bagochips

Blane, how is Africa treating you?

And Gogol Bordello, what a blast.

Oh yeah, and in no particular order: Femi Kuti, Leo Kottke, White Stripes, Sharon Jones, Elmer Ferrer, Buddy Guy and Los Lobos. No particular order, but Femi was hands down the best show I saw.

I'm surprised that nobody (that I have noticed)has mentioned John Carroll. He played outside the festival on the corner near the main entrance, doing a few originals but mostly covering Tom Waits and the like. I thought he was great. He has been doing this for a few years now and has a gig at the Laff every Wednesday night. Quarts anyone?

Cat power.

Great book. Read "Running in the Family" next and you'll be glad you did.

Woman jailed for 'neglected' lawn A 70-year-old US woman has been left bruised and bloody after an unexpected clash with police who came to arrest her because her lawn was dry and brown. Trouble flared when Utah pensioner Betty Perry, 70, refused to give her name to an officer trying to caution her for not watering her lawn. She says the officer hit her with handcuffs, cutting her nose, although police insist she slipped and fell. Ms Perry said she was "distraught" after the incident. He's just trying to cover his tracks, as far as I'm concerned Betty Perry She denied that she was resisting arrest, maintaining that she turned to go inside to call her son to fix the confusing dispute. "I tried to sit down and get away from him," she told Utah newspaper the Daily Herald. "I don't know what he's doing. I said: 'What are you doing?' And he hit me with those handcuffs in my face," she said. "He's just trying to cover his tracks, as far as I'm concerned." Set free The officer had judged that Ms Perry's "sadly neglected and dying landscape" breached an Orem city guideline and was attempting to issue a formal caution when the 70-year-old was injured. She was treated in a local hospital for the cut to her nose and for other bruises before being taken to jail. But she was let go when police realised there were "other ways" of finding out her identity without taking her to jail, a police spokesman said. The arresting officer has not been named but has been placed on administrative leave, he added. Ms Perry, who says she has never had a run-in with police in the past, has been offered help by local church leaders to clean up her garden. "I'm very distraught over all this," she said. "I can't believe this happened. Do you ever just wish you could start your day over and it would all be different?"

See ya there, lady.

Watch the stage instead.

I'm sooo excited to see Los Lobos. Those are the guys that do La Bamba!, right? I love that song.

Great photos, Ollie. Really wish I was there.

The Caribbean place, Mugena serves great food.

What the hell is Kotttke doing on the Rogers stage? That is way too big a stage for such a mellow act.

It was great to see the Ottawa crowd respond to the energy put out from the stage. The band seemed to really enjoy themselves and they played far longer than I expected, all the way to 11pm. Too bad they were scheduled at the same time as Toumani Diabate. That's probably the worst conflict of the fest for me. So far the best show I've seen at the fest was Femi Kuti, followed by Manu Chao.

Great work on the flyer, phorbesie. Tim handed me one after the show. I am impressed. All I have ever done is bitch to my friends ad nauseum. Last night I was able to get within twenty feet of Gary US Bonds without trouble. Everyone was standing for the Flecktones and the crowd at the river stage were too busy shaking it to Femi Kuti to care about chairs.

I am listening to Toumani Diabate right now and I am certain they will put on a great show. Plus, the small stages kick ass over the main area in every way. Beautiful locations by the river, intimate up-close experiences, bla bla blah. But, Manu Chao rules so I will have to be there for at least the bulk of his show. I'm curious how the white anglos are going to react on the main stage. His music should pull at least a few of their oversized posteriors off of their lawn chairs!

There was already one letter to the editor in today's Citizen regarding the chair shituation. But really, you know, it has been like this for years and I will be extremely surprised if it ever changes.

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That has to have been the best Neville Bros show I've ever seen. WAY better than the Bluesfest from two years ago. Just killer.

Set list?

Thanks for the link. I keep forgetting how good Wilco is.

I'm disappointed. I thought this thread was about draught beersicles, which sort of seemed like a tasty summer treat. Word to the wise, and the fools for that matter, stay away from the draught at bluesfest; smuggle a bottle of something in, instead.

And here is a link to the actual document (summary): http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wilderotter.pdf

Washington D.C., June 21, 2007 - The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called the file "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency." The papers are scheduled for public release on Monday, June 25. "This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency," commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive's director. Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages of the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers--hard-target analyses of Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy plane. The National Security Archive separately obtained (and posted today) a six-page summary of the illegal CIA activities, prepared by Justice Department lawyers after a CIA briefing in December 1974, and the memorandum of conversation when the CIA first briefed President Gerald Ford on the scandal on January 3, 1975. Then-CIA director Schlesinger commissioned the "family jewels" compilation with a May 9, 1973 directive after finding out that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord (both veteran CIA officers) had cooperation from the Agency as they carried out "dirty tricks" for President Nixon. The Schlesinger directive, drafted by deputy director for operations William Colby, commanded senior CIA officials to report immediately on any current or past Agency matters that might fall outside CIA authority. By the end of May, Colby had been named to succeed Schlesinger as DCI, and his loose-leaf notebook of memos totaled 693 pages [see John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 259-260.] Seymour Hersh broke the story of CIA's illegal domestic operations with a front page story in the New York Times on December 22, 1974 ("Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years"), writing that "a check of the CIA's domestic files ordered last year… produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities… beginning in the nineteen fifties, including break-ins, wiretapping, and the surreptitious inspection of mail." On December 31, 1974, CIA director Colby and the CIA general counsel John Warner met with the deputy attorney general, Lawrence Silberman, and his associate, James Wilderotter, to brief Justice "in connection with the recent New York Times articles" on CIA matters that "presented legal questions." Colby's list included 18 specifics: 1. Confinement of a Russian defector that "might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws." 2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott. 3. Physical surveillance of muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including current Fox News anchor Brit Hume. 4. Physical surveillance of then Washington Post reporter Michael Getler. 5. Break-in at the home of a former CIA employee. 6. Break-in at the office of a former defector. 7. Warrantless entry into the apartment of a former CIA employee. 8. Mail opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union. 9. Mail opening from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from China. 10. Behavior modification experiments on "unwitting" U.S. citizens. 11. Assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba, and Trujillo (on the latter, "no active part" but a "faint connection" to the killers). 12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971. 13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female and U.S. citizens in Detroit. 14. Surveillance of a CIA critic and former officer, Victor Marchetti. 15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the antiwar movement. 16. Polygraph experiments with the San Mateo, California, sheriff. 17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws. 18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits.