Simon Reeve on why we should have completely open borders

Hopping channels, we got a few seconds of this: "Mediterranean", with Simon Reeve.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bqn4g1/mediterranean-with-simon-reeve-series-1-episode-4

He's just been spending a bit of time with lads on the North African coast who are trying to get into Europe illegally. And here's what he says, now on board ship and looking over the Strait of Gibraltar at 17:30 minutes in:

"Across the Mediterranean, from Africa to Europe, from Morocco to Spain, it feels that under the watchful eye of those lads in the forest who look at these big ships carrying their hopes and their dreams across to southern Spain. And I just get to do it thanks to this (gets out his passport) little thing: my passport (chagrined grimace); an accident of birth."

Yes, indeed. It's hard not to feel sympathy with people who want a better life.

But if you're going to play on our emotions in this way, there should also be a cool head to go with that warm heart.

There are three options:

a.) Let anyone and everyone into Europe, anytime.
b.) Let nobody in, ever.
c.) Let some people in.

Since (a) and (b) are obviously lunatic, it must be (c). And if (c), then we need a system.

It really doesn't help the political discourse to have TV presenters and celebs indulge in obiter dicta without considering the implications of what they say.

Getting past eco-guilt

There's some element of psychological sado-masochism at work in the Great Plastic Rubbish Crisis. It's almost as though the real driver is the need to make (other) people feel bad about themselves, which mostly they do anyway.

https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/ 

If you're going to whip the world you'll need a long lash, and in this case there's plenty of thong. We've all seen the animal pictures, and then there's the five great ocean garbage patches to remind us what a messy, throwaway lot we are.

Like the WW2 British tearing down park railings on tne pretext that they were needed to make into tanks and aircraft - which they weren't, so I understand, it was just to keep the populace aware that There Is A War On And We Must All Make Sacrifices (geez Louise, as though we didn't know) - we've had the Plastic Shopping Bag Guilts foisted on us.

The 5p charge has indeed been effective at reducing waste, and that's a good thing:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/plastic-bag-charge-supermarkets-figures-reduction-a9029996.html

- because it is always good not to be wasteful.

But then there's the link between that and Killing Sea Turtles (etc.):

http://www.planetexperts.com/meet-the-famous-turtle-with-a-serious-plastic-problem/

By and large, it's not me. I live 100 miles inland and what my Local Authority doesn't recycle it burns - creating atmospheric particulate pollution that may be more of a health hazard than Deadly Diesel (the fuel that the Government wanted us all to switch to, then very much not).

So the Mail boasts of how it has successfully influenced our consumer behaviour, yet only last year ran a story explaining that most of the seaborne plastic garbage comes from rivers in far-off continents:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5910011/Plastic-bag-ban-criticised-90-cent-plastic-waste-comes-rivers-Asia-Africa.html

- a story based on a German scientific news item from the year before:

https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=36336&webc_pm=34%2F2017

We may be indirectly responsible, in that until recently we sent a lot of garbage to China to be processed, but China is calling a halt to much of that:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-ban.html (sodding paywall)
But you can read this follow-up:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/china-has-stopped-accepting-our-trash/584131/

It seem the real answer to 90% of the problem is to get faraway foreign countries to stop throwing the stuff into the rivers - a perfectly practicable, political issue.

And then maybe a cleanup of the floating ocean crap - initial cost estimate c. £1 billion:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-plastic-waste-alliance/plastics-consumer-goods-makers-in-1-5-billion-pledge-to-rein-in-waste-idUSKCN1PA2AS

- though likely to be far more:

https://gcaptain.com/big-plastics-1-billion-pledge-to-end-plastic-waste-just-a-drop-in-the-polluted-ocean/

- yet even then, still a tiny fraction of the cost of building an aircraft carrier, for example.

Meantime, I wish the new prophets would get out of my head with their arrogant Save The World stuff.

9/11 Conspiracy Theory Gets Legal and Scientific Teeth

24 July 2019: The Fire Commissioners of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District outside of Queens, New York have passed a resolution calling for a formal enquiry into allegations that explosives were planted in the Trade Centre buildings prior to the airplane suicide attacks -
NY Fire Commissioners Demand New 9/11 Probe, Citing "Overwhelming Evidence of Pre-Planted Explosives"

This comes after a petition to the New York Southern District Attorney's office by victims' families on 10 April last year, stating “The Lawyers’ Committee has reviewed the relevant available evidence . . . and has reached a consensus that there is not just substantial or persuasive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted crimes related to the use of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries . . . on 9/11, but there is actually conclusive evidence that such federal crimes were committed.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/911-inquiry-lawyers-and-victims-families-file-petition-for-federal-grand-jury-investigation/5635854

That Grand Jury Petition made on 10 April 2019 can be read here:
https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/lc-doj-grand-jury-petition/

FRIDAY MUSIC: Al Andaluz Project, by JD

...tip of the hat to Mr Sackerson for this https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2010/08/great-music.html which popped up in his sidebar of random selections from the archive. I haven't yet checked out "Marko Markovitch's tremendously vibrant jazz band" but I did look for the Al Andaluz Project and they were very interesting.

They are a collaboration between a German group called Estampie and L'Ham de Foc from Valencia.

This from their web page -

"The encounter of the three "leading" cultures of the Middle-Ages - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - a topic as fascinating and controversal as ever - is reflected in the Al Andaluz Project by the origin of the involved musicians. Just recently violent-prone fundamentalist movements, whether religious or not, have taken centre stage of public debate. Unfortunately, the necessary basic knowledge of the matter is often fragmentary, this being due to a general ignorance of the historical context. And this in view of the incredible abundance of musical literature. In some regions this music has never ceased to be living tradition until today. Especially in the realm of music, the peaceful co-existence of the three great cultures lasted for centuries - a shining example for a mutually enriching and inspiring social life."

"Al-Ándalus is the name chosen by the Ummayad conquerors for the Iberian Peninsula. Moorish-governed Spain was not only famous for its tolerance and scholarship, but for prosperity, trade and flourishing arts as well. For many centuries, people with different religions - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - lived together in peace and inspired each other. Philosophers, poets, artists and musicians were most welcome at the courts of occidental rulers like Alfonso X "the Wise" of Castile, and made their artistic contribution to a unique merging of cultures."
https://www.last.fm/music/Al+Andaluz+Project/+wiki

The music is not all from Andalucia, the first video below is Portuguese/Galician* but it fits the style and the mood of all they do.

















_______________________________________
*Sackerson asks:

"Can you describe for our readers the technical differences between Portuguese/Galician music and Andalusian?"

JD replies:

Well I can try :)

This is a traditional version of the Portuguese/Galician song -



As you can tell the AlAndaluz Project adapted it to their Arabic/Sephardic rhythms and tunings but the melody is identifiably the same.

Their style of music is nothing like the popular image of Andalucian music, i.e. flamenco which has roots in the north African 'tarab' as I showed in my previous post -

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-legacy-of-moors-in-europe.html

The Al Andaluz Project web page mentions the influence of the Umayyad caliphate which had its origins in Damascus and they were one of the more enlightened sects of Islam in contrast to the Abbasids who drove them out of Damascus prompting their migration to Al Andalus. The link I had in the references helps to explain things - http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sumay/hd_sumay.htm

I think there is a lot of guesswork goes into reconstructing history and as I have pointed out elsewhere historians only tell us about the 'gangsters' who, animal like, fight each other for power. They tell us little or nothing about how people lived and even less about their traditions and their arts and music but if we open our eyes and our ears we can get glimpses of the influences from one tradition to another.

Infrastructure, a dirty word ? by Wiggiaatlarge

If there is one thing above all others where we have fallen badly behind our European neighbours it is in the world of infrastructure: hugely expensive, always over budget and always years late, not just in the building but in the whole planning and execution phase.

I could pick any sector. Schools, hospitals, transport, airports etc etc all are dated in short supply and/or in poor condition. It seems to have been like that for decades now and it has been. For the purposes of a small local illustration of the absurdity of the way things are "run" and planned and executed, I will tell the tale of a road to nowhere just up from me here in Norwich.

Norfolk in general is not exactly blessed with road connections. It has no motorways. It does have some A roads, the worst example being the A47 the main east to west route that still has many miles of single lane sections causing horrendous jams and stationary traffic on a daily basis during any daylight hours. We live in west Norwich and it takes over two hours to reach the A1, the nearest motorway to the north, and if you go south the newly dualled A11 (it only took thirty years to get that bit done) takes you slowly south to link up eventually with the M11, and that is it: everything else is single lane and very slow and very crowded.

Back to the road north of here. For years - it is always years - there has been a need for a northern by-pass to the City of Norwich to link at each end with the A47 and create a ring road for the city.
This was finally built and opened 18 months ago to much joy, despite certain cheap short cuts in its build which rather took the shine off it. But the real farce with this road is that it stops short on the western end of joining with the A47. How could this be? I thought only the Italians with Mafia help built roads that just, well ended, but no, we have one.

There has never been a decent explanation to this ‘short’ coming. Reading between the lines, it's likely the Norfolk Council and Highways England who are responsible for the atrocious A47 could come up with money for their bit and the project went ahead on the understanding that, well, ‘one day...’

There was needless to say a fairly large riposte to this nonsense as the road's stopping short created other problems, shovellling traffic at the short end into small rat runs through the surrounding villages. Norwich has a river network that bisects the city and this creates problems through lack of decent crossings, most are small and old. The two bridges near us for example both have 7.5 tonnes weight limits but that doesn't stop 44-tonners using the bridges and creating mayhem in the small villages and tight roads and corners that can hardly contain them. As usual in these circumstances the police are less than useless in stopping these lorries and fail totally to stop the excessive speeding in the same roads, a tale retold in many places in this country.

Back to the road to nowhere: after the obvious and pointedly ridiculous foreshortened route the council embarked on a local study as to how best to complete the route. Total nonsense of course because it has been discussed over and over for years; if they don’t know how to finish the road I would suggest they all resign and do something else for a living.

Yet on they have ploughed with a “consultation” document, meetings with proposals and diagrams for alternative routes have been held in all the affected areas and emails and letters sent at great expense to people who live in these areas. This process in itself - unsurprisingly, if you are a cynic like me - managed to eat up 18 months of time since the road stopped short, almost certainly stalling in the hope of funding coming forward which is not there at the moment.

Finally the survey is completed and analysed and a final route chosen. Naturally it is not the one that 90% of those asked plumped for which begs the question why ask? but in their consideration a route further west was chosen and the reasons given. What they don’t say is that by pushing the joining up further west the inclination is for many to not bother and take the rat run instead because it is shorter. Well done Norwich City Council, they really should not be allowed to plan anything.

They also give a timetable for the works (assuming it gets the go ahead,) It will start work on this three and a half miles addition in 2022 and finish in 2025. Three years for three and a half miles! The Chinese recently built 2000 miles of railway in eighteen months.

And all this comes with a caveat of the funding being made available. You really couldn’t make it up.

Meanwhile at the top of our road the council has just spent £5.4 million making a dual carriageway. This involved one extra lane and some re-jigging of the less than a half mile stretch. Apart from the money being wasted - and they cry austerity at every juncture - it achieves absolutely nothing as it ends at the same set of lights and the road from then on into the city is mainly single carriageway and where it is dual it has a bus lane. Well done again Norwich City council: £5.4 million that could have gone towards the road to nowhere used for a useless road widening. We get what we vote for but sometimes I think whoever we voted for would come from the same gene pool of the current incumbents of city hall, a building that itself despite having millions spent refurbishing on it still looks like Ceaușescu’s palace.

Every time I go abroad now the difference in things like road infrastructure, railways, airports and more becomes ever more evident. In a crowded isle it is never as easy to make the building of major projects yet we seem to be shackled by planning, shackled by lack of vision, and shackled with the lack of desire to make the citizen's life easier.

Because so much is is in a parlous state through long term neglect we ended up with the unbelievably costly PFI projects for items like hospitals; these by their nature are a business man's dream and a taxpayer's nightmare at the time. PFI was an easy method to get past legislators as any government could with the right projection be seen to be actually doing something; only later did the cost raise its ugly head and while the increase in PFI projects has slowed they are still being pushed and passed in some areas. As with all such, other people's money is easy to spend whether short term or long term.

All that is wrong is exacerbated by an increasing population. All the increase comes in from abroad , from the EU and from the third world, all have access to our crumbling infrastructure and all by sheer numbers contribute to its further decline.

Is there a light on the horizon? No, not if a Prime Minister can sign away a trillion on a climate change project that will do nothing to change things; despite the hand-wringers who say we should do “something” that does not make it all right to squander huge sums that further impoverish a once powerful proud nation while disregarding the real needs of the people.

As a really powerful storm showed last night, if the climate is changing and it always has, we - homo sapiens - are in just a very small window of the evolution of the Earth. It will do as it has always done: change. If we are adding to it there is one problem that will not be solved by throwing money at it: the population explosion wipes out any gains made every minute of every day, so how about spending what we have on things that don’t impoverish the nation, just for once spend it on something that makes a difference to everyday lives and boosts trade at the same time: infrastructure!

Craig Murray (whom God preserve) has a moment

One of the few Net commentators on whom I rely for the true inside gen has his moments of unbalance. Here he splutters about the new "right wing" Cabinet, contrasting it unfavourably with the gang of corporatists in Mrs Thatcher's last line-up. Sometimes he simply loses it, like "Attila The Stockbroker" who also uses the term "right-wing" so loosely on Facebook that it might as well mean "occasionally wears a tie."
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/07/johnsons-westminster-cabinet-is-far-to-the-right-of-thatcher/

I reply (but what's the point?):

Usually I look to you for information or angles on subjects that are suppressed in the mainstream media, but there are one or two topics where you seem to exhibit a galvanic response. I suppose even the brightest minds have their red-button issues.

Surely you know that the EU is neoliberal in its economics – vide Costas Lapavitsas' “The Left Case Against The EU” – and intent on Empire-building, interfering in countries as far away as Mali (and thereby compromising Ireland’s military neutrality by the involvement there of Eire’s troops, as Irish Midlands MEP Luke “Ming” Flanagan explains.)

Yes, one element among Leavers are “free traders” who are happy to see capital smash-and-grab its way about the world – though on a local scale that is what the EU does also. But there always was and should be a Left vision of a sovereign nation working for the good of all its people, which is not on the menu in the EU as its peripheral members are sadly only too aware.

I suppose this splenetic outburst is related to your hope for an independent Scotland, but in that case why should the UK also not be allowed to desire independence? And how much more wealth and liberty do you imagine Scotland would have in the event (unfeasible I understand) of her being a separate member of the EU?

“Ken Clarke, Chris Patten, John Major, Virginia Bottomley, Douglas Hurd and William Waldegrave” – corporatist anti-democrats: you want “right wing”, you’ve got it there. Guys who despise the people – Major prided himself on "knowing how to talk to the man in the four-ale bar,” like knowing that koalas need to be fed eucalyptus. 

Maybe you’re drawing your political graph all wrong – it’s not Left v Right, it’s Horseshoe Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

Monsieur Barnier’s Epic Fail

There is no crisis that the French cannot extend and deepen: the Tennis Court Oath and the Treaty of Versailles spring to mind. M. Michel Barnier, the EU’s Chief Brexit Negotiator since December 2016, has found it difficult to resist the call of this tradition.

Sensing Mrs May’s weakness (or ambivalence), he allowed himself to be misled into the stubbornness that sometimes passes for resolution, even when the British Parliament thrice refused to take even a teaspoonful of the addled, trap-studded pudding that was the draft Withdrawal Agreement.

I say ‘was’, but M. Barnier’s first reaction to Mr Johnson’s ascension to the UK’s highest office was a tweet saying ‘We look forward to working constructively w/ PM @BorisJohnson when he takes office, to facilitate the ratification of the withdrawal agreement and achieve an orderly #Brexit.’  

However, as the new Prime Minister was quick to signal, the ratifications deserted PMTM’s sinking ship some while back. The dWA must be swiftly hauled into dry dock, have the Barnier-cles scraped off its hull and its faded pink lines given a fresh coat of red paint.

Swiftly, not for our sake, but for the EU’s: the tide is turning against them. Never mind the one-off c. £39 billion divorce payoff that is risked by Community intransigence, the net trade balance between the UK and ‘Europe’ is £64 billion per annum in the latter’s favour – partly because the UK’s major strength is in services, which (deliberately) are not allowed the same liberal EU trading terms as manufactures (when will the BBC get that across to the viewers?)

One can understand Barnier’s desire to hamper our attempts to escape: he was, after all, France’s representative in the group that wrote the Lisbon Treaty. Perhaps it was a mistake to make the same man the negotiator for the process that now threatens to spoil The Project; the mind of even the brightest enarque can be clouded by emotion.

Or is it more (or less) than spite? Is it, as Johnson himself said in 2017, an attempted ‘punishment beating’ pour discourager les autres? Trouble is, that would be a game of Blind Man’s Buff and the UK would be far from the only country to take a hit. Is the EU happy to harm manufacturing giant Germany’s economy further, when it is already stagnant in the face of global recession? That would give the Bundestag’s AfD opposition party something to beat Mrs Merkel with as she tries to hold her country together. Maybe M. Barnier really thinks he will win with his repeated de Gaulle-ish ‘Non’; maybe he is merely putting on a brave front while officials scramble about in the background to review the dWA for their own red lines.

Alternative game metaphor: when chess champion Bobby Fisher wiped the floor with Boris Spassky, he had two exercise books of move openings, one labelled ‘Spassky White’ and the other ‘Spassky Black’. Our new PM needs one for ‘Negotiated Deal’ and another for ‘No Deal,’ both meticulously thought-out. His appointment of Michael Gove for the latter option shows he knows this, and Gove’s intellect is well up to the task.

What a shame that Mrs May only had one cahier in her satchel.

And it will concentrate M. Barnier’s mind wonderfully if he is forcefully reminded of what is at stake for him personally. With reference to a State leaving the EU, Article 50 (2) of the Lisbon Treaty says ‘the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State’: clearly the onus is on the EU’s negotiating team, not on us. Lord Kerr, who wrote that Article, has explained that its function was to buy time for the EU to organise an orderly separation and reduce the "legal chaos" for the Community.

If Barnier doesn’t unfold his arms soon, he personally will have failed the EU, leaving it floundering in a Sargasso Sea of complications and costing it many much-needed billions.

Your move, Michel.