If this event happens, your alarm clock can’t help you. The Zen Alarm Clock comes in both analog (normal clock style) and digital…

Marching makes you feel good anf that’s about all it does.

“I ain’t marching anymore . . .”
Phil Ochs

Which is why they have no influence. The Vietnam movement helped end the war, as Giap and Nixon agreed.

Forty years ago, there were few if any outlets for anti-war sentiment and “the establishment” was far more ubiquitous and monolithic.

Street marches were the only viable option and provided rare opportunities for networking among peace activists and even rare edification for a point of view portrayed by the establishment media as “fringe.”

Hooking up with the most-informed, best-positioned peace activists is now a click away. It should be no surprise that street marches are increasingly the province of the more desperate identity-seekers and their manipulators and thus unattractive to more mainstream anti-war people.

If there’s little outrage, it’s because it’s hardly an “incredible waste of young lives” to have weekly US casualty lists that seldom reach into the double digits. Check the stats on Vietnam casualties. Then look at the risk to a man 18-35 of being killed, in a bad neighborhood in Philadelphia or Miami. In terms of risk of violent death, Iraq’s hardly worse than urban life in America in some places, if you’re an American soldier.

“In fact the only reaction to the names of the dead I have ever had here is Turner’s nonsense that it deflects from concern about Iraqi deaths, ….”

Great at putting words in my mouth, as usual. I never said it “deflects concern”. I just question the emphasis. I read in the news the other day that three Iraqi children were killed during a firefight between insurgents and U.S. troops. Why aren’t you posting *that*, Balter?

“…. something that neither he nor very many others here have shown much concern about either.”

If I’m so unconcerned about it, why do I raise it in every other post here? Why do I take the most recent Lancet report seriously when others (with precious little statistical acumen) deride it, ignore it, forget it?

“And that is why it keeps going on and on.”

Oh, right, it couldn’t be simply that most people have a sense of proportion, and a sense of what’s at stake, that’s better than yours.

“During the 60s we had an antiwar movement. Nothing is stopping us from having one now, which we don’t, except that unlike during that decade very few people are being driven half-mad with outrage.”

My hometown of Berkeley exploded after the news of the Cambodian Incursion. It was quite a few people being “driven half-mad with outrage”. However, it wasn’t because that particular action was killing a lot of U.S. soldiers — most of the violence was American bombing, which was killing untold thousands of *Cambodians*. That’s a true outrage. (Estimates of the eventual death toll from that bombing run from 200,000 to 500,000. The total explosive tonnage, if measured in nuclear terms, might have been 20 Hiroshimas.)

And what does today’s news from Iraq bring? An insurgent group called the Islamic Army rooting Al Qaeda in Iraq from a section of Baghdad. With US forces supporting the attack. Tribal leaders in Anbar Province working hand in glove with the US military. If you look at Iraq and see Vietnam, it must be from some vantage point in Oz, or perhaps the perspective is more rectal (your own, to be specific). Aside from the fact that it’s war, in a foreign land, and largely against insurgents of one kind or another, I just don’t see the parallels. Is it “winnable” in ANY sense? I don’t know, and I don’t think you know either. Is outrage going to make a positive difference? Yeah, if it’s selective and intelligent. Otherwise, it’s probably just going to make things worse.

jcummings may be referring to this take on the Dead and the Velvets:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n06/grei01_.html

It’s a great essay. BTW JC — do you have a reference to Sweet Home Alabama being tongue in cheek? I always assumed it was just a classic “Yankee go home” f-u from the south. (More memorable than Young’s original song though.) There’s an alternative interpretation on Wikipedia, which I find doubtful, but even that does not say it was meant as a joke.

About the Beatles, there are only a few songs I can enjoy from their whole catalog. It’s all been played so, so much. I prefer the Rutles.

Punk and its DIY methods have been enormously influential, across a large swath of culture including fine art.

What’s the problem with having fewer iconic cultural artifacts that appeal to a certain generational slice? It’s much more mature, IMHO, to have a fragmented landscape in the 18-25 range. It’s fragmented at older ages too. The whole phenomenon of 60s cultural icons might mainly have been an accidental by-product of the fact that the dominant media at the time were broadcast.

Hanging out at the “San Remo” in the village in the fifties with the likes of Mailer and Williams and Vidal and all those beats and their muses like Hunke.

Birdland

“Down those stairs, lose your cares
Where, down in Birdland.
Total Swing, Bop was king.
There, down in birdland.

Bird would cook, Max would
look, there, down in Birdland.
Miles came thru, Trane came too
There, down in Birdland
Basie flew, Blakey too,
There, down in Birdland
Cannonball played that hall
. . . Down in Birdland!”

Anyway those were the days

“I don’t know if you would have like it but I do know this, those were the greatest days of them all!”
Bert and Kurt (“Bilbao Song”)

Only super-album released in my lifetime that I ever really “got” was Cheap Trick’s Live at Budokan.

Celeste, you’ll love the book. Mailer, Wolfe Sack, Talese – they’re all there!

MB I don’t know if we were driven to madness then but that reminds of another time that I would have loved to see – was only eight then so I doubt if they’d let me in. But back in the summer of 1955 it would have been a gas to be at Cafe 6 on Hayes St, in San Francisco to see Keruoac, Ferlenghetti, Snyder, and McClure perform and listen to Ginsberg recite his new poem “Howl”

“I saw the best minds of my generation driven mad . . .”

Bill, Sorry to hear your unfortunate experience with Franmpton but I’ve got you beat. In the Summer of ’69 I was at Fort Devens and forced to share a barracks with a guy who played “In A Gadda Da Vida” over and over again! The long version! I think he’s working at Gitmo now!

They also have a clasic ant-gun song.

Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down.
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
a southern man don’t need him around anyhow.

Many of you are now probably shouting “Free Bird!”

Bill Bradley: Blogging and activism are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I agree that it is very easy to delude oneself that one is doing the latter when one is doing the former. I will be in the USA from Jan-May 2008 and will actively be looking for some antiwar activism to be part of, will I find it?