“Again, readers should consider watching the video, which is only 30 seconds or so. It’s actually so chaotic, it took us several viewings to fully make sense of it. Whether people want to watch it or not, we’ll try to describe it. Good was driving a minivan, one with decorative stickers all over the rear window and hatch. You couldn’t find a more “suburban mom” vehicle if you tried. At the moment the footage starts, there are two vehicles to the right of her car, one to the left, all of them 2-20 feet away. These are presumably all ICE vehicles, and Good’s car was roughly at a right angle to all three of them, and thus was at a right angle to the lanes on the street.”
“There are five agents shown in the video, though only three of them are really relevant to the discussion. Relevant Agent #1 was standing behind the vehicle, and slightly to the right of it. Relevant Agent #3 was standing in front of the vehicle, and slightly to the left of it. If you believe the claims of Trump and Noem, either one of these agents could theoretically have been the “ramming” target. Relevant Agent #2 approaches the vehicle, apparently to apprehend Good, and tries to open the door.”
“At that point, someone (very possibly Good) shouts “Nooooooooo!” Meanwhile, Good backs her minivan up slightly, to avoid contact with the vehicle that is closest to her (right side, about 2 feet away). Agent #1 (behind the minivan) gets out of the way without difficulty, while Agent #2 (trying to open the door) backs off slightly. Good then endeavors to flee the agents, and Agent #3 (in front of the minvan) gets out of the way, again without difficulty, and then fires several shots into the driver’s side window, at point-blank range. Good is presumably dead/dying at that point, but the momentum of the minivan carries it forward perhaps 30 feet before it crashes into (presumably civilian) cars parked on the side of the road.”
And I want to break here to insert some analysis from the NYTimes that pretty much confirms the E-V sequence of events:
Forensic analysis of objective video evidence. This is how you serve readers searching for clarity.
I last played this one two years ago, December 2023 … and since everyone liked at least one version of it, I’m reduxing it today!
This one goes back to 1961 and a song that would become Motown’s first #1 hit. This one is the first ever recorded by the Marvelettes and the only #1 hit they ever had. There is some interesting background to the song, as told by SongFacts …
When The Marvelettes auditioned for Motown, the label didn’t have their full songwriting machinery in place, so they asked the girls to bring in material. William Garrett, a songwriter friend of group member Georgia Dobbins, offered this to The Marvelettes when she asked if he had anything for them to sing. He wrote it as a blues song, but Dobbins completely rewrote it (she saved only the title) and taught it to lead singer Gladys Horton. Before The Marvelettes recorded it, Dobbins left the group to care for her mother. Motown producers Robert Bateman and Brian Holland worked on the song with The Marvelettes and crafted it into a hit. Holland, along with his brother Eddie and Lamont Dozier, went on to write many other Motown classics.
Marvin Gaye played drums on this song. He was 22 at the time and trying to break into the business.
Part of this song was written by a postman who helped complete the lyrics. His name was Freddie Gorman and his mail route included Brewster public housing where members of The Supremes lived. Gorman also sang with the Motown group The Originals. He passed away in 2006.
The Marvelettes were five teenage girls from Inkster, Michigan. This was their first single and their only #1. They went through many member changes before breaking up in 1969.
When they recorded this song, it was the first time The Marvelettes had ever been in a recording studio – their singing experience was in choirs and glee clubs. They got some help from Florence Ballard, who was a member of another Motown girl group, The Supremes. Ballard suggested they loosen up, stretch out the word “postman,” and add “oh yeah” backing vocals. “We were all tight – petrified,” Gladys Horton said. “Florence was a sweetheart, and what he said was dead on.”
I had no idea … or perhaps I knew once upon a time, but my brain lost the data as it often does … that the Beatles had also covered this! According to Wikipedia …
John Lennon sang lead vocal, Paul McCartney and George Harrison providing backing vocals, while all three added handclaps at their head level. The Beatles’ 7 March 1962 performance of the song on BBC Radio’s Here We Go was the first time any Tamla song was played over BBC radio. Beatles author Mark Lewisohn reflects: “Without even realising it (and they’d have been thrilled to know), the Beatles broke the Detroit ‘Motown sound’ to the British listening public.”
The Beatles’ version does not appear to have charted, but then along came the Carpenters who covered it in 1975, and their version went to #1 in the U.S. and Canada, and #2 in the UK. Go figure.
Last time I played this, I included all three versions — The Marvelettes, The Beatles, and The Carpenters — but since literally nobody liked the Carpenters’ version, I’m omitting it this time …
I know that some of you don’t care much for this one, for it’s message, but I think it’s about balance. Yes, the merry songs with jingle bells and lots of “Ho Ho Ho” are wonderful and fill us with joy, but … I also think that this is the time of year when we take stock, when we remember that for some, there is no joy, when we remember history. And not just history — this year, I’m thinking of all the people in Ukraine who have lost their lives for no reason, the people in Gaza who are being bombed and threatened with losing their identity and their lives, and the people of Venezuela who are being killed and threatened for no reason other than the greed of one ‘man’. And so, this one has, like a few others, become a part of my annual holiday roundup. I do try to include some of the more serious ones like this one, and also some of the cheerier ones. It’s all about balance. Joy, tempered with reality.
Most Christmas songs are cheery, evoking visions of sleigh bells, mistletoe, presents, and the like. This one, however, is a bit different and given the chaos and angst around the world today, I think is more appropriate than the other sort to play on Christmas Eve. This song asks us to think about those who live in fear, and collectively bring about the end of war. The call to action is the refrain “war is over, if you want it.”
John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote this in their New York City hotel room and recorded it during the evening of October 28 and into the morning of the 29th, 1971, at the Record Plant in New York. It was released in the US for Christmas, but didn’t chart. The next year, it was released in the UK, where it did much better, charting at #4. Eventually, the song became a Christmas classic in America, but it took a while, and it only reached #42 at best.
John and Yoko spent a lot of time in the late ’60s and early ’70s working to promote peace. In 1969, they put up billboards in major cities around the world that said, “War is over! (If you want it).” Two years later this slogan became the basis for this song when Lennon decided to make a Christmas record with an anti-war message. John also claimed another inspiration for writing the song: he said he was “sick of ‘White Christmas.’”
The children’s voices are the Harlem Community Choir, featuring thirty children, most of them four to twelve years of age, who were brought in to sing on this track. They are credited on the single along with Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band.
Lennon and Ono produced this with the help of Phil Spector. Spector had worked on some of the later Beatles songs and also produced Lennon’s Instant Karma. It was not Spector’s first foray into Christmas music: he and his famous session stars (including a 17-year-old Cher) spent six weeks in the summer of 1963 putting together A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, featuring artists like The Ronettes and Darlene Love. Unfortunately, the album was released on November 22, 1963, which was the same day US president John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The album sold poorly as America was focused on news of the killing.
At the beginning of the song, two whispers can be heard (not by me, of course, but perhaps you will hear them). Yoko whispers: “Happy Christmas, Kyoko” (Kyoko Chan Cox is Yoko’s daughter with Anthony Cox) and John whispers: “Happy Christmas, Julian” (John’s son with Cynthia).
John Lennon was shot and killed less than three weeks before Christmas in 1980. The song was re-released in the UK on December 20 of that year, reaching #2.
Why not “Merry Christmas” or “Merry Xmas”? In England, “Happy Christmas” is a more common seasonal greeting and helped differentiate it from the holiday standard Merry Christmas Baby. More confusing to Americans is “Father Christmas,” which is the English version of Santa Claus.
I was reminded of this song by our friend David when he sent it to me earlier this evening. There are several versions, and I am playing two of them tonight. The first is family-friendly and depicts normal Christmas scenes, while the second is far more graphic, depicting actual scenes of death and the results of war — so graphic, in fact, that YouTube has a disclaimer which you must click on in order to see the video, but … while it isn’t cheerful, I think it’s important … it reminds us that we in the West, despite our troubles, have been living a rather homogenized life, that we have never actually known what it’s like to be treated as ‘the enemy’, to carry our dead child wrapped in a dirty blanket. Watch one or both … your choice.
Happy or Merry Christmas, dear friends!
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) John Lennon and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir
Yesterday, October 18th, was the 2ndNo Kings Day and from everything I’ve seen & read, it was successful beyond the wildest expectations. Something like 2,700 events around the nation and even in Canada and parts of Europe with an estimated 7 million people turning out, though I hear that even those estimates may be on the low side. Sadly, while I was there in spirit and in my heart, my body was not able to make the journey. Next time … I swear I will be there next time if I’m still alive!
I am heartened by a few things … starting with the huge crowds! The pictures I’ve seen show the truth about how people are feeling about the current regime and their attempt to rule with an iron fist, upending the democratic principles built into the Constitution. I’m also heartened by the lack of violence … while a few arrests were made in two or three cities, for the most part there were no arrests, no outbreaks of violence, no shootings. And the enthusiasm … you could see it in people’s faces … the determination, the belief that they are doing something good, not just for a few but for the entire nation!
I think that We the People proved to the leaders of this regime that we will not lie down and let them kick us, will not give in and will fight to the death against their lawless attempts to replace our democratic republic with a dictatorship run by a cruel and evil tyrant. Remember these images next time you hear Felon Trump say that “everybody” loves him or “everybody” believes what he is doing is right.
Boston (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
New York (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
Chicago (Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Kansas City (Austin Casey Johnson/AFP via Getty Images)
Los Angeles (Frederic J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
It just seemed like some form of a protest song was appropriate for today … No Kings Day #2. I read somewhere that 10 million people are expected to turn out for the 2,700 or so protests being held in nearly every town across the nation. And this is one of the few protest songs in my repetoire I haven’t already played this year! Yes, I could have gone in search of a new one — there are several good ones I’ve never done yet, but I’m running low on both time and energy and I must conserve some of the latter if I’m to make it to the No Kings Day event here!
Written by Buffalo Springfield guitarist Stephen Stills, later of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, this song was not about anti-war gatherings, but rather youth gatherings protesting anti-loitering laws, and the closing of the West Hollywood nightclub Pandora’s Box. Stills was not there when they closed the club, but had heard about it from his bandmates.
In the book Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, Stephen Stills tells the story of this song’s origin:
“I had had something kicking around in my head. I wanted to write something about the kids that were on the line over in Southeast Asia that didn’t have anything to do with the device of this mission, which was unraveling before our eyes. Then we came down to Sunset from my place on Topanga with a guy – I can’t remember his name – and there’s a funeral for a bar, one of the favorite spots for high school and UCLA kids to go and dance and listen to music.
[Officials] decided to call out the official riot police because there’s three thousand kids sort of standing out in the street; there’s no looting, there’s no nothing. It’s everybody having a hang to close this bar. A whole company of black and white LAPD in full Macedonian battle array in shields and helmets and all that, and they’re lined up across the street, and I just went ‘Whoa! Why are they doing this?’ There was no reason for it. I went back to Topanga, and that other song turned into ‘For What It’s Worth,’ and it took as long to write as it took me to settle on the changes and write the lyrics down. It all came as a piece, and it took about fifteen minutes.”
Buffalo Springfield was the band’s first album, and this song was not originally included on it. After For What It’s Worth became a hit single, it replaced Baby Don’t Scold Me on re-issues of the album.
*The featured doors are the carved double wooden doors of the main portal entrance of the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Chorus (Santa Maria del Coro), San Sebastian, Spain (circa 1774).
Built in a landmark Churrigueresque (late Spanish Baroque) architectural style of stone sourced from six miles away at Mount Igeldo, the Basilica was built to serve as both a church and a fortress at the foot of Mount Urgull.
Basilica Saint Mary of the Chorus, San Sebastian is located at the crossroads of the high traffic streets in Old San Sebastian: Calle 31 de Agosto and Calle Mayor.
*The featured door’s opulent portal is designed as a mini altar (retablo) that prefigures the altar inside the Basilica.
The outer door leads into another pair of carved wood doors, images of the doors are below.
Above the doors in the elaborate tympanum is the central figure, a depiction of Mary, Mother of Jesus surrounded by angels.
The sculpture above the archivolt and tympanum depicts San Sebastian, in whose honor the city is named.
Trivia #1: The story of San Sebastian, a Roman soldier.
San Sebastian was a soldier in the Roman army who concealed his Christian faith and secretly helped persecuted Christians. He was later martyred.
Legends of San Sebastian persist to this day. One such legend has it that he somehow survived the first attempt on his life, although mortally wounded by many arrows. According to that legend, he was nursed back to health, and some time later was martyred.
Trivia #2:
The City of San Sebastian during the War of Spanish Independence.
On 31 August 1813 during a battle in the War of Spanish Independence, the city of San Sebastian suffered a devastating fire.
However, Basilica Saint Mary of the Chorus was spared, no one knows for sure how the only two areas that survived the flames unharmed were the street which led to the steps of Basilica Saint Mary of the Chorus and the basilica itself.
Every 31 August, the city celebrates this event and its citizens’ resilience. The spared street was renamed Calle 31 de Agosto (31st of August Street). Below is an image of the street with the Basilica at the end.
San Sebastian, the city, is famous for its Basque cheesecake (Gazta tarta). A burnt cheesecake made with only six ingredients and no crust. The Basque cheesecake’s top is burned to a crisp, literally, in ultra-caramelization.
Basque cheesecake was invented thirty-five years ago by Santiago Rivera, owner of San Sebastian’s La Viña. It is rated among the top three cheesecakes in the world, alongside New York-Style Cheescake.
Barrick Gold Corporation: Legal gold mining destroys forests and contaminates water sources globally!An open pit at Barrick Gold Corp.’s Veladero gold mine in Argentina’s San Juan province. The mine has estimated reserves of 10 million oz of gold. –Photo by Marcos Brindicci/Reuters files
On January 24, 2023, Survival International’s statement on “Yanomami health emergency: a genocide foretold” was published with a “Six Point Plan” – a list of “solutions” which included as #5 – “Clean up the supply chains to ensure anyone buying Brazilian gold can be sure it’s been legally produced. » ???
The reality is that illegal & legal gold mining are both destructive & toxic!
Ilegal gold mining destroys forests and contaminates water sources in Indigenous territory in the Amazon region!– photoJoão Laet
Here, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman discusses the ravages of gold mining in Yanomami territory and its effects on the community with Davi Kopenawa, the Yanomami leader. He explains how the toxic substances used in gold ming contaminate rivers, wildlife and people. As always, he has nothing positive to say about gold, not even the “legally produced” gold that Survival, and others, are promoting.
“AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned disease that the Yanomami people face, that the illegal gold miners bring in. But it’s also mercury contamination. This issue of the use of mercury for gold mining, needed to extract the gold, over 90% of the Yanomami have mercury levels in a number of communities that are far higher than the World Health Organization recommends. Mercury is not found natively in the area. Can you talk about the effects of mercury poisoning on the children, on the Yanomami people, adults, as well?
DAVI KOPENAWA YANOMAMI: [translated] I’m going to explain. Our forest peoples don’t know of any illegal gold miner who doesn’t use mercury. Mercury is poison. It harms our health. Mercury, what you’re asking about, well, the miners who work without mercury aren’t going to get the gold. They place the mercury where the gold is, to separate it out, to clean it, and then the mercury stays in the water.
And we, the community, we’re downriver. So the Yanomami draw their water from the river for cooking, to drink and for bathing. Children, adults and the elders are all getting mercury poisoning. And now it’s killing my people.
It flows through the rivers in the Yanomami area. The rivers that are contaminated are the Catrimani, the Apiaú, the Mucajaí and the Uraricoera. And it also impacts the Orinoco River in Venezuela in the Yanomami region, as well, in the Mutuacá. The water originates in the mountains, and that’s where the gold miners are, at the headwaters in the mountains.”
The fact that “legal” gold corporations are systematically polluting groundwater, air, soil, and glaciers and causing a loss of biodiversity around their legal gold mines makes the notion of “Cleaning up the supply chains to ensure anyone buying gold can be sure it’s been legally produced” ludicrous and counter-productive for Indigenous peoples, wildlife and the environment.
Here’s one of many, many examples:”The complaint alleges that Barrick Gold Corporation has violated Guidelines provisions on disclosure, environment and general policies at the company’s Veladero and Pascua Lama gold mines in the Argentine San Juan province.
The complaint alleges that Barrick has systematically polluted groundwater, air, soil, and glaciers and has caused a loss of biodiversity around the gold mines.
The complainants also highlight the company’s negative impact on the local population’s health and the deteriorating regional economy resulting from the destruction of natural landscapes and restrictions on access to land and water resources.
Moreover, the case alleges that Barrick has violated the right to information, has been improperly involved in local political decision-making, and has used violence against social and environmental organisations.”
But it isn’t an issue for legal gold only in South America: Tanzanian villagers accuse the Canadian mining giant of being complicit in killings and torture at the North Mara gold mine.A group of Tanzanian villagers is suing Barrick Gold over alleged police killings, torture and other abuses at a gold mine in northwestern Tanzania!
Near Barrick Gold’s legal Pueblo Viejo gold mine
“Legally produced gold” is NOT a solution! The only viable solution for Indigenous peoples, wildlife and the environment is for consumers to STOP BUYING GOLD, particularly for useless decorative ornaments like gold jewelry, watches and accessories.
Gold is a colonial relic from an era of global domination of Indigenous peoples and lands.
It’s stupefying that Davi Kopenawa’s friend, the anthropologist Bruce Albert, echoed Survival’s #5 “solution” in a recent interview with O Valor:
Albert stated that “The gold trade must be thoroughly reviewed so that inspection of the origin of the metal produced and destined for the financial and jewelry sector can be systematically implemented.”
I commented on Albert’s interview: “…just like in the six point plan of Survival International, ‘STOP BUYING GOLD’ is missing.”
Bruce Albert is a consultant for the gold merchant Cartier’s art foundation. Survival has supported Cartier’s “Yanomami – themed” art exhibitions for 20 years. Is that a factor influencing their pro-legal-gold statements?
How long has Survival been supporting Indigenous peoples? 50+ years? That’s long enough to have informed themselves about the reality behind the shiny publicity facade of the gold industry.
I am appalled by the apparent conflict of interest/complicity of people in the hierarchy at Survival International as well as other supporters of Indigenous people and wildlife. Why does denouncing gold appear to be such a dilemma for them?
Not any conceivable reward or donation – Nothing could compensate for the deadly and irreversible outcome for the Yanomami and so many other Indigenous peoples exposed to legal and illegal gold mining globally. Why is that not evident to them?
Rather than giving speeches inside during “The Yanomami Struggle” opening at the Cartier Foundation in January, 2020, representatives of Survival could have been outside the Cartier Foundation to protest with signs such as “Stop the greenwashing of dirty gold!” and “Pas de Cartier!”
photo montage: “Pas de Cartier” series – “Their True Nature #1- Cartier Foundation”
photos: Fondation Cartier – Luc Boegly / gold mining site – João Laet
photo of Yanomami, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela and photomontage – Barbara Crane Navarro
Representatives of Survival could have been outside the Triennale Milano at the inauguration of the Triennale Milano/Fondation Cartier “The Yanomami Struggle” exhibition to protest with signs such as “Stop the greenwashing of dirty gold and blood diamonds!”…but that didn’t happen then, either.
photo montage: “Pas de Cartier” series “Their True Nature #2 – Triennale Milano”
photos: Triennale Milano – Gianluca Di Ioia / gold mining site – João Laet
photo of Yanomami, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela and photomontage – Barbara Crane Navarro
Now, in 2023, Cartier is again presenting “The Yanomami Struggle”, this time in New York.
Representatives of Survival could have been outside The Shed in the Hudson Yards shopping center to protest with signs such as “Stop the greenwashing of dirty gold and blood diamonds!” at the inauguration of the Shed/Fondation Cartier “The Yanomami Struggle” exhibition …but that didn’t happen this time, either.
The mantra that Cartier as well as most of the other jewelry companies, gold mining corporations, Bruce Albert and Survival evoke is the “illegal/legal” gold dichotomy with: “Clean up the supply chains to ensure anyone buying gold can be sure it’s been legally produced.” But this has always been illusory because “legal” gold is also toxic! Cyanure is used in legal gold mines like mercury is used in illegal gold mines.
And since cartels and organized crime elements, with the help of complicit banks and refineries, took over the gold industry – from around 2007, as was so brilliantly illustrated in Netflix’s “Dirty Gold” documentary film – legal and illegal gold are now indistinguishable.
“The entire history of Latin American colonial barbarism, for over 500 years up through today, has mining as its objective. Mining is literally behind all the genocide, slavery and countless coups d’état, year after year, in almost every country. Understanding this is essential.” – Maurício Angelo
The song was released as a single, but was initially intended to be part of an album that was never completed. It charted at #2 in the U.S. and #6 in Canada. It was also covered in 1992 by The Beach Boys.
…This song became a civil-rights anthem, and was also very popular with American soldiers fighting overseas. Speaking with Mojo magazine February 2013 about the song, Neville recalled: “I remember guys (who’d served) in Vietnam telling’ me that record was burnin’ up over there. That time they called it a social song. But to me it was a love song, written for me by Lee Diamond and George Davis. I recorded four songs and I had my eye on another song that I thought would be (a hit) but my brother Art said, ‘No, that’s the one.’”
This charted at #2 in the U.S., #8 in Canada, and not at all in the UK.
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