Friday, June 28, 2013

Judges Tell Congress That They Are Pressured To Paydown Backlog Of Disability Cases




Driven to reduce a huge backlog of disability claims, Social Security is pushing judges to award benefits to people who may not deserve them, several current and former judges told Congress Thursday June 27, 2013.

Judge Larry Butler, an administrative law judge (ALJ) from Fort Myers, Fla., called the system “paying down the backlog.”

 (For a complete explanation of the term "paying down the backlog" see socialNsecurity by Judge L. Steverson, USALJ (Ret.)
The approval rates among ALJs can be quite arbitrary. One ALJ might reverse 9 out of 10 cases and another might deny 9 out of 10 cases. It all depends on the luck of the draw.
There is a practice called “Paying Down The Back Log”. This is where a judge just reverses every case on his docket and grants benefits to the claimant. Some ALJs have been known to do this with no regard at all for the merits of the case. Judges have been known to pay 200 cases or more on-the –record in this manner. Sometimes the Commissioner will take action to stop them. Other times he does not. (Steverson, Judge London, socialNsecurity, p. 19)
http://www.amazon.com/Judge-London-Steverson/e/B006WQKFJM

(AP)
A former Social Security Judge, J.E. Sullivan, said, “The only thing that matters in the adjudication process is signing that final decision.” Sullivan is now an administrative law judge for the Department of Transportation.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating why many judges have high approval rates for claims already rejected twice by field offices or state agencies. Two current and two former judges spoke at a subcommittee hearing.

The number of people receiving Social Security disability benefits has increased by 44 percent over the past decade, pushing the trust fund that supports the program to the brink of insolvency.

Social Security officials say the primary reason for the increase is a surge in baby boomers who are more prone to disability as they age. Deputy Social Security Commissioner Glenn Sklar noted that the vast majority of disability claims are initially denied.

“I think the data kind of speaks for itself,” Sklar told lawmakers.

To qualify for benefits, people are supposed to have disabilities that prevent them from working and are expected to last at least a year or result in death.

According to Social Security data, there were errors in 22 percent of the cases decided in 2011, Sklar said. He said some errors were procedural and did not necessarily result in incorrect decisions.

“The true wrong rate would be less than 10 percent,” Sklar said.

Nearly 11 million disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security disability benefits. That compares with 7.6 million a decade ago. The average monthly benefit for a disabled worker is $1,130.

An additional 8.3 million people get Supplemental Security Income, a separately funded disability program for low-income people.

Social Security disability claims are first processed through a network of local Social Security Administration field offices and state agencies called Disability Determination Services. About two-thirds of initial claims are rejected, according to agency statistics. If your claim is rejected, you can ask the field office or state agency to reconsider. If your claim is rejected again, you can appeal to an administrative law judge, who is employed by Social Security.

In 2007, the average processing time for a hearing was 512 days. Today it is 375 days, Sklar said. The agency has reduced the wait time even as the number of applications has increased. But the judges who testified Thursday said the quality of their decisions has suffered. So far this budget year, the vast majority of judges have approved benefits in more than half the cases they’ve decided, even though they were reviewing applications typically rejected twice by state agencies, according to Social Security data.

Of the 1,560 judges who have decided at least 50 cases since October, 195 judges approved benefits in at least 75 percent of their cases, according to the data analyzed by congressional investigators.

“The Social Security Administration has failed to take steps to address the problem of rapid disability growth, probably because the agency has failed to recognize many of the problems,” said Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., the subcommittee chairman.

None of the judges who testified spoke of being specifically ordered to award claims. Three said they had been pressured to decide cases without fully reviewing medical files.

The judges described a system in which there is very little incentive to deny claims, but lots of pressure to approve them. It requires more documentation to deny a claim than to approve one, said Sullivan, the former Social Security judge. Also, rejected claims can be appealed while approved claims are not.

There’s a tremendous amount of pressure to push cases out the door as soon as possible,” Sullivan said in an interview after the hearing. “There’s a push to pay mentality.

Butler, the current judge, told the subcommittee, “I think you need to look at the issue of paying down the backlog. It’s not media hype, its real and for six years it’s been going on.”
                      (AALJ President Randy Frye and Marilyn Zahm)
The Association Of Administrative Law Judges(AALJ), union representing administrative law judges, says judges are required to decide 500 to 700 cases a year in an effort to reduce the hearings backlog. The union says the requirement is an illegal quota that leads judges to sometimes award benefits they might otherwise deny just to keep up with the flow of cases. according to a federal lawsuit filed by the judges’ union in April.

 The Social Security Administration says the agency’s administrative law judges (ALJs) should decide 500 to 700 disability cases a year. The agency calls the standard a productivity goal, but a lawsuit filed in April 2013 by the Social Security Judges against the Commissioner and the Agency claims it is an illegal quota that requires judges to decide an average of more than two cases per workday.
‘‘When the goals are too high, the easy way out is to pay the case,’’ said Randall Frye, president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ) and a judge in Charlotte, N.C. ‘‘Paying the case is a decision that might be three pages long. When you deny benefits, it’s usually a 15- or 20-page denial that takes a lot more time and effort.’’

The lawsuit raises serious questions about the integrity of the disability hearing process by the very people in charge of running it. It comes as the disability program faces serious financial problems.
The agency denies there is a case quota for judges and says the standard is a productivity goal.

  “I find it interesting that there is so much wringing of the hands about a judge who pays almost 100% of his cases, as if the agency didn’t know about it, as if the agency wasn’t complicit in it, as if the agency didn’t encourage it,” said Marilyn Zahm, a Social Security judge in Buffalo, NY who is an executive vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ), the judges’ union.

Judge Zahm had a lot more to say in an interview in October 2009. (Read the entire interview starting at page 430 in my book, socialNsecurity, available at  http://www.amazon.com/SocialNsecurity-ebook/dp/B006VOQIKK

If Congress doesn’t act, the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money in 2016, according to projections by Social Security’s trustees. At that point, the system will collect only enough money in payroll taxes to pay 80 percent of benefits, triggering an automatic 20 percent cut in benefits.

Congress could redirect money from Social Security’s much bigger retirement program to shore up the disability program, as it did in 1994. But that would worsen the finances of the retirement program, which is facing its own long-term financial problems. (AP)

Several current and former Administrative Law Judges (“ALJs”) testified before Congress that the Social Security Administration is purportedly pushing ALJs to award benefits (or grant benefits) in an effort to reduce the rather large backlog of disability claims in the system. This further feeds the misperception that ALJs are approving claims willy-nilly left and right. Just as there are Judges who have high approval rates or grant rates (the percentage of claims approved out of all claims disposed), there are Judges who have extremely low grant rates and deny the vast majority of claims that they decide.

Nick A. Ortiz, Esq. crunched the data from all Social Security disability claims decided in Fiscal Year 2012. The data was found here: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/appeals/DataSets/Archive/archive_data_reports.html. [Update: the raw, unedited data can be found here in the archives for 2012: http://www.ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/archive/archive_data_reports.html#ht=1].

 http://www.nickortizlaw.com/the-50-social-security-administrative-law-judges-with-the-worst-grant-rates-in-2012/

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Bobby "Blue" Bland An Original American Art Form








Bobby "Blue" Bland

Bobby "Blue" Bland (born Robert Calvin Bland on January 27, 1930 in Rosemark, Tennessee) was an American singer, who created tempestuous arias of love, betrayal and resignation, set against roiling, dramatic orchestrations, and left the listener drained but awed. We called it the Blues. He was an original member of The Beale Streeters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZMNEieo44k
Bland's son Rodd said that failing health had forced his dad off the stage earlier this year 2013. "He had a hole in his stomach that had become tumorous, and it was emptying into his bloodstream."
He said Bland passed away from natural causes at his home in Germantown, Tennessee. "He was in my arms," his son said. "But I'm not going to lie. I could have used at least 20 more years."
A website in Bland's name credits the singer with being "one of the main creators of the modern soul-blues sound."
"He never b**ched about not getting his due," said his son, who formerly was a drummer in his father's band. "When I took him to Beale Street for ribs and catfish, fans would come up to him. He was always courteous, polite and kind. And humble. That's what I admired."
Bland's song "Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City" was sampled on Jay-Z's 2001 album, "The Blueprint.Bobby 'Blue' Bland, who has died aged 83, was among the great storytellers of blues and soul music. In songs such as I Pity the Fool, Cry Cry Cry and Who Will the Next Fool Be, he created tempestuous arias of love, betrayal and resignation, set against roiling, dramatic orchestrations, and left the listener drained but awed.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSo47llUMWg
It was a skill that came gradually. His husky voice was gorgeous from the start, but as a young man he followed BB King – for a while literally, as his valet and chauffeur – and his singing took on a special character only after he began to study the recorded sermons of the Detroit preacher CL Franklin, Aretha's father. "That's where I got my squall from," he recalled. That alchemy of blues and gospel cadences would create one of the most affecting voices in black music.
He was born just north of Memphis in Tennessee and in his late teens he hung out in the city with King, the pianist Rosco Gordon and the singer Johnny Ace, an informal musical gang known as the Beale Streeters. He made a few recordings for Chess and Modern, and then signed with Duke. After a few inconsequential singles, he began working with the bandleader Bill Harvey and the arranger Joe Scott, and within a few years, in pieces such as Little Boy Blue and I'll Take Care of You, this collaboration transformed his recordings from the equivalent of low-budget B-movies to widescreen epics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZYSiRvUA7M
For much of the 50s Bland toured the "chitlin' circuit" of southern clubs and theatres with Duke's other star, the singer and harmonica player Little Junior Parker, in a revue called Blues Consolidated. That was also the title, in 1958, of their first, shared, album, notable not only for hits such as Bland's Farther Up the Road, which topped the R&B chart in 1957, but also for its overheated sleevenotes by "Dzondira Lalsac" (probably Duke's proprietor Don Robey), in which Bland becomes "the freewheeling master rogue of the Blue Note, rockin' 'em this and that-a-way, across the forty-eight!!!".
Some of Bland's best work, done under Scott's direction in 1960-63, appeared on the albums Two Steps from the Blues, Here's the Man... and Call on Me, such as the ferocious homily Yield Not to Temptation, the joyous Turn on Your Love Light and a virtuoso reading of the blues standard (Call It) Stormy Monday, featuring a guitar line by Wayne Bennett that has become a blues guitarists' set piece. Occasionally, saccharine songs and lush orchestrations would move Bland rather more than two steps from the blues, but his admirers endured his straying and waited for him to find his way back with poised renderings of strong material such as Blind Man and Black Night.
During the 60s Bland placed more than a dozen records in the R&B top 10, reaching No 1 with I Pity the Fool and That's the Way Love Is, but his kind of soul music was being eclipsed by the catchier sounds of Motown and the funkier ones of Stax, and by the end of the decade he was working less and drinking more. Duke was sold to ABC, which made Bland the object of crossover marketing, rebranding him as a mainstream soul singer. Bland dutifully strolled into the Technicolor sunsets of His California Album (1973), Dreamer (1974) and Reflections in Blue (1977), and in Get On Down with Bobby Bland (1975) he sauntered along Nashville's Music Row.
Bobby 'Blue' Bland Bobby 'Blue' Bland's core audience was African American, mature and predominantly female. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives Some relief from this high-sugar diet was provided by recorded encounters with his old friend King, the first in 1974 at a studio-recorded junket where they genially reminisced and swapped favourite songs, the second in 1976 at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, where Bland, previously rather the junior partner, was more assertive and received top billing. They continued to give joint concerts for years afterwards.

 When blues singer Bobby "Blue" Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, his longtime friend B.B. King, considered one of the most successful and influential blues singers of the 20th century, praised Bland not just for the blues recordings he'd been making for decades, but he also added, "There's no better singer in any genre."
While King and other blues artists were increasingly performing for young white listeners, Bland preferred to tour the southern circuit and play to his core audience: African American, mature, predominantly female. Having spent the early 80s making half a dozen lavish albums for MCA in a vaguely Barry White manner, in 1985 he signed with Malaco, a Mississippi company specialising in southern soul, and the move brought him closer to the people who cared for him most. This last stage of his recording career produced 10 albums of well-honed material by Malaco's inhouse writers and producers, in which he embarked again on the stormy seas of heartbreak and ecstasy with an even surer hand on the wheel. His last release was Blues at Midnight in 2003.
Bland was admired by artists including Van Morrison, who featured him at some of his concerts, and Mick Hucknall, who made the album Tribute to Bobby in 2008. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 1997.
He is survived by his wife, Willie Martin Bland, and his son Rodd, who is also a musician.
• Bobby Bland (Robert Calvin Brooks), blues and soul singer, born 27 January 1930; died 23 June 2013
 He released a couple of unsuccessful singles for Chess Records in 1951, and Modern Records in 1952. That year, Bland entered the Army and returned to music upon his discharge in 1955. His first successful single was "It's My Life Baby", showcasing a new, more mature sound. He was signed to the Duke Records label in 1956.
Bland's glottal gargle sound was patterned after Aretha Franklin's father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin. For all his rough and raw vocal projections, Bland was backed by a band that delivered some of the smoothest and most modulated arrangements in the Blues genre. Sometimes referred to as "the Lion of the Blues", Bland was as regal in appearance as his band was musically mellow. His album covers tell the story, showing Bland beautifully manicured in the sportsman style, his large frame nattily dressed and dripping with conspicuous, but tasteful jewelry. Though not conventionally handsome, Bland had a certain magnetism that had a profound affect on his fans.
Guitarist Pat Hare contributed to Bland's first national hit, "Farther Up The Road" (1957). Clarence Holliman was his guitarist for most of his 1950s sides, including "Loan A Helping Hand", "I Smell Trouble", "Don't Want No Woman" and "Teach Me (How To Love You)". In the 1960s, Bland was working with Wayne Bennett, including "Turn On Your Love Light" (1961) and "Yield Not To Temptation" (1962); he was by then a superstar and world-famous entertainer. Other popular records from this period were "Grits Ain't Groceries," "Little Boy Blue," "I Pity the Fool," "Stormy Monday Blues" and "Two Steps from the Blues."
After Duke was sold to ABC Records in 1973, Bland's career began to diminish. Though he continued recording throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bland never regained his former fame on recordings, but toured and became a major influence on the Soul blues sound.
In 1992, Bobby Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bobby 'Blue' Bland, who has died aged 83, was among the great storytellers of blues and soul music. In songs such as I Pity the Fool, Cry Cry Cry and Who Will the Next Fool Be, he created tempestuous arias of love, betrayal and resignation, set against roiling, dramatic orchestrations, and left the listener drained but awed.
It was a skill that came gradually. His husky voice was gorgeous from the start, but as a young man he followed BB King – for a while literally, as his valet and chauffeur – and his singing took on a special character only after he began to study the recorded sermons of the Detroit preacher CL Franklin, Aretha's father. "That's where I got my squall from," he recalled. That alchemy of blues and gospel cadences would create one of the most affecting voices in black music.
He was born just north of Memphis in Tennessee and in his late teens he hung out in the city with King, the pianist Rosco Gordon and the singer Johnny Ace, an informal musical gang known as the Beale Streeters. He made a few recordings for Chess and Modern, and then signed with Duke. After a few inconsequential singles, he began working with the bandleader Bill Harvey and the arranger Joe Scott, and within a few years, in pieces such as Little Boy Blue and I'll Take Care of You, this collaboration transformed his recordings from the equivalent of low-budget B-movies to widescreen epics.
For much of the 50s Bland toured the "chitlin' circuit" of southern clubs and theatres with Duke's other star, the singer and harmonica player Little Junior Parker, in a revue called Blues Consolidated. That was also the title, in 1958, of their first, shared, album, notable not only for hits such as Bland's Farther Up the Road, which topped the R&B chart in 1957, but also for its overheated sleevenotes by "Dzondira Lalsac" (probably Duke's proprietor Don Robey), in which Bland becomes "the freewheeling master rogue of the Blue Note, rockin' 'em this and that-a-way, across the forty-eight!!!".
Some of Bland's best work, done under Scott's direction in 1960-63, appeared on the albums Two Steps from the Blues, Here's the Man... and Call on Me, such as the ferocious homily Yield Not to Temptation, the joyous Turn on Your Love Light and a virtuoso reading of the blues standard (Call It) Stormy Monday, featuring a guitar line by Wayne Bennett that has become a blues guitarists' set piece. Occasionally, saccharine songs and lush orchestrations would move Bland rather more than two steps from the blues, but his admirers endured his straying and waited for him to find his way back with poised renderings of strong material such as Blind Man and Black Night.
During the 60s Bland placed more than a dozen records in the R&B top 10, reaching No 1 with I Pity the Fool and That's the Way Love Is, but his kind of soul music was being eclipsed by the catchier sounds of Motown and the funkier ones of Stax, and by the end of the decade he was working less and drinking more. Duke was sold to ABC, which made Bland the object of crossover marketing, rebranding him as a mainstream soul singer. Bland dutifully strolled into the Technicolor sunsets of His California Album (1973), Dreamer (1974) and Reflections in Blue (1977), and in Get On Down with Bobby Bland (1975) he sauntered along Nashville's Music Row.
Bobby 'Blue' Bland Bobby 'Blue' Bland's core audience was African American, mature and predominantly female. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives Some relief from this high-sugar diet was provided by recorded encounters with his old friend King, the first in 1974 at a studio-recorded junket where they genially reminisced and swapped favourite songs, the second in 1976 at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, where Bland, previously rather the junior partner, was more assertive and received top billing. They continued to give joint concerts for years afterwards.
While King and other blues artists were increasingly performing for young white listeners, Bland preferred to tour the southern circuit and play to his core audience: African American, mature, predominantly female. Having spent the early 80s making half a dozen lavish albums for MCA in a vaguely Barry White manner, in 1985 he signed with Malaco, a Mississippi company specialising in southern soul, and the move brought him closer to the people who cared for him most. This last stage of his recording career produced 10 albums of well-honed material by Malaco's inhouse writers and producers, in which he embarked again on the stormy seas of heartbreak and ecstasy with an even surer hand on the wheel. His last release was Blues at Midnight in 2003.
Bland was admired by artists including Van Morrison, who featured him at some of his concerts, and Mick Hucknall, who made the album Tribute to Bobby in 2008. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 1997.
 Though he possessed gifts on a par with his most accomplished peers, Mr. Bland never achieved the popular acclaim enjoyed by contemporaries like Ray Charles and B. B. King. But he was nevertheless a mainstay on the rhythm-and-blues charts and club circuit for decades.
His vocals, punctuated by the occasional squalling shout, were restrained, exhibiting a crooner’s delicacy of phrasing and a kind of intimate pleading. He influenced everyone from the soul singers Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to rock groups like the Allman Brothers and The Band. The rapper Jay-Z sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 single “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” on his 2001 album, “The Blueprint.”
Mr. Bland’s signature mix of blues, jazz, pop, gospel and country music was a good decade in the making. His first recordings, made in the early 1950s, found him working in the lean, unvarnished style of Mr. King, even to the point of employing falsetto vocal leaps patterned after Mr. King’s. Mr. Bland’s mid-’50s singles were more accomplished; hits like “It’s My Life, Baby” and “Farther Up the Road” are now regarded as hard-blues classics, but they still featured the driving rhythms and stinging electric guitar favored by Mr. King and others. It wasn’t until 1958’s “Little Boy Blue,” a record inspired by the homiletic delivery of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, that Mr. Bland arrived at his trademark vocal technique.
“That’s where I got my squall from,” Mr. Bland said, referring to the sermons of Mr. Franklin — “Aretha’s daddy,” as he called him — in a 1979 interview with the author Peter Guralnick. “After I had that I lost the high falsetto. I had to get some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be identified with.”
The corresponding softness in Mr. Bland’s voice, a refinement matched by the elegant formal wear in which he appeared onstage, came from listening to records by pop crooners like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Perry Como.
Just as crucial to the evolution of Mr. Bland’s sound was his affiliation with the trumpet player and arranger Joe Scott, for years the director of artists and repertory for Duke Records in Houston. Given to dramatic, brass-rich arrangements, Mr. Scott, who died in 1979, supplied Mr. Bland with intricate musical backdrops that set his supple baritone in vivid relief.
The two men accounted for more than 30 Top 20 rhythm-and-blues singles for Duke from 1958 to 1968, including the No. 1 hits “I Pity the Fool” and “That’s the Way Love Is.” Steeped in vulnerability and emotional candor, his performances earned him a devoted female audience.
Though only four of his singles from these years — “Turn On Your Love Light,” “Call on Me,” “That’s the Way Love Is” and “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” — crossed over to the pop Top 40, Mr. Bland’s recordings resonated with the era’s blues-leaning rock acts. The Grateful Dead made “Love Light” a staple of their live shows. The Band recorded his 1964 single “Share Your Love With Me” for their 1973 album, “Moondog Matinee.” Van Morrison included a version of “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” on his 1974 live set, “It’s Too Late to Stop Now.”
Mr. Bland himself broke through to pop audiences in the mid-’70s with “His California Album” and its more middle-of-the-road follow-up, “Dreamer.” But his greatest success always came in the rhythm-and-blues market, where he placed a total of 63 singles on the charts from 1957 to 1985. He signed with the Mississippi-based Malaco label in 1985 and made a series of well-received albums that appealed largely to fans of traditional blues and soul music.
Mr. Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 1997.
Robert Calvin Brooks was born on Jan. 27, 1930, in Millington, Tenn., just north of Memphis. His father, I. J. Brooks, abandoned the family when Bobby was very young. His mother, Mary Lee, married Leroy Bridgeforth, who also went by the name Leroy Bland, when Bobby was 6.
Mr. Bland dropped out of school in the third grade to work in the cotton fields. Though he never learned to write music or play an instrument, he cited the music of the pioneering blues guitarist T-Bone Walker as an early influence.
After moving to Memphis in 1947, Mr. Bland began working in a garage and singing spirituals in a group called the Miniatures. In 1949 he joined the Beale Streeters, a loose-knit collective whose members at various points included Johnny Ace, Rosco Gordon, Earl Forest and B. B. King, all of whom went on to become popular blues performers as solo artists.
Mr. Bland also traveled as a part of the Johnny Ace Revue and recorded for the Chess, Modern and Duke labels before being drafted into the Army in 1952. Several of these recordings were made under the supervision of the producer Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis; none sold particularly well.
After his time in the service Mr. Bland worked as a chauffeur, a valet and an opening act for the Memphis rhythm-and-blues singer Junior Parker, just as he had for Mr. King. He toured as a headliner throughout the ’60s, playing as many as 300 one-night engagements a year, a demanding schedule that exacerbated his struggles with alcohol. He performed widely, in the United States and abroad, until shortly before his death.
In addition to his son, Rodd, Mr. Bland’s survivors include his wife, Willie Mae; a daughter, Patrice Moses; and four grandchildren. Rodd Bland said his father had recently learned that the blues singer and harmonica player James Cotton was his half-brother.
Mr. Bland’s synthesis of Southern vernacular music and classy big-band arrangements made him a stylistic pioneer, but whatever he accomplished by way of formal innovation ultimately derived from his underlying faith in the emotional power of the blues.
“I’d like to be remembered as just a good old country boy that did his best to give us something to listen to and help them through a lot of sad moments, happy moments, whatever,” he said in a 2009 interview with the syndicated “House of Blues Radio Hour.”
“Whatever moments you get of happiness, use it up, you know, if you can, because it don’t come that often.”
He is survived by his wife, Willie Martin Bland, and his son Rodd, who is also a musician.







If Mr. Bland lacked the pop-music name recognition of B.B. King and Ray Charles, that did not make him any less influential as an artist. Many of Mr. Bland’s recordings, such as the blues “Further On Up the Road” (1957), later covered by Eric Clapton, and the gospel-flavored “Turn On Your Love Light” (1961), covered by the Grateful Dead, became rock music standards.
Van Morrison, who covered Mr. Bland’s 1964 hit “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do,” often cited him as a seminal influence, and the two singers later recorded together. Mr. Bland’s version of T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday,” with an extended solo from guitarist Wayne Bennett, inspired a later version by the Allman Brothers Band. Rapper Jay-Z recently sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 recording “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” on his 2001 album “The Blueprint.”
Mr. Bland placed 23 top-10 hits on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues charts between 1957 and 1975 and had a strong following on the so-called “chitlin’ circuit,” the ballrooms and clubs that catered to predominantly black audiences. He played as many as 300 one-nighters a year.
Other soul-blues singers such as Little Milton, Z.Z. Hill and Artie “Blues Boy” White borrowed heavily from Mr. Bland’s style, though none approached his career longevity.
“Bobby Bland brought the sound of black gospel music into the blues and thereby helped transform black music of the 1950s into the soul style of the 1960s,” rhythm-and-blues historian Robert Pruter said in an interview. “He is considered the pioneer of a distinct form of rhythm and blues called ‘soul-blues,’ thereby influencing a host of later blues singers.”
“It is not an exaggeration to say that Bobby Bland is one of the titans of late 20th century African-American music, close to equal in importance to Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and James Brown,” Pruter added.
Mr. Bland could bring a tender, soothing vulnerability to the often-machismo world of the blues. When the warm, gentle side of his singing gave way to a harsh guttural scream, it served to emphasize the tension inherent in his songs.
He developed the squalling style from recorded sermons by Rev. C.L. Franklin, Aretha’s father, and adapted the rough, gargling sound that the senior Franklin used to exhort the congregation to his own singing voice.
During his affiliation in the 1960s with Duke Records, a Houston-based company, Mr. Bland’s work was often defined by the collaboration with trumpeter and arranger Joe Scott. Scott’s urbane horn charts, rooted in the big band era and modern jazz, contrasted with the brash soul sounds of Motown and Stax records. Mr. Bland’s slow songs such as “Two Steps From the Blues” were lushly scored, and his up-tempo songs pulsed with brassy fanfare that often built to a crescendo.
Bland, who died Sunday at 83 at his home in Memphis, Tenn., of complications from an ongoing illness, never achieved the broad-based recognition of fellow blues musicians such as King, Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins. But he was lauded almost universally by blues enthusiasts for his vocal mastery that spanned the gamut from throat-searing growls to gossamer sighs throughout an up-and-down career that ran more than 60 years.







"I often joke that people can sit around in bars all night arguing over who the greatest blues instrumentalists are," Jay Sieleman, president and chief executive of the Memphis-based Blues Foundation, said Monday. "But if they're talking about the greatest blues singers, they wouldn't get past the first beer without mentioning Bobby 'Blue' Bland."
Best known for hits including "Farther Up the Road," "Turn On Your Love Light," "I Pity the Fool" and "Stormy Monday Blues," Bland carved out a distinctive niche that bridged the gap between earthy rural blues singers such as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton and Muddy Waters and more urbane jazz vocalists like Nat King Cole and Charles Brown, prizing meticulous diction as much as soul-wrenching emotion.
He's been cited as an important influence by many blues, rock and pop singers and groups who followed, notably Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and the Band. Even B.B. King, for whom Bland once worked as a driver before his own career took off, has said if there were another singer he could sing like, it would be Bland.
He placed more than 60 singles on the R&B charts over a near-three decade span from 1957 to 1985, the majority of them making it to the Top 30. The bouncy, gospel-inflected "Turn On Your Love Light" was subsequently recorded by dozens of other artists, including Jerry Lee Lewis, the Righteous Brothers, Delbert McClinton, James Cotton, the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Grateful Dead, but it was Bland's definitive recording that was voted into both the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"He was such an inventive singer," said Lauren Ontkey, the rock hall's vice president of education and public programs. "He sang real hard blues but also had this incredible melodic sense and could sing around a really snarly guitar as well as around a string section."
Robert Calvin Bland was born an only child on Jan. 27, 1930, in Rosemark, Tenn., about 25 miles northeast of Memphis. He was raised by his mother, and did not meet his father until after he became famous.
As a youth he began singing with the gospel group the Miniatures, and gravitated to Memphis where he started hanging out with King, Herman "Little Junior" Parker and other musicians who frequented the clubs on Beale Street.
Referring to King, Bland once told the Washington Post, "He'd let me hang around and get some kind of experience. I drove his car; I did anything I could to get my foot in the door. He gave me the opportunity and I still thank him today."
That scene in Memphis gave rise to a group of musicians who began performing and touring together under the name "the Beale Streeters," with Bland among their ranks.
He recorded in the early '50s for producer Sam Phillips' Sun Records label, several years before Phillips launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, but those records didn't generate much attention beyond Memphis.






Bland found a style of his own after having his musical career interrupted by a three-year stint in the U.S. Army. Having been exposed to smoother West Coast-based singers including Cole and Brown, Bland incorporated their suave sophistication with the grittier style he'd grown up with.
Emerging from the military just as rock 'n' roll was starting to explode, Bland began to hit his stride, establishing his name at Duke Records in 1957 with "Farther Up the Road," which went to No. 1 on Billboard's R&B chart and reached No. 43 on the overall pop listing.
He struggled with alcohol dependence in the late '60s and early '70s, but eventually recovered. He remained popular among longtime blues and R&B audiences and toured regularly until recently, when health issues forced him to cut back.
One possible reason Bland never received the kind of recognition beyond blues circles accorded King, Waters and John Lee Hooker was that he wasn't a guitarist.







"In this day and age," the Blues Foundation's Sieleman said, "I think it's easy to overlook people who just sing. The guitar has become such a prominent part of our musical culture [in the blues]. But the more you listen to Bobby, the more you appreciate the phrasing, the way he could deliver a song. They call him the Frank Sinatra of the impeccable phrasing and what he could do with a song."
Bland was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 and selected for the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1981.
• Bobby Bland (Robert Calvin Brooks), blues and soul singer, born 27 January 1930; died 23 June 2013

1 Comments:

Blogger ichbinalj said...
Aretha Franklin is the greatest singer in Rock n' Roll era, acccording to a new Rolling Stone magazine poll.

She's already the Queen of Soul, but now Aretha Franklin has been named the greatest singer of the rock era in a poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine.

Franklin, 66, came in ahead of Ray Charles at No. 2, Elvis Presley at No. 3, Sam Cooke at No. 4 and John Lennon at No. 5, according to the magazine's survey of 179 musicians, producers, Rolling Stone editors, and other music-industry insiders.

The 100-strong list will be published on Friday 14 November 2008, when Rolling Stone hits the newsstands with four different covers. (11/11/2008 Reuters)
12:59 PM  

Putin: 'Nyet' to US request to turn over Snowden

MOSCOW (AP) — Yes, he's at a Moscow airport, and no, you can't have him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the first official acknowledgment of the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Tuesday June18 and promptly rejected U.S. pleas to turn him over.
Snowden, who is charged with violating American espionage laws, fled Hong Kong over the weekend, touching off a global guessing game over where he went and frustrating U.S. efforts to bring him to justice.
Putin said Snowden is in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport and has not passed through Russian immigration, meaning he technically is not in Russia and thus is free to travel wherever he wants.
After arriving Sunday June 16 on a flight from Hong Kong, Snowden registered for a Havana-bound flight Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn't board the plane.
Speculation has been rife that Russian security services have been talking to Snowden and might want to keep him in Russia for a more thorough debriefing, but Putin denied that.
"Our special services never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren't working with him today," Putin said at a news conference during a visit to Finland.
Because Moscow has no extradition agreement with Washington, it cannot meet the U.S. request, he said.
"Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him," Putin said. "I hope it will not affect the businesslike character of our relations with the U.S. and I hope that our partners will understand that."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that the U.S. wants Russia to show respect for the rule of law and comply with common practices when it comes to fugitives from justice.
Putin's staunch refusal to consider deportation shows his readiness to further challenge Washington at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are already strained over Syria and other issues, including a Russian ban on adoptions by Americans.
"Just showing America that we don't care about our relations, we are down to basically a Cold War pattern: The enemy of your government is our friend," said Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
"The Russian administration has not come that far, but we don't know what it's up to," she said.
Despite Putin's denial, security experts believe Russia's special services wouldn't miss the chance to question a man who is believed to hold reams of classified U.S. documents and could shed light on how the U.S. intelligence agencies collect information.
Igor Korotchenko, director of the Center for Global Arms Trade and editor of National Defense Magazine, said Snowden would be of particular interest because little is known about digital espionage.
"The security services would be happy to enter into contact with Mr. Snowden," Korotchenko said.
Russia also has relished using Snowden's revelations to turn the tables on the U.S. over its criticism of Russia's rights record.
Putin compared Snowden to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been given asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, saying that both men were labeled criminals but consider themselves rights activists and champions of freedom of information.
"Ask yourself a question: Should people like that be extradited so that they put them in prison?" he said. "In any case, I would prefer not to deal with such issues. It's like shearing a piglet: a lot of squealing and little wool."
In an apparent reference to claims that Russia could have played a role in Snowden's exit from Hong Kong, Putin said his arrival in Moscow was a "complete surprise" and dismissed such accusations as "ravings and sheer nonsense."
"He doesn't need a visa or any other documents, and as a transit passenger he has the right to buy a ticket and fly wherever he wants," Putin said.
Snowden, 30, is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor for the NSA. In that job, he gained access to documents that he gave to newspapers the Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
Snowden also told the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." He is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents in laptops he is carrying.
Russian news media had reported that Snowden remained in a transit zone at the airport, which is separate from regular departure areas. He has not been seen by any of the journalists who have been roaming Sheremetyevo in search of him, furthering speculation that he had been secreted away.
The Interfax news agency, citing an unidentified airport official, said Snowden could be staying in a room in the transit zone normally reserved for flight crews and other personnel.
Legally, an arriving air passenger only crosses the border after clearing Russian immigration checks.
Earlier Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected the U.S. push to turn over Snowden, but he wouldn't specify his whereabouts, saying only that he hadn't crossed the Russian border.
Kerry called for "calm and reasonableness."
"We would hope that Russia would not side with someone who is a fugitive from justice," Kerry said at a news conference in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. has revoked Snowden's passport.
A representative of WikiLeaks has been traveling with Snowden, and the secret-spilling organization is believed to be assisting him in arranging asylum. Assange, the group's founder, said Monday that Snowden was only passing through Russia and had applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries.
A high-ranking Ecuadorean official told The Associated Press that Russia and Ecuador were discussing where Snowden could go, saying the process could take days. He also said Ecuador's ambassador to Moscow had not seen or spoken to Snowden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Kremlin has previously said Russia would be ready to consider Snowden's request for asylum.
Some observers said Snowden's revelations have provided the Kremlin with propaganda arguments to counter the U.S. criticism of Russia's crackdown on opposition and civil activists under Putin.
"They would use Snowden to demonstrate that the U.S. government doesn't sympathize with the ideals of freedom of information, conceals key information from the public and stands ready to open criminal proceedings against those who oppose it," Konstantin Remchukov, the editor of independent daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

 Russia's foreign minister,  Sergey Lavrov, bluntly rejected U.S. demands to extradite Snowden, saying that Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border.
Sergey Lavrov insisted that Russia has nothing to do with Snowden or his travel plans. Lavrov wouldn't say where Snowden is, but he lashed out angrily at Washington for demanding his extradition and warning of negative consequences if Moscow fails to comply. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday urged Moscow to "do the right thing" and turn over Snowden.
"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials."
The defiant tone underlined the Kremlin's readiness to challenge Washington at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are strained over Syria and a Russian ban on adoptions by Americans.
U.S. and Ecuadorean officials said they believed Snowden was still in Russia. He fled there Sunday from Hong Kong, where he had been hiding out since his disclosure of the broad scope of two highly classified U.S. counter-terror surveillance programs. The programs collect vast amounts of Americans' phone records and worldwide online data in the name of national security.
Lavrov claimed that the Russian government found out about Snowden's flight from Hong Kong only from news reports.
"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with American justice or his travels around the world," Lavrov said. "He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media."
Snowden booked a seat on a Havana-bound flight from Moscow on Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn't board the plane. Russian news media have reported that he has remained in a transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, but journalists there haven't seen him.

A high-ranking Ecuadorean official told The Associated Press that Russia and Ecuador were discussing where Snowden could go, saying the process could take days. He also said Ecuador's ambassador to Moscow had not seen or spoken to Snowden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, hailed Snowden on Monday as "a man attempting to bring light and transparency to facts that affect everyone's fundamental liberties."
He described the decision on whether to grant Snowden asylum as a choice between "betraying the citizens of the world or betraying certain powerful elites in a specific country."
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. had made demands to "a series of governments," including Ecuador, that Snowden be barred from any international travel other than to be returned to the U.S. The U.S. has revoked Snowden's passport.
"We're following all the appropriate legal channels and working with various other countries to make sure that the rule of law is observed," President Barack Obama told reporters.
Some experts said it was likely that Russian spy agencies were questioning Snowden on what he knows about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.
"If Russian special services hadn't shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional," Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia's top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.
The Kremlin has previously said Russia would be ready to consider Snowden's request for asylum.
The Interfax news agency, which has close contacts with Russian security agencies, quoted an unidentified "well-informed source" in Moscow as saying Tuesday that Snowden could be detained for a check of his papers. The report could reflect that authorities are searching for a pretext to keep Snowden in Russia.
Snowden is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor for the NSA. In that job, he gained access to documents that he gave to newspapers The Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
Snowden also told the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." He is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents in laptops he is carrying.
Putin has accused the U.S. State Department of instigating protests in Moscow against his re-election for a third term in March and has taken an anti-American posture that plays well with his core support base of industrial workers and state employees.
____
(Huuhtanen reported from Naantali, Finland. Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow and Michael Weissenstein and Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this story.)

SOMEONE FORGOT TO PUSH THE RESET BUTTON. DID HILLARY TAKE IT WITH HER?

A row between the US and Moscow over Snowden’s extradition has reached a new level of tension after Barack Obama canceled a long-planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, again showing the adherence of US to double-standard politics.
This goes back to Putin finally deciding to give temporary asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, specifically ignoring Obama’s personal directive that Snowden should be handed over to the US. With this measure, Putin echoes Russia’s and the world’s growing weariness with America’s hegemonic carrot-and-stick strategy, and its double talk.
Both presidents had agreed to hold a summit in Moscow next month to discuss bilateral issues but, reading between the lines, one can clearly sense the increasing frustration the US and its key global allies feel towards Russia and China, the only two major powers that can stand up to them, bringing some measure of traditional balance-of-power to today’s world; even if uneasy and fragile.

Disclosure

As with Julian Assange, the case involving Edward Snowden is well-known around the world: both men were in a position to access credible behind-the-curtain information, together with the documentation backing it up, and they both came out boldly disclosing it to the public.
If the proof is in the pudding, then America’s rage and ire, as well as that of its allies’, are proof that these disclosures are in fact true, which is why such a large portion of global public opinion hail Snowden and Assange as true heroes and freedom fighters.

A demonstrator holds a posters aying 'thank you' to U.S intelligence contractor Edward Snowden during a protest (AFP Photo / Angelika Warmuth)
A demonstrator holds a posters aying 'thank you' to U.S intelligence contractor Edward Snowden during a protest (AFP Photo / Angelika Warmuth)

For when it comes to assessing the true motives and unconfessable activities and goals behind much of US, UK and Israeli foreign and domestic policies, millions of modern-day Hamlets can smell that there is definitely something very rotten and not precisely in the State of Denmark.
If, as we believe, the supranational global power elites are embedded deep inside the public and private power structures of key nations – notably the United States and the United Kingdom  – then clearly their Achilles Heel is any and all disclosure of their crimes, their meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, their direct or indirect involvement in false-flag attacks, their support of genocidal regimes when it serves their purpose, their murderous invasions and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Libya, and their obscene funding and support of terrorists, guerrillas and mafias in Syria and elsewhere, under the PsyOps cover of ‘Arab Spring’.
Now, if giving temporary asylum to a disgruntled 30-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) operative like Snowden has such impact on the US power structure - so much so that it led the president of the United States to cancel a key summit with the President of Russia - then one can only wonder at the fear and trembling they must feel when assessing potentially much more serious ‘security breaches’.
What if a really organized group of truly powerful insiders-turned-outsiders were to decide to confront Washington, New York, London and Tel-Aviv with unquestionable evidence and proof of their crimes and their criminal perpetrators? What if, say, somebody comes up with total and undisputable proof on the truth behind 9/11? Or Iraq and Libya? Or Wall Street in 2008? Or London 7/7…?

Russia and China: America’s 21st-century foes

Naturally global hegemons abhor anyone standing up to them, which is clearly what Russia has been doing for the past decade.  At the UN, where Russia had been more accommodating to many US interests, after the US-backed monstrous assassination of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on live TV and the rape of Libya in 2011, its appears Moscow got really fed up. 
Assassinating global leaders to the chuckling of Hillary Clinton on CBS News is definitely not on Moscow’s agenda.
A key change in Russian foreign policy can thus be clearly seen in the cases of Iran and, more significantly, in Syria - a traditional Russian ally.
The US, UK and Israel know full well that even if they continue to finance the worst terrorists, mafias, murderers, arms-dealers and Al-Qaeda operatives - whom they collectively dub as ‘freedom fighters’ - against the legitimate government of Bashar Assad, Russia just won’t budge.
Putin’s message is clear: the West will not have its way in Syria. Period.
Many readers are probably asking, what about China? Isn’t China supposed to be the key Pentagon target in the years to come because it continues to grow and grow, and its economy will soon surpass that of the US? 
Yes, but that’s just the economy and, yes, China does hold almost $2 trillion in US Treasury Bills, which gives them the potential to wreak havoc on the US by just liquidating them short-term in the major global financial markets. China could, if it wanted, send the US Dollar crumbling down like the World Trade Center twin towers did in 2001.

AFP Photo / Philippe Lopez
AFP Photo / Philippe Lopez
But the US knows China will not do that; not now, anyway, as they have much more to lose from a US financial collapse than they have to win.  China knows that triggering the mass devaluation of those Treasuries would backfire and explode in their own face.
Besides, China has never had, nor has today, global hegemonic aims. China seems quite happy to be and remain the undisputed power in South East Asia and the Western Pacific, something that is in sharp contrast with the US/UK/Israel, which together insist on running the whole world: politically, territorially, financially, even trying to impose its courts and laws.
In addition, China has few issues for open conflict: Tibet, Taiwan, a couple of disputed islands with Japan, perhaps, but that’s basically it. Their struggle lies on the economic and resources stage.
Now, compare that to the permanent conflicts the US and its allies stir up in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Central Europe etc.
China does not really need to be contained; it is self-contained. The US and its allies, however, must be contained and, seeing the way things are going, in the long run they must be stopped.
Russia might have far less economic clout than the US, however the Kremlin has always had clear long-term geopolitical objectives; intelligently designed and planned ever since the times of the tsars, later under the Bolsheviks, and today under its mature, coherent and consistent leadership.
For Russia not only has global aims, Russia understands the world and its multicultural complexities far better than the US. On this, Russia is only rivaled by Britain... and China.
So is the US now slipping back into ‘Evil Empire’, Russia-standing-in-the-way-of-‘democracy’; Russia-supporting-the-bad-guys rhetoric?
The truth is that Russia is helping to unmask American social and political decadence, financial weakness, and psychopathic imperial overdrive. 
When Russia stands up to America, it shows strength, personality and self-respect. The world looks on and applauds.

Double standards

On August 7, Obama appeared on Jay Leno’s popular ‘Tonight Show’, whining and complaining about Putin, accusing Moscow of slipping back into “Cold-War mode”. He listed US grievances against Russia: missile defense and arms control, trade relations, global security, human rights, civil society… and advising President Putin not to look at the past but to “think about the future as there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cooperate.”

US President Barack Obama chats with host Jay Leno during a taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at NBC Studios on August 6, 2013 in Burbank, California. (AFP Photo / Mandel Ngan)
US President Barack Obama chats with host Jay Leno during a taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at NBC Studios on August 6, 2013 in Burbank, California. (AFP Photo / Mandel Ngan)
Obama doesn’t seem to understand that to think correctly about the future, requires learning from the experience of the past. Addressing the Snowden Affair in isolation is but another example of US double-standards and double talk.
As journalist Glenn Greenwald of London’s The Guardian newspaper reminded his readers on that same day, whilst Obama and the mainstream media today express so much distress over Snowden’s Russian asylum, they seem to forget past cases where the tables were turned, and which did not involve a young, mild-mannered whistleblower, but rather where the US protected the worst criminals and murderers.
For instance, the US refused to heed an extradition request from Italy for two CIA agents indicted in the alleged 2003 abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan (New York Times, February 28, 2007); later, when CIA agent Robert Seldon Lady was released in Panama, he was flown back to the US to avert the possibility he might be extradited to Italy (Washington Post, July 19, 2013). 
Then we have America’s refusal to extradite former CIA-supported Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada - who for all practical purposes was given US asylum - so he could stand trial for genocide and war crimes in Bolivia (The Guardian, September 9, 2012). Or the case of Luis Posada Carriles, whose extradition to Venezuela was also refused by the US, over his alleged role in the 1976 terror bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people (El Paso Times, December 30, 2010).
The list does not stop there. In recent years, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil filed repeated requests and legal summons asking the US to give up one Sir Henry A. Kissinger, wanted for questioning over his decades-long involvement with CIA-backed military regime murders in those countries during the 1970s, under a mass genocide strategy which later became known as ‘Plan Condor’.
But again, the Global Power Elite always stands behind its problem children like Sir Henry to the very end. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón went so far as to ask Interpol to arrest Kissinger for questioning during a visit to London but - Alas! - to no avail.
And we won’t even mention the repeated extradition requests filed by Belgian Courts against former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his war crimes and crimes against humanity, filed by Lebanese victims of his 2001 killing sprees.
The list is far too long.  But the double standards are glaringly obvious, which does not seem to unduly bother the Global Hegemons, for they are far too used to always having their way. 
And even when they do take some risk they use their overpowering leverage to play their game safely, as if saying “let’s flip a coin: heads we win; tails you lose”.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Comments (23)

 

dd 09.08.2013 21:53

If the behavior of team US-UK-Israel seems schizophrenic, there is good reason. They're under the sway of those indefatigable neocon "thinkers" , ardent followers of Leo Strauss, who "create their own reality" and then bend all facts to that "reality". If they are allowed to continue on this path of total recklessness, life will not be worth living.
 

A. Veranen 09.08.2013 20:51

Few years ago I saw Mihail Gorbachev being interviewedIin Russian tv and he stated that "world id in a perilous state as democracies have started to become derailed as they have no counter-force to keep them solidly integrated" (freely quoted). He was right in the sense that during cold war, anybody in the west would not have dared to suggest torture or violating basic liberties. Now, that Russia places a general reminder of lawful behavior, they get accused of Cold War mindset which quite surprisingly was the typical act of USA of the time. Tables have truly turned.
0
 

Connie 09.08.2013 18:42

The US is flabbergasted that another nation had a slight difference of opinion. Or was that a sledgehammer on his hard head?

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Obama’s Comments On Military Sex Abuse An “Undue Command Influence”

Two defendants in military sexual assault cases cannot be punitively discharged, if found guilty, because of “unlawful command influence” derived from comments made by President Barack Obama, a judge ruled in a Hawaii military court week of June 10.
Navy Judge CDR. Marcus Fulton ruled during pretrial hearings in two sexual assault cases — U.S. vs. Johnson and U.S. vs. Fuentes — that comments made by Obama as commander in chief would unduly influence any potential sentencing, according to a court documents obtained by Stars and Stripes.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Fulton approved the pretrial defense motions, which used as evidence comments that Obama made about sexual assault at a May 7 news conference.
The judge’s pretrial ruling means that if either defendant is found guilty, whether by a jury or a military judge, they cannot receive a bad conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge. Sailors found guilty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s Article 120, which covers several sexual crimes including assault and rape, generally receive punitive discharges.
“A member of the public would not hear the President’s statement to be a simple admonition to hold members accountable,” Fulton stated. “A member of the public would draw the connection between the ‘dishonorable discharge’ required by the President and a punitive discharge approved by the convening authority.
“The strain on the system created by asking a convening authority to disregard [Obama's] statement in this environment would be too much to sustain public confidence.”
The ruling sets the stage for defense attorneys to use the same arguments in sexual assault cases throughout the military.
Should other judges accept the same line of reasoning, commands would have to consider issuing lesser administrative discharges to servicemembers found guilty of sexual assault. In some cases, this could allow servicemembers found guilty of sex crimes to retain veterans benefits, according to Defense Department regulations.
“I think that as a defense attorney, I would raise this argument in virtually any [sexual assault] case I had,” said Victor Hansen, vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice and former instructor at the Army’s JAG school.

President Barack Obama said that he has “no tolerance” for sexual assault in the military, comments made in the wake of a new Pentagon report showing the instances of such crimes have spiked since 2010.
The president said he had spoken today with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to urge him to “exponentially step up” efforts to identify suspects in assaults, and aggressively prosecute those cases.
“The bottom line is: I have no tolerance for this,” Obama said at a press conference following his meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
‘I expect consequences,” Obama added. “So I don’t just want more speeches or awareness programs or training, but ultimately folks look the other way. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this, they’ve got to be held accountable – prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”
(…;)
“For those who are in uniform who’ve experience sexual assault, I want them to hear directly from their commander in chief that I’ve got their backs,” the president said. “I will support them. And we’re not going to tolerate this stuff, and there will be accountability.”
What constitutes “undue command influence” is, at least in part, established by Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice:
(a) No authority convening a general, special, or summary court-martial, nor any other commanding officer, may censure, reprimand, or admonish the court or any member, military judge, or counsel thereof, with respect to the findings or sentence adjudged by the court, or with respect to any other exercises of its or his functions in the conduct of the proceedings. No person subject to this chapter may attempt to coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal or any member thereof, in reaching the findings or sentence in any case, or the action of any convening, approving, or reviewing authority with respect to his judicial acts. The foregoing provisions of the subsection shall not apply with respect to (1) general instructional or informational courses in military justice if such courses are designed solely for the purpose of instructing members of a command in the substantive and procedural aspects of courts-martial, or (2) to statements and instructions given in open court by the military judge, president of a special court-martial, or counsel.
The operative question here is whether the comments by President Obama and others in the chain of command, which based on how they are set forth in the opinion seem to be little more than generalized statements about the need for increased vigilance against sexual assault in the military constitute an attempt to “coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal or any member thereof, in reaching the findings or sentence in any case, or the action of any convening, approving, or reviewing authority with respect to his judicial acts.”  In his ruling, the presiding Judge found that there was sufficient reason to believe that the President’s insistence that members of the military who have engaged in sexual assault should be “prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged” constituted at least potential undue influence over the sentencing phase of the hearing in the case before him. Consequently, he ruled that if the Defendant is convicted, the military jury would not be able to impose a dishonorable discharge or similar punishing upon him. As noted above, this would potentially mean that the Defendant would remain fully eligible for all veterans benefits despite having been convicted of a crime while in the military.
I don’t have the expertise in military criminal law to comment on the Judge’s decision here, however the immediate consequences of his ruling. Defense attorneys representing members of the military facing similar charges will without a doubt file similar motions in the cases they are involved in, and we’re likely to get contradictory rulings on the matter from the presiding Judges in each of those cases.
Additionally, the ruling in these cases will likely end up being appealed, likely before the trial actually starts.

The judge’s pretrial ruling means that if either defendant is found guilty, whether by a jury or a military judge, they cannot receive a bad conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge. Sailors found guilty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s Article 120, which covers several sexual crimes including assault and rape, generally receive punitive discharges.
“A member of the public would not hear the President’s statement to be a simple admonition to hold members accountable,” Fulton stated. “A member of the public would draw the connection between the ‘dishonorable discharge’ required by the President and a punitive discharge approved by the convening authority.
“The strain on the system created by asking a convening authority to disregard [Obama’s] statement in this environment would be too much to sustain public confidence.”
The ruling sets the stage for defense attorneys to use the same arguments in sexual assault cases throughout the military.
Should other judges accept the same line of reasoning, commands would have to consider issuing lesser administrative discharges to servicemembers found guilty of sexual assault. In some cases, this could allow servicemembers found guilty of sex crimes to retain veterans benefits, according to Defense Department regulations.
“I think that as a defense attorney, I would raise this argument in virtually any [sexual assault] case I had,” said Victor Hansen, vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice and former instructor at the Army’s JAG school.
Hansen found Thursday’s ruling surprising, since judges have rejected “unlawful command influence” arguments under the logic that statements by high-level officials lose their effect as they reach the military’s lower levels.
However, in recent months there has been a lot more said — and in overly specific terms — about sexual assault by military and political leaders, Hansen noted. Obama’s call for dishonorable discharges is an example of such specificity, which begins to sound to military juries like a direct order from the commander in chief.
“This is bad lawyering on [Obama’s] advisor’s part,” Hansen said. “It’s certainly not a problem to say that sexual assault is a bad thing and we need to weed it out … that’s innocuous. It’s when they get very pointed that it’s problematic.”
Last year, Marine Corps defendants in more than 60 sexual assault cases filed unlawful command influence claims following comments by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, according to a May 9 McClatchy Tribune news report.
In one speech, Amos declared that 80 percent of sexual assault claims were legitimate, according to the report. Judges in nearly all of the 60 disputed cases found the appearance of unlawful command influence, according to the McClatchy report.
When contacted by Stars and Stripes, Navy legal officials in Hawaii deferred comment to the officials at the Office of the Judge Advocate General in Washington, D.C.
JAG officials in Washington said they could not comment because of potential conflicts with any appeals arising from the ruling, but confirmed the court document’s authenticity. The White House had no immediate response when asked for comment.
Obama’s comments came after a Defense Department report stated that 3,374 incidents of “unwanted sexual contact” occurred during fiscal year 2012, a 6 percent increase over the prior year.
A secondary survey reported that if the 6.1 percent of women and 1.8 percent of men who said they experienced unwanted sexual contact are extrapolated to include the entire military, about 26,000 servicemembers may have been victimized in 2012.
The reports led to heightened public and congressional scrutiny of the military’s handling of sexual assault.
On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Service Committee voted down a proposal that would have transferred authority over military sexual assault cases to independent prosecutors. Instead, committee chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., included a clause in a markup of next year’s defense bill that would require high-level review of decisions made by commanders not to prosecute sexual assault cases.
As for the President’s statement itself, I can’t help but think that the Judge got it wrong here. On it’s face, what the President said struck me as a general, benign, statement regarding future policy and the message that the Commander in Chief wishes the military to take the issue of sexual assault far more seriously than it has been. Is that “undue command influence?” As I said, I’m not an expert in this area so I’ll leave that to others, but it does feel to me like the Judge went a little over the top here. I suppose we can be grateful that he didn’t dismiss the cases completely.
On a general level, though, this case does point out the importance of the White House in general, and the President specifically, not getting involved in criminal investigations and prosecutions that occur under his watch, whether in the civilian or military spheres.
Recently, for example, the White House has been criticized for not commenting directly on the Justice Department’s investigation of leaks that includes pursuing information from journalists using subpoenas and search warrants. There has also been a lot of criticism directed at the White House from the right for it failure to officially designating the November 2009 Ford Hood massacre as a terrorist act, and that Major Nidal Hasan continues to receive his military pay while awaiting trial on those charges. In both cases, the White House has pointedly refused to comment on the cases at hand, and that was entirely the appropriate reaction. Specific comments from the President regarding guilt or innocence of a Defendant would be highly inappropriate and would likely result in defense attorneys moving for mistrials at any criminal proceeding. The comments the President made here, of course, were not about a specific  case, but this ruling is a pretty good reminder of what could happen if Presidents started bending to the demands of reporters or political opponents that they make comment on such matters.