Friday Night Is Music Night: Galicia Delicia

JD says: Some music from Luar na Lubre with a couple of links to Wiki and their own web page. Just realised there are seven videos and then thought, why not! :)

No apologies for inflicting more Celtic music upon you because it is wonderful! This time by the excellent Luar na Lubre from Galicia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luar_na_Lubre

http://www.luarnalubre.com/

You will recognise the first two tunes and will enjoy, no doubt, the variations on familiar themes.

Luar Na Lubre - The sailors hornpipe / Pasacorredoiras:



Luar Na Lubre - Romeiro Ao Lonxe (Con Diana Navarro)
(video slightly out of synch):



Luar Na Lubre - Hai Un Paraiso:



Luar Na Lubre - Canto De Andar:



Luar Na Lubre - Chove En Santiago:



Luar Na Lubre - Leabhar Gabhála (Torre de Breoghán)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breog%C3%A1n


Luar Na Lubre - BRITONIA



Hope that pleases everyone :)

Bill Whittle got it wrong about Hillary Clinton

... slightly. And anyway, that's not the point.

He analyses a series of lies by Mrs Clinton relating to her off-site storage of classified information on not one, but many insecure devices, and then quotes the law:

"... the simple admission that she did not turn in all of her work-related documents – for whatever reason -- was an open admission that she was in violation of U.S. Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 101, Section 2071, Paragraph a: which in fact is a felony. And of course, if you’re running for President, a felony looks bad on the resume."

* https://www.billwhittle.com/firewall/clinton-lie-ratchet

Here is the paragraph to which he refers:

"(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

But that crack about a résumé is wide of the mark. What Mr Whittle should have quoted is the next paragraph (emphasis mine):

"(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States."

* https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071

So, if this is proved against Mrs Clinton, no application is needed or wanted.

I'm not American and if I were I should have a hard time choosing between Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump, for different reasons. However, in my view Trump is a symptom and Clinton part of the malaise. The USA and the UK, as well as other Western countries, are in a systemic crisis foreseen long ago by the late Sir James Goldsmith:

* http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/system-part-2-there-really-is-class-war.html

The theatre of the Presidential candidates' debate may make good emo-TV, but the underlying issue of untrammelled "free trade" and its socio-economic effects has its own narrative, irrespective of the Godzilla-versus-x franchise. It seems from reports of last night's set-to that Mrs Clinton is for it and Mr Trump, like President Coolidge's preacher re sin, is "agin' it".

It's still possible, of course, that the egregious Mr Trump could win the national vote and lose the Presidency, thanks to the workings of the Electoral College - he wouldn't be the first.

Time for the real democracy that you and I love so much. Perhaps, if we little Brits could have a referendum on EU membership, Americans  could have one on TPP, TiSA and all the rest? After all, the EU is just a scale model of globalism. And then, like us, you could have the fun of watching whoever takes the leadership try to get out of the plebiscite's result - or be thwarted and subverted in attempts to honour it.

I was getting ready to go down the Ecuadorian Embassy behind Harrod's and ask for asylum - move over, Julian Assange - but June 23rd took me by surprise. In Churchill's words after Alamein: "We have victory - a remarkable and definite victory. A bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers."

Cling on to hope, and remember it's not about them, it's about you.

___________________________________________________________

Also posted at Talkmarkets: http://www.talkmarkets.com/contributor/rolfnorfolk/blog/economics--politics/bill-whittle-got-it-wrong-about-hillary-clinton?post=107440

Why we need to lose 50 MPs

It's the desperate overcrowding:

(Pic source)

Let's call it a cat

As we waited for a traffic light on upper Broadway, I saw a sporting extra headlined with the score of the game. The green sheet was more real than the afternoon itself--succinct, condensed and clear:

PRINCETON CONQUERS YALE 10-3

SEVENTY THOUSAND WATCH TIGER TRIM

BULLDOG

DEVLIN SCORES ON YALE FUMBLE

There it was--not like the afternoon, muddled, uncertain, patchy and scrappy to the end, but nicely mounted now in the setting of the past:

PRINCETON, 10; YALE, 3

Achievement was a curious thing, I thought. Dolly was largely responsible for that. I wondered if all things that screamed in the headlines were simply arbitrary accents. As if people should ask, "What does it look like?"

"It looks most like a cat."

"Well, then, let's call it a cat."

My mind, brightened by the lights and the cheerful tumult, suddenly grasped the fact that all achievement was a placing of emphasis--a molding of the confusion of life into form.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Bowl (1928)

An unusually long quote but the context is important - an American football game - muddled, uncertain, patchy and scrappy to the end, but nicely mounted now in the setting of the past. And here again is the conclusion Fitzgerald's character draws from all the tidying up so that everything is nicely mounted.

My mind, brightened by the lights and the cheerful tumult, suddenly grasped the fact that all achievement was a placing of emphasis--a molding of the confusion of life into form.

Not particularly easy to generalise as an insight into the essentially artificial nature of achievement because there are obvious caveats. Eliminating hunger globally would be more than a mere placing of emphasis. So expanding Fitzgerald’s observation to wider achievements is not so easy. As well as the caveats it requires a kind of lateral cynicism, a willingness and even a desire to step away from the social clamour and focus on the artificial aspects of achievement. Perhaps it is also easy to see such an attitude as overdone, as envy or misanthropy taken too far.

And yet... and yet all achievement is a placing of emphasis because it must be. We have to define what counts as achievement and what does not, even if we are eliminating hunger or aiming to cure cancer. We have to emphasise the necessary qualities of achievement before it counts as achievement, even if that emphasis is perfectly obvious to the entire world.

Staying with sporting achievement - suppose the rules of soccer were to be changed. Smaller or bigger pitches, a different number of players, changes to the scoring, kick-ins instead of throw-ins, no offside rule. Whatever we do we have to say how the game is to be won or lost, we have to define the achievement of winning by a placing of emphasis. As we all know the emphasis on winning has become so overblown that even the idea of football as a sporting contest seems naive. The emphasis has shifted.

A more tricky example might be Jeremy Corbyn winning the general election for Labour in 2020. That would certainly be a remarkable achievement by conventional standards, yet the man probably doesn’t expect to win. His notion of achievement may be centred around a different placing of emphasis, shifting the Labour party towards the more totalitarian politics he and his supporters favour.

The internet is a remarkable achievement by conventional standards, but again we could step aside so that this too becomes a placing of emphasis. The power of almost instant global communication is emphasised over a range of more sedate alternatives such as talking, doing and taking part. This does not imply that the internet is a malign influence. It merely reminds us that popular emphasis is merely that – emphasis - and that one achievement often precludes another. 

Friday Night Is Music Night: Mood Blue

JD writes:

"Can blue men sing the whites?"

That's a very good question. In the late fifties and early sixties many of the British musicians who were part of the 'beat boom' were greatly influenced by America's blues singers and soul singers and this influenced the way the music developed. Some of the more pompous music journalists at the time were scornful of these 'white' boys trying to sing in the style of their idols saying that they were not 'authentic' whatever that means. In response to such silly journalism and possibly agreeing with them, you never quite know with Vivian Stanshall, The Bonzo Dog Band recorded a song called "Can blue men sing the whites?" Very whimsical and very British, of course.

But there are indeed not a few 'blue' men and women who really can sing blues or R&B with great feeling and 'soul' At least three of these singers here earned the respect of, and were fully endorsed by, the very singers they were trying to emulate!

Joe Cocker - Ray Charles said Cocker had one of the best voices he had ever heard.



Ottillie Patterson



Christine Perfect



Bonnie Bramlett was from 1963 to 1966 an 'Ikette', a backing singer for Ike and Tina Turner. She wrote this song with Leon Russell. It was originally recorded as 'Groupie' (with rather more explicit lyrics)



Miller Anderson



And three from Sir George Ivan "Van" Morrison, OBE

Spurious signals

One of the pleasures of modern language is the invention of particularly apt, powerfully descriptive phrases such as ‘virtue signalling’. This seems to be a recent one. According to Google Trends it first appeared as a blip in 2009 then rose from obscurity in 2015. In spite of claims by James Bartholomew it probably originated within signalling theory. Google Ngram Viewer isn’t aware of it at all.

Virtue signalling is the expression or promotion of viewpoints that are especially valued within a social group, especially when this is done primarily to enhance the social standing of the speaker. For example, expressing a hatred of the conservative newspaper Daily Mail might be an example of virtue signalling on the British left. The term is chiefly used by commentators to criticize the platitudinous and empty or superficial support of socially progressive views on social media, but has also been used to describe analogous behaviour in other groups, such as pro-gun rights grandstanding among the American right, and by signalling theorists to discuss conspicuous piety among the religious faithful as well as agnostics and atheists.

A real stonker of a phrase, it is extraordinarily powerful as a concise term for vast swathes of unedifying human behaviour. Yet the idea of signalling is hardly new - Strindberg saw it in art.

...for my art was incapable of expressing a single idea; at the most it could represent the body in a position expressing an emotion accompanying a thought—or, in other words, express a thought at third hand. It is like signalling, meaningless to all who cannot read the signals. I only see a red flag, but the soldier sees the word of command: Advance!

August Strindberg – The Red Room (1879)

In which case and given that it is now so obvious that virtue signalling is a vital aspect of human behaviour, what prevented us from describing it in such a powerfully accessible way before? Perhaps it is because, as we well know, forceful phrases soon become overused, lose their vigour and slip off into the land of cliché.

Which would be handy for those who rely on virtue signalling because it cuts so deeply into the social fabric. It exposes the manipulative mechanisms of power, the screen behind which personal interests hide.

Celebrity culture, mainstream journalism, drama, political allegiances, the EU, the UN, major charities, environmental drama, major sporting events and international businesses all lean heavily on virtue signalling. They cannot say so or folk might expect some genuine virtues instead of being caught up in the nonsense themselves. We can’t have that can we?

Dangerous Gaslight

"I told you to put that cigarette out, but would you listen?"

We've all heard the music, but has anyone seen the film?