A Layman's Thoughts on Boko Haram

Among the world’s current human lows in terms of tactics is the organization known as Boko Haram, who in addition to making the second pages of most American newspapers last week over the slaughter of 2000 people in a single Nigerian town, also authored the kidnapping and enslavement of 300 girls last year. They foul a great nation that has an even greater potential, and I am coming to the conclusion that there ought to be a Western commitment to mount a resistance to this moral and political affront. Neither their passion nor their hypocrisy knows any limits and a Western movement to assuage their influence on their territories would be the first righteous concerted world effort in a long time.

Modern conflicts of course aren’t generally pursued for anything righteous. They are motivated by religious zealotry and for resources, most typically oil, so it would require a different mindset, one that according to a prevailing moral human standard, acts once a layer of cowardly excess that exceeds acceptability has been definitively identified. I do not believe that the civilized world has become so callous a place that no such limit exists, and I believe that this organization has plumbed those depths to the tipping point.

It’s not a simple situation and don’t get your hopes up that I have a solution other than a suggestion to commit and to think creatively. For instance, in the case of Boko Haram, their seeming intractability relies on ignorance. With a 71% literacy rate among Nigeria’s young male population (15-24), there is a vast group of easily indoctrinated young men who are expressly taught Boko Haram’s Quranic interpretations.

The young men are awed by the indoctrination process in which the leadership’s ideology is justified through contemporary teachings from Al Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood leaders, along with a sense of ancient wisdom through memorized verses from the Quran in phonetic Arabic. They speak English maybe, French perhaps, or Kunari or any one of the hundreds of tribal languages spoken in Nigeria, but definitely not Arabic. Boko Haram's rank and file, like most Americans, have no idea what the Quran actually says. They find these boys at the right time, at the right poverty level, at the right age, and they destroy them.

Boko Haram’s leadership is educated, following the edicts of radical established Islamic intellectuals, but even their middle management and most especially the vast majority of their ranks are woefully ignorant and easily manipulated. These forces are not stupid by any means, but their education during the years in which their souls are most seeking are exclusively driven by the most radical Salafist teachers, and the result is a vast pool of highly motivated fundamentalist Islamic warriors with not much independent thought and utter willingness to martyr themselves.

Illiteracy is an area of high volatility for Nigeria.  I don’t know how to increase the literacy rate in Nigeria, but I do know that large national endeavors that begin with a large international commitment have a much better chance of succeeding. With a literacy rate of close to 50% among young Nigerian women, the total literacy rate of Nigeria’s later teen and young adult population is now somewhere around 60%. Education reform takes a long time of course, and Boko Haram is destroying a nation right now, so while a global commitment to increasing world literacy is a crucial goal, the West should likewise disrupt the Boko Haram leadership by other means.

These deluded and committed young men along with training support from other area militant Islamic groups are a terrible combination. They are zealous and in the great majority eager to martyr themselves. They additionally receive concentrated and extensive training in carrying out sudden and dramatic attacks on civilian populations and as they can be managed, military installations, with no regard to surviving the attacks. These kinds of attacks will continue to occur with Boko Haram's unabashed signature upon them. I can nearly guarantee that.

The other challenge, as it is with forces that orchestrate asymmetrical warfare, is that Boko Haram fighters are often insinuated into civilian populations and are situated in a way that Western morality precludes using its air superiority.  Boko Haram in the region of this most recent large scale attack were often Kunari and even while occupying some of these villages, to a large degree have been allowing the local Kunari populations to conduct their own legal and interpersonal affairs. They do not absolutely ravage their captives' persons and resources, and as such, relative to a government that doesn’t do much to help them, are not regarded necessarily with abject hatred. They are feared and obeyed, but their protection is implicit.

Again, the weapon here seems to be helping the Nigerian government to help its people. If the Kunari of the northeast region of Nigeria that was so devastated in this slash and burn rampage last week in general got a better deal from its government, there would have been a greater broad resistance to its incursion into neighborhoods and towns over the course of the past months and years.

So, education and addressing the Nigerian people’s needs of daily living are longer term cushions to serve as bulwarks against this of vein of bullies and thugs that call themselves Boko Haram. But, apart from these sunnier visions, what’s in is in and will stay in unless it is plucked out. It’s a sickening mess.

36 Hours

It has been a busy weekend indeed, working a booth at the Jazz Educators Network’s annual convention. I work in part for Woodwind and Brasswind, an online band and orchestra retailer whose catalog and web content is developed in the Los Angeles area. I lead a cubicle existence, generating and editing copy for the Woodwind and Brasswind website and catalog along with parts of the pro audio section of the Musician’s Friend catalog and website, so these convention duties are a welcome change. In the three years I have worked for the Guitar Center family of companies in Westlake Village, I have traveled to Dallas, Atlanta, Grand Rapids, Columbus and now, San Diego to attend various trade shows and conventions. For this most recent one I drove down, which combined with a busy show and a gig I had previously booked in Los Angeles, precipitated a particularly intense 36 hours or so.

I worked nine to five on the convention floor on Friday, whose cacophonous din sounded like a pet shop on fire for eight hours straight. So Friday at five, I dashed out of the convention hall to make it to my gig at The House of Blues in Hollywood by 10:30. Traffic was medium, catching the suitcase crowd out of San Diego heading to whatever the Friday workweek antidote was, a cabin in the foothills, skiing in the mountains or a hotel room by the sea, and I got to the House of Blues by 9:00 where I met my lady Debra and our friend Debbie. The band had a nice set, and Debbie, Debra and I got on the road before midnight, encountering next to no traffic all the way and expecting to make the hotel room by 2:00 AM and get six hours of sleep before getting up to work the convention floor again on Saturday.

Eight miles outside of San Diego, traffic stopped completely and stayed stopped for ten or fifteen minutes. Some mobile web investigation indicated that a man was over the barrier on the Seaworld Drive highway overpass bridge and was threatening to jump. A traffic service additionally indicated that there was an accident in the area, which was supported by two wreckers that drove past in the left breakdown lane. The Occam’s Razor on that would be that during the dramatic slowing of traffic that probably occurred when the suicidal man was engaged with the police, a collision occurred between one or more inattentive drivers.

After another half hour or so, traffic began to move and we were funneled down to one lane by way of a slowly accelerating arc of highway flares that passed by the place where a man who of sound mind or not decided that hurling himself from a highway bridge thirty feet onto asphalt was how he would end his Friday night and his life.

Hundreds of cars filed past his sheeted body, surely dwarfing the procession that will honor his casket. An explosion of colored lights from emergency vehicles and police cars heralded his passing, perhaps the grand tribute he sought in life but couldn’t find. You could speculate on a life of ennobled suffering, loved ones taken by chance, by murder or by betrayal. Perhaps his life’s losses were born of neglect ascribable to a preference of his own selfish pursuits over the needs of those who counted on him, the remains of his shredded conscience at last pushing him to swing a leg over the rail. Information technology being what it is, I could probably dig out the story and find a police report, but it seems more decent to let the police, the priests and the worms do their work. Whatever his woe, and whatever fool this man may or may not have been, he now knows the detailed answer to a question that I believe none of the rest of us do, but that many of the rest of us are nonetheless pretty damn sure about.

We rolled into the Grand Hyatt a little after three and I enjoyed four or five hours of dead sleep before hitting the convention floor again for another eight hour stretch, followed by breaking the booth down and loading the gear and the signage into boxes and onto pallets. That took us until about 8:00 and I then met the ladies for a set of music at a club on Shelter Island, finally wrapping it up for a much-needed crash at around midnight.

The work provided wherewithal, the driving provided solace and meditation, the gig provided artistic release, the suicide provided a time for gratitude and reflection and the company provided the love and sharing I need to feel human. Thirty-six hours of pretty high output. I have discovered that I am not too old for this shit.

Some thoughts on the passing of Jamie Powell.

The first musical environment I discovered in the Los Angeles area when I moved out here three years ago was a blues jam in Toluca Lake at a place called Lucy’s 51. It was led by Bobby Spencer and his band, and I found my trumpet to be welcome in that place. One of the leading lights of that session was an imposing gentleman who would lumber to the stage carrying a black guitar, situate himself on a tall bar stool, and from about a foot off the microphone, do some of the most gripping blues hollering I have ever seen anywhere. This was Jamie “Blues Boy” Powell, a six-foot-four powerhouse of blues music, one of the early indicators to me that yes, Los Angeles is a place where I might be able to live.

Jamie Powell has died and I find myself to be pretty busted up over the news. He was in the hospital and was visited frequently by close associates, and all of the reports were that he was looking well and in good spirits. I fully expected him to recover and I expected to play with him again. He didn’t, and I won’t.

Jam sessions are formed, they live and they die, and this one at Lucy’s is no more, but while it was happening, it had its own unique beauty. A real family developed in the time the session was happening, and I grew to be part of that family. When Jamie would sing and play, if I were there, he would always request that I join him on trumpet. That was a great honor and a pleasure, as I looked upon Jamie as a blues master, and someone who, as Bobby Spencer once put it, “comes from what he’s singing about.”

The most beautiful part of the Lucy’s 51 little chapter in Los Angeles music history was the advent of a young man named Ray Goren, then 12 years old, who played authentic blues guitar. He would come in accompanied by his father, and he would often share the stage with the great master, Jamie Powell. The two became dear friends and with the help of Bobby Spencer, Retha Petruzates Tadg Galleran and many others, they formed the Generation Blues Experience, a blues band that featured the stately stage command of Jamie Powell and the ferocious guitar work of young Ray Goren. The project garnered significant attention and resulted in gigs from Los Angeles to Chicago and in between.

The picture I post here of Ray and Jamie says it all. It was a brief confluence of ostensibly different but at a core level practically identical trajectories of energy, Jamie’s and Ray’s, colliding at this jam session that happened for a period of time in Toluca Lake, and I was afforded a front row seat on it and the opportunity to play with both of these great musicians, one whose musical voice is just finding its wings, and one whose mastery and command shall soar no more.

Election Day Eve Ramblings...

I am preparing for a bad referendum on a pretty good president tomorrow. Rotten politics will be rewarded and a lousy selling job on the part of the administration will be manifest in some mid-term spankings in senate, congressional and gubernatorial races. Speaking of gubernatorial races, wait until you see the goober who might get reelected as Maine’s governor tomorrow. It’s could be a bad day for Maine Democrats.

But it’s going to be a bad two years of non-governance for America as well. The butt-hurt that is felt by the soon to be former majority in the senate is so acute and its lesson from McConnell and Boehner in blind obstructionism so recent that what’s good for the goose will surely be considered good for the gander, or turtle, as the case may or may not be. Expect congressional gridlock that will make the 101/405 rush hour intersection look like boarding school toilets on the night of a bean supper. Sixty is the new majority, and the GOP won’t have it.

Recent presidents, and indeed recent politicians rarely come from single parent households, rarely needed a student loan, and rarely haven’t made a long slew of really rotten deals. A thrice-elected senator, a kick-ass speech at the Democratic National Convention and boom, there’s your Manchurian candidate. He was too clean, and the machine did not like that a bit. A bit of grime is appreciated, a few skeletons in the closet, and it is best if they resemble little boys.

The more parts of your soul you’ve already sold, the more capitulation can be expected, so when this moderate political figure with a silver tongue, caramel skin, a clean slate and a decent jump shot came along, the DNC put a lot of its eggs in the Obama basket and Brand Obama pulled it off. The resentment throughout the blue blood arm of the Senate alongside that of the Adam’s Rib/Noah’s Ark crowd in the House made for strange bedfellows and pretty soon, the only way this brainy African-American was going to survive at all was by capitulating at every turn with the Republican Party, with giving the banks a pass in the housing collapse, at signing the NDAA without a sneeze, signing away habeus corpus for military detainees, and the list goes on.

But even these egregious betrayals, these phenomenal sellings-out on the part of our smart, level headed president failed to satisfy the beast. Obama was not sufficiently craven for the side the oligarchs have decided to back more heavily, and the Citizen’s United savaging of representative democracy and the McCutcheon final removal of it paved the way for the gerrymandering ad-blitz masterpiece currently being orchestrated by theKoch/Adelson/Bechtel/Halliburton economic dictatorship.

It is to our shame that the message of military and corporate beholdenness has been inculcated into the American pysche to the degree that it has. The real truth of the matter though is that we have in fact not as a nation fallen into line with this message, rather the fact is that the ones who have adopted it have done so passionately, and  the majority of people who haven’t fallen for it haven’t fallen out of bed on Election Day either, thereby ushering in rule by people who do not have their best interests at heart. Low voter turnout is the stated goal of the Republican Party, and with or without voting restrictions, to my amazement and unspeakable frustration, America's hoi -polloi, the rabble middle, my people, seem willing to oblige them.

The 5-4 lock on the Supreme Court that believes it to be appropriate that 42 individuals control one third of the totality of Political Action Committees' resources will ensure that one dollar one vote supersedes one man one vote for the immediate future. I don’t see a way out beside campaign finance reform, and that won’t happen without a Supreme Court change or a senate veto. A senate veto is out, so progressives are going to have to hold their noses and vote for Hillary in order to have a prayer of effecting some easement of the money, media and politicians triumvirate of internally competing criminality, and even that has to wait. I guess so. Unless the Bernie Sanders miracle happens and we have our next assassinated president and our next shot at the truth. In any case, we can't just give up or the super predators will keep swarming to this country's wealth like bugs to a summertime porch light. They're not going to quit, and we can't either. I won't if you won't.

Gas Wars

There is a profound geopolitical move on Saudi Arabia’s part right now that is resulting in lower gas prices, and countries with significant but not voluminous oil export capacity, like sanctions-crippled Iran, are the ones who are most feeling the pressure. Ordinarily when oil prices become depressed, Saudi Arabia cuts production and keeps prices high. Right now though, they seem to be in a frame of mind to toss a stink bomb into Iran’s tent. The question then, is why?

Of course there are the Sunni versus Shiite national profiles of Saudi Arabia versus Iran. Iran is one of only a few predominantly Shia countries, and Saudi Arabia is currently in a position to punish them for it. What’s the real problem though? It takes awhile to grok the difference between Sunni and Shia, why it matters, and why the level of commitment to the schisms is as great as it is.

Apart from the stylistic, academic, jurisprudence and other departures of the practice of Sunni versus Shiite Islam, the Shiite’s professed sole claim to direct lineage from Mohammed to the exclusion of the Sunni is offensive, and it is a gripe that has sustained itself through the oral tradition and manifest itself through the tradition of Civil War for centuries. The question then ought not be about why Saudi Arabia is trying to rupture Iran’s economy. The question instead is, why now?

One piece of circulating conventional wisdom is that Saudi Arabia is leveraging the economic sanctions that have been applied to Iran by the US over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s production and markets are so hobbled by sanctions that even what little they can bring to market can only sell for half of what it did a month ago. So, the same pain that Saudi Arabia oil barons will experience from lower profits will generate a more acute blow to the Iranian economy than it would absent the US sanctions, thereby being a more efficient expenditure of resource.

The United States government, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil and munitions industries, has been doing what it can to add to the glut by practically fracking its Grand Tetons off. It’s easier to get a fracking license in Texas right now than it is to get proper voter ID. The reason for that is because what’s bad for Iran is bad for other oil-exporting countries that do not have oceans of the stuff lying around in easily accessible desert regions, Russia for instance.

Russia is as crippled by this current glut as Iran is, and for those Obama haters who think he’s a ninny and not up to playing big boy games, this is the one to watch. Russia and Iran are nasty little nests of capacity, resource and a cultural ability to withstand prolonged agony and inflict unimaginable pain on their enemies.

The US has pulled the strategy of Arab collusion to bankrupt the Russians before, playing footsy with Iran and Iraq while draining Soviet resources with a covert CIA war in Afghanistan in 1985. Add in the Cold War arms race, burgeoning secessionist movements among the Soviet protectorates, most notably the Baltic states, and come 1991 under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s long-outlived reason for being collapsed.  You can bet that Russia is leery of this move right now and will in all likelihood react with some show of belligerent irksomeness.

In the late 1980s under the Reagan presidency, there was a more or less symbolic downward pressure on oil prices in letting James Watt savage the southwest and putting ANWR drilling back on the table, but the philosophy of the times matches the Obama response right now.  The administration, in cooperation with big bomb and big oil, is in search of anything to heighten a real or expected glut that will further damage the Soviet economy, and fracking is obviously it.

So yes, the final acts of a horror show are going on in Afghanistan and Syria right now, but the real war just may be happening at a gas pump near you.

Batting Out of My League

The wonderful musicians that seem to have accepted me in Los Angeles since moving here three years ago from New Hampshire continue to astound me. The resumes of the people I played with just this week include tours, recordings or individual dates with Ray Charles, Stan Kenton, Dr. John, Carlos Santana, Eddie Kirkland, Pete Anderson, et cetera. They are far more advanced than I, far more, and I’ll never catch them in terms of instrumental command, but the crazy thing is that I seem to fit. And I have a simple theory about why all of that is so, and it all comes down to listening.

One area of my playing that I have high confidence in, and that I focus on pretty intently is intonation. I almost always play in small sections, like tenor and trumpet, or at the largest, tenor, alto, two trumpets and trombone, and Ithink it fair to say that my trumpet sits in as fine a tuning within the chords as any of these very advanced horn players I stand next to so often.

The next bit is tone; the timbre of the sound. I have lately been cultivating a less eager and more relaxed sound, and I think it’s working. I still put a lot of air in the horn, as I always have; I definitely play loud, but I try to get as much color into the sound as I can. Another part of the tone has to do with having pulled my equipment together this year. I have a new model of Jupiter trumpet called the1600XO. It’s the most perfect horn for me I’ve ever owned, and I didn’t expect that to be so. I have owned a Bach, a Yamaha and a Stomvi, all of which are pro horns, and each of which brand is more traditionally prestigious than Jupiter, but this one suits me best out of all of them. Likewise, I stumbled upon on a beautiful Blessing flugelhorn. The equipment end of things is all about listening as well; not buying on price, cachet or brand name, but rather on fit, and that fit for me has been all about the sound.

Next is always being aware in the tune; at the top, at the turnaround, at the solo cue, at the end. I am never anywhere else but in the music. A lot of the playing here is pickup, small dates, standards, Motown, R&B, whatever. If I don’t know the lick, you bet I have it by the second time around, and I am not happy until I am fully in the section. Since the arrangements are being put together on the fly, I keep a close eye on whoever the leader on a particular tune seems to be, and it often changes tune to tune, even within the same tune once in a while, and they all have slightly different ways of telegraphing what they’re after. I pay strict attention at all times.

While I don’t have the stratospheric range or the fluent jazz improvising skills of some of my trumpet colleagues, I am welcome in a number of pretty high-quality playing environments, and it’s all because of listening, and also showing up on time and not being a dick.

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Ebola Schmebola.

Last night I wrote about fear and politics, eventually aiming at the establishment and subsequent leveraging of the irrational fear of an Ebola outbreak in the US. It took until abut eight paragraphs in to really focus on the misplaced hysteria and the glee with which the media has fallen into line with the foolishness, as the essay examined fear-based politicking since 1990 in order to establish the premise. It’s a decent read if you’re up for it, but I’m sure a lot of people clicked out of it before getting to the discussion of the Ebola panic, so tonight, I’ll jump right into the virus that’s gone viral in America, Ebola.

The reason that no one in any city, in any town, in any rural setting has contracted the Ebola virus outside of a hospital is that it is only transmissible when an infected person is heavily symptomatic, and only when intimate contact with that person is made. The first case of Ebola in the US was a West African man who traveled to America to marry the woman he loved. He became ill and died, and two of the nurses ministering to him the hospital likewise contracted the disease. They have been sent to specialty hospitals and are expected to make a full recovery.

Understand that Ebola has never been passed from one individual to another in the United States outside of a hospital. Never. Not once. No city, now town, no rural setting. Two cases have been transmitted in the US, both in a Dallas hospital. If you are not a nurse and you live in the United States, you are in a zero percent risk group. If you are a nurse, you are in a virtually zero percent risk group. There are nearly three million licensed nurses in America. Two have contracted Ebola, both in environments in which their condition and the emergence of symptoms were monitored, ensuring them swift and effective treatment. Statistically, .00003% of nurses and .0000002% of Americans have contracted the disease. Remember also, no one who has ever contracted Ebola in the United States has ever died from it. No one. Ever. Nobody.

Here are some more statistics. In any given year, you have a one in 1,900,000 chance of being killed by lightning. Remember that no one has ever contracted Ebola and died in America, so it is impossible to calculate a comparative statistical likelihood against a sampling of zero. The likelihood of contracting Ebola then, is one in 175,000,000. If you are not a nurse, those numbers go through the roof. The obvious question then becomes, are you afraid of lightning?

Most people come inside during electrical storms. This reduces risk of getting hit by lightning greatly. Avoiding the feces, urine, blood and semen of people with 103 degree temperatures is akin to coming in out of the rain in a lightning storm. It reduces your risk immensely. I’d tell you an Ebola joke at this point, but you probably won’t get it. Not original, sadly, but quite astute, and I think, pretty funny.

The World Health Organization recently declared Nigeria to be Ebola-free. Zero instances currently. If Nigeria can win the fight with Ebola absent the benefit of the mighty Atlantic separating it from its source and a per capita income discrepancy of about a thousand percent, we have no reason to jump onto a panic bandwagon. The ridiculousness of this is mind-boggling.

Compare this to American reaction to the AIDS epidemic. It took Ronald Reagan six years and 20,000 deaths as president to even mention it, and this was a disease that could be transmitted when the carrier was asymptomatic. I don’t put this up as a model for how a leader and how a nation should react to a health risk, rather I use it as a benchmark for measuring the ludicrousness of the prevailing national attitude toward the non-outbreak of Ebola.

I suppose we get what we deserve, and as long as we breathe life into this non-story with the vigor we have been, news programs seeking your eyeballs will continue to serve it up as though it were an actual major story. It isn’t. It is a major story in West Africa, and if we want to ensure a world free of the virus, we would be committing resources to stop it in its tracks at the source. The best way to make it an actual story in America, which it currently is not, is to continue to sit on our hands and do not much about it, as we have been since the crisis erupted in West Africa.