Untitled Document

..............MAY-11

..............Monumental Hypocrisy. ....................Swamped by Zombies ................. Never a dull moment

	G R E A T . CHARACTERS now on youtube
	Henry Miller Gives us an alluring tour of his bathroom (34-mins) + much more recent stuff alongside. Wally Shawn Author of 'The Fever' (one of the most impressive monologues you'll ever read or hear) - is interviewed on his 'Essays' (6-mins) + loads more alongside. PLUS NUMEROUS OTHERS (just think of a name....) But here's the first few poignant paragraphs of the first essay from Wallace Shawn's 'Essays' 2009: PART 1... REALITY - ONE THE QUEST FOR SUPERIORITY 2008 When I was five years old, I had a small room of my own, with a record-player and records and shelves full of books. I listened to music, I thought up different kinds of stories, and I played with paper and crayons and paint. Now I've grown up, and thank God things have mostly gone on as before—the paper, the stories—it's pretty much the same. I've been allowed to become a professional maker of art, I've become a writer, and I dwell in the mansion of arts and letters. When I was a child, I didn't know that the pieces of paper I used had been made by anybody. I certainly didn't know that almost everything I touched had been made by people who were poor, people who worked in factories or on farms or places like that. In fact I'd never met anyone who worked in a factory or on a farm. I'd frequently met people who *owned* factories and farms, because they lived all around us in the huge houses I could see from my window, although I wasn't aware then that the houses *were* huge because the people who lived in them paid very low salaries to their employees, while paying themselves enormous sums. Our wealthy neighbors were really like the giants in a fantastic tale, giants who were superior to others because they could spin gold out of human suffering. Well, it turns out that I still live in the same neighborhood, because that's where the mansion of arts and letters is located. So I still can see giants when I look out my window, and the funny thing is that pretty much all of us in the mansion of arts and letters actually live off the money we get from these giants. Isn't that funny? You know, they buy the tickets to our shows, they buy our books and paintings, they support the universities where we teach, there are gifts and grants—it all comes out of the gold they've spun. And we live with them, we share the streets with them, and we're all protected by the same cops. But you see, some of the people who *don't* live in the neighborhood—the ones our neighbors don't pay well, or treat well?—some of those people are out of control, they're so miserable, so desperate, they're out of their minds, they're very *threatening*, so it turns out we need more than cops. We actually have a large army as well, and a navy and an air force, plus the F.B.I., Coast Guard, Central Intelligence Agency, and marines—oy. It turned out that simply in order to be secure and protect our neighborhood, we needed an empire. And so on... for a total of 8-pages.

G R E A T . CHARACTERS

now on youtube

Henry Miller

Gives us an alluring tour of his bathroom (34-mins) + much more recent stuff alongside.

Wally Shawn

Author of 'The Fever' (one of the most impressive monologues you'll ever read or hear) - is interviewed on his 'Essays' (6-mins) + loads more alongside.

PLUS NUMEROUS OTHERS (just think of a name....)

But here's the first few poignant paragraphs of the first essay from Wallace Shawn's 'Essays' 2009:

PART 1... REALITY -

ONE

THE QUEST FOR SUPERIORITY

2008

When I was five years old, I had a small room of my own, with a record-player and records and shelves full of books. I listened to music, I thought up different kinds of stories, and I played with paper and crayons and paint.
Now I've grown up, and thank God things have mostly gone on as before—the paper, the stories—it's pretty much the same. I've been allowed to become a professional maker of art, I've become a writer, and I dwell in the mansion of arts and letters.
When I was a child, I didn't know that the pieces of paper I used had been made by anybody. I certainly didn't know that almost everything I touched had been made by people who were poor, people who worked in factories or on farms or places like that. In fact I'd never met anyone who worked in a factory or on a farm. I'd frequently met people who owned factories and farms, because they lived all around us in the huge houses I could see from my window, although I wasn't aware then that the houses were huge because the people who lived in them paid very low salaries to their employees, while paying themselves enormous sums. Our wealthy neighbors were really like the giants in a fantastic tale, giants who were superior to others because they could spin gold out of human suffering.
Well, it turns out that I still live in the same neighborhood, because that's where the mansion of arts and letters is located. So I still can see giants when I look out my window, and the funny thing is that pretty much all of us in the mansion of arts and letters actually live off the money we get from these giants. Isn't that funny? You know, they buy the tickets to our shows, they buy our books and paintings, they support the universities where we teach, there are gifts and grants—it all comes out of the gold they've spun. And we live with them, we share the streets with them, and we're all protected by the same cops.
But you see, some of the people who don't live in the neighborhood—the ones our neighbors don't pay well, or treat well?—some of those people are out of control, they're so miserable, so desperate, they're out of their minds, they're very threatening, so it turns out we need more than cops. We actually have a large army as well, and a navy and an air force, plus the F.B.I., Coast Guard, Central Intelligence Agency, and marines—oy. It turned out that simply in order to be secure and protect our neighborhood, we needed an empire.

And so on... for a total of 8-pages.


	...MONUMENTAL HYPOCRISY ..................(yawn....)...(yawn!)

	In their MAY 4 posting 'Fallujah, Iraq 2004 - Misrata, Libya 2011' , Medialens notes: "There is also the embarrassing fact that British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs. WikiLeaks revealed that David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory." *And a majority of Labour MPs still* preferred this crook as a possible future PM... So much for the UK's 'ethical' foreign policy under Labour!** ------- In a MAY 3 email reply to my friend Rod on the bin Laden issue I wrote: The entire frenzy and 'misinformation' surrounding the bin Laden killing is, as you suggest, shady and obnoxious. Can anyone with more than half-a-brain fail to perceive something blatantly devious in what's been reported: first killing an international fugitive, then testing his DNA, and finally dumping the body at sea so it can never be checked by forensics, journalists, or any independent agent? AND all within 24-hrs... I'll tell what I think: bin Laden died of natural causes well before this staged 'assassination', and the reputed manner of death used as a trade-off with Al Qaida in exchange for an early US exit from the region. The immediate propaganda value to Obama at home (from a juvenile, simplistic populace) is clearly inestimable, as you observe: 'mob jubilation' - one of the most primitive and heinous of human shortcomings: the proverbial lynch-mob! When I heard about the dumping of bin Laden's body at sea, my immediate reaction was to laugh because it's just about the most ludicrous (and obviously crooked) act anyone could dream-up in the circumstances - and is precisely the opposite of what any even remotely-intelligent person would endorse (unless they were staging a fix, or deliberately inviting derision and charges of lying). The whole situation reeks of fraud - even the most ardent anti-conspiracy theorist couldn't fail to recognize the madness of dumping the body as they claimed... UNLESS fraud was the reason. Then in Chomsky's MAY 7 article 'My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death' I find: We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Here's more from the article (plus 3 responses): In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that [9/11] was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.” Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement. We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bosch was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president. Responses: 1: But why did the u.s. murder bin laden when they could have captured him, noam? And why the hasty dumping of the body into the sea where nobody can find it, noam? Reply: Exactly! Noam Chomsky is part of the 'controlled' alternative media. Chomsky believes the official 9/11 conspiracy theory that 19 Arabs did it, and now he apparently believes they just killed Osama, when he died almost a decade ago. These progressive 'pundits' like Noam are some of the most dangerous of all! I bet my bottom dollar you won't have an answer ! You, me, and thousands of dudes knows the answer [for THE WHY!!!] 2: the burial at sea has to be the most ludicrous aspect of this whole concoction. Remember how much USA loved to parade film of the disheveled Saddam Hussein, having his mouth pried open for public consumption, leaving us to imagine the other 'cavity' searches. And you mean to say they gave up the chance to question THE man? That only makes sense if he was always irrelevant. I believe he died years ago, 3: Well, Osama has been murdered and who is the world's biggest terrorist now? You get three guesses. Hint: which is the biggest terrorist nation? If you wrote "America" go to the top of the class. Now, who leads America? If you answered 'The Corporations' you get the silver medal. Now for the biggest hint: Who carries out the orders of the Corporations? So much for this month's political jibe! (except on AV - see below:)


	SWAMPED - BY - ZOMBIES

	ON THE UK VOTING FIASCO Rejection of AV means that most people in the UK prefer to leave ALL the political power in the pockets of the party machines with their whips and scorn for public opinion and unconcern for fair representation. The question on the ballot paper should have been: Should a small fraction of politicians' unrepresentative power be transferred to the public - YES or NO? Traditionalist supporters of the corporate establishment vote NO - fine. But so also do the multitude of victims of that establishment who are too IDLE to think for themselves or too stupid to see through establishment propaganda. Well, you couldn't be much more IDLE than me - that's a fact - but I really don't see that marking a ballot paper just once every two or three years with '1', '2' and '3' (or a mere '1' if you're a traditionalist) instead of an illiterate 'X', is sufficiently taxing to justify being denied the option. For those who (like me) regardless of effort actually prefer to think for themselves, this denial is a clear imposition - inflicted by establishment politicians and their hapless stooges (though since AV would form only a marginal advance, the greatest imposition is the refusal of full Proportional Representation... which doubtless, even then, would fail to yield a decent and fair system where the interests of the great mass of ordinary people would no longer be subordinated to that of wealthy Big Business). Since more than a third of the population are disenfranchised in the current electoral system (they don't bother to vote because they're in a 'safe seat'... in fact well over half the population live in a 'safe seat') then the system is not working - unless you're a politician or a member of the 'elite' and are happy (as most of them are, of course) to accept such iniquitous disenfranchisement and distortion. True, only 42% bothered to vote in the referendum, and of those about 68% (ie: 28.5% - less than a third - of the voting population) chose 'No' to reform.... so since 'the right' are renowned for being more politically active, most of the 'No's would come from them, while the 'Yes's would be from the small proportion of active 'left', what other result could one expect? As for the LibDem collapse on 5th May... one reason only: to retain their fluke position of illusory 'power' they let the Tories walk all over them - as Murdoch obviously calculated would happen when he 'approved' the alliance.


	NEVER - A - DULL - MOMENT

	While going through some of what happened to me on 4th May (explained below), I could hardly fail to reflect on (and acutely sense) a small fraction of what many in Libya and Syria must currently be going through. To save writing it again, the account is pasted from an email I sent my friend Rod yesterday. You'll notice it's a bit souped-up, but it's all true; it's just that by adding an embellishment or two (as I'm inclined to do in an email) the entertainment value can be suitably enhanced - why not? MONUMENTAL HASSLE! I've spent most the afternoon at the accident and emergency dept at Conquest hospital.... Last night I was trying to catch a moth (the only detail I didn't reveal... and it wasn't a big attractive harmless moth, but one of those menacing little brown moths that lay eggs everywhere and eat your clothes) and stood on my bedside table which keeled over and sent me sprawling - why not onto the bed is as much a mystery to me as to anyone else. But on the sharp corner of the table I gouged a deep slice in my upper arm (underneath where impossible to see without a mirror). I failed to realise at the time how deep the gouge was since it didn't bleed that much and I was tired anyway - just going to BED, after all! I washed it and put lint on it with loads of antiseptic and wrapped tape round tightish so the separated flesh would hopefully hold together. I had a dead-leg too from something I hit. Otherwise fine: slept well, woke about 08.30 and it didn't hurt & hadn't bled. To be on the safe side I went to get it checked at the 'walk-in' clinic near the station. They were horrified - that I'd left it so long (crucially > 6 hrs) AND had not gone to casualty last night. They also said the damage was too MASSIVE for them to fix – though they normally would do stitches - and that I'd have to go to A & E. Well, then the f'in car wouldn't start - not a squeak, as if the battery was disconnected... YET, by a miracle from another universe it started instantly when I tried it later when I got back expecting to have to recharge the battery - which was full of life last week (so I was a bit surprised when it failed.... must have been some weird intermittent fault). SO THEN I HAD TO GET THE OLD VELOCIPEDE OUT and peddle the 3-or-so long miles up to The Ridge.... very pleasant it was too, I should say, through Aly Park and along the quiet little prissy bungalowed roads on the shortest route up to the Hospital. Had to wait 2-hours - then because the gouge had been left more than this magical 6-hours, it had to be re-faced (the surfaces rubbed away under local anaesthetic), and deep cleaning - a couple of cm, the guy said. He had to stitch it in layers: inner then outer. And he was teaching this young nurse how to do it at the same time so she had a go at some of the outer, less important and non-soluble stitches - I could feel it all right when she did it! Blood everywhere - yet I felt ABSOLUTELY FINE all the time. At no point did it cause much pain and my arm worked OK, as if nothing had happened... fingers wriggled etc, when they tested them. Then another woman came and did a 'dressing' (sounds like a pantomime, which it was a bit) - and yet another gave me a tetanus jab, antibiotics for a week and a couple of record cards... Then off I went, and sailed effortlessly back down the hill via ASDA to get some spuds (and plonk) and stuff.... So all during this excellent sunny day when I could have been charging around the Firehills I was stuck in Monumental Hassle! And all because of an f'in MOTH which probably spent the night - and all day today - eating my clothes! Whewwww.... Well, I hope that was suitably entertaining - authentic as it is... (just slightly revised for 'good taste').