FRIDAY MUSIC: Burns Night - diversion diverted - by JD

 

JD's Burns Night selection will appear here on Monday 25 January.

Hail to the Chief!

 

https://www.rt.com/usa/513205-biden-icon-jacobin-magazine/

Debate: Does inequality matter? - by Sackerson and Paddington

Sackerson:

Today sees the inauguration of the 46th President of the US, Joe Biden. Bien-pensant media crapheads are rejoicing: a piece by Tom Leonard and Daniel Bates in the print edition of todays' Daily Mail begins 'Donald Trump will leave office today as officially the worst US President in history.' Already nonsense in the first sentence: there is no such official ranking. Elsewhere, in the online edition, Leonard is much more nuanced. 

The satirical Private Eye magazine's cover this week shows a still from the post-apocalyptic sci-fi film Planet Of The Apes, the Statue of Liberty mostly submerged in sand and speech-bubbling 'You can take over now, Mr Biden.' 

Oh, how we laughed. They know so much better, our media mavens and Press pundits.

As a foreign observer with no dog in the fight, it seems to me that the last four years have been little better than a bullfight, Trump being ragged by the Democrats but also very selectively supported by the Republicans that one would expect to be on his side. Some of the things Trump tried to get done, such as the Wall, couldn't be completed even though in 2016 he had Party majorities in both House and Senate; other things, especially tax cuts for the rich, have been Republican themes for decades.

The unpleasant atmosphere at the end of Trump's term in office seems to me the natural result of a prolonged bipartisan campaign to make America unworkable, at least as far as the long-term interests of the majority are concerned. British politics often echoes the American and the professional representatives on both sides, Left and Right, have appeared content to preside over the hollowing of the economy and the consequent.destabilisation of society. Perhaps over there, as here, they really believe that the system cannot be broken, no matter how much they jump up and down on the bed.

Trump's hick-brash, unapologetic personality has been a gift to his enemies and frenemies; focusing on the man ('Isn't he awful?') is a great way to bury what is really going on, and has been going on for a generation or two. The postwar crossparty consensus has broken down, as income inequality has soared back to pre-Wall Street Crash levels:

Source

The Democrat Party is, of course, definitively good - or is it? Some of the voters they have taken for granted have started to see things differently: for example poc's like Professor Thomas Sowell, or Candace Owens (initially anti-Trump) whose recent book 'Blackout' is a call for black people to detach themselves from the Democrats. There is a perception on both sides of the Atlantic that just as the Right is cold and mercenary, the official Left is happy to buy its own supporters with modest financial and service benefits without ever letting them free of their dependency.

Given those options, why else would so many people have voted in 2016 for a non-professional like Donald Trump? Long before Trump started to run, acerbic entertainer George Carlin gave us a clue. Back in 2005 he said the political system gave only the illusion of choice, and the audience's emphatic reactions to the last part of this clip must give us some idea of the groundswell of angry disillusion that was developing, even before the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9:

For a while, I suppose, the media will support Biden, just as they puppy-followed Blair in 1997, all the way to Downing Street and the fake People's Celebration in the gated area outside Number Ten.

I fear that the four-year-long (and continuing) Two Minutes' Hate groupthink around Trump will blind the good-hearted, right-thinking commentariat to Biden's flaws and errors for some time yet, just as we move into a very dangerous phase in international relations and the world's fracturing economic system.

But let's start by tearing our eyes away from the great orange-haired narcissist and refocusing on the kind of people who now infest the establishment Republican Party. Paddington gives below a few scraps to indicate their Scrooge-like avarice and callous mean-heartedness.

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Paddington:

Mitch McConnell, then the Senate Majority leader, blocked a $2000 payment to Americans of average income during the COVID pandemic because he was “worried that someone might get the check who doesn't need it”. Meanwhile, the 2017 tax bill which he helped ram through gave a $1.3 billion tax break to the Koch family, who are worth $113 billion.

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, was put in charge of the national distribution of PPE and other supplies. He reportedly decided that those supplies shouldn't go to the big cities, since most of the victims would be poor Democrats. When Democratic governors secured those supplies themselves at great cost, mysterious government agents often swooped in and seized them. Later reports indicate that many were then sold abroad.

Mitch McConnell also blocked support for the falling tax revenues that states and cities are experiencing, in the hope that this would cause all of the public pension systems to fail, especially in Democratic states.

Social Security is funded through a separate income tax, even though the revenues are thrown into the same pool. Up until 2018, the system brought in more money than it spent, every year. A simple increase in the ceiling of income subject to the tax, from $125,000 to $250,000 would keep it solvent for decades after the anticipated shortfall in around 2030. A couple of years ago, Mitch McConnell declared that Social Security was the cause of the huge deficits, and the Senate would look into cutting it.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner refused to allow members of their Secret Service detail to use any of the 6 bathrooms in their house, requiring the government to pay $3,000 per month to rent a local house so that the agents could take a shit.

Governor Walker of Wisconsin, based on his personal record of becoming a rich businessman without a college degree, declared that education was useless. He slashed funding for all education, including the state's previously outstanding university system. He also made other changes, such as not requiring college degrees for substitute teachers, and not requiring any education certification for regular teachers.

In Virginia in 2018, faced with an incoming Democratic governor, the Republican legislature stripped the governor of most of the power of the office.

From https://www.salon.com/2017/03/20/donald-trumps-war-on-the-poor-has-historical-precedent-and-its-not-pretty/:

'The notion of "useless eaters" must be implemented within the United States' current social values and political system. Under the logic of neoliberalism (in which human worth is reduced to a person's value in terms of economic activity), American conservatives deems the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, people on Social Security, those who need help from programs such as food stamps and ultimately anyone who is not "economically self-sufficient," that is rich, to be expendable.'

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For further discussion: 

Does the fact that some people are extremely rich, matter?
What is to become of the poorer element?
Can the welfare systems of the West survive a prolonged global depression?

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: Sounds Incorporated (motorcycle roars), by Wiggia

                           
Backing group to the stars of the time.

Nothing to do with the sixties rock band above of the same name, this is about the ‘Golden Age’ of racing motorcycles which ended with the end of that era.

Just before I  married I dragged the future wife to Brands Hatch on an early October day in 1967 for the Race of the South, a race meeting that was to be the swan song for so many of the motorcycles racing there that day as a universal agreement had been agreed with all the major manufacturers and the governing body to cut costs and simplify racing motorcycles from that year on.

For many of those manufacturers there was a break until ‘69 when the new rules limiting number of cylinders, gears etc. came into force, although you could under certain circumstances have more cylinders - restrictions or penalties in the premier class made that almost impossible.

The reason the FIM gave for those restrictions was a gulf between motorcycles raced and those used on the road. That was disingenuous, it was really because the Japanese had totally obliterated their European competition and the changes were an attempt to redress the balance.

Racing motorcycles had always been prototypes in the world championships, such amazing machines such as the earlier Moto Guzzi V8 gave lie to what the FIM said as the reason for change.

In 1966 Honda won every single world championship class and a total of 138 wins in all classes since starting in 1960.

It had been an incredible period, all the manufacturers had been in a non stop race to develop ever more powerful and exotic machines in an attempt to stay on top of the world championships.

Most were Japanese and most, unlike today, entered works machines in all or several of the championship classes, 50cc, 125cc, 250cc 350cc and the premier class 500cc. The R&D departmens required to develop those machines year in year out were enormous, Honda at one time employed I believe 10,000 people in their R&D department, many in the race division.

I mention Honda because they stuck to four stroke engines even when the two strokes were the obvious route to go down, and later dominated all classes of motorcycle racing, but their philosophy was that at that point they didn’t make any two stroke motorcycles and that meant there was no connection with their road bikes with two stroke engineering; they did later relent when they had no choice.

But it resulted in some of the most sophisticated engines being produced in their efforts to keep the two strokes at bay.

The two strokes themselves were some of the most complicated engines ever produced, for what is a simpler layout. Much was copied from the pioneering work of MZ in East Germany and indeed their top rider and development engineer Ernst Degner defected to Japan in the middle of a race in Finland; such was his input that the Japanese soon dominated with their versions of that two stroke design ‘stolen‘ from the Soviet block.

The 50cc class was in its early days somewhat derided, despite many riders starting off in the class. The late Bill Ivy, future 250cc world champion, started on one he took in a sidecar to race meetings. When it became a world championship class things began to change rapidly. The first to really stretch what was considered a kiddy class for motorcycles was the German firm Kriedler who made a range of very successful mopeds. Their race bikes were something else, as with all two strokes revs were important as a ratio to power and as the power went up the rev band diminished requiring ever more gears to keep the engines in that optimum rev range.

The final iteration of the early Kriedlers had a four speed gearbox with a hand-controlled three speed overdrive=twelve gears; but they were handicapped by being based on road bike engines, whereas the Japanese were not - the Hondas, still four strokes were twin cylinders and the Suzuki was a three cylinder revving to 20,000rpm with a 14 speed gearbox; the Honda with nine speed gearbox revved to 22,500rpm.

The Suzuki sadly never raced as the regulation changes meant the factory could not see the point in just one season with it.

This photograph of the Suzuki gearbox innards show how complicated they became. The little Honda even had bicycle brakes fitted to save weight; they tried the same on a 125cc race bike but the rims got so hot the tyres started to melt.

The 125s and 250s were where things started to get interesting. In the case of the two strokes from Yamaha and Suzuki they were to a degree mirror images of each other apart from the engine size and the framework to care for the extra power of the 250s.

It is difficult to find many videos of these bikes and most are for petrol heads, but here we have the 125cc and 250cc V4 Yamahas that were ridden to world titles by Phil Read and Bill Ivy and you get a flavour of that screaming sound for a moment at least. Phil Read is actually on the 250. these bikes if I remember rightly have nine speed gearboxes and I remember them well at Brands that October day.

During this early period of the 1960s there was an intruder in the GP ranks. Dr Joe Ehrlich came from his native Austria and was employed at Queens University Belfast. He developed under the name EMC a racing two stroke based loosely with his own modifications on the East German MZ, and this rare photo of it without fairing shows how these two strokes were brothers under the skin so to speak and this was an early version of what the Japanese took a lot further. The whole science of expansion chamber exhausts and disc valve carburettor can be spotted here.

De Havilland had a hand in the building of the EMC.

At the start it lacked a top flight rider for the GPs though it still fared well against the full works outfits, but in ‘62 Mike Hailwood rode to fifth place in the 125cc championship.

The two stroke development continued apace and by ‘67 this Suzuki was typical of the progress made, but it was the last throw of the dice before the FIM banned the prototypes in favour of twin cylinders and six gear maximum machines.

Sadly there is not a single video I could find with the bike being raced.

As an aside, there is much made about who is the GOAT, the greatest of all time in many sports especially motor sports. It is impossible to ever say x was best but Hailwood would be my choice, simply because he would ride anything anywhere: two stroke, four stroke, 125 – 500cc, all at the same meeting and sometimes all different makes on circuits that today would all be banned on grounds of safety. I had a picture of him some time back riding in the wet on ‘cobbles during the Czech GP, not something we will ever see again for obvious reasons but that does not diminish a rider who took on everything; as with all these things it was a different age.

Back to the bikes. Honda and their quest to stay on top of the emerging two strokes produced some of the most iconic racing motorcycles of all time, those multi cylinder machines transformed GP racing at the time and the sound of them is still music to those aficionados of the sport that can remember those days.

There early entries into racing were twin cylinder affairs, but it is the fours and more where it got interesting and noisy, the push for ever more power resulted in more cylinders and higher revs and the five cylinder 125cc was the final say of the four stroke in that class, ridden by Luigi Taveri a lightweight specialist, it was a wonder of Japanese design, details of it are here…..

   https://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/model/Racers/honda_125_fivecylinder.htm

It won the ‘66 world title and passed into history as the last of the four stroke title winners in that class.

There are no videos of this machine actually racing that I could find, in fact this era has little to dig up regarding all of these amazing machines, but just for the sound there is this at Goodwood in 2002, a rare airing of a very expensive motorcycle.

And this even earlier 1961  TT film shows the then Honda twins dominating, but includes briefly the MZ and EMC - even the early twins had a sound of their own.

And then briefly at the end the start of the multi cylinder era with the 250cc Honda fours in 1962.

The machine that nearly everyone calls the finest racing motorcycle of all time was the six cylinder 250cc Honda. It first appeared in ‘65 at the end of the season to combat the Yamaha four cylinder disc valve two strokes ridden by Phil Read and Bill Ivy; the following year (1966) it won every race in the 250cc class with Mike Hailwood on board.

There was also a 300cc version that Hailwood rode in the 350cc class, winning all but one championship race in the 350cc class in ‘67. This machine was also Hailwood’s favourite bike, and he rode it to victory on that October day at Brands Hatch beating everything including Agostini on the lovely three cylinder 500cc MV Augusta.

There are virtually no racing videos that convey the sound of the six cylinder Honda but this short clip gives you a fair idea about what was described as the loudest racing motorcycle ever, but what a sound and what a magnificent machine it was!

The Japanese did not totally have the field to themselves regarding iconic sounds. The late fifties had the amazing Moto Guzzi V8. Guzzi, then in their prime, had machines ranging from single cylinder to the V8 racing at the same time, the theory being that it was horses for courses and the single suited some more than the V8 which was still in experimental days.

The commentary in this short clip gives the history of the V8 and how it was so far ahead of its time.

The MVs and Gileras of the same period as the Guzzi are well documented for their four cylinder engines and how they dominated that period of motorcycle racing. In truth, fabulous machines though they were they had little competition in the big 500c class for many years. In many ways the achievement of the later three cylinder 500ccc of MV was greater as it was pitched up against the might of the Japanese factories.

The link below gives the history of the three cylinder bike and contains a small sound bite.

https://silodrome.com/mv-agusta-three-cylinder/

The last photo shows the rear of the Honda six with Hailwood onboard, this was the view every other rider had of that bike in ‘66.

And this is what it really sounded like.

EAR PLUGS IN……………………………………………….

http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/galleries/soundfiles/1965%20Honda%206.mp3

Plus a few other sound only clips... this is the 250cc four two stroke of Phil Read:

http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/galleries/soundfiles/1966%20Reid%20Yamaha.mp3

Suzuki 125cc four cylinder two stroke:

http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/galleries/soundfiles/1967%20Suzuki%20125.mp3

Suzuki 50cc 1967:

http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/galleries/soundfiles/1967%20Suzuki%2050.mp3

From Italy, the Benelli 250cc four. Benelli are the oldest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, they finally won the 250cc world title with Kel Carruthers on board, known as Mr Speed in his native Australia, in 1969:

http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/galleries/soundfiles/1967%20Benneli%204.mp3

Finally, from slightly earlier, our own John Surtees on the MV four in 1958:

http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/galleries/soundfiles/1958%20JS%20MV4.mp3

Sadly there's no mp3 for the perfume of petrol, sights and sounds will have to do for now!

What is 'Farmer' Bill Gates telling us?

UPDATE: It may be to do with modelling a sustainable approach to agriculture:

In January 2020, The Land Report announced the launch of a sustainability standard that was developed by US farmland owners and operators. Called Leading Harvest, the organization’s goal is to create a sustainability standard thatcan be implemented across the greatest swath of agricultural acreage. Currently, more than 2 million acres in 22 states and an additional 2 million acres in seven countries are represented. Among the participants in the 13-member Sustainable Agriculture Working Group are Ceres Partners, Hancock Natural Resources Group, The Rohaytn Group, and UBS Farmland Investors.

Not surprisingly, one of Leading Harvest’s other inaugural members is a Cascade entity called Cottonwood Ag Management. Committing the resources to launch this all-important standard validates the assertion that Cascade supports sustainable strategies that advance resiliency and efficiency, retain talent, and reduce regulatory burdens.

Although the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has no ties whatsoever to Cascade or its investments, it also has a farmland initiative: Gates Ag One, which has established its headquarters in the Greater St. Louis area. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, Gates Ag One will focus on research that helps “smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low- and middle-income countries more productive, resilient, and sustainable.”

https://landreport.com/2021/01/bill-gates-americas-top-farmland-owner/

- htp: JD

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https://summit.news/2021/01/15/bill-gates-buying-up-huge-amount-of-farmland-while-great-reset-tells-americans-future-is-no-private-property/

Paul Joseph Watson stitches this story of billionaire agricultural land acquisition into the narrative of The Great Reset, but does it have more to do with:

• a feared stockmarket collapse?
• hope of grants and tax reliefs from the next US Goverment as it seeks to support farmers?

Similarly, Warren Buffett has been investing in railways for years - he took over the BNSF Railway Company over a decade ago. https://financhill.com/blog/investing/which-railroad-does-warren-buffett-own - a long-term buy for when roads become less economical? An investment in land because as Will Rogers said, they're not making any more of it?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Apollo's Fire, part two, by JD

This time a selection of music and dance from America's folk music roots. I found three versions of "Down in the river to Pray" which is, according to Wiki, "...is a traditional American song variously described as a Christian folk hymn, an African-American spiritual, an Appalachian song, and a southern gospel song. The exact origin of the song is unknown. Research suggests that it was composed by an African-American slave." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_River_to_Pray

The one I have used here was, for me, one of the the most moving renditions I have ever heard.

Adventure: two approaches, plus a third - by Sackerson

In 1909 E. L. Grant Watson sailed to Australia* to work with social anthropologists studying aboriginals in Western Australia, and noted two kinds of migrant that he met on board, and again later.

One had very little money but started off with a stint of sheep-shearing:

'After a short time at the coffee-palace [in Perth] he had applied at the exchange for a bush job. Could he shear a sheep? Yes, he answered boldy and mendaciously. He was sent with a lot of other men to the head of the line beyond Cue, then by wagon to a remote station. There he had to shear sheep. He was thoroughly cursed for his ignorance, but he couldn't be sent back. He was taught how to shear sheep, and for many months he did nothing else. Now he had more than doubled his original fifty pounds. He was applying for a fencing job. In this way he was learning how to do the jobs of a farm, at someone else's expense, he said laughingly. By the time he had learnt all the jobs he might have enough money to buy a little place of his own. He looked as though he would succeed, and he had kept himself all the time he had been in Western Australia.'

The other turned up at Sydney docks, 'dejected and hungry':

'He had been, he told me, in the damned country far longer than he wished, and had lost every penny that was to start him as a farmer. Now he had just been trying to arrange with a ship's steward to work his way home as a scullery man. He had had no success, and mentioned that he was hungry. I asked him to a meal, and heard his story, how he'd been cheated here, and bamboozled there. He was quite a pleasant fellow, and I felt truly sorry for him. After our meal we parted, and I wished him luck, though I did not feel he was going to have very much.'

The author also met two Scots navvies, hopelessly drunk and broke:

'I was assured by a hard-boiled young Australian, with whom I had struck up a passing acquaintanceship, that they would get on all right. Drunks could always find employment. Drunks were self-made slaves, and were safe to employ as such, little chance of their ever rising and thnking themselves as good as their masters.'

The last reminds me that our grandfather, a gentleman farmer in East Prussia, employed a man who was drunk most of the time on methylated spirits. The reason was, that hand did more work in three days sober than others could in a week.

Or there's living on your wits:

*Recounted in his autobiography, 'But To What Purpose' (Cresset Press, 1946)