Category: Commentary

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The Lord’s Prayer

The Cinch Review

Those attending Christian churches this morning following the most common Lectionaries would, I think, have heard from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11 (KJV):

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

Give us day by day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Continue reading “The Lord’s Prayer”

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Bob Dylan Obit

There’s an exceptional article on Dylan — in particular latter day Dylan — written by Robert Roper, in an online magazine called Obit today. Thanks a lot to Karen for the link. It’s called Bob Dylan: Together Through Life.

While the Baby Boomers were busy building their ordinary lives, buying vacation homes and packing their IRA’s with ready dough, then getting foreclosed on a lot of those houses and seeing a third of the value of their pensions disappear overnight, Dylan was off somewhere shaking his head, sucking an eye-tooth, pulling at that mean little moustache he wears these days. He’s not surprised. Bad news is to be expected. Life is about harm, the collapse of hope; and then, at the very end, that unavoidable date with the Reaper. Whoopee! Thanks a lot, Bob! We needed to hear that.

Actually, many of us did, and do. When Dylan says it, it stays said. The credibility he enjoys is enormous among a certain demographic; he is the most honored American songwriter of our time, and by virtue of the prominence of American cultural product in the world, the most honored and influential songwriter on earth. Among Americans and Europeans and South Americans and Russians and South Africans and Israelis and Norwegians he enjoys the status that two centuries ago was accorded the preeminent poets – he is the Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth of our time, our Emerson, Dickinson, and Whitman, and our Auden and Neruda and Mandelstam to boot. He has fulfilled for nearly 50 years the classic functions of the seminal poet, that is, to register his times in vivid and memorable words, and to prophesy.

It’s appropriate that an unusually perceptive article about Bob would appear in a publication that is devoted (I take it) to death, from various angles. The way in which Dylan’s work has always faced up to “death’s honesty” is arguably the single most distinguishing characteristic of it, in the context of the last fifty years of pop culture. That alone has qualified it to be called prophetic.

Of-course, one can in a certain sense “face” death’s honesty and come up with nihilism — and many have done just that and still do — but another distinguishing characteristic of Dylan’s work is that this is not his conclusion. It’s not the taste left on one’s lips after consuming his songs. He once joked back in some 1960s interview that all his songs end with: “Good luck, hope you make it.” In actuality, they do. “Everything’s collapsing, the world is depraved, you can’t trust anyone, you’re gonna die … hope you make it!” The question is what making it really means.

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Tom Jones’s Gospel Music Not Liked By Some

The Cinch Review

Tom Jones - Praise & Blame

Tom Jones’ new album is called Praise & Blame,and has a distinct tilt towards songs of faith, like What Good Am I?, Didn’t It Rain, and Lord Help the Poor and Needy. Now, an e-mail from the vice-president of Island Records, David Sharpe, has been leaked by someone, and it indicates some extreme displeasure with the Tom’s latest musical direction. From WalesOnline:

Mr Sharpe fumed to colleagues: “I have just listened to the album and want to know if this is some sick joke?”

[…] [The e-mail] stated: “We did not invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the common book of prayer.

“This is certainly not what we paid for.”

Jones is not happy about this and is making his feelings clear.

“In the press it says that I’ve gone off and made something that the record company didn’t pay me for and that they don’t like it.

“People tell me that all publicity is good publicity, that’s what I’ve been told.

“People say to me ‘well it’s being talked about’, but to me it’s being talked about in a negative way.

“Hopefully, if there’s any good that comes out of it, it’s that people will wonder about [the new album]. But it isn’t the way I would handle it by going and making a stupid statement. That’s not going to help it.

“They’ve apologised, they can’t apologise enough – and they’ve said ‘we’ll make good on this’.”

Some people, perhaps including Tom Jones, are not entirely sure if this e-mail reflected Sharpe’s real opinions or if the leaking of it is in fact a kind of publicity stunt. However, I think we may mislead ourselves by assuming too much deviousness, when in fact Sharpe’s scathing response to Tom Jones’ gospel music is pretty much par for the course amongst record executives when one of their secular artists makes this kind of move.

It’s well established history how the execs at Columbia hated Bob Dylan’s gospel stuff, and went out of their way to bury Saved.(Some conspiracy theorists even suspect they sabotaged the mix on that record.) I’ve written in a different venue on how Paddy McAloon’s masterpiece Let’s Change the World With Musicwas dismissed, if not suppressed, by those in control of the purse strings at Sony in the U.K. back in 1992, reportedly because of discomfort with numerous references to the divine in the songs’ lyrics.

The only thing I wonder is this: In these cases, do the record company executives oppose songs of faith because they genuinely believe that kind of music won’t sell (in which case I think they’re grossly mistaken) or does the attitude come from a deep antipathy towards the very concept of belief in God?

Motivations tend to be messy, so what’s going on is probably a combination of the two, but I would not at all underestimate the latter cause.

I do note that it’s quite sad that any Englishman would refer to the venerable old Book of Common Prayer as the “common book of prayer.”

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Supreme Court recognizes 2nd amendment

The Cinch Review

From my cold, dead handsThe headline from the AP is: “Justices extend gun owner rights nationwide.” This, as distinct from their more narrow decision in the D.C. case in 2008. But just to correct the headline: The right always existed, and will continue to exist even if some later more perverse court should fail to recognize it. The fundamental rights of Americans do not and must not rest on the passing whim of any elite.

More details via the WSJ:

Monday’s ruling elevates the Second Amendment right to bear arms to the status of a fundamental right that states can’t abridge.

“It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” wrote Justice Alito in his majority opinion.

The full text of this judgment is available from the Supreme Court at this link, in .pdf form.


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Region N11 of Large Magellanic Cloud (and Psalm 8)

The Cinch Review

Large Magellanic Cloud Psalm 8

Pictured here is just another breathtaking image from the Hubble Space Telescope, recently released. It is of a region called N11 of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The sciences of physics and astronomy tell us that what we’re looking at is a nursery of stars. (More images and more details are at this link.) Gases are being compressed and compacted here and nuclear fusion is sparking and bringing forth bright new spheres of light and energy which will shine for billions of years, like our own Sun. What planets might they light, what frozen or perhaps boiling vistas on strange and beautiful worlds that human eyes will never see?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers
the moon and stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

When I was younger, there was a very difficult-to-resolve conflict here. Continue reading “Region N11 of Large Magellanic Cloud (and Psalm 8)”

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Leonard Cohen: An Inducted Songwriter

The other night, Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.

Well, maybe you’re thinking like me: Given that there is such a thing as the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, how come a guy like Leonard Cohen wasn’t inducted twenty years ago or more?

I guess they’ll be getting around to Jerome Kern any day now.

Cohen’s connections to Bob Dylan are many, although I think that the fundamental connection is likely way beyond any of the details.

One of the most quotable quotes regarding Dylan’s art has come from Cohen, who in an interview way back when recalled reading a review of Bob’s Shot of Love album in which the reviewer dismissed it as containing “only one masterpiece,” namely Every Grain of Sand. Cohen exclaimed, “My God! Only one masterpiece. Does this guy have any idea what it takes to produce a single masterpiece?”

Leonard said a lot with those few words, and he’s always been able to say a lot with relatively few words. I guess by that I mean that although he’s far from the most prolific songwriter of the last five decades, his songs resonate massively.

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Rush Limbaugh Marries Elton John


PALM BEACH, FL — Leading American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, 59, married legendary British rock star Elton John, 63, in a ceremony here on June 5th. People Magazine reports:

Amid dozens of giant bouquets of white roses (and very tight security), reports the Palm Beach Post, guests at the wedding included former Bush adviser Karl Rove; actor-politician Fred Thompson; former Kansas City Royals slugger George Brett; Fox News commentator Sean Hannity; former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft; former Clinton adviser James Carville and his wife, GOP analyst Mary Matalin; and golfer Tom Watson. A wedding guest also tells PEOPLE that among the others was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Continue reading “Rush Limbaugh Marries Elton John”

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A Commercial Message: Fight the Boycott

As at least a partial-Irish-ex-pat, I keep an eye on news from the Emerald Isle. Today I saw this story: Group calls for boycott of Israeli products.

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign is urging a boycott of Israeli products and services – saying Palestine must not be forgotten.

Two members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla will be holding a public meeting at the Central Hotel on Exchequer Street in Dublin this afternoon at 2pm.

Fintan Lane and Derek Graham were on board different ships intercepted by Israelis while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The IPSC is also hoping to highlight what it calls the complicity of Veolia, the operators of the Luas in Dublin, with Israel’s regime. [sic]

A spokesperson for the Irish Anti-War Movement said: “It is vital the murders of peace activists trying to break the siege of Gaza, and most importantly the cruel siege itself are not forgotten and that Israel is held to account for what it is doing to the Palestinian people.

“The easiest and most concrete way, ordinary people can put pressure on Israel and show their solidarity with the Palestinian people is by supporting the campaign of boycott, sanctions and divestment.

“Today we want to make the shops and shoppers in Dublin city aware of the connection between Israeli atrocity and some of the goods stocked in Dublin shops, and appeal to them not to buy these goods or stock them.

“Israel does very significant trade with Ireland. We need to hurt Israel in the pocket if we are to put pressure on them to end their cruel oppression of the Palestinian people.”

Charming indeed. This kind of thing is breaking out all over, but it’s nothing new either. The campaign of divestment and boycott against Israel has been going on for years, centered amongst the European left. The current situation merely gives it a renewed head of steam and focal point. And make no mistake: The attackers on the Mavi Marmara gave their lives for just this purpose, knowing that the next day’s headlines would deal a massive blow to the image of “the Zionist regime,” and rally the opposition of those across the world only too willing to swallow the ready-made narrative of “Israeli atrocity,” pushed with vigor by the likes of Turkey’s Erdogan.

Most countries in Israel’s neighborhood refuse to trade with the Zionist regime anyway, so an economic boycott by the larger world is no small thing. In fact, it’s part of a growing multi-pronged existential threat.

That’s why I’ve added to my sidebar a link like this: FIGHT THE BOYCOTT: BUY ISRAELI!

That takes you to Amazon.com and some products labeled as “Made in Israel.” As an added bonus, buying anything from Amazon after following a link from THE CINCH REVIEW benefits this website at no added cost to you, the discerning consumer!

Of-course, there are plenty of other ways of buying Israeli products. You can find many listed on this page: Ways To Help Israel.

Shalom, and go raibh maith agat.

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Chaos, Anarchy To Reign in New York

The Cinch Review

So goes the news tonight:

Chaos, Anarchy To Reign If [Governor] Paterson Shuts Down NY
Monday Could Be Doomsday If Budget Deal Can’t Be Reached
Shutdown Would Mean Closing Of State Parks, DMV, Courts, N.Y. Lottery

Wow! Well, I’m ready. I’ve been ready for anarchy and chaos in New York City for a long time; I have the necessary resources stored away, and I fully expect to be one of the few survivors in Manhattan. Continue reading “Chaos, Anarchy To Reign in New York”

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More on Israel, Gaza, the Blockade and the Blockheads

Charles Krauthammer’s column today is as concise and powerful as his best.

The world is outraged at Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel — a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

He goes on to assert, correctly, that this entire escapade has nothing to do with helping the people of Gaza, and everything to do with depriving Israel of any means of self-defense, even such passive means as a blockade. He also outlines the result of every recent “land for peace” gesture by Israel: only more attacks, from enemies who are now nearer. He finishes:

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized, and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.

But read it all.

And courtesy of the Canada-Israel Committee, here are some figures on how much aid is regularly delivered to the people of Gaza.

Despite the fact that Israel publicly offered to inspect and then transfer the flotilla’s aid to Gaza several days prior to the incident, many opponents of Israel are now making wild accusations that humanitarian supplies are being blocked from entering Gaza.

The facts put these charges to rest – just take a look at how much aid Israel regularly delivers to Gaza, and what it means in real terms for Gazans:

  • Over one million tons of humanitarian supplies were delivered by Israel to the people of Gaza in the past 18 months – that’s equal to nearly one ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza.
     
  • In the first quarter of 2010 alone (January-March), Israel delivered 94,500 tons of supplies to Gaza. It’s very easy to miss what that actually means for the people of Gaza. The breakdown includes:
    • 40,000 tons of wheat – which is equal to 53 million loaves of bread;
    • 2,760 tons of rice – which equals 69 million servings;
    • 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear – the equivalent weight of 3.6 million pairs of jeans; and
    • 553 tons of milk powder and baby food – equivalent to over 3.1 million days of formula for an average six-month-old baby.
  • This reflects a long-term effort on the part of Israel to deliver a massive and comprehensive supply of aid to Gaza’s civilians, while restricting the ability of Hamas to import missiles that have been launched at the cities of southern Israel. In 2009 alone:
    • During the Muslim holy days of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha, Israel shipped some 11,000 head of cattle into Gaza – enough to provide 8.8 million meals of beef;
    • More than 3,000 tons of hypochlorite were delivered by Israel to Gaza for water purification purposes – that’s 60 billion gallons of purified water; and
    • Israel brought some 4,883 tons of medical equipment and medicine into Gaza – a weight equivalent to over 360,000 260-piece mobile trauma first aid kits.

Read the full statistics and judge for yourself. Humanitarian crisis in Gaza? Not according to the facts.

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The War of Isolation Against Israel

The Cinch Review

The false narrative of the supposedly innocent “aid flotilla” attacked by Israel (when in reality the only violence which took place occurred when IHH terrorists attacked Israeli commandos with the goal of creating this story) is lending fuel to an already-burgeoning global movement of boycotts and divestment that poses a very real risk to Israel’s survival. From the Wall Street Journal:

Israeli officials point to a significant toughening by many allies on important Israeli strategic issues, such as peace efforts with the Palestinians and the country’s nuclear program. But the fallout has ricocheted beyond diplomacy as well, they say. It is reflected in incidents including British grocery chains dropping products produced in Israeli settlements; Scandinavian pension funds divesting from an Israeli defense company; and the spread of an annual “Israel Apartheid Week,” backed by mostly left-leaning Western organizations, to 50 cities world-wide. Continue reading “The War of Isolation Against Israel”

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Israel Under Attack

The Cinch Review

Hamas fired two Kassam rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip earlier today, but that’s far from the most serious attack being made on the Jewish state. Unable to defeat Israel in a direct military assault, her enemies have become well practiced at tactics that seek to damage her in the court of world opinion, to strip her of support (or even tolerance) and to encourage the kind of opposition that could ultimately break the nation’s spirit.

The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank receive more international aid per capita than any Continue reading “Israel Under Attack”

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Raquel Can Write

Raquel Welch: Beyond the Cleavage
Raquel Welch has a new autobiography out, called Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage.

She also has a piece on the CNN website, in which she looks back on the sexual revolution and weighs its fruits. (Via First Thoughts.)

Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again. Since then the growing proliferation of birth control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values. Continue reading “Raquel Can Write”

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Miles Davis on friendship

The Cinch Review

The following is a passage from Miles: The Autobiography.

Shooting heroin changed my whole personality from being a nice, quiet, honest, caring person into someone who was the complete opposite. It was the drive to get the heroin that made me that way. I’d do anything not to get sick, which meant getting and shooting heroin all the time, all day and all night.

I started to get money from whores to feed and support my habit. I started to pimp them, even before I realized that this was what I was doing. I was what I used to call a “professional junkie.” That’s all I lived for. I even chose my jobs according to whether it would be easy for me to cop drugs. I turned into one of the best hustlers because I had to get heroin every day, no matter what I had to do.

I even beat Clark Terry out of some money once in order to buy some drugs. I was down around the Hotel America, where Clark lived, too, sitting on the curb thinking about how and where I was going to get some money to get off when Clark walked up. My nose was runny and my eyes were all red. He bought me some breakfast and afterward he took me to his room at the hotel and told me to get some sleep. He was going out on the road with Count Basie and about to leave. He told me when I felt well enough to leave to just lock the door behind me, but I could stay as long as I wanted to. That’s how tight we were. He knew what I was doing but he just figured I would never do nothing fucked up to him, right? Wrong.

As soon as Clark left to catch his bus, I opened up his drawers and closets and took everything I could get my hands on to carry. Took a horn and a lot of clothes straight to the pawnshop and what I couldn’t pawn, I sold for whatever little money I could get for the stuff. I even sold Philly Jones a shirt that Clark later saw him in. Later I found out that Clark didn’t catch the bus. He had waited but the bus had taken longer than he thought. He came back to his hotel room to check on how I was doing and found his door wide open. Clark called home to St. Louis and told his wife, Pauline, who was still living there, to call my father and tell him what bad shape I was in. When she called him, my father got on his case.

“The only thing that’s wrong with Miles now is those damn musicians like your husband that he’s hanging around with,” he said to her. My father believed in me and it was hard for him to accept that I was in real deep trouble, and so he blamed Clark. My father felt that Clark had been the reason that I had gone into music in the first place.

Since Clark knew my father, he knew where he was coming from, and on top of everything, Clark forgave me for what I had done to him. But for a little while after that, I avoided being anyplace I thought Clark was going to be. When we did finally run into each other, I apologized and we went on like nothing had ever happened. Now, that’s a good friend. A long time after that every time he caught me in a bar drinking with my change on the counter, he’d take it for payment on what I had stolen. Man, that was some funny shit.

It sure was. We can probably all find something to relate to in Miles’ story above. Like for me: the terrible ease with which one can find oneself slipping into pimpery, almost so subtly as to not even realize it.

In any case, what a friend Miles Davis had in Clark Terry. Clark takes Miles in even though he knows that Miles is a heroin junkie. He disregards the risk and leaves his place at the mercy of Miles. When Davis rips off everything he can carry, Terry’s first thought is to get word to Davis’s father that Miles is in really bad shape. Yet, Terry understands when the senior Mr. Davis instead blames him for whatever is wrong with Miles. Further, he forgives Miles for the abuse of their friendship and even turns the whole episode into a joke between them.

Clark was being a spectacularly good friend, pretty obviously. But someone else is being a good friend here too, and that’s Miles Davis. That’s because all of these kindnesses that Clark Terry performed are being remembered and lifted up in a highly sensitive fashion here by Miles Davis himself, on the occasion of the writing of his autobiography.

So, not a lot of point to all this, except to observe that, well, people are just nice sometimes.

…

Miles Davis, one of the greatest figures in jazz, died in 1991 at the age of 65. Clark Terry, a big influence on Miles as a trumpeter and a huge figure in jazz in his own right, is still living today, at the age of 89. (Click here to see a YouTube clip of Terry receiving a Lifetime Achievement Grammy earlier this year.)

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Study: Vitamin D Crucial to Fighting All Kinds of Infection


Why does vitamin D interest me so? I swear, I’m not one of those supplement-popping freaks. I’ve never been a vitamin C zealot, nor a loud advocate of ginseng, royal jelly or even wheat germ. Yet, the continuing story of how vitamin D levels have been massively overlooked by the scientific and medical communities as a vital factor in human health fascinates and compels me because it is a singular example which illuminates a much bigger picture.

Science is wonderful. Medical science has saved so many lives and every day works what would have been considered miracles not very long ago. It is to be greatly valued and scientists and doctors are to be admired and encouraged to continue in the same vein. All of that is true, and yet, it is even more important not to forget one underlying fact: Everything that scientists and doctors think they know could actually be wrong. Everything. Continue reading “Study: Vitamin D Crucial to Fighting All Kinds of Infection”

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Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

The Cinch Review

From the LA Times: Justices signal they’re ready to make gun ownership a national right.

Most of the Supreme Court justices who two years ago said the 2nd Amendment protects individual gun rights signaled during arguments Tuesday that they are ready to extend this right nationwide and to use it to strike down some state and local gun regulations.

Since 1982, Chicago has outlawed handguns in the city, even for law-abiding residents who sought to keep one at home. That ordinance was challenged by several city residents who said it violated their right “to keep and bear arms” under the 2nd Amendment.

[…]

All signs Tuesday were that five justices saw the right to “bear arms” as national in scope and not limited to laws passed in Washington.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy described the individual right to possess a gun as being of “fundamental character,” like the right to freedom of speech. “If it is not fundamental, then Heller is wrong,” Kennedy said, referring to the decision two years ago that struck down the handgun ban in the District of Columbia. Kennedy was part of the 5-4 majority in that case.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. called it an “extremely important” right in the Constitution. Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. echoed the theme that the court had endorsed an individual, nationwide right in their decision two years ago. The fifth member of the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas, did not comment during the argument, but he had been a steady advocate of the 2nd Amendment.

Well, it will be months before there is a decision here, and part of my breath will be held until this incredibly important ruling is actually issued, but, I must say, this is highly pleasurable stuff to contemplate.


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Something to dwell upon

The Cinch Review

On another blog I just picked the album From Langley Park to Memphis by Prefab Sprout as “one of the essential but non-obvious albums of the 1980s” so I thought I’d post one of the essential but non-obvious songs from it, titled Enchanted. (Actually, it’s taken me 22 years to let this little slice of Brit-pop-soul, or whatever you want to call it, get under my skin, so I’d say that’s very non-obvious indeed.)

Here’s something to dwell upon
Now we’re living, next we’re gone

So if you’ve love please pass it on

’Cos it’s a disbelieving world
But sensitive as any girl …

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Mr. President (Obama): Have Pity On The Working Man

The Cinch Review

PrezNow, I know that Randy Newman is some kind of darned liberal, and (based on media reports I’ve seen) was quite recently in possession of a very fine case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I don’t like him for his politics, but I do genuinely enjoy his artful and ironic way with a song. And all I know is that his song Mr. President (written around 1974, but with something of an aura of 1934) has never been a more relevant and sharply-aimed arrow than it is at this very moment. Today, President Barack Obama, in the face of so much incredulity — on both sides of the aisle, mind you — and in the face of so much frustration on the part of average Americans, continues to pursue his ideological goal of getting the hands of the federal government firmly around the U.S. health-care system. On this particular day he is doing it by means of a televised “summit” with Democrats and Republicans from Congress, as if all of the issues have not had more than their due airing over the past 13 months and more; as if he has just not had sufficient time to make his arguments. He persists in this vein while the U.S economy continues to descend in its death spiral, with real working Americans (and once working Americans) continuing to suffer in ever greater numbers, and with no real recovery even in sight. Continue reading “Mr. President (Obama): Have Pity On The Working Man”