THOUGHTS UNDER THE DUVET COVER


Should Obama win the US Presidency for a second term today many satisfying possibilities arise. Second terms are always more liberating, the burden of having to campaign for re-election being lifted. One particular option for the President will be to exact revenge on Benjamin Netanyahu[1] who has so shamelessly campaigned for a Romney presidency, violating all protocol. Obama also once re-elected will no longer have to bow to pressure from the Israel lobby. One can just imagine Netanyahu’s face as Obama signals, albeit subtly, payback time. The beneficiaries will be the Palestinians; we may in this way get some progress toward an equitable peace settlement in the region.  
The big question will be, does the president have the balls?

The other extremely satisfying outcome will be the discomfiture of the religious right. The Republicans will surely have to realise that being allied to these zealous fruitcakes has now cost them two elections. Moreover the demographic is now moving against the Republican Party, the growing Latino population has nothing in common with the white evangelical Protestants of Middle America. Either they start to distance themselves from this lunatic crowd or condemn themselves to a life of perpetual opposition.
This development would also have the merit of weakening the pro-Israel Lobby, forged as it is between American Zionists and fundamentalist evangelicals. This lobby has distorted American foreign policy interests in the Middle East for the last four decades.[2]

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Sign on a London bus, sponsored by some Islamic foundation:[3] FREEDOM OF SPEECH WITH RESPECT.

What a piece of meaningless piffle. What this really means is say what you like so long as you don’t offend me. One could equally demand FREEDOM TO PREACH WITH RESPECT. No more attacks on atheists, on other religious beliefs, on non believers and homosexuals. No more “There is only one God Allah, and Mohamed is his prophet,” deeply offensive to polytheists.
Enough already; has ever a word so rapidly been devalued as respect?


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Beggars Banquet was a great album, Sympathy for The Devil, Street Fighting Man, Factory Girl, Salt of the Earth, Stray Cat Blues[4], any one of these tracks raises the album above the banal output of most rock bands. Lyrically strong and with a wonderful rock hard kick the album represented the Stones at their best. It was a time when music felt truly subversive.
By 1972 The Rolling Stones were dead as a creative force in rock music; in reality Exile On Main Street was their swan song. After 1974 all they could do was make money. At least The Beatles had the decency to split up in 1969. Now we have the caricature of the grotesquely over-priced Farewell Tour, Spinal Tap on Viagra.


[1] In a particularly naked example of the tail wagging the dog Netanyahu snubbed the president on his last visit to the US.
[2] A more balanced approach would incidentally in the long run be more beneficial for Israel.
[3] Despite a search could find no reference to this campaign on the internet.
[4] The lyric incidentally contains the line, “I can see that your 15yrs old “ with an invitation to “come upstairs,” on the Live Album Got Live if You Want It’ he changes the age to 13. Not lyrics that anyone these days would be to happy to be heard singing.
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