*** FUTURE POSTS WILL ALSO APPEAR AT 'NOW AND NEXT' : https://rolfnorfolk.substack.com
Friday, October 08, 2021
FRIDAY MUSIC: Tuba Skinny 2021, by JD
Thursday, October 07, 2021
THURSDAY BACKTRACK: Music and news from 60 years ago - week ending 07 October 1961
https://fresques.ina.fr/de-gaulle/fiche-media/Gaulle00073/allocution-du-2-octobre-1961.html
1 |
Michael Row The Boat |
The Highwaymen |
HMV |
2 |
Wild In The Country / I Feel So Bad |
Elvis Presley |
RCA |
3 |
Walkin' Back To Happiness |
Helen Shapiro |
Columbia |
4 |
Kon*Tiki |
The Shadows |
Columbia |
5 |
Johnny Remember Me |
John Leyton |
Top Rank |
6 |
Jealousy |
Billy Fury |
Decca |
7 |
You'll Answer To Me |
Cleo Laine |
Fontana |
8 |
Wild Wind |
John Leyton |
Top Rank |
9 |
Sucu Sucu |
Laurie Johnson |
Pye |
10 |
You Don't Know |
Helen Shapiro |
Columbia |
11 |
Together |
Connie Francis |
MGM |
12 |
Get Lost |
Eden Kane |
Decca |
13 |
Hats Off To Larry |
Del Shannon |
London |
14 |
Reach For The Stars / Climb Every Mountain |
Shirley Bassey |
Columbia |
15 |
Granada |
Frank Sinatra |
Reprise |
16 |
Muskrat |
The Everly Brothers |
Warner Brothers |
17 |
Michael Row The Boat / Lumbered |
Lonnie Donegan |
Pye |
18 |
Bless You |
Tony Orlando |
Fontana |
19 |
Hard Hearted Hannah / Chilli Bom*Bom |
The Temperance Seven |
Parlophone |
20 |
Sea Of Heartbreak |
Don Gibson |
RCA |
Sunday, October 03, 2021
Conspiracy theory, conspiracy fact
You may have missed it, but Google’s slogan ‘Don’t Be Evil’ was airbrushed out over three years ago https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 . I can’t say whether this more lenient attitude to Old Scratch has anything to do with its corporate parent Alphabet being partly owned by investment house Blackrock https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/011516/top-5-google-shareholders-goog.asp , which has ambitions in China https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/8/blackrock-raises-1bn-for-its-maiden-for-the-chinese-market , as does another Alphabet shareholder, Vanguard https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/vanguard-gave-up-on-mutual-funds-in-china-but-working-with-ant.html . In any case, and especially now that public opinion is being nudged against China, we should remember that the Middle Kingdom is hardly the head shed of lies and wickedness; our own governments manage very well without their help.
What concerns me is the growing tendency of mainstream
Western news media - including much of the social media and internet platforms -
towards distortion and suppression, something for which we used to laugh at
Russia’s ‘Pravda’ (Truth) and ‘Izvestiya’ (News). As with the supposedly
uniquely oppressive Communist regimes, the liberal-democracy corporate approach
to ‘don’t be evil’ is to change that to ‘be evil, but don’t let the public find
out; and if they do, woe betide the whistleblower.’ We saw that with Daniel
Ellsberg and ‘The Pentagon Papers;’ we saw it with Julian Assange’s Wikileaks
and the Apache helicopter ‘Collateral Murder’ in Iraq https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
.
In Assange’s case, Yahoo! News shows how far the authorities
are prepared to go https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html
. An especially outrageous detail of the CIA’s 2017 plans to intercept the transfer
of the Australian journalist from the Ecuadorian Embassy to Russia and kill him
on British soil, is the UK government’s willingness to become directly
involved:
‘Those included potential gun
battles with Kremlin operatives on the streets of London, crashing a car into a
Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and then grabbing him, and
shooting out the tires of a Russian plane carrying Assange before it could take
off for Moscow. (U.S. officials asked their British counterparts to do the
shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed, according to a former
senior administration official.)’
I wonder how such an incident would have been covered in the
British news.
So far, so bad; but it’s
the news treatment after Yahoo!’s that deepens one’s concern. For a start, the online
BBC News seems to have remained silent – except for their Somali-language
edition, as Media Lens tweeted: https://twitter.com/medialens/status/1443626585916121089
I happened upon this tale via a Facebook group and followed through to the BBC – you’ll see that the search address line includes a tell-tale, showing how you got to that page https://www.bbc.com/somali/war-58709505?fbclid=IwAR1T3Brt_mcHO8GLuMgjHn65F7Ywou_my1dpE55ccMBRrBvL3l8nDooTrg0 . This gave me access to the Somali-language version, so as a Google Chrome user I clicked Google’s ‘Translate this page’ icon at top right, and it got even weirder:
Oh, yeah? When I highlighted and copied the text and pasted
it into the Google Translate app it managed just fine. In fact, if you try the
link yourself now it will translate to English – but it didn’t then.
So I surmise (who’s going to tell me the pravda?) that Google temporarily suppressed the
translation but gave up as the internet rumour spread.
Was it because the link came from Facebook?
Maybe. After all, Facebook has now announced it will ‘begin
removing content questioning any approved medical vaccine, not just those for
Covid-19’ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-29/youtube-will-remove-videos-with-misinformation-about-any-vaccine
, so the 1984 memory hole has widened into a mineshaft. The omniscient
webmasters at Facebook and Google know the truth exactly and infallibly,
whether on medicine or politics; trust them!
This time, some of the izvestiya leaked; but soon, as
their algorithms get even smarter, we may not get to hear the rumours.
Saturday, October 02, 2021
WEEKENDER: The Energy Crisis, by Wiggia
Friday, October 01, 2021
FRIDAY MUSIC: The Byrds, by JD
It took a couple of years for the Americans to respond and that came in 1965 from The Byrds, formed by two former folk singers Jim McGuinn and Gene Clark. (Jim McGuinn subseqeuntly changed his name to Roger for reasons which remain obscure.) Their first hit was a 'rock' version of Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man which helped to inspire Dylan himself to change direction into this new 'folk rock' style.
"McGuinn developed two innovative and very influential styles of electric guitar playing. The first was "jingle-jangle" – generating ringing arpeggios based on banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School of Folk – which was influential in the folk rock genre. The second style was a merging of saxophonist John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities, which hinted at the droning of the sitar – a style of playing, first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High", which was influential in psychedelic rock."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Byrds
The third video here features new band member Clarence White's famous 'string bender' guitar. Invented by White and drummer Gene Parsons this modified Fender is so famous it gets its own special mention on White's Wiki page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_White#The_StringBender
Thursday, September 30, 2021
THURSDAY BACKTRACK: Music and news from 60 years ago - week ending 30 September 1961
At #6 this week is Billy Fury's 'Jealousy':
Some memorable events (via Wikipedia):
See also: https://www.wpr.org/surprisingly-controversial-history-seat-belts and the invention of the modern three-point seat belt by Volvo's Nils Bohlin: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/three-point-seatbelt-inventor-nils-bohlin-born
As of April 1, 1999, ACDA was abolished and its functions merged into the Department of State.
1 |
Kon-Tiki |
The Shadows |
Columbia |
2 |
Johnny Remember Me |
John Leyton |
Top Rank |
3 |
Wild In The Country / I Feel So Bad |
Elvis Presley |
RCA |
4 |
Michael Row The Boat |
The Highwaymen |
HMV |
5 |
You Don't Know |
Helen Shapiro |
Columbia |
6 |
Jealousy |
Billy Fury |
Decca |
7 |
Get Lost |
Eden Kane |
Decca |
8 |
Reach For The Stars / Climb Every Mountain |
Shirley Bassey |
Columbia |
9 |
Hats Off To Larry |
Del Shannon |
London |
10 |
Together |
Connie Francis |
MGM |
11 |
You'll Answer To Me |
Cleo Laine |
Fontana |
12 |
Michael Row The Boat / Lumbered |
Lonnie Donegan |
Pye |
13 |
Walkin' Back To Happiness |
Helen Shapiro |
Columbia |
14 |
Cupid |
Sam Cooke |
RCA |
15 |
Sea Of Heartbreak |
Don Gibson |
RCA |
16 |
Granada |
Frank Sinatra |
Reprise |
17 |
Halfway To Paradise |
Billy Fury |
Decca |
18 |
Ain't Gonna Wash For A Week |
The Brook Brothers |
Pye |
19 |
That's My Home |
Acker Bilk |
Columbia |
20 |
I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door |
Eddie Hodges |
London |
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
What Parliament Is For, And the Delusions of Frau Merkel and Remainers
A man called James Hawes has just brought out a book called ‘The Shortest History of England’ (288 pages.) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shortest-History-England-James-Hawes/dp/1910400998/. If you see who praises it, you may guess its political tendency. https://jameshawes.org.uk/
On the back of it he has written an article for Unherd https://unherd.com/2021/09/angela-merkel-wins-again/?1632732450484
that is a fine piece of Remainer coat-trailing, as the furious comments section
shows.
In passing, the author recounts an anecdote that made my
diesel engine cough into life:
I have twice been told by a
German insider… that at the 2015 G7 meeting at Schloss Elmau, Merkel, Cameron’s
best friend in Europe, personally begged him not to hold his utterly needless
referendum and “throw away 800 years of parliamentary rule.”
I will do Frau Merkel the courtesy of not calling her a
cynical, manipulative liar; I shall believe that she was giving her sincere
opinion. If so, she is – I flail about for a suitable adverb – astoundingly
ignorant and blinkered. So for her edification and your convenience, I
shall now offer a much, much shorter history of England.
Frau Merkel seems to think that Parliament is merely a conduit of rule, as it is in the EU, where those delegates who do not simply sign in
and then take their wheelie luggage straight back on the train remain to air
their views powerlessly.
She does not understand that we are ruled not by Parliament
but by a monarch, albeit one whose awesome powers have devolved onto the Privy
Council and especially the British Prime Minister and Cabinet, all of whom are
automatically members. It is now 241 years since John Dunning MP moved his
resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dunning,_1st_Baron_Ashburton
that "the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought
to be diminished"; this is long overdue for resubmission, perhaps with the
substitution of ‘Prime Minister’ for ‘Crown’; indeed it should have been
remooted when Mr Blair brought his wrecking ball to the Constitution, but
surely now we have seen the whim of iron wielded by the Government during the
Covid crisis we feel its relevance more than for a very long time.
Merkel remembered that Parliament’s roots go back eight
centuries, but seems to have forgotten the significance of 1215. Runnymede saw
the first of several versions of Magna Carta and was about the restraint of
autocratic power, not its passive transmission as the deluded German Empress
imagines. The same Charter also established Parliament to set controls on the
King, especially in money matters. The key role of our representatives is to scrutinise,
moderate and sometimes outright oppose the ruler who is tempted to say ‘The
very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand.’
Speaking of Scottish kings, we had the strife all over again
when the Stuarts came to the throne, bringing their cronies and Celtic
absolutist kingship with them; not to mention religious bigotry and
double-dealing (‘Na, na, we’ll no’ need the Catholics noo.’) There was a little
discussion about that in the 1640s, following which we discovered that we didn’t
like despots even if they were Puritans.
I can understand and forgive ignorance, but it is asking too
much to accept it when it is accompanied by egregious arrogance, as we see even
among those Remainers who are obviously literate, even littérateurs. I can only
think it is down to an inability to distinguish between what the European
Project means to them, and what it actually is. The EU is adept at the emotional
management of us by signs, symbols and words, which we use to process our perceptions
of reality. Its cheerleaders in Britain are so wedded to the groupthink that
they cannot see that the EU is institutionally antidemocratic; it wields the
Ring of Power that even Gandalf feared to handle; and like groupthinkers they
feel compelled to misrepresent and despise those who disagree with them. The
English intellectual, unable to see what is in front of his nose, instead looks
down it at the rest of us.
What a shame; for leaving the EU was only the first struggle;
the people are now at war with several great Empires.