What a load of rubbish news headlines today. Regurgitation of inconsequential headlines or endless tired propaganda – both sides of the aisle. Of course there’s much going on behind the scenes – much to do with Russia in the middle east etc, but no original analysis by any respected or controversial journalist has been penned or published in the past 24 hours. Some days it’s overwhelming how much good reads are out there – but not today, no sirree not today.
You’ll have to forgive Plato’s for not posting up much newsstand articles today therefore. I don’t wanna bore you or waste my time either. If I’m not too tired tonight, I will try write an original piece.
Today is therefore probably a good day for a Plato’s Pow wow thread. Step up and feel free to talk about anything you want on this thread.
You’ve got to give people something good to read
on a Thursday ….
Very telling that Kerry is giving Bibi a pass on the Nazi/Palestine comments…AND…allowing Bibi to blame Abbas as being the cause of recent events.
Israel continues to control the conversation.
Obama’s White House is too polite to pile on. They can already see the intellectual humiliation that Bibi is suffering from with his kook statement.
Another zionist he-said-she-said nonsense – I’m sure that’s what Kerry is thinking.
“Intellectual humiliation”.
That good.
When I was a young teen I used to enjoy reading short stories by Gogol, Guy de Maupassant and Oscar Wilde. I read their stories over and over and over. When I was in my late teens, for a few years I read nothing but Rimbaud, Shelley, Baudelaire and Hart Crane. Over and over and over. I mounted all their books on small planks of wood and hung them on my bedroom walls. I didn’t have a clique of school friends my age or anything like that – I had two close friends and they both happened to be famous rock stars whom I met separately – they were both a few years older than me and music and literature was our connection – they were serious songwriters looking for concepts and inspiration. During my college years, I spent my week studying and doing sports every day and I spent my weekends either reading books or going to concerts or to music rehearsals with my friends. I didn’t really hang out with anyone from my college. My parents were concerned that I wasn’t doing enough ‘normal’ stuff and I would ask “like what?” and they would shrug shoulders and say “How should I know? That’s for you to figure out”. When I was in my early twenties they sat me down to discuss my “lack of focus and direction in life” and proposed that I should, well, be a writer. Despite my utter passion and worship of writers and their work, I couldn’t think of a more cave-like existence and rejected the idea.
Here I am now three decades later writing a regular blog and having a cave-like existence. And I still haven’t yet resolved the issue of my lack of focus and direction in life.
Hold the Freud though, eureka could strike me down tomorrow.
And if it doesn’t? Oh well, that’s what you might call another wasted life. And what difference does it make anyway? Why should I shed tears over my life-long lack of ambitions? I feel liberated to have no goals to achieve and no one to impress. I feel positively brilliant for it.
Turns out that my lack of need for validation is my personal standard of normal.
Very few set their adventure ship sailing on the seas of great ideas, at such an early age, my friend. Seems to me…you were very tightly focused on not living a narrow life.
Which rock stars? (The Police? I recall you mentioning Miles Copeland — CIA big wig and Stewart Copeland’s father — and Stewart’s older brother, Miles Copeland III, was the founder of I.R.S. Records.)
No, not the Police. I knew the Copelands when we all lived in Beirut as kids back in the 70’s – years before the Police was formed. Expat kids hung out together back in the day.
The names don’t really matter, Sean.
Sean, I just knew you’d ask for details. Always probing, eh?
Well, never mind – I just saw a funny cartoon with a cat sitting at the reception room, his arm bandaged and one of his eyes covered by a black patch. The doctor, his white coat on, holding his diagnostic x rays, says to the cat” “sorry, it’s curiosity. That was a close call”.
Don’t let it happen to you…..
Curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back.
My curiosity was relatively random, mild and conversational — expressed by someone who is a fan of The Police and who has been curious in the past about the role of Miles Copeland senior (and his CIA associates) in Mideast politics — the convergence of two fascinating topics. I wondered if Taxi, while she was in autobiographical reminiscing mode, had any colorful personal anecdotes about the Copeland clan.
Nothing “colorful”, Sean. I was like 10 years of age and they were like late teens and up – we went to the same beach club and I’d pull up a deck chair and hang out with them and their sister Lennie too – did that for a few years in a row – also went to their house for 4th July barbecues a few years in a row. We all left Beirut in 1975 around the same time, just before the civil war there started. I’ve bumped into them here and there since. Last time I ran into one of them, it was Ian Copeland (R.I.P) back in 2000 in a bar in Beverly Hills.
Here’s a fun little Copeland read for you, Sean:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/my-perfect-weekend/9946361/My-perfect-weekend-Stewart-Copeland-musician.html
Taxi,
Nice article on Stewart Copeland and his clan — that bit about the connections between the Copeland and Philby families was a revelation for me. (I also love that bike path from Santa Monica to Hermosa Beach.)
That bike path is my old stomping ground. I’d be out there biking away at 5am, often the only person out there – I owned that goddamn beautiful bike path for 18 years!
Taxi, too much is made these days of “focus”. Especially in the form of l”lectures-to-young-people”. So, I have been thinking lately – what’s all this emphasis on focus if not a call to “get-on-with-the program”? namely, narrowing one’s life into manageable bits that could be made to fit into the pre-configured bins society has designed for them?
So may be the bins that were out there for the “choosing” are not for everyone. May be there are some horses that don’t wish to become entirely tamed, despite the obvious benefits (a nice stall, lots of hay, being let out once or twice a day for a little trot, an occasional sugar cube for a particularly well done trick, a chance or two to mate, and regular visits from the vet. and did I mention that a few even get to be ridden in races where they are cheered to the tune of others placing bets on their ‘win” chances?).
Lol Danaa, that’s a fantastic analogy.
If you’re overdosed on the I/P, Jewish Lobby, congress corruption but still need to unload some anger on something try US Wall Street financial corruption….it will make your head explode the same way.
Between Israel and WS and Obamas new TPP trade deal the US is just about finished…..I can guarantee you the mother of all crashes I still out there waiting to hit.
I’ve seen this several times on PIVOT tv, its excellent.
‘Inside Job’
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/
It’s still Thursday here, and Hillary is testifying about her emails.
A long time ago, I wrote to some of these Benghazi activists, saying they should look into what their relatives and Chris Stephens were doing there, anyway, and that the big story was how they were fueling the Syrian conflict with weapons and Jihadis from Libya. (They got their just desserts, but of course I didn’t say that.)
I sent them Hersh’s article, “The Red Line and the Rat Line”. One of them wrote back, saying thanks for the info, but nobody has pursued that line. The Repubs want to discredit Hillary, but their fine with the neocon agenda of massive devastation.
I’m sure you recall the rebels in Libya were trying to make a real revolution, but they were losing badly. They finally knuckled under to what the cia and stevens wanted…and they got their help and “won”.
Some say that is why stevens went down.
A real color revolution? Yeah, besides those with ulterior agendas, a lot of people were duped.
Of course…with all those things/qualifications understood. As real as it could have gotten.
In other words, not so real, after all.
Stevens was running guns in Libya – thru our embassy there.
Here’s an author at The Hill who kvetches that Israel is becoming a losing issue to support in the US:
Ghettoization of Israel in American politics
By Joshua Sharf
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/257656-ghettoization-of-israel-in-american-politics
I was out of town for about ten days, for a much needed vacation (though it had a purpose beyond that), and aside from weather reports, I maintained a near-blackout of the news. (The most extended thing I watched was a Paul Craig Roberts interview by someone from a Henry George School, on a public access channel, which I stumbled upon by accident.) I have to admit, I think it was a good break. Maybe I need to do it more often for my own.
I’m still catching up on the news today, so last week’s news is still news to me. In fact, I haven’t heard a lot of it.
“Hocus-pocus/I need focus”: an friend from my past, probably under the influence of cannabis.
Good to have you back, Rudy.
So does it seem the world is better or worse after a ten day break from the news?
And congratulations on your expanding audience.
Gracias Rudy. It’s a momentary spike, I’m sure. Traffic will go back to normal any day now.
Intercept: Israel Calls a Man Its Soldiers Killed a “Terrorist”: Until They Realized He Was an Israeli Jew
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/22/israel-calls-a-man-its-soldiers-killed-a-terrorist-until-they-realized-he-was-an-israeli-jew/
Caroline Glick explaining how Ted Cruz is the guy for Israel. laughable interview. Cruz is nutty and dangerous, and a joke in the polls [5%]
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Ted-Cruz-A-fresh-approach-to-American-foreign-policy-and-US-Israel-relations-429752