Saints Peter and Paul Church looms above Washington Square Park in San Francisco’s North Beach Neighborhood, where Jessica and I went for a walk Saturday.
[photo: Daniel J. McKeown]

The New Republic has finally found a reason to admit that giving bizarre creep Lee Siegel a weblog on its site was a mistake. This “apology“ is actually a “regret” below the headline, so I wonder how sorry Mr. Foer is really, but then, it must be hard to deal with image issues and circulation issues at the same time at a neocon magazine these days:

‘An Apology to Our Readers

After an investigation, The New Republic has determined that the comments in our Talkback section defending Lee Siegel’s articles and blog under the username “sprezzatura” were produced with Siegel’s participation. We deeply regret misleading our readers. Lee Siegel’s blog will no longer be published by TNR, and he has been suspended from writing for the magazine.

Franklin Foer
Editor, The New Republic’

Mountain Lake Park in San Francisco is a hangout for a very wide variety of fascinating birds through the seasons. I shot a few flying low near sunset time with Jessica’s camera.
[photo: Daniel J. McKeown]

Tony Blair, for all his high sanctinomy and pious posturing, is a lousy right-wing war-monger and now Jimmy Carter is calling him out on it. From the Sunday Telegraph:
‘Tony Blair’s lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.
“I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair’s behaviour,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
Asked why he thinks Mr Blair has behaved in the way that he has with President Bush’s belligerent regime, Mr Carter said he could only put it down to timidity. Yet he confessed that he remains baffled by the apparent contrast between Mr Blair’s private remarks and his public utterances.
“I really believe the reports of former leaders who were present in conversations between Blair and Bush that Blair has expressed private opinions contrary to some of the public policies that he has adopted in subservience.”‘

As George W. Bush toured New Orleans, he must have felt much the way he did at the Republican convention in 2004–like a vulture arriving on the scene of a disaster. On a day that Donald Rumsfeld barks up more nonsense about “fascists” and dares to say to others that “it is apparent that many have still not learned history’s lessons,” Bush tours the city where “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” Mediocore piano player Condi Rice said something similar and also false about airplanes and tall buildings.
Rumsfeld’s typically inept misuse of history would be merely laughable if he had been fired already, but as it is he is still in the Pentagon. He has a stake in pushing his distortions–for he must know that history will record, among other things, that Rumsfeld lost a war in Iraq.
[photo: AP via Yahoo]

(Record review: Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam [the avocado album], 2006.)

Along with Neil Young’s new album, Living with War, Pearl Jam is the most exciting new rock album of the year. (Ten years ago, Pearl Jam was Young’s backing band for Mirror Ball, and both have done well since.) Although the lyrics are typically more oblique than on Young’s album, some of Pearl Jam is dedicated to political protest—“World Wide Suicide” is pretty straightforward:

“It’s a shame to awake in a world of pain
What does it mean when a war has taken over
It’s the same everyday in a hell manmade
What can be saved, and who will be left to hold her?
The whole world–world over
It’s a worldwide suicide!”

Some of the songs tend more toward the longing and impassioned expression of Pearl Jam’s long-established style. The songwriting is outstanding and distinctive, and Mike McCreedy and Stone Gossard along with Eddie Vedder still provide the heavy, rocking rhythm guitars that are expected. The rhythm section is well established now that the long tenure of Matt Cameron on drums (after serial replacement drummers earlier in the band’s history) has given bassist Jeff Ament a consistent partner to work with.

Pearl Jam’s frequent touring and musical talent can be heard in the album as the loose feel is held together by tight rhythms and skillful playing. Eddie Vedder now sounds more like Tom Waits than the Eddie Vedder on the band’s first album, Ten. Pearl Jam might be the best rock band in the world all over again.

Many of the songs mix Pearl Jam’s claustrophobic emotional style and anxieties about the war. “Army Reserve” is one example, and it uses a distinct change from verse to chorus, going from a fast tempo and interweaving guitars to a sluggish chorus featuring rueful harmonies.

Most of the songs on Pearl Jam are heavy rockers, delivering big riffs and screaming choruses most of the way through a coherent, well-flowing album. “Gone” is a bit different, with a rocking chorus but very slow, brooding verses, featuring these lyrics that seem to be about suicide, a noted Seattle problem:

“No more upset mornings/No more trying evenings/This American dream/I am disbelieving
When the gas in my tank/Feels like money in the bank/Gonna blow it all this time/Take me one last ride
For the lights of this city/They only look good when I’m speeding/Gonna leave ’em all behind me/Cause this time
I’m gone”

Just because it was the right thing to do, Vedder also does one of his rhythm vocal outbursts at the end of “Come Back,” mixing yelling the song title and the classic “Hoo-ooo-ooo-ooo/hoo-oo-oo-ooo!”

No, America must say, to war in Iran. As Iraq continues to strain the country unimaginably, an attack on Iran remains off the table. George W. Bush’s unpopularity should help Congress find the nerve to do something closer to its historical role as an important branch of government–and everyone that can influence their elected representatives (and contacting them is nice but I am actually talking about people with money) needs to let them know that two war theaters in that part of the world is already more than enough.
A civilian nuclear power program is probably within Iran’s rights. The war mongers in the Bush administration will do whatever they can to hype any perceived threat from Iran.
The propaganda is coming in. From far-right web site Newsmax.com:
‘A just-released staff report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy concludes that the United States lacks critical information needed for analysts to make many of their judgments with confidence about Iran.
Entitled “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States,” the report points to “many significant information gaps.”
Threats against the United States and Israel by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — coupled with advances in the Iranian nuclear weapons program, support for terror, and resistance to international negotiations on its nuclear program — demonstrate that Iran is a security threat to the nation that requires high caliber intelligence support, the report concluded.
Noted for special concern are major gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iranian nuclear, biological, and chemical programs.’
Israel was quite mad to take on Hizbollah, and it is hard to imagine that they would dare risk an attack on Iran. So this Martin Peretz post from tnr.com should be seen as a more an attempt to egg on America to get on board for a war against Iran than a serious threat:
‘Some of these perils revolve around Iran‘s nuclear capabilities. Will the United States take them out? Or will Israel be forced to do it?
This is my view about the last question; I don’t know if it’s Shavit’s: If the United States doesn’t, Israel will. The world will be shocked, positively shocked. It will also condemn Israel, protesting that the diplomatic option had been cut off … and other such nonsense. The diplomatic option is a figment in the imaginations of a few Democrats, a few Europeans, and Kofi Annan. But, if truth be told, the world will be grateful to the Jewish State for committing the deed.’
These bizarre, bellicose delusions are perhaps less due to rational analysis than a need to lash out after this summer’s Lebanon failure. The world was not grateful for the war crimes in Lebanon and no gratitude would be due an Israeli attack on Iran either.

A well-fed and energetic gang of pigeons caught my attention at a Mission neighborhood gas station where I was filling the tire of up my bike when I saw them pecking up and down rhythmically at tiny scraps while each walked in its own zig-zag pattern. I rode the north drive through Golden Gate Park on the way there and captured the carless street of a summer Sunday.
[photos: Daniel J. McKeown]

David Corn has a piece on the website of The Nation magazine. The following is a small portion, discussing former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage:
“Though Armitage’s role as Novak’s primary source has been a subject of speculation, the case is now closed. Our sources for this are three government officials who spoke to us confidentially and who had direct knowledge of Armitage’s conversation with Novak. Carl Ford Jr., who was head of the State Department’s intelligence branch at the time, told us–on the record–that after Armitage testified before the grand jury investigating the leak case, he told Ford, “I’m afraid I may be the guy that caused the whole thing.”
…
Shortly after [Robert] Novak spoke with Armitage, he told [Karl] Rove that he had heard that Valerie Wilson had been behind her husband’s trip to Niger, and Rove said that he knew that, too. So a leak from Armitage (a war skeptic not bent on revenge against Wilson) was confirmed by Rove (a Bush defender trying to take down Wilson). And days later–before the Novak column came out–Rove told Time magazine’s Matt Cooper that Wilson‘s wife was a CIA employee and involved in his trip.
As Hubris also reveals–and is reported in the Newsweek story–Armitage was also the source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 that Joe Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.”
(Michael Isikoff has his article about Armitage on the Newsweek website.)
[photo of Richard Armitage: AP]

“Please George Bush, please Tony Blair,” pleads Fox News reporter Steve Centanni, “open your minds to Islam, and bring peace to all people around the world.” Of course, the statement was made under duress after being abducted.
The Guardian writes:
“Two journalists from the American Fox News channel were freed unharmed in Gaza yesterday after being forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam at the end of a two-week kidnapping ordeal.
Hours before their release, the two men appeared in a video, dressed in Arab robes. They announced their conversion and criticised American and British foreign policy in the Middle East.
Steve Centanni, 60, an American correspondent, and his freelance cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, a New Zealander, were later released and dropped off by Palestinian security forces at a hotel in Gaza City. They were then driven to Israel.
…
“Then they forced us to convert to Islam at gunpoint,” said Centanni. “I have the highest respect for Islam and learned a lot of very good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had guns and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.””
But the arguments Centanni was forced to make on the video released by his captors were generally designed to sound moderate: “Islam is not fascism” is true, and worth noting, after George W. Bush resorts to the obnoxious (and perhaps fascist itself) term “Islamic-fascism” in a press conference. The most offensive comment in the forced speech was something Centanni said about Islam that Bush would probably say himself about his own religion:
“It is the true religion for all people for all times.”

[photo via AP-Yahoo]