SICKOFITRADLZ: Diana Ross' RCA Years

Diana Ross?

I’ll be watching Sunday when she performs on The American Music Awards. I love Diana.

I’m a weirdo probably on this but I like her RCA years the best.

I should note that Betty and C.I. and I talk about music a lot. And we’ve all agreed that there are certain moments in your life when music can register a lot more – high school, when you’re in mourning, when you’re first in love.

Diana’s RCA years for me are high school.

I love the RCA albums, even Silk Electric, which is the weakest.

RCA really made big mistakes with Diana because they usually got the lead single wrong. For example, “Pieces of Ice” was not the song to announce a new Diana album. I would have gone with “That’s How You Start Over” or “Love or Loneliness.” And with “Eaten Alive,” I would never have released the title song. I do get the argument, Michael Jackson co-wrote the song and sings on it. He was huge because of Thriller and Bad. But the song is nothing like the rest of the album. I don’t dislike “Eaten Alive” as a single – it’s a fun track. But it really does not capture Eaten Alive. “Chain Reaction” was a number one hit in the UK, Ireland and Australia. If it had been the lead off track instead of “Eaten Alive,” it would have been a hit in the US.

Eaten Alive is a great album and would be her best RCA album if it weren’t for the title track. “Experience” is like a George Michael song. “Oh Teacher” and “Crime of Passion” are great high energy songs while “More and More” is just amazing.

But Eaten Alive has that title track so it just doesn’t fit.

Swept Away, therefore, is my favorite album. It has the soul hit “Telephone” which reteams Diana with Bernard Edwards (Chic). Along with that hit, it has three pop hits: “All of You” with Julio Iglesias, “Missing You” (written by Lionel Richie) and “Swept Away” which I loved from the first time I heard the spoken intro: “I was lying there, lying on the beach . . .” I love it when Diana does spoken. It’s just a great album. She covers Fontella Bass’ 60s hit “Rescue Me” and Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” And we get “Nobody Drives Me Crazy Like You Do” which is one of the two most underated soul tracks of the 80s in my opinion, the other being “Ain’t Nobody Ever Loved You” by Aretha Franklin on her Who’s Zoomin Who album. I also love “It’s Your Move” and “Touch By Touch.” It’s just a great album.

So my ranking of RCA goes:

Swept Away

Eaten Alive

Red Hot Rhythm and Blues – I love this, her final RCA album.

Why Do Fools Fall In Love – “Mirror Mirror” is an amazing song. And it and the title track were hits. “Two Can Make It” is a song that has stuck in my head for years.

Ross – good production and a lot of good songs.

Silk Electric – diverse but it doesn’t add up. I don’t mind the rocker (“Fool For Your Love”) but would have preferred it had at least one more rocker. Too many ballads distracts from the moments she has on them. We’d be blown away if she just did “Hold Me (Make Me Your Woman)” but she’s doing too many ballads for us to register the delivery unique to each one.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Thursday, November 16, 2017.

"Do You Know Where You're Going To" is one of the 19 number one pop songs (BILLBOARD US singles chart) that Diana Ross has sang on (and it's the theme to her hist film MAHOGANY). November 19th, she'll be on the live broadcast (ABC) of The American Music Awards to perform and to receive the American Music Award for Lifetime Achievement. Motown Classic is issuing DIAMOND DIANA: THE LEGACY COLLECTION November 17th to note this monumental achievement. That's this Sunday and her daughter Tracee Ellis Ross (BLACKISH, GIRLFRIENDS) will be hosting the broadcast.

Moving to Iraq, it's been a slow process but the renewed attempt to lower the age of marriage for girls to 9-years-old is finally get press attention.

‏ @WatchSharia

Nine-year-old girls in Iraq could be forced to marry under new Muslim laws tinyurl.com/yc8ejopy The bill includes provisions that would legalise marital rape and child marriage and ban Muslims from marrying non-Muslims.

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IBT's Isabelle Garratsen notes:

Human rights activists are warning that a new Iraqi law could legalise marriage for children as young as nine and set women's rights back 50 years.
They are calling on Iraqi ministers to withdraw a draft of the Jafaari Personal Status Law which would allow Muslim clerics to have control over marriage contracts.

For the earlier attempt, please refer to the April 17, 2014 snapshot.

We first noted the new push for the measure in the November 3rd snapshot. Last week, Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reported on it, Chris Harris (EURONEWS) has reported on the issue and Karen McVeigh (GUARDIAN) has covered it.

Middle East media has covered this issue throughout the month. One example being Rosie Alfatlawi's report for AL-BAWABA:

Child marriage may soon be legal in Iraq.

Troops have only just liberated the final major ISIS stronghold, but now Iraq’s parliament is voting on changes opponents say are reminiscent of the extremist group.

Baghdad’s House of Representatives voted “in principle” on Wednesday to approve amendments to the Personal Status Law that could allow girls as young as 9 marry.

Currently 18 is the official marriage age, although a judge can allow individuals as young as 15 to wed.

In addition, the amended law would facilitate polygamy, with men no longer needing a judge’s permission to marry multiple wives.

Yet while Middle East outlets have covered the issue, western media has been largely silent. This despite the fact that the US State Dept commented on this issue last week. As KURDISTAN 24 noted:

State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert strongly criticized the Iraqi parliament’s approval, in principle, of a draft law that would allow the marriage of girls as young as nine-years old and restore the authority of religious courts in matters of personal status.
“We are completely against and oppose the idea of children marrying adults,” Nauert said on Thursday, replying to a question from Kurdistan 24 at a Department press briefing.
Nauert likened the pending Iraqi legislation to the practices of the Islamic State (IS.)
“It was not that long ago,” she said, that we condemned “the depravity of [IS] for taking children as brides.”
“We remain firmly opposed to the idea that any adult would attempt to marry a child in that fashion.”

Iraq’s current personal status law goes back to 1959. It was approved in the wake of the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in a military coup led by Gen. Abdul Karim Qasim in July 1958.

If you're in the west, especially if you're in the US, grasp this: Day after day, for weeks now, you are part of the daily outrage -- good, healthy outrage -- over the abusive behaviors of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, etc. What is being proposed in Iraq right now is abuse. And women and men in the west have benefited from global solidarity.

To avoid looking self-involved and hypocritical, it would be good for numerous 'social justice warriors' in the US to try to take a moment or two to recognize proposed abuse even if doesn't involve a famous performer.

Late yesterday, Bethan McKernan (INDEPENDENT) noted:

[T]he UN and various women’s rights groups in the region have condemned the proposed legislation.
“I call upon the Council of Representatives to seize this opportunity of the process to amend the Personal Status Law,“ the UN Secretary General’s special representative to Iraq, Jan Kubis, said in a statement.

The Council of Representatives must “conduct a wider consultation on the draft amendments in a participatory manner to recommit to and ensure the full respect, protection and fulfilment of women and girls’ rights in Iraq in relation to matrimonial and other matters,” he added.

Mina Aldroubi (THE NATIONAL) explains:

Iraq’s current personal status law, introduced in 1959, is considered to be one of the most protective of women’s rights in the region. It is applied to all Iraqis regardless of their religious beliefs and sets the legal age of marriage at 18. In "urgent" cases, however, a judge is allowed to permit girls as young as 15 to marry.
The current personal status law bans forced marriages and restricts polygamy.
Under the new amendments, however, Shiite girls would be allowed to marry from the age of nine in line with the teachings of the Jaafari school of Shiite religious jurisprudence. The school was established by the sixth Shiite imam, Jaafar Al Sadiq.
Belikis Wille, Iraq and Qatar researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that the mooted changes — which were first proposed in an earlier, more extreme bill introduced in 2014 — were "catastrophic".
“The fact that this is not the first time the proposal was introduced is deeply disturbing,” Ms Wille added.

“It’s a step backwards for Iraq, a country where there are many initiatives to improve women’s rights. Now [after ISIL’s defeat] is the time to assert more clearly that everyone in Iraq has equal rights.”

In 2014, the bill was approved by Nouri al-Maliki and his Cabinet of Ministers. Yesterday,voting was halted on the measure by a committee in Parliament. Mohamed Mostafa (IRAQI NEWS) reports:

SNG website quoted Lama al-Halfi, chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s women affairs committee, saying in a press statement on Wednesday that the “personal status” law had been withdrawn from voting and returned to the committee for further deliberation with the endowments committee.
“This (draft) law permits girls between eight and nine to get married, while the Iraqi law 199/1959 sets a girl’s maturity age between 15 and 16,” Halfi said, asking to adopt that age range in the new amendments.

In other disturbing news, Bill Van Auken (WSWS) reports:

An investigative report by the BBC titled “Raqqa's dirty secret” has confirmed earlier charges by Iran, Russia and the Syrian government that the Pentagon has colluded with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the evacuation of ISIS fighters from cities and towns under US military siege.
The BBC story, based on interviews with some of those who organized the evacuation along with truck drivers who were brought in to transport the fighters and others who observed it, describes a four-mile-long convoy that included “50 trucks, 13 buses and more than 100 of the Islamic State group’s own vehicles. IS fighters, their faces covered, sat defiantly on top of some of the vehicles.”
In total, the convoy, which set out on October 12, transported some 4,000 people—ISIS fighters and their families—along with tons of arms, ammunition and explosives. The US military and its proxy ground force, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, assured that reporters and cameramen were kept out of Raqqa to prevent images of the long column of trucks, with armed ISIS fighters on top of them from being broadcast around the world.

The story has been largely ignored by the US media. It flies in the face of repeated statements by leading US officials vowing to “annihilate” ISIS to the last man in Iraq and Syria and debunks the greatest “fake news” story of the 21st century—the so-called US war on terror.

ISIS was bussed. Poor thug Hayder al-Abadi. He's been taking victory laps as fast as his tiny legs could carry his portly body while screaming that he'd defeated ISIS. Poor Hayder, always a fool on the western stage.

This false claim has led to the mistaken assumption that the Iraqi forces have vastly improved when that is not the case. The official desertion rate among the Iraqi forces remains as high today as it was in 2014. They are still unable to move into a town unless they have at least 10 soldiers for every 1 suspected terrorist. They have been trained and retrained.

It's probably always going to be difficult to get them to fight for a government propped up by the United States as opposed to a true Iraqi government.

That is only shocking to those who haven't paid attention to what has taken place repeatedly. Of, for that matter, the 2011 brush off of the offer for more US training. (Iraq's 'acting' Foreign Minister -- speaking on behalf of Nouri al-Maliki -- suggested that the US find a better way to spend their money.)

The bussing was also outrageous when you grasp that the US is supposedly fighting ISIS. For many in the Middle East who have long argued that the US created ISIS and did so intentionally, this latest news will only confirm their beliefs.

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