From: les@jmdl.com (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2003 #43 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: les@jmdl.com Errors-To: les@jmdl.com Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Archives: http://www.smoe.org/lists/joni Websites: http://www.jmdl.com http://www.jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Sunday, January 19 2003 Volume 2003 : Number 043 Sign up now for JoniFest 2003! http://www.jonifest.com ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Anti-war in SF [Randy Remote ] Deniability NJC PC [sl.m@shaw.ca] UN inspectors find Iraqi nuclear weapons papers, NJC PC [sl.m@shaw.ca] 31 songs that changed lives NJC [sl.m@shaw.ca] Re: Political information on Joni njc [Les Irvin ] Need help identifying JONI show [CDTraderJohn@aol.com] Today in History: January 19 [ljirvin@jmdl.com] Today's Library Links: January 19 [ljirvin@jmdl.com] Re: JMDL Digest V2003 #36 --- middle-aged [BRYAN8847@aol.com] Re: JMDL Digest V2003 #38 -- CD sales [BRYAN8847@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 16:26:53 -0800 From: Randy Remote Subject: Anti-war in SF Witnesses of the anti-war protest in San Francisco estimate that 300,000-400,000 people are in attendance. Happening right now, There is live coverage from KPFA (Real Audio) at: http://www.kmud.org/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 19:23:13 -0700 From: sl.m@shaw.ca Subject: Deniability NJC PC Mike, thanks for posting your paper on deniability - it looks incredibly interesting. The whole issue of truth, deniability and the media goes to the heart of how hard it is to reach rational conclusions about what's going on, because it's well nigh impossible to get accurate (and complete) information. Politicians and the media seem to operate as though in a courtroom, where argument and evidence matter, but not truth. So if we can't disprove x's statement, we have to live with it, and you're so right to point out that the onus is now on the audience to disprove things, rather than on the speaker to prove them. During the last Gulf War, the British journalist Robert Fisk declined to be part of the reporting pool in the Middle East, which was being controlled in every way by the American military (where to stay, where to go, what to look at, which tanks to get rides on etc - and of course the journalists loved it, because it made them feel like soldiers). Fisk decided to wander off to check out some of the things they were being told - wanting to see them for himself. He was "caught" and told to re-join the pool, and when he did, the people who rounded on him the most were the other journalists! Said he was "risking spoiling things for everyone else." So in this case even the journalists were accepting that the notion of truth was secondary to whether they got "the story" i.e. whether they got a version of events from a source who would be considered reliable (the military) by their news organizations. Whether it was true or not, could be left to the Fisks of this world to explore, but AFTER the war please, so as to not screw things up for the network correspondents. And then of course when journalists like Fisk do investigate events after the fact, they're the only ones to reach their conclusions, and so are not believed because of that - but they're the only ones to say these things because they're the only ones who went looking for the truth, rather than just accepting "the story" that was dished out to everyone else. Sarah At 11:54 PM +0100 01/17/2003, mike pritchard wrote: >mike says > >Berel Lang, in an article entitled 'Politics and the New History of >Truth' (Lang, 1991:38), looks at the concepts of 'truth' and 'lie' >and the blurring of the distinctions between them, especially as >used by Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Many of the key concepts of the >corruption of language emerged during their presidencies. Most >people have a clear idea of the difference between telling a lie and >telling the truth. The difference between the two concepts is so >fundamental that: > > >>it would be difficult to find a child above the age of five who, >at some level, is unaware of the difference, and indeed almost all >the links that hold social institutions together - laws, contracts, >promises, even simple descriptive statements - assume this very >distinction (Lang, 1991:38). << > > The concept of 'deniability', however, muddies the waters and >during the Watergate hearings the "Nixonians' working definition of >truth" emerged (Lang, 1991:38). > > >>Where in common usage, the truth of a statement implies a >correspondence with facts, including those that might be known only >to the speaker, 'deniability' ascribes truth to any statement that >cannot be disproved, all claims to the contrary can then be denied. >(Lang, 1991:38). << > > The second step is to ensure that there are no claims to the >contrary, such as the cases where films are banned or censored, >therefore 'deniability' works hand in hand with censorship, ensuring >that the official version remains the only version the public gets . >Public opinion, then, is based on a partial viewing of the facts >(partial in both senses). Where claims to the contrary are >available, the government uses the media to discredit the source. >For example, some people attempt to ridicule Chomsky's political >views in order to diminish the weight of evidence he provides. > >We should not underestimate what is going on here: without evidence >to the contrary, the original assertion, however incredible, remains >'true'. Lang states: > > >>It means that the test of truth is now negative: all assertions - >claims or denials of responsibility, descriptions of events - are >true until they are disproved. If they are. The burden of proof is >thus entirely on the audience and not at all on the speaker, whose >main concern, once s/he has spoken, is to retain the power of >deniability by assuring that possible counterevidence remains >hidden.<< (Lang, 1991:39). ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 19:35:02 -0700 From: sl.m@shaw.ca Subject: UN inspectors find Iraqi nuclear weapons papers, NJC PC Sorry for posting this article from tomorrow Sunday Times in London, but it's from a subscription only site so the link wouldn't work. I'm only pasting the most interesting part of it. Note that the Iraqis are allegedly threatening to kill scientists' families down to the 6th cousin if they cooperate with the U.N. inspectors. Sarah The Sunday Times, January 19, 2003 UN seizes Iraqi atom bomb papers Marie Colvin, Nicholas Rufford and David Cracknell UNITED NATIONS weapons inspectors in Iraq revealed last night that they had discovered 3,000 documents linked to nuclear arms technology while searching a scientist's house. The documents were recovered from the home of Faleh Hassan, an Iraqi physicist and director of a military installation west of Baghdad. Mohamed El Baradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Hassan's papers related to a laser technique for enriching uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. If Iraq had not previously disclosed the technique, he said, "it obviously doesn't show the transparency we've been preaching". He added: "Why should these documents be in a private home? Why are they not giving them to us?" Hassan, 55, protested about "mafia-like" behaviour by the inspectors, saying they had used his wife's illness to persuade him to leave Iraq for questioning. He claimed the documents were from his private research and the doctoral theses of some of his students. However, El Baradei indicated that the papers, dating from the 1980s, could be connected with a nuclear programme. "We know it has got something to do with laser enrichment," he said. The disclosure came as it emerged that other Iraqi weapons scientists had been forced to produce lists identifying scores of their relatives in an attempt to intimidate them before any interviews this week with UN inspectors. The lists were compiled so that scientists from Saddam Hussein's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes would be left in no doubt about the consequences of co-operating with the UN, a senior defector said. "The message was clear - if you talk, we know your family," said the defector, a former high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officer. "It is called the Six List - it means you will lose your family down to the sixth cousin if you reveal information. For some of the scientists it took three days to write the list because Iraqi families are very big." The scientists were also quizzed late last year by Iraqi security agents who rehearsed them for inspectors' questions to ensure they would not reveal sensitive information. The disclosures, confirmed by the opposition Iraqi National Congress and western sources, cast renewed doubt over whether Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, will be able to obtain secrets directly from the scientists. Blix arrives today in Iraq, where his inspectors have widened their searches to include a hunt for a mobile biochemical weapons laboratory. MI6 has told them it may contain the means to produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. Unmovic, the UN inspection team, hopes to fly weapons scientists and their immediate families out of Iraq this week for questioning, perhaps at a British base in Cyprus. However, the Iraqi regime insists no scientist is willing to leave. This weekend American intelligence officers were investigating a report that a senior official in Iraq's ministry of industry and military industrialisation, which oversees weapons production, had been killed. He had been trying to flee the country for Jordan with his wife and two children a week ago, but had been stopped. "He was trying to leave with information, but the Mukhabarat [intelligence service] are watching him and all people like him," said an Iraqi source opposed to the regime. "They brought him back to Baghdad. We think he [was] executed." There has been no confirmation of the claim. Growing evidence that the Iraqis are obstructing UN inquiries was acknowledged yesterday by Blix as America and Britain stepped up their preparations for war. . . ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 20:45:55 -0700 From: sl.m@shaw.ca Subject: 31 songs that changed lives NJC Interesting Observer piece on the 31 songs that changed people's lives, although no Joni Mitchell among them which surprised me. My own favourites from this list are This Charming Man by The Smiths, and We People (who are Darker than Blue) by Curtis Mayfield. Speaking of whom, someone on the list recently mentioned Remy Shand and how he sounds like Al Green and Smokey Robinson, which he does, but when I first heard him, I thought of the young Curtis Mayfield, maybe not quite as funky, but the voice is close. Sarah In a new collection of essays writer Nick Hornby reveals the 31 songs that have provided a soundtrack to his life. So we asked 31 music fans, including authors, musicians and artists what song is guaranteed to make their spine tingle http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,877496,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 22:42:53 -0700 From: Les Irvin Subject: Re: Political information on Joni njc At 1/17/2003 10:26 AM, Lori Fye wrote: >With all due respect, the JMDL as a whole settled this argument many >years ago with the request for the addition of the "NJC" (for No Joni >Content) tag to posts that contain ... well, no Joni content. Lately >we've seen additional tags as well: "PC" (Political Content) and "RC" >(Religious Content), although I believe the only tag that filters posts >is NJC (Les, please correct me if I'm wrong). Lori, you are correct. The NJC tag is the only automatic one. Les ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:59:38 EST From: CDTraderJohn@aol.com Subject: Need help identifying JONI show Can anyone help me identify this Joni show I recently received. It runs about 48:45 and was identified only as BBC (sounds like 1969-1970 or 71). Also, if anyone has a corrected setlist, venue and/or ARTWORK (!), I'd sure appreciate it. It's a great set, whatever it is. Thanks, John in Massachusetts 1) Chelsea Morning (begins abruptly) 2) The Good Samaritan 3) The Gallery 4) Being Free (?) 5) My Old Man 6) For Free 7) Woodstock 8) All I Really Want (?) 9) California 10) Big Yellow Taxi 11) Both Sides Now Thanks! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 02:06:49 -0500 From: ljirvin@jmdl.com Subject: Today in History: January 19 1995: Joni appeared at the "Commitment To Life VIII" benefit for AIDS Project Los Angeles, honoring Elton John, Tom Hanks and Ron Meyer at the Universal Amphitheatre. Joni performed "Moon at the Window" and "Sex Kills". Some of the other performers at the show were Julie Andrews, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Don Henley, Salt N Pepe, Tammy Wynette, Rupaul, Clint Black, George Michael, and Elton John. More info: http://www.jonimitchell.com/AidsProjectLAMain95.html http://www.jonimitchell.com/AidsProject95SlideA.html - ---- For a comprehensive reference to Joni's appearances, consult Joni Mitchell ~ A Chronology of Appearances: http://www.jonimitchell.com/appearances.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 02:06:49 -0500 From: ljirvin@jmdl.com Subject: Today's Library Links: January 19 On January 19 the following items were published: 1975: "Joni's Private World Gets Lost in the Stadium" - New York Times (Review - Album) http://www.jmdl.com/articles/view.cfm?id=820 1988: "Storm Pelts West, Heads Toward Plains" - Detroit Free Press (News Item) http://www.jmdl.com/articles/view.cfm?id=917 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 02:34:35 EST From: BRYAN8847@aol.com Subject: Re: JMDL Digest V2003 #36 --- middle-aged I went over to the table and told another member that we discussing Joni Mitchell and he said he had never heard of her! He's about 60 or so and was a professor etc etc This is similar to my experience. There are a lot of older (60s and 70s) volunteers where I work, and the few times I've mentioned Joni among that age group the response is that they don't listen to those young rock & roll singers. Younger people of course don't listen to those old folksingers. That leaves me in the middle, listening to the magnificent Joni, who in reality is neither a rock nor folksinger. In fact, I find it difficult to describe what she does. Bryan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 02:57:58 EST From: BRYAN8847@aol.com Subject: Re: JMDL Digest V2003 #38 -- CD sales If Joni indeed doesn't sell (TI, TTT and BSN were particularly disappointing, given Joni's '90s return to favour), I know some people find this subject tedious. But anyway, I think it would be safe to say that TI and BSN had respectable (if far from spectacular) sales, especially TI, which I believe sold over 300,000 copies. BSN probably around 200,000. TTT and T'log have experienced minimal sales, with T'log not even cracking the top 200 (I'm pretty sure), something that hasn't happened since the first album, if even then. It's all about radio, baby. No matter how controversial or odd, T'log would be selling well, if it were only on the radio. Bryan ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2003 #43 **************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------- Siquomb, isn't she? (http://www.siquomb.com/siquomb.cfm)