Laural's Dish

(OCCUPIED) LAURAL'S DISH

Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.

Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.

Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:

Laural's Dish comes out on Fridays, before lunch, usually.

November 18, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/la-detectives-open-natalie-wood-death-inquiry-014714964.html

There are some Hollywood mysteries that will not die. There really are Hollywood Vampires in the Hollywood Hills who have discovered the secret of immortality, there's still a Manson Family (albeit without their prophet) who live somewhere in the California desert, how the hell did Quincy Jones get so powerful, etc. There are hundreds of 'em, and I bet some of them are true. Maybe this one.

Anyway, this is probably the best, at least one of the better ones. Natalie Wood was a very famous and talented actress, and one not exactly against taking chances. For me her most important, greatest role was in Love With the Proper Stranger, which….militant anti-abortionists say that anyone having an abortion should have to view footage of an aborted fetus. If that's true then every voter considering voting against legal abortion should have to watch Love With... before voting. Neither are right, to me, it would just go on…anyone voting for any candidate determined to continue any military action should have to view footage of carnage…as Rod Stewart sang those years ago "…if you've ever seen how wars are won…"

So far maybe it's a better story for the tabloids. A celebrated actress just kind of drank herself silly and hit her head on a boat? Unlikely. And the other guys on the boat were celebrated good-guy actor Robert Wagner (who she'd already divorced once but married again and argued with that night), and the brilliant Christopher Walken (greatest as the "bad guy," see King of New York ). Wow. This is going to get fascinating, I almost feel bad pointing it out..

http://news.yahoo.com/patriotic-millionaires-beg-supercommittee-higher-taxes-185620525.html

"America is no longer based on markets and capitalism, instead our economy is designed as 'socialism for the rich' – it is designed to ensure that the wealthiest people take all of the gains, while regular Americans cover any losses...It's a Las Vegas economy where regular Americans put their money on the table and the richest 1 percent own the house…And if the 1 percent happen to lose money, the 99 percent bails them out – covers their losses and then stands by watching while the house does it all over again." -- Patriotic Millionaire Robert Johnson, former chief economist of the U.S Senate banking committee

I can't describe what's happened in the United States of America over the past 30 years any better. No one can. I wonder if the "third" or "fourth" party candidate for 2012 that we've been waiting for isn't an ex-corporate raider…an American Gorbachev…you know, someone so disgusted, polluted and guilt-ridden from the system that they've served and succeeded in that they're ready to turn on it and-better than that-knows all its nooks and crannies….I'm listening…it would certainly be an American exercise in forgiveness, but it's worked…ok…for the Soviet Union, and we've always been better than them

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/27-reasons-why-newt-gingrich-would-be-a-really-really-bad-president

Anyway, the good news-I think-is that we won't be electing a Republican (who was the last decent one? Eisenhower?...someone before that?)

Why Obama's going to be easily re-elected #345,455: the Republican Party is so bewildered that they're actually considering nominating the guy who's most famous for putting out The Contract on America that so largely contributed to the immediate mess. The Newt is easily brighter than his Republican candidate counterparts (we might be talking about President McCain if the buffoon had taken the other buffoon's advice and denounced the bailouts but he didn't; and so Obama parroted and had him in a corner and the election was over ), but he's still trying to weasel his way to the top by declaring that every ill in society, the world, and the universe can be cured by eliminating the Capital Gains Tax ( RIP Jack Kemp)…which isn't exactly a position likely to catch fire in the 2012 election with the 51%. I'm not going to get into his trying to impeach Clinton for a blow-job while he-Gingrich-was fucking around on his wife who was dying of cancer, because it makes me sick.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/free-beer-offer-snares-suspects-000704160.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062451/Newt-Gingrich-received-1-8m-Freddie-Mac-consultancy-fees-taxpayer-bailout.html

Yep, someone offer Newt some more free (pretend) Federal Bail-out cash and he's out of the picture (again).

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7217085/top-jewish-former-baseball-players-join-israel-bid-world-baseball-classic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnflzhtDkJM

http://news.yahoo.com/activists-fear-gaza-aid-ships-intercepted-012546900.html

COOL BASEBALL NOTE: This strikes me as great news. Sports (think Mandela rugby, not '72 Olympics) can be such a...well, at least people from the many and opposing cultures get together and there usually aren't fights. I would suggest major screening, though, on both sides...partly because the heads of state of the United States of America and France have both recently pretty much agreed that Israel's leader is "a liar" and....

...George Galloway-the most brilliant speaker in UK politics and a man who single-handedly trashed a US Senate pro-Israeli subcommittee in a most historic manner, to an extent that I've never seen before...I mean, it was Norton vs. Bobick...anyone with a heart would have declared the winner within seconds and stopped the fight...

Mr Galloway, perhaps the most articulate and popular advocate of Palestine in the UK....spoke in Exeter a few years back, and was typically wittily recounting a "friendly" match that he'd arranged between Scottish and Palestinian under-16 football (US: "soccer") teams...."and all these giant guys came out with beards!"

Ok, just to make sure you know that Laural's Dish isn't all into Hollywood intrigue and the vaguer senses of this world...I woke up at 2:14 this morning, because I had to finish reading Love in the Time of Cholera. and I did. I guess I don't consider it the masterpiece that some do but I really liked it a lot (none of the characters, I didn't care much what happened to them)-though I have no doubt that Gabriel García Marquez is the greatest living writer-coming down the home stretch (denouement) the master reminds the rest of us that he has a unique insight and clever approach-an incredible ability to make things that don't seem to have much to do with each other intimate-he does that, in spades. I was not, this morning somewhere before 5 am, disappointed. Here are my favorite passages (SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU'RE EVER GONNA READ IT, page references Penguin edition, 1989):

Life would have been quite another matter for them both if they had learned in time that it was easier to avoid great matrimonial catastrophes than trivial everyday miseries. But if they had learned anything together, it was that wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. (p 26)
She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had loved him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had so badly in the past. But she had to give into the intransigence of death. (47)
Reading had become his insatiable vice. Ever since she had taught him to read, his mother had bought him illustrated books by Nordic authors which were sold as stories for children but in reality were the cruelest and most perverse that one could read at any age. (74)
That is how they were: they spent their lives proclaiming their proud origins, the historic merits of the city, the value of its relics, its heroism, its beauty, but they were blind to the decay of the years. (111)
The matter was not mentioned again, but the following week it was impossible to work in Florentino Ariza's office. On Monday the electricians burst in to install a rotating fan on the ceiling. The locksmiths arrived unannounced and with as much noise as if they were going to war, installed a lock on the door so that it could be bolted from the inside. The carpenters took measurements without saying why, the upholsterers brought swatches of cretone to see if they matched the color of the walls, and the next week an enormous double couch covered in a Dionysian flowered print was delivered through the window because it was too big for the doors. (165)
"This stuff tastes of window." Both she and the servants were surprised because they had never heard of anyone who had drunk boiled window, but when they tried the tea in an effort to undertand, they understood: it did taste of window. (222)
The meeting frightened away sleep. Instead of driving Leona Cassiani in the carriage, he walked with her though the old city, where their footsteps echoed like horses' hooves on the coblestones, open balconies, bedroom confidences, sobs of love magnified by phantasmal acoustics and the hot frgrance of jasmine in the narrow, sleping streets. (257)
Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies, and no death could resemble the man he was thinking about less than this one. But it was he, although it seemed absurd: the oldest and best-qualified doctor in the city, and one of its illustrious men for many other meritorious reasons, had died of a broken spine, at the age of eighty-one, when he fell from the branch of a mango tree as he tried to catch a parrot. (276)
His name was Diego Samaritano, he wore a white linen uniform that was absolutely correct, from the tips of his boots to his cap with the R.C.C. insignia embroidered in gold thread, and he possessed, in common with other river captains, the stoutness of a ceiba tree, a peremptory voice, and the manners of a Florentine cardinal. (326)
"Do you want to be alone? he asked. "If I did, I wold not have told you to come in," she said. Then he reached out with two icy fingers in the darkness, felt for the other hand in the darkness, and found it waiting...
Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.

November 11, 2011

This is a great cartoon and it's half right. ("To the right!" as Jesse Jackson once yelled at a Ernest Hollings in one of the better presidential candidate debates) It is courtesy of the organization For America, which I take it is a conservative group that supports the Tea Party.

It would be surprising to see the cartoon in mainstream/corporate media unless accompanied (immediately, or within a few days) with a counterpart declaring the Occupy Wall Street movement the "radical fringe element" and the Tea Party "legitimate voice of America." The details would be along the lines of:

cool symbol: "Don't Tread on Me" t-shirt for the TPs, "Fuck Capitalism" t's on the OWS
placard: "We're overdrawn, spend less!" for the TPs, "What happened to my free lunch?" for OWS
mere hyperbole: "I'm tired of paying for people who won't work" for the TPs, "Everyone has a right to everything" for the OWS
fueled by: "common sense" for the TPs, "laziness and entitlement" for the OWS
inspiring literature: Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), Steal This Book (Abbie Hoffman) for the OWS
spiritual music: A hymnal for the TPs, Bullet For My Valentine for the OWS

You get the idea, yeah? What's it mean? It means that everything that the corporate media has done over past thirty years is the same thing that it's done since it started doing it: it's turning us against each other so that we don't turn on it. The corporate media immediately moves to marginalize anything, anyone who threatens what's become the status quo of the 1%. Without the Tea Party, the Occupy Wall Street movement is not quite the 99%. Without Occupy Wall Street the Tea Party is a faction so lost in the wilderness that they alternately support...well, the candidates that they do.

Occupy Wall Street and The Tea Party are the same movement! Sure we have social differences, we don't necessarily drink with each other (though, to be fair, I have about an equal number of friends on each side of the convergence...and I can't imagine five Tea Partyers or Occypyers sitting together without dispute)...but we're all getting ripped off by the same people. IT'S THE ECONOMY...[political junkies know the rest of this famous phrase, no one else need bother]

When there are people starving, and an increasing number of hard-working people can't make ends meet it's time to back-burner school prayer (what did Ronald Reagan do for you anyway, mate?) and homophobia and legalize marijuana (though it has its advocates in the libertarian wing of the Tea Party) and....just get the greedy bastards responsible off the controls of power, for once and for all.

Which is, of course, very easy to say.

The increasingly obvious probability is that President Obama will serve a second term. Herman Cain was never going to be president, his main claim to fame used to be that he ran a pizza company for awhile. Rick Perry isn't going to be president, there are moments he couldn't even remember his own name, much less any idea he might have. Mitt? Are you kidding? He's an even more pro-corporate Obama...and while he could argue that he's a more competent corporate goof that's hardly a selling point in the current environment and...the sad reality is that his being a Mormon alienates his own Republican grass-roots power base, permanent. Ain't gonna happen.

Ron Paul...I really like Ron, I admire him, he's true to his ideals...but I won't vote for him for the same reason that millions of other Americans won't: he can't even explain how his theory of government is going to result in a functional interstate system, much less feed the people that our politics of the past 30 years are increasingly cutting out.*

*of course you already know that I blame every wrong in the world on Ronald Reagan, have since 1982 or so and haven't backed off much. But I saw a very interesting graphic the other day: although the economy was MUCH stronger and profits WAY up, the AVERAGE American income was LESS in 2008 (after two rounds of Bushes and Clinton) than it was in 1988, when The Gipper was set out to pasture. As I have said, every president since has been a caretaker for Reagan Revolution, but it's also wrong to say that he would have made the same mistakes that they did. Hell, he might be out occupying Wall Street! (ok, I doubt it)

There's going to be a strong third-, fourth-, and maybe even fifth-party candidate, I'm telling you...it's a crap shoot, everyone knows that Obama can be taken and there is no magnet like power, and there is no power more magnetic than the presidency.

So it's either going to be more of the same, or absolutely shocking starting somewhere in the next twelve months (they're lying in wait I tell ya; think how popular Ross Perot was early in '92, and how quickly he faded-there's a rhythm and window): I vote, Occupy Wall Street Votes, the Tea Party votes...for absolutely shocking. I think we'll get it, what we do with it remains to be seen. Obama's the bookies' favorite, but hardly anyone else's at this point.

Just to show that Bill Clinton still doesn't inhale (isn't it strange how cool presidents turn out to be once they're away from the Beltway lobbyists? I mean, Carter was a bold governor and campaigner, but wimpy president; Reagan was at least allegedly all for the common folk until he hit Washington; W has become almost dignified...)...

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/bill-clinton-q-taxing-rich-not-anti-wealth-222914518.html

...but does still excel and delight in self-serving lies and bullshit:

We've had the biggest increase in income inequality since 1981 in our history. [Tax increases on the rich] isn't class warfare. It's class warfare if we're saying 'rich people plundered the middle class and if we just brought them down to our level everything would be wonderful.'

Of course no one has done more than President Clinton in ensuring that economic inequality be the case. While we might expect previous Republican presidents to do everything they can (and did) to make the super rich richer-take out the family farm and make it a corporate farm-Democrats naively relied on Clinton to restore some balance. Instead he continued the (strategically) non-declared war on the working class, continuing deregulation and funding that by continuing the all-out war on the poor. (in a manner that even Reagan, arguably, wouldn't have, or at least didn't ) Bill Clinton will be remembered for emasculating the Democratic Party, unless his apologists write the textbook.

My argument is it's not class warfare for asking for higher revenues to deal with the debt and to invest in what we need to. It is that we're [ultra-rich people like himself] about the only people whose incomes have gone up in last 30 years... [he then goes on to explain that economic "inequality" is one of the reasons he felt compelled to lead the nation]

The quote is right on, but....just for those who didn't notice, can you remind us who was president for eight of those 30 years? And how that dynamic played out during those years? Clinton was only more of the same, now he says he was something better. Fuck you.

You can go on and on but the simple reality today is the same as it was all those years ago: Bill Clinton is a self-aggrandizing piece of crap who will say whatever he thinks will make him popular to anyone who might listen to him. Since lobbyists don't give much of a shit what he says these days, he turns back to us....but not even for forgiveness, instead to be admired for things he didn't do.

Ok, enough of the Oxford Dullards...let's look at some people who mean what they say, and say what they mean, and are going to their graves saying the same thing..

http://news.yahoo.com/chavez-venezuela-watching-carlos-jackal-case-024437720.html

"He's not a terrorist! He's a communist!"

We all have different skills, different talents...different callings. It's easy enough to say "Thou Shalt Not Kill," but it does render political improvement more difficult, or at least did in the recent past in what we consider Western civilization. General George Washington, for example, must have killed someone. Che Guevara did, and approved death sentences (please consider how anti-death penalty I am) for potentially dangerous counter-revolutionaries. Alexander the Great? Are you kidding? General Patton had a great line on this, on how wars are won.

In writing ulrike's weinglas, gudrun's violin I did no small amount of research into revolutionary-terrorism during the '70s (the last period where it could arguably make any sense at all; in the Western world-of course there's still Gabon out there for mercenaries, or whatever). The people that I wrote about...some of them were brilliant, most of them were tough, all of them were dedicated in ways that you and I cannot imagine, but....here's a fictitious scene from ulrike's where the protagonist [not me, a violent communist revolutionary] learns of Carlos' greatest triumph:

Carlos the Jackal-he's not the dude I know-the tv calls him the greatest terrorist in the world, or worst or best or something. The Jackal and four of his Comrades have gunned their way into one of the most protected rooms in the world, a meeting of OPEC in Vienna. Three dead, one wounded comrade. The five of them held 71 people hostage (11 oil ministers and 60 [not very good] Protector Pigs).

I start giggling, a little bit, and Helena looks at me. Not to shut up or something, just looks at me. "Wow!" Ralf goes.

Footage of the Austrian secret service trying to gun their way in. They wound Hans-Joachim Klein/the dude I know-but are gunned back out. Negotiations, they take Hans-Joachim to the hospital, I guess that saves his life. I wonder what Sartre thinks of the man who served as his chauffeur to Stammheim, now.

But The Jackal doesn't leave his own. Hans-Joachim is on the plane when it takes them, and the hapless hostages, to the destination of their choice--which turns out to be a fundraising rock 'n' roll tour of OPEC nations, where Carlos drops off hostages in return for what adds up to more than $5 million that he'll drop off in Palestine.

It gets better. The plane is greeted by the people on the ground, the governments have two choices: (1) destabilize themselves to the point of near collapse, or (2) make damn sure that their people know that they're going to do everything that they can for the Palestinian cause.

I'm not backing Carlos, I'm just saying...he was the very best at what he did. And unlike all kinds of other folk-oh, Patty Hearst for example-he never changed his mind (whether that is good or bad). He stood his ground and so far as I know he hasn't bothered lying about anything. I don't admire Carlos for being a Marxist and I certainly don't celebrate his violence, I admire Carlos for being a unique talent, and more, mainly: for the same reason that U.S. Army Marines are admirable: he didn't leave a man behind.

Carlos-not a modest man, but I believe an honest one-claims to have killed/murdered something along the lines of 2000 people (some of them no doubt innocent collateral damage, though his efforts were certainly more surgical than, for example, US operations in Iraq) in 100 events or so. What did he accomplish? Well, he raised some cash for the Palestinian movement when it was secular (every world leader must wish for the days of dealing with the PFLP instead of Hamas)...he fought hard, he did his best for a world-view that never took focus and probably wouldn't have worked anyway. He is a courageous and brilliant man, and he gambled everything he had for what he thought was right.

He killed a lot of people in doing so. I can't condone that and I offer no mitigating...well yeah, I do. Think about all the people that Israelis have killed in what's legally Palestine. Way, way more than 2000 and millions of lives ruined. That might be considered in mitigation, and that's what he was trying to stop.

Chavez-who I greatly admire for the way that he's dealt with corporations (basically "Pay my people or get the hell out, don't tell me Venezuelan oil is your oil!") - is waxing too nostalgic for me, though. The thing that that guy who wrote about history ending with the end of the Cold War was right about, at least, was that unadulterated Marxism won't work; and our current situation demonstrates that we can do better than what's celebrated as Free Market Capitalism.*

*incredibly, the most ardent "Free Market" capitalism enthusiasts preclude the government joining the market. Would we not do better if there was a government bank, for example, to keep the other banks honest? Several states have caught on to this, fortunately...expanded to healthcare and housing...along with getting the government's little nose out of places it doesn't belong...you might have something. Less government, lower taxes and a more just society, for example, just off the top of my head.

Carlos the Jackal says that he's innocent of the (relatively minor league-but not to the victims or their families) atrocities that he's immediately being tried for. I don't know much about them-they weren't a focus of my research-but I believe him. He brags about the shit that he did, he doesn't say he didn't inhale. He's a dangerous man-a very, very dangerous man-the Babe Ruth of revolutionary terrorism. But he's also a certain kind of genius who's always done what he thought was right. I say send him (and his wife/lawyer) off to Elba like Napoleon or something, definitely keep him out of the way, but he's admitted to enough that there's no reason to try and frame him for somebody else's petty terrorist bullshit.

Good people do bad things every day. A question is why they do them. I believe that Carlos' ultimate motivation was (like Washington, like Che) altruistic-and that a helluva lot more people than 2000 (2000!) have been killed and will be killed until we collectively realize that he's right on, at least, Palestine. People are dying in Palestine every day, most often the bravest ones first, in the name of injustice. Is Carlos the Jackal a bad man? To me, no, I don't think so. Is the world better without him running around loose in it? Definitely.

Let God judge him, as He will the killers of the millions murdered by Hitler, Stalin, Nixon, Bush and now ...I guess we're not up to a million (unless you count the children dying in Africa every day for lack of water or basic medicines...they could really use an effective bailout)...tragically, Obama.

Carlos played in the big leagues and he has big league stats to back it up. It is tragic that so many are gravestones, and perhaps more tragic that the cause he fought hardest for-Palestinian independence-is not yet won, and will result in more gravestones than hundreds or thousands more Carloses, unless...unless we stop fighting against justice in the Middle East.

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