More Catalonian lunacy, by JD

Carles Puigdemont (r) welcomes Quim Torra in Berlin. (EPA-EFE/Omer Messinger)

Found on Quartz

I see the Catalans have finally elected a new regional president but this one is another lunatic. Quim Torra he is called. That is a wonderful name :) He sounds like a Catalan Supremacist. He described Spanish speakers as "The Castilian speaker, according to Torra: "Beast, hyena, viper, scavenger ..."  http://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2018/05/15/5af9e6a246163fc7138b456e.html

His sole mission in life is the creation of an independent Cataluña by fair mean or foul; that second method being the preferred method. That should win him lots of new friends! The smallest party, CUP who are anarchists and have four seats in parliament, didn't vote for him because he is not radical enough. So it looks like the petulance will continue. And we think our politicians are stupid!!!

I don't like to say that I told you so but.......
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/catalunacy-by-jd.html

The archives of Barcelona’s Autonomous University hold a booklet signed by Nosaltres Sols! that was published around 1980, according to historian Enric Ucelay-Da Cal. It contains eight pages of typewritten text written in the Catalan language, and titled “The scientific basis of racism”. The authors reach the following conclusion: “For the above reasons, we consider that the Catalan racial makeup is more purely white than the Spanish one, and hence that Catalans are racially superior to Spaniards.”
https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/15/inenglish/1526373293_276622.html

And I found this from 1931-
http://www.filosofia.org/hem/193/var/931nsols.htm
It does not state explicitly the racial superiority of catalans but there is no doubting their mindset.

This will not end well. The Catalans are determined to restart the Civil War. Their stupidity is breathtaking. And it has spread to the Balearic islands. Mallorca is seeing an exodus of doctors and nurses because of new regulations requiring proficiency in the Catalan 'language' Earlier this year Ibiza lost its last remaining paediatrician. And, as if to demonstrate how insane this has now become, the members of the Orchestra of the Baleares must speak Catalan. The music director is Japanese and speaks English in rehearsals. The assistant director is Spanish and speaks Spanish when he is in charge.
https://slippedisc.com/2018/04/you-can-join-our-orchestra-if-you-speak-catalan/

John Lennon was right 50 years ago - our government, every government, is run by insane people for insane purposes!

They must have a President before 22nd May and Torra is their third choice. The tidal surge behind it? I wish I knew but their belief in 'racial supremacy' has to be a factor plus the usual vanity and egomania of politicians. Sackerson asked - "How much social disruption is caused by posh people's boredom?" http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/posh-tarts.html
Maybe not so much these days, more like political vanity and egomania as I say above.

And then there is the 'cause' which is invariably imaginary. In the 1931 document they were comparing themselves to Ghandi and De Valera struggling for their countries. There was a definite logic to those two but Cataluña has never been a country. In fact a lot of things I have read will pretend that Aragon is really just another name for Western Cataluña as if Aragon were subject to Catalan rule when it has always been the other way round.

By the way, Craig Murray and Julian Assange are strong supporters of Catalan independence. They obviously haven't done any research on the history and even less by way of thinking about it. Which, to me anyway, calls into question their accuracy and/or motives for their other 'causes' (I also think Murray and Assange fit into Sackerson's "posh people's boredom" category but with added sanctimonious righteousness.)

I conclude with a reference to Tabarnia. Here is the BBC's version of the story -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-42777496

The provinces of Tarragona and Barcelona (Tabarnia) voted to remain part of Spain and the other two provinces, Lerida and Gerona voted for independence. Albert Boadella, who is a comic actor, has appointed himself as President of Tabarnia and the campaign for Tabarnia to remain part of Spain is based word for word on the Catalan campaign to leave Spain, only the words Spain and Catalonia have been switched.

Here is Boadella outside Puigdemont's house in Belgium-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBevTHvHs8

And here is Belgian television's report on Tabarnia's desire for independence-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAE5z2Di-bw

I see from YouTube that Torra is already the subject of a lot of humour plus one studio interviewee, Joaquin Leguina, describing him as an imbecile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8tFZfjuW0A

It will be a long road back to normality :)

FRIDAY MUSIC: Jeff Beck, by JD

Looking back at the musical posts from both Wiggia and myself, there is a sort of haphazard intermittent pattern featuring musicians who explore other musical styles and/or cultures. I think 'crossover' is the popular name given to these artists. Not a word I like but I suppose it is as good as any other.

Previously we have had Wynton Marsalis -
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/friday-music-wynton-marsalis-by-jd.html
... the interchange of jazz and classical -
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/classical-jazz-fusion-by-wiggia.html
... and, more recently, the musical explorations of Ry Cooder - https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/friday-music-ry-cooder-by-jd.html

This is another such post and features Jeff Beck. He was one of the many 'guitar heroes' who came out of the 60s 'beat boom' and quickly established himself as possibly the best of a very good bunch.
http://jeffbeck.com/jeff-beck-still-run-jeff-beck-story/

What sets Beck apart is his musical journey since then. He acknowledges the influence of artists as diverse as Ravi Shankar, The Shadows, Les Paul, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman to name but a few. He also has a very distinctive and unique style such that he could never be mistaken for any other guitarist. One of the reasons for his distinctive sound is the way he has modified his Fender Stratocaster guitar and Fender make a guitar to his specifications which carries his name (if you want one, they are not cheap by the way!)

The other 'magic' ingredient is that fellow guitarists (Eric Clapton and Dave Gilmour among others) will all say they haven't the faintest idea how he gets such a range of sounds from his guitar.

And when the music business crowds in on him he escapes by building Hot Rod cars: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/08/20/no-ridiculous-self-driving-car-guitarist-and-hot-rodder-jeff-beck/89026794/

FRIDAY MUSIC: Swedish Nightingales, by JD

The Real Group are Swedish and sing acapella. That is all I know about them but I like their style!
http://www.therealgroup.se/about.html

May Days and Holi-days

Image source

"May Day festivals, which began with great public gaiety, usually ended in orgiastic displays of sexual licentiousness. Marriage vows were temporarily forgotten during this honey month. People coupled freely in the woods and fields, fertilizing the soil and each other, sharing a fervent participation in the regenerative magic of the earth." 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/don.../may-day_b_1465779.html

A German-born lady told me how women of all ages would stand at their doorways, dolled up, waiting... Any resulting babies were deemed legitimate.

As for Holi in India (celebrated in their - earlier - Spring), here is the past, imagined by someone with a deep knowledge of the country and its people:

A Shocking Situation: Electric Dog Collars, by Wiggia

I came across this article from the Countryside Alliance the other day, in itself not exactly prime cause for concern for the average voter, yet as the article says, it has crept in under the radar along with other animal welfare issues pushed by the animal charities with no doubt PETA  leading the way.

http://www.countryside-alliance.org/ban-on-electronic-collars-could-set-dangerous-precedent/

The concern over this by the Alliance is justified as explained, for it reaches further than electric dog collars and will mean the end of electric compounds regularly used for small mobile enclosures to ensure horses and cattle do not stray into what could be dangerous areas.

Electric collars have a battery in the collar activated by a remote control, NOT a lead plugged into the mains! The animal rights groups will howl in protest; I must make it clear that I do not advocate the general use of these collars - they should be available for a few specific situations.

I have a little knowledge of this as when I was training dogs for competition during the seventies and eighties I was also chairman of the committee in the Kennel Club that was responsible for competitive obedience competitions and was there when this item first surfaced.

The collar in question was an American import and, along with another totally cruel collar - the inward choke collar that had blunted barbs that opened inwards when the choke was pulled - was rightfully condemned. Well the latter was and very little was heard about them afterwards.

But of course the KC is not a law maker except within its own boundaries so as the government did nothing about the collars and they remained on sale.

The latest chapter in this has been instigated by animal charities as the usage of electric collars has become more widespread and once the charities have made the right noises in the press all “God fearing politicians” jump on the bandwagon without further thought and shout barbaric, cruel, etc etc probably in the hope that some old pensioner who votes Labour and owns a guinea pig will change sides after hearing how caring the incumbents are.

The fact is that in certain cases the electric collar has a place. Anyone who has owned dogs will know that there are circumstances where a dog however well trained can override that training with a base instinct that will ignore commands and if the dog is away from you off lead you have a problem. Naturally if the dog has a propensity to repeat such moves then he should be on lead as much as possible.

In cases where sheep worrying can occur there is a big problem and the electric collar can quite simply save lives and stop the aggression before it happens. I know, because I have seen and spoken to sheep dog handlers, there is a fine line between being a great sheep dog and a sheep worrier: the dog has to have enough ‘bottle’ to face down troublesome sheep but not to harm them. Yet I have seen some of the best dogs at trials actually lose it and attack the sheep; they were ordered off and did so.

The likelihood of the aggressive family pet being ordered off is virtually nil if he has the bit between his teeth, and the electric collar has in those instances a role to play as there is no other way at distance to get the dog to desist, which is why the collar was invented in the first place.

The alternative remedy is twofold: if your dog worries sheep or cattle then the farmer has every right to shoot it' in a domestic environment, if a dog shows aggression towards family members, the collar has limited use because of close proximity and if a dog does not respond to training should if the owner is right minded be put down - the risk is not worth it, and re-homing simply shifts the problem to someone else.

I must admit when this matter came up I had no idea how easy it was to get one of these collars. I have been out of the loop for some time, but there they are on Amazon and elsewhere. The downside of them is that in the general public's hands they are simply another way of training a dog rather than a remedy for a specific problem and there lies the rub: used as a method of general dog training they are a crude and potentially damaging training aid rather than a deterrent in a one-off situation, so legislation will cure one problem but will also prohibit the real reason for these collars' usage.

It appears since starting this piece that the government is having second thought on any ban as the implications re electric fencing cannot be resolved so easily; we shall see.

Of course the government could do something more useful regarding dogs and implement the Dangerous Dogs Act properly. The rash of ridiculous chav breeds that can cause and do cause damage to the person has reached epidemic proportions in some neighborhoods. Why anyone would want to risk the lives of family members never mind anyone else by having one of these breeds in the house simply so they look “right hard” is beyond me, but then so much of the modern world is now.

Amazingly, the prong dog choke collar is still available on Amazon and eBay !

Plague

Still with us in the 20th century:

"Ratcatchers during a 1900 outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, Australia" (From Historium)

"Australia suffered greatly from the effects of bubonic plague in the first two decades of the 20th century. The Australian colonial government had been wary of plague arriving in Sydney via shipping trade routes since the 1894 outbreak in Hong Kong. When plague did reach Australia in 1900, the response was one of panic and dread, fuelled by the knowledge of the history and ravenous potential of the disease." - Sydney Medical School

... and in the 21st century also: "Although plague is now rare in Europe, it recently sickened more than 10,000 people in Congo over a decade, and cases still occasionally emerge in the Western United States, according to a study published Sept. 16 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene." - LiveScience (2013)

and even in America: "This review documents plague in human cases in the 1st decade of the 21st century... In the United States, 57 persons were reported to have the disease, of which seven died... Two United States scientists suffered fatal accidental exposures: a wildlife biologist, who carried out an autopsy on a mountain lion in Arizona in 2007, and a geneticist with subclinical hemochromatosis in Chicago, who was handling an avirulent strain of Y. pestis in 2009." - The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2013)

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/plague/Plague-map-2016.pdf?ua=1

War

From the nuclear war satire"Doctor Strangelove":

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.

President Merkin Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

And now we hear what real American war planners thought in the 1960s:

Daniel Ellsberg ("Pentagon Papers" scandal) asked, "If your plans… are carried out as planned… how many people will die in the USSR and China?"

The answer was in the form of a chart… rising over six months because radioactive fallout would increase the deaths… 325 million people if we struck first…

Another 100 million would be killed in the captive nations [Soviet-linked nations in Eastern Europe]… from their [US] air defences attacks on those air bases… And then another 100 million in contiguous areas… like Afghanistan, Austria, Finland, Japan… from radioactive fallout.

The whistleblower also heard what the expected death toll would be for US allies in Europe:

And without another warhead landing on West Europe, naturally, from our attack, 100 million of our allies would be killed by radioactive fallout from East Europe and the Soviet Union, depending on which way the wind blew…

But that added up then to 600 million, or 100 holocausts.

Meanwhile, Ellsberg said the USSR at the time had the ability to “annihilate” Western Europe, which it would likely do in the event of a US attack.

It gets worse:

The US, however, didn’t include how many further deaths would result from the fires its nuclear bombs created. It also didn’t include how many people would die because of the smoke, which would cause a ‘nuclear winter’. Ellsberg says the smoke, which would block much of the sun and kill all the harvests, would last a decade or more.

And although Ellsberg asked the question in the 1960s, he said:

"People have now told me, who are insiders on the plan, quite authoritatively, the plans have never reflected this, never taken [smoke] into account any more than they take fire into account, which means that our own attack… would kill nearly everyone…"