Sunday Classics preview: "Love is a thing that has victims"

Get past the cinematic razmataz and you get to the "Fugue for Tinhorns" from the film version of Guys and Dolls, with Stubby Kaye and Johnny Silver, who originated the roles of Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstret on Broadway, and Danny Dayton as Rusty Charlie. We're going to be hearing more from Nicely-Nicely and Benny in a moment.


No chatter tonight, just -- as promised last night -- the title songs from the three shows we sampled. As regular readers know, we like wherever possible to start at the beginning, so why don't we start with an overture? -- Ken

Overture and "How To," from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961)

Robert Morse (J. Pierrepont Finch), vocal; Elliiot Lawrence, cond. From the Original Broadway Cast recording


FOR FULLER VERSIONS OF THE HOW TO SUCCEED
OPENER AND OUR OTHER TITLE SONGS, CLICK HERE

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So THAT'S what's been holding us back in Afghanistan: the wrong underwear

Once we get the underwear right, everything
in Afghanistan should fall into place.

Passed along without further comment (well, almost), from our pal Al Kamen in the Washington Post. -- Ken

Ballistic underwear for troops in Afghanistan

"Based on analysis in theater," the solicitation notice says, such underwear will drastically improve casualty recovery and reduce secondary infections."

"An Army marches on its stomach," said Napoleon , or maybe it was Frederick the Great . But the Marines in Afghanistan will soon, one would hope very soon, be marching more safely -- in their new ballistic underwear, designed to better protect them from injuries from improvised explosive devices.

The Pentagon this month put out a rush order solicitation, spotted by our colleague Walter Pincus, for "27,500 ballistic undergarments" for $2 million, noting that "ballistic underwear is currently being used by British forces" in Afghanistan "and they have significantly less injuries" to their privates as a result.

This is especially important in such places as Helmand province, where patrols in agricultural areas must be done on foot on narrow, often mined, paths along irrigation canals and such.

The double -weave silk underwear, which looks pretty much like bicycle shorts, is not bulletproof. But it will block out smaller particles or "blast fragments" and thus lessen damage in the groin area and to the femoral artery.

In addition, the undies have an antibacterial treatment that should reduce the risk of infection. The Marines say no source except the British supplier "provides a battlefield tested undergarment," though "we expect more sources to enter the marketplace" in the future.

Sounds as if they want immediate delivery, like maybe yesterday.

Well, obviously supporting our troops means . . . er, supporting their privates.

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Sometimes Trade Policies Work-- But Only When Regulations Are Enforced, Which Is Very Rare Indeed

Obama's corporatist trade policies are barely distinguishable from the cruel and failed trade policies rammed down America's throat by Reagan, the two Bush catastrophes, and Clinton. Perot had the giant sucking sound talking point exactly right. So it's with a great deal of pleasure I can announce that Obama-- who is currently pushing the NAFTA-like trade agreements Bush made with South Korea, Panama and Colombia (all absolutely against the interests of workers)-- actually did something right on trade for a change.

True, it was way back in 2009, but it's paying off for America now in a big way. Back then the new Administration "imposed duties on surging imports of subsidized tires from China. The three-year plan was designed to provide relief for U.S. tire manufacturers under Section 421 of U.S. trade law, the first time the law had been used since its inception."

Only one year after the import duties were applied, a study by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) found that the U.S. tire industry had already reversed a significant decline. Sales were up, and workers were being hired.

The latest demonstration of the effectiveness of the 421 ruling is that Continental AG plans to build a new consumer tire manufacturing plant in the United States. The company says the planned plant will help cover rising tire demand in North America: "These plans are further proof for the depth of the turnaround that the Passenger and Light Truck Tires Division has achieved in the Americas region by means of determination and perseverance."

I guess that helps explain why China spent so much money financing right-wing PACs trying to elect Republicans supportive of China's economic expansion, particularly Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) and why they contributed so heavily to making sure John Boehner would replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.

50:1, or the two percent solution

The history of violence goes all the way back in human history and prehistory. The history of organized, mass violence dates back at least 5,000 years and possibly as many as 11,000 years or more in humanity's dedication to resolving conflicts "once and for all" by killing off the perceived problem, that is, the people.

Meanwhile, humankind has known about mass nonviolence for only 100 years, one-fiftieth of the timespan we've been learning to master violence. So, in our group-to-group conflict history as a species, we've known about one method for 100 percent of the time and the other competing method just two percent of that time.

So, let us call nonviolence the two percent solution.

Awareness of the power of nonviolence has been quite slow, but is now unstoppable. Indeed, if scholars in Security Studies and Political Science are not conversant with it, they are behind the curve. Thirty years ago, it was not much considered beyond Religious Studies and the small handful of Peace Studies programs. The wave of nonviolent liberations of the 1980s and early 90s started to change that significantly and the colored revolutions and now the Arab Spring have thrust nonviolent studies into the center of the mix.

We know that these civil society movements may have acted in pacifist modes while the campaigns were ongoing, but we also know that this was mostly strategic, not philosophical. Timothy Garton Ash (2009, p. 372) observes, "Only a very few of the leading actors in these histories are true pacifists, like the Theravada Buddhists of Burma, according to Christina Fink, and it seems to me, Pope John Paul II--offering an imitation of Christ rare enough among Christians."

Teachers: teach nonviolence and earn some respect from students who will see that you can teach what helps them understand the world.
Students: Insist that your teachers learn about strategic nonviolence and help you learn too.
Parents and children (from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young):

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

References
Roberts, Adam; Ash, Timothy Garton (Eds.) (2009). Civil resistance and power politics: The experience of non-violent action from Gandhi to the present. New York: Oxford University Press.

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