fun of the ribbons and medals they earn for the ruling class's imperialism. Next time you see a rich republican walking down the street, kick him in the nuts and give him one of those disgusting purple heart band aids.





The above was edited for a couple of grammatical errors and I fixed a less-than-perfect sentence or two.

http://www.smilethealbum.com/

That should be a link to the release of what could have been the greatest rock and roll or progressive pop album ever. The short story is Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were having all kinds of troubles with each other on the material that he was writting and problems with the record company and were losing fans in the later sixties. Brian never finished his follow up to Pet Sounds and lost his mind. Some of the unfinished tracks were tweaked and released on later albums. The most famous songs that would have been on Smile are "Good Vibrations" and "Heros and Villians" and many people point to "Surf's Up" as the shining example of why the record would have been so great had he finished it.

He apparently has finished it, I don't know if it is new music or if he is useing the old tracks. If he used the old tracks then this could be a mind-blowingly great record. I'll review when I hear it.

I wrote the following as a comment on another blog here. I was asked about Ithaca recently on a guitar forum, so I figured I'd share this here on my blog in case one of the musicians over there checks in here.

When we played Ithica, there were all sorts of frat and soroity parties and stuff happening as we had packed up the gear after the show, and I had two "kids" from the band that were stuck driving with me (my car). They both wanted to go party and I wanted to go back and practice my guitar at the motel in Cortland which was like a half hour drive.

I already ate, and they were saying that the we might find something to eat at one of these things (What frat party do you go to for the food???? Am I that old that the food is why people go to frat parties??? I'm 40 not 90 for God's sake, and I've spent too much of my life in nightclubs trying to stay as hip as I can, so how did that one pass me by. Maybe that is why kids to day are soo fat, too much buffet not enough binge drinking and coke). (just kidding, Hey kids, don't try those at home or anywhere else).

Anyway the one kid keeps going back the food thing, like that is going to win me over; and I'm like I said I already ate, what are you like making a double entoundre or something about what I'll find to eat at the soroity party.

Finally we drive back to the motel and I just thought it was really funny that I made them "go home early" essentially because I'm such an old miserable bastard. It was a horrible night, way too humid, mosquitos everywhere, and no musician leaves his gear in the car where it always gets stolen out of.

I never said that I just don't leave gear in the car unless I'm at the car, which is a big reason I didn't go "party"-- we'd have to park blocks away and then if my amp and guitars get swiped I'm out big time. Hey musicians reading this, you can click on the calendar above on the dates that have brackets and read other entries here if all the "tour" ones are not on this page. Most of my stuff here is political, but some is about music.

Alright, maybe that is not such big news. I know there are people here that broke 5K after a month of blogging, but I'm happy. As I type this my page here has had 5005 views. I thought I'd hit 5K by the end of the week.

Back to democracy, the thing we say we value so dearly.

Putin, one of Prince George II's close "allies" on the "war" on "terror" has decided that all sorts of offices that had been elected, like governorships and at least parts of the duma, will be appointed from approved lists of pary members. That was the system I joined the Navy to help protect us from. It seems that our allies in democractizing the world as we combat terror are no more democratic that the third world puppets we propped up and continue to prop up during the cold war when we sought to bring democracy to a world that otherwise would be subjected to totalitarianism.

Now, terrorism is real just as totalitarianism is real. But it seems that in both the terror war and the cold war-- or the war on terror and the war on cold-- our governments uses our population's lofty ideals to disguise their service to multi-national corporate interests that only seek to subjegate the world and never free it from totalitarianism or terror. Well, cold they are fighting pretty well. Global warming might the the true cold war just like the only true war on terror is Love.

So, as I pass the 5,000 mark-- my impulse engines to your warp speed for Trekkies-- I wish you all love. Good happy AA or NA hugs, hippy love and peace to all of you.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5 40&e=13&u=/ap/20040913/ap _on_re_mi_ea/saudi_electi ons

Cut and paste in a new window, the link might not work, or search Yahoo news for it: saudi elections.

We had to bring democracy to the middle east, right? That was just one of the lines they tried feeding us in Iraq, that if we put one "good democratic government" there they'd see just how good it is and be a model for the rest of the region.

Well, if that is even a tiny bit of the story then Saudi Arabia putting off municiple elections again should be very disturbing. If Bush's close freinds of the the family aren't even the slightest bit inclined to move towards democracy then why should we pretend to think that Bush wants democracy anywhere else in the world?

The Bush's have never liked democracy, they probably think they are above it-- kinda like the Prince George the II was above real millitary service. Prescott drooled over the type of set up the nazi's had and wanted it here. George I talked about demcracy and freedom in Kuwait which never was and never is, and George II babbles about it for Iraq and Afganistan while supporting: a failed coup Venezuela, a sucessful one in Haiti, a dictatorship in Pakistan, the worst human rights offenders in the world in Columbia, and the bastards in Saudi Arabia. Democracy really means a way to overthrow a government they don't like to prop up a false one that will behave to George's liking.

We and the whole world do need democracy, but not George's lame lip service to the word, we need real Democracy, now!

As summer ends, I see many of t-blog's citizens, like me, were very busy and didn't blog as much as they had. I just want to through out a big "Hope everything is well" and I look forward to when we are all settled back in and can preach to each other regularlly again.

I also wanted to pose this idea: I like comments better than blogs often. I'm sure many of you reading this have gotten really long comments from me at some point on your blogs. To me, this is a great way to have really meaningful and deep conversations with people all over the world. I've learned a lot, and most of it came from bouncing comments back and forth. Every so often I type a big essay (my perhaps too obvious "Byzantium" one is still perhaps my favorite) that that lets me organize my thoughts, and sometimes they are scattered (like my to recent ones) where I'm pulling together experiences over my 40 years of wasting space and air on the planet, and I point to some rather unrelated aspects of life and society in an attempt to make sense of things that don't make much sense to me maybe.

I just hope that everyone that takes the time to blog and to read each others blog finds that they grow a little deeper in their understanding of the world we all share and in each other. This can be a bit like Hemmingway's "In Our Time", but ultimately I hope that this forum will break down the filter of our media and politicians and purveyors of selective culture that separates us all and creates misconceptions in each of our minds about our individual realities.

One blogger here from Texas makes me realize that Texans are not as wacked out as I would otherwise have thought (I know that says more about me than it does about Texas), and I learned a bit about Venazuela because I blogged about Chavez. From politics to partying to parenting I've gained insight into all of them here.

Now I've got to play My Funny Valentine, Cherokee, How High The Moon, my scales and all the rest of my guitar schedual for today and get it done in time to go Ice Skating by 3 at some rink I've never been too. So, why am I wasting my time here????? I've got to go.

As I was typing about the police brutality incident in Pittsburg, I remembered a discussion as I drove back from Ithica to the motel in Courtland NY about a week earlier. I was talking about points on my license and how I've been whipped into submission with speed laws and stuff. I just can't afford more points. It turned into a discussion about the nature of service and "good jobs" and I've had some interesting observations about it over the years. They are worth typing up here for once.

I told the "story" about how when I got out of rhw Navy years ago, I wanted to go to college and hadn't taken the SAT's or anything. So, before I took the SAT's I took the policeman's test. I finished second, to a guy that Graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy, so I would have been on the force pretty quickly had I choosen it. But, I wanted to go to college and learn and get an education I saw so many others had, and I wanted to "save the Earth" and work in the emerging environmental fields. So I went to college.

I got a ticket for running a police barricade a couple of years later. It was cold out and there was a fire across the steet from my house. I had to drive a friend home, and when I came back the road was blocked of by a cop car. The car had it's lights on, and the cop was sitting in it looking the otherway-- towards the fire which was too far away to actually see anything-- talking to another cop that was leaning on the passenger side window. I pulled my car as close to his as possible so I could just roll down my window and speak with him window to window. All I wanted to do was ask if I could get past to go home. As the other cop leaning on the passenger side window saw my car, he stood up and the cop in the car jumped put on his sirens and leaped out of the car with his gun pulled. I hollered something kinda mean about his intelligence and my intentions to simply get home.

See, he isn't supposed to be in his car when he blocks th road like that. He is supposed to get out and direct traffic, which sat not moving and without any instructions at a very strange intersection ot a busy street that only locals knew how to get around (I can't really explain it, but there is a cliff on one side a river on the other and no way to go north from this blockade except to go south about a mile first). Anyway, the cop that didn really do his job at this road block was the guy that made it on the force because I chose college. If I had been a cop he'd not gotten on the force till the next time after more people took the test-- I don't know if he would have had to rej-take the test or not. From all accounts I've heard the guy is an idiot and a real jerk, with no career until he barely passed a police test.

When I was in that college, fresh out of the Navy I met all sorts of professors that didn't serve in Viet Nam because they were "protesting" it. I found it hard to beleive that kids that age at that time "Knew" the war was a wrong as it turned out to be. And by wrong, I don't mean to sound like "losing" or how it turned out, but I do mean that the reasons we fought it and we supported the French before us there was completely wrong. This I didn't know until I went out and did my own research on it, which maybe I'll blog about at some time. Anyway, all these professors were like hippies in the sixties and much of my family served. At the time I was putting up a vet cousin of mine and getting him his benefits for him and stuff. I wasn't really "impressed" with their principled stance in avoiding the draft and service.

These guys were often smart, engaging and I learned a lot from them. As the recent "bru-ha-ha" about Kerry's service blew up, I thought about those guys again. OK, now bare with me on this. Kerry served bravely, then he came back and spoke out against attrocities he knew had been committed their in a stupid and pointless war that killed more than it helped anyone. The standard media line is that vets that hate Kerry do so because of what he did after he came back.

The point is Kerry did the very best thing I can ever imagine a man in his position could have done. He served, and more so he served bravely. Then he spoke the truth about what was happening their. Anyone that wants to pretend such atrocities didn't happen are just denying reality. Take the My-Lai incident. Colin Powell went their for the Army to investigate if the massacre happened. He absolved the millitary of any wrongdoing and basically covered the incident up. That could have been the end of the story but persistent journalists and honest vets labored on and proved the incident was excatly what we feared it was. So, the only one in this current admin that is a vet, Colin Powell covered up atrocities and Kerry testified before congress about them. Have you seen his testimony on C-SPAN? It is riveting. Bottom line is Kerry told the truth and served bravely. He is a smart, capable man that we were lucky to have in our millitary. We need more of that kind of guy.

Why am I talkin about Kerry? Well, I don'tt hink it was guys like Kerry that committed these bad atrocities. When almost any that could avoid service, avoids it: what do we have left to serve? If they aren't able to meet the psychological demands of the war, did we have anyone to replace them? If these people that avoided service had served, would the war had been different? Would there have been less cruelty towards the local population?

Service is something that is not really all that well rewarded, but so very important to our society, but anyone capable of acheivment in our society is encouraged away. Us lefties miss the point I think. If we let wackos, cruel bullies, facists, be the only people in these jobs then we doom "service" to being "poor service".

As I look back on my life, I don't wish I had been a cop at all. I can't imagine my life continuing tied so closely to that town. Not like I'm all happy and comfortable, but I dont think I could have been the kind of guy that could have done that. Maybe for a couple of years but not for a career. I had become a kind of "worldly" guy during my Navy service, and I needed education to fully interpret my experiences in various counties and places I had been. If I had it all to do over I'd take any one of these four: Stay in the Navy (sorry lefties), joined Merchant Marines, double major in Music and pre-Law or something along those lines and then Law School, or doulbe major music/teacher degree.

Anyway, don't discourage good people from "serving" regardless of the danger and the lack of reward. Bottom line is, God takes care of us as we need or He don't. That isn't the way to measure our lives, we measure our lives on what we give to others. The musicians I look up to are were often miserable and died tragically and had major problems. When I hear their music I am thankful for their gifts recorded for the world to hear. If I'm lucky enough to channel through me anything like the musical gifts these guys gave us, I'd feel very blessed even if I had the same or more problems they lived through. Suffering a burden in life isn't always fair or fun but it is never what we should judge our life on. It is like this, a smooth road with no view or rest stops or anything is not as good as a bumpy and "bad" road that gives us a view of the landscape and interactions with other people and communities. We are what we do for each other and not "the sum of our comforts" or someother thing that we often think about at the end of our days.

Did any of this makes sense

I don't envy the job of policeman, especially in a big city where there is always the chance of something really stupid and dangerous happening. Just like all public servants they should be given the opportunity to perform to a standard and held to that higher standard. The public trust is something that should be treated as sacred by those paid to be in service of the public, and they should be paid and compensated for it. Too often they fall short. Politicians are the worst offenders, I don't know where police stack up but they are the most visible public servants and when they do fall short it weakens our society. Lao Tzu wrote "to abolish lawlessness we must abolish law", I don't want to get in that kind of a discussion but it is always in the back of my mind that people should know how to behave themselves; and when authority figures don't, but have the protection of the law and their own legalized right to use force on the public: lawlessness doesn't look much worse than oppression.

When Daddy finished their set, I squared away my all my equipment and stepped outside The Quiet Storm Cafe in Pittsburg onto the side street into what once was a really nice area of the city. A police car was stopped in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, with it's light on but no sirens and I didn't see the officer or officers. It was a bout 2 or 3 yards back up the one way from my car so I wasn't blocked and I was legally parked so I had little worry. I told Daren Kramer, a musician with a modern interpretation of very traditional Blues, he might want to move his car before getting ticketed (although I'm not saying he was illegally parked, I don't know nor have any expertise in the interpretation of Pittsburg's parking regulations ). As I started packing my car I noticed that the police were not there giving tickets or anything like that, but I didn't really know what was going on. I told him it wasn't no big deal and that they were doing something else.

As I finished packing my car I realized the police had been their quite a while and still I couldn't figure out what was happening. as Daddy was getting their stuff ready to load into their vehicles a paddy wagon and four more police cars blocked up the street all the way to the corner. All the musicians and the remaining crowd gathered around the side door as for policemen held a man and walked peacefully and quitely towards the paddy wagon. I actually thought this is going smoothly, but something must have happened for this much police attention to be paid to one man's arrest. The man didn't struggle or even speak and we were about 20 feet from the paddy wagon. The threw him into the paddy wagon, and from the top of the steps at the side door of the cafe I could see a cop winding up and punching. I couldn't see the guy as police were blocking much of the view into the wagon, but from my vantage point I could see the cop punching and punching the man who was handcuffed behind his back. As he hollered out in pain, the then wrestled and I could see one cop standing outside the wagon with his hands in front of himself, one over the other pushing down as though pushing down the floor of the paddy wagon, and I saw another officer inside the paddywagon doing the same thing as though pushing down on the bench of the wagon where the man had been sitting and getting punched.

A few moments later the man started crying and screaming loudly in pain begging them to stop-- which they didn't. The crowd gathered and one woman in particular was yelling at the police basically pointing out that the man was cuffed an no longer a danger and asking what would they do if the crowd hadn't of gathered. She also asked why were their so many cars and officers to arrest this one man, and she pointed out that this beating and torture of the guy was unneccessary and shows what bullies the police were. She may have used slightly different words. The bartender of the cafe also chimed in with his own comments at the police, pointing out that they must really be tough guys with so many of them beating on a single handcuffed man. They really didn't let this guy go for a long time and the cries got worse as the crowd grew bigger. Eventually they locked up the paddy wagon and all left and the crowd dispersed.

I tried to look at the local paper the next day to see what it was all about. All I could gather that night was that the radios kept talking about a domestic disturbance, a man and a woman. You couldn't really figure it out from listening to the police radio, though it was very loud and clear. In the same area, but on a different street a drug dealer was arrested and the paper said that someone was murdered in an altercation which led to the police being called out and the drug dealer being arrested. But that was on a different street, we were on a corner of Penn Ave and that was on Liberty St. They are parallel there, I think, but they are a few blocks apart there, I think, and the cross street they said dind't match where we were.

It really doesn't matter if it is the same incident or not. Once a man is no longer a threat and the threat of violence towards the officers in no longer possible, the police have no right to beat the man. Police "arrest", but judges punish. Once we allow punishment to be dealt out by the police we lose our legal system to thuggery. I personally would rather have anarchy than that because then I could be my own judge of justice and right and wrong and not depend on a frustrated bully to eforce law.

In the famous Bernhard Getz trial, Getz went to prison because of the additional shots he fired even after any potential of a violent confrontation had been eliminated. Getz may not have even been mugged, but in any event the jail time he served had nothing to do with his "defending himself" or his disabling the four kids that approached him: it was the follow up bullets he fired. He was expected to account for every bullet and every action through the incident, and he was just a wacked out shut-in riding a subway. Do we even hold police to the same standard than Berhnard Getz? When about 12 police officers are at the scene of an arrest and four are beating a handcuffed man, what should we think about not only those beating him, but those that stand and protect the offending officers? Not one stepped up and said, "calm down he's cuffed now", they essentially kept the crowd from breaking it up. In any other situation we'd all walk over and break it up and calm everyone down. The police don't have to calm down or break it up when it is their party. In this kind of event they are above the laws they enforce. This is wrong.

I'll finish this later. OK, I'm back. I fixed a couple of typos above and I'll finish this thing.

My point is that the police as a team participated in this beating, even when the "cooler heads" that arrived late to the "party" should have been able to prevent the beating. They were all bullies with their guns and paddy wagon and hand cuffs. If a citizen had stepped in to do the right thing and break it up he'd be beat down too. Would a riot ensue? I don't know, but the frustration we all felt-- the musicians and cafe patrons and the crowd of locals-- now feels like guilt and shame that we couldn't stop it. We couldn't stop it that night and we'll never stop it unless we all speak out about it and demand better.

Police seem to think that us fearing them is somehow useful to them. I believe I do what is right because it is right, not because I might get beat down by a cop. Perhaps we need to all start a movement to hold police to the highest reasonable standard when it comes to brutality and thuggery. It already is a major part of must peace and justice coalitions-- which I would be blogging about if this hadn't happened.

I'm turning this into a letter to the editor type thing and send it in to the local papers there. I'll send it to whatever civilian complaint mechanism there is and perhaps to the mayor. I'll send it to the Merton Center's newspaper and cc some board members. It isn't nearly enough.

I played a show the day after the Ahmadu Diallo shooting and I swear the feeling in the city was like nothing I've ever felt. The air was filled with the collective fear that an explosion of public rage or police rage would erupt with just the slightest trigger. My band played Kenny's Castaways (as we so often did back then) and we filled the place in spite of the fear. I grabbed the mic (we played instrumental music) to speak and said, while the police stood right at the door way, that we comfortable white people need to be as disgusted and outraged over this as the local people in his section of the Bronx and the minority population in the city. We can't sit by and allow the myth that the police are just doing their job and these events are misunderstands go on. I probably was a lot more empassioned and angry, as I was more like that back then and when I used to grab the mic back in those days I sounded pretty radical.

Afterwards, the guitarist told me that he didn't like what I said because one of the "fans" in the audience had a cop for a husband and he had to work that night because of the tension and fear that the city would errupt. I said, too bad. This stuff needs to be said and these are exactly the people that need to hear it, including the cops at the door of the club. At it's core his "fear" of my statement is racist. At it's core, white peoples comfort with brutality is racist. Brutality is not just racist though. It hits the RNC protesters, it hits anyone that speaks up when confronting a bad cop, and it stirs up the fear that lets evil run our country.

We need to move beyond fear and intimidation in all it's forms. But, it will not go away unless we push it away and keep pushing it till it is as distant as the dark ages. I've already gotten to comments on this blog before I finished it, and I'll get to them shortly. But lets all see what we can do. Join your local peace and justice coalition. In Pittsburg it will be affilitated in some way with the Merton Center as many progressive and radical groups are. In NYC it could be United for Peace and Justice. In NJ it could be Sommerset Voices for Peace, or the Central Jersey Coalition for Peace and Justice. In Ithica it can be found probably after only a couple of phone calls to "Bush Must Go". It is also, in my estimation, the Green Party. I still believe that the long term hope for our country is Green Party, but only if we can change the culture from fear to love, from hate to peace, from oppression to justice.

I just got back, late last night from Buffalo. I've got a Police Brutality story to tell (not about me!), impressions of the cities, and good stuff to write about-- but not today.

I'm pretty impressed with the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburg. I spoke to a beautiful young lady named Marie about the organization as they set up a table at the show and they were like the co-sponsors.

Jim, the guy that organized the whole thing did a great job. He had more than his share of problems that popped up at the last minute also. I was reminded of so many musician horror stories and how Jim was able to completely avoid real problems for a lot of people by just good planning and organization skills. He gave a lot of himself to the tour and to the musicians and the local groups. These local peace groups would do good by working with him again if the chance arises. These things have a tendancy to grow and everyone can benefit.

I've got to run, and I'll blog about the trip later, but I was a little disappointed there was no local talent at the Pittsburg show. There is a music scene of some kind there and there had to be some local talent that is active. I say that for selfish reasons though, I love talking to musicians at shows and just getting hipped to what is going on.