Friday, May 13, 2022

FRIDAY MUSIC: Nanci Griffith, by JD

 Nanci Griffith 1953 - 2021.

"Nanci Griffith, the Texan “folkabilly” singer-songwriter, died in August last year at the age of 68, after fighting two different cancers for 25 years. In my decades of writing about contemporary folk music, I’d venture to say there were no performers who possessed more talent than Griffith in the 1980s and early ’90s, when she was at her remarkable best."

Greatly admired by her fellow artists and a devoted army of fans, Nanci Griffith, exemplified a style of musical storytelling with a literary flavour, focusing on the small details of the lives of her characters. Songs such as Love at the Five and Dime and Gulf Coast Highway have become permanent fixtures in the folk-country canon (Griffith described her music as “folkabilly”), and the Grammy award she won for her album Other Voices, Other Rooms in 1994 seemed a long overdue reward for her carefully crafted body of work.








Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Not that I'm prescient: the US proxy war against Russia

JD has kindly drawn my attention to what I said here nearly 4 years ago:

Is Ukraine to be the new Guernica?


Pic: South China Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2162391/ukraine-peace-plan-ice-after-pro-russian-rebel-leader-killed-cafe

























Last Friday (31.08.18) Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the "Donetsk People's Republic" (in eastern Ukraine) was killed in a bomb blast, along with his bodyguard. It is claimed that the killers, who are still being hunted, work for the Ukrainian security service.

Unlike in the western part of Ukraine, the population of Donetsk is predominantly Russian-speaking and/or of Russian descent. The breakaway state declared its independence four years ago, but so far has only been formally recognised by South Ossetia.

Under the 2015 Minsk II agreement, Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany brokered a ceasefire and progressive demilitarisation. But the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has now cancelled ongoing treaty negotiations, claiming that the assassination is "an open provocation aimed at hindering implementation of the Minsk agreements" and linking it to the recent increase in US sanctions against Russia (announced 8 August) in the wake of the Skripal poisoning case in Britain, which has been blamed on Russia (denied by the latter and not yet forensically proven.)

The Kiev administration has failed to implement Minsk II and last year the United States was saying that the US did not wish to be limited by the agreement and suggested that Kiev should seek an accommodation directly with Moscow. Now the US special envoy for Ukraine has said that Washington could increase arms supplies to Kiev to buttress the country’s naval and air defence forces.

There is some evidence to suggest that the Ukraine has become a testing ground for Western weaponry. A "Ukraine based" firm called LimpidArmor has just announced the extension of a battlefield sensor system from fighter planes to tank warfare:

"The Land Platform Modernization Kit uses four cameras positioned strategically around the tank to create a seamless display of the environment surrounding the vehicle. Crew members wearing the HoloLens headgear would then be able to look around their environment without being hampered by the tank’s heavy armor while also not having to potentially expose themselves to enemy fire."

Although run by a Ukrainian, Mikhail Grechukhin, and conducting its research and development in Kiev, LimpidArmor's headquarters are in Walnut Creek, California. And in March this year the Ukrainian Defence Minister said that the US' supply of anti-tank missiles "opened the door for closer military cooperation in the face of Russian aggression."

Anti-Russian rhetoric was a major feature of Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign in 2016, to the extent that Russians were getting nervous. When Trump won, it appeared to be a chance to normalise relations and shortly afterwards he was tweeting "Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad!" But since then the US President has seemed to row back, perhaps in response to the sustained campaign by the Democrats to paint Russia as in collusion with Trump to get him his election victory.

Doubtless there is a deep geopolitical game being played, but aside from Mrs Clinton's disappointed hopes one has to wonder what the real motivation may be. Is it really a cold, then a hot war with Russia - now no longer a Communist country, thanks to its people who have every reason not to wish the return of the Reds?

Or is it to rehearse weapons and tactics for war - perhaps by proxy - against another, still Communist, mightier and clearly expansionist potential foe: China? If so, the increasing sophistication of China's defence capabilities ought to give the three-dimensional chess players of Washington pause for thought - see for example this article on the PRC's development of next-generation unmanned aerial vehicles.

Could the "military-industrial complex" (as Eisenhower called it) be endangering us with its hubris?

http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica


_________________________


  • https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2162391/ukraine-peace-plan-ice-after-pro-russian-rebel-leader-killed-cafe
  • https://sputniknews.com/world/201809011067667072-rusia-us-sanctions-dialogue/
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_II
  • https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-ukraine-idUSKBN19H19M
  • https://thenewsrep.com/107709/ukrainian-company-testing-f-35-style-helmet-to-see-through-tanks-in-combat/
  • https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=uk&u=https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/LimpidArmor&prev=search
  • https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-defence/ukraine-says-weapons-decision-heralds-new-era-of-cooperation-with-u-s-idUSKCN1GE27X
  • https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/07/the-kremlin-really-believes-that-hillary-clinton-will-start-a-war-with-russia-donald-trump-vladimir-putin/
  • http://thesaker.is/chinas-dark-sword-uav-program/

Monday, May 09, 2022

Gaming democracy

 Can universal-franchise democracy actually work?

In the vlog below, Demirep/Granniopteryx looks at the results of the 5 May UK local elections in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. There the mayoral election of 2014 was declared void and the victor, Lutfur Rahman, banned for five years because of corrupt and illegal practices; Rahman has now stood again under a new political banner - the Aspire Party - and regained his mayoral office.

'Granniopteryx' discusses the potential for gaming the vote by the use of proxy and postal voting in a community where the head of the household can use his traditional authority in the family to influence the casting of votes. She makes the point that this does not happen only with Asians but also, for example, among Greeks. The ability to get together and elect one of your own gives you the chance to go along and ask for favours. (Labour's mayoral candidate was a non-Asian - perhaps a Party blunder, under the circumstances.)


Why are postal votes needed, except for the significantly disabled? It is so easy to vote in person. Voter participation can be affected by the distance to the nearest polling place - 

'The largest impact occurred in lower-salience European elections, with voter drop-off occurring after 500 metres from the polling station; this occurred at 600 metres for local elections. Distance travelled had very little influence on turnout to Parliamentary elections.'
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpolcon/writev/1463/1463.pdf (p.8)

- but it is not difficult to get to one in Tower Hamlets. Geographically the borough is smaller than 20 square kilometres yet in 2019 there were 110 polling places - i.e. 5.5 per square kilometre.

Participation in local elections tends to be much lower than for General Elections: in my own constituency - another densely-populated urban one, in Birmingham - the 5 May turnout was only 27%. Yet in this Tower Hamlets it was 42% (and in 2014, almost 48%.) Perhaps the size of the Tower Hamlets mayoral election turnout is because it was not merely for local councillors but for the Big Man running the borough, the Man who can grant your wishes; insinuations of procedural jiggery-pokery may not be necessary to account for it.

By contrast, in the US, I read, some places deliberately make it difficult to vote by setting up polling stations far from population centres and perhaps not even easily reachable by public transport. Those Americans who suspect that the 2020 Presidential election was 'stolen' by late or fake postal votes should, if their concern is that participation should be fair, look at other solutions to accessibility issues.

But even if polls are fairly conducted, what about how those votes are canvassed? The system is set up to make the aspiring politician focus on what voters think (or can be made to think) matters, rather than systemic problems. The tail is wagging the dog; instead of the people calling their leaders to account, political parties have learned how to cultivate the vote. Billions are spent on psephological analysis, focus groups, opinion polling, advertising, lobbying etc - how can good long-term governance arise out of this mess? 

One method currently used to divert the public's attention from domestic policy challenges and cloud their minds with emotion is to wage wars and proxy wars on foreigners. America and Britain are like Lewis Carroll's Walrus and Carpenter, happily prepared to eat Ukrainian Oysters until the last is gone. Such a useful distraction from what Americans need; and so good for the arms industry. Instead of a welfare state, the US has opted for a warfare state.

Yes, the US has a welfare system at the moment, but the GOP is pressing for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.) For their part the Democrats' plan seems to be to encourage the 'undocumented' immigration of relatively poor people, who may look to the Dems for financial benefits of various kinds. There is no plan either from the Republicans or from the Democrats, to help the indigenous lower classes thrive by protecting their work and wages. 

The people are waking up to this, when not mesmerised by other 'woke' issues or military drum-banging. Was it not the slow-dawning realisation that in the US Red v Blue has become a 'uniparty' scam that led to the election of the unprofessional maverick Trump (with all his faults)? But the Establishment did everything it could to hamper him in office, and does everything it can to bury him in lawfare now. The uniparty wants Business As Usual until the machine breaks down.

Similarly, here in the UK, although the Northern 'Red (socialist) Wall' collapsed in 2019, Granniopteryx notes that it still far from being rebuilt, despite the Conservatives' difficulties in the last couple of years. We are in a wider political crisis in which Labour has failed to make itself credible but as Peter Hitchens says, 'You need something better than the Tories, and soon.'

We must hope that there will be replacements for both parties before it is too late; but how can they possibly replace themselves, and alternatively, how could we do it, without a revolt?

Sunday, May 08, 2022

EMAIL FROM AMERICA (11): Work avoidance and worker exploitation

 America has interesting and rather diverse views on physical labour.

While there is loud praise of the Protestant Work Ethic, an awful lot of the culture is devoted to 'get rich quick' schemes and various forms of confidence tricksters, whose scams generally feed off greed. And it seems that this has been the case for a very long time, from the gold rushes in California, South Dakota and Alaska to gambling on the stock market in the 'bucket shops' of the 1890's, and more speculation in the events leading up to the crashes of 1929 and 2008. Not to mention the lottery, the illegal 'numbers games', Florida swampland swindles, evangelists, multi-level marketing schemes, Ponzi schemes, telephone 'psychics' and so much more.

It is almost as if most people were trying to avoid 'good, honest work' and always have.

The Jamestown colony in Virginia was established in 1607 by a group of 'adventurers' (read junior sons of nobility who wouldn't inherit) to make money, yet they had no skills or tools, and eventually had to import Polish workmen to actually build things. Interestingly, this led to the first American strike, when the colonists decided to set up a democratic system, without giving those workers a vote.

The famous Plymouth colony, founded in 1620, consisted of very pious individuals, who came with no tools or skills other than firearms. They would have died, and almost did, had it not been for the local tribes making alliances with them, and a few sailors electing to stay, with their tools and practical skills.

And who did the bulk of the dirty work to build the country for the next 200 years? In the Northeast, it was indentured servants and other poor immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. In the South, it was enslaved African-Americans and Native Americans. In the West, it was poor Mexicans and imported Chinese, who were then quite badly mistreated by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The rapid industrialization of the late 1800's demanded a concentration of workers, who then started to think about unionization. This led to cries of 'socialism' and 'anarchy' from the wealthy, who used every power of the government to stop them.

In 1920, efforts to unionize coal mines in West Virginia led to the Stone Mountain Coal Company hiring the Baldwin-Felts agency to evict the families of striking miners from the company-owned housing. In the course of their actions, the agents claimed to have a warrant (which turned out to be fake) to arrest the Chief of Police Hatfield in Matewan, which in turn led to a gunfight known as the Matewan massacre. This inflamed the miners, who embarked on a campaign of sabotage and harassment.

In the midst of this, Chief Hatfield went to an adjacent county in 1921 to stand trial on a count of sabotage. As he walked up the courthouse steps, Hatfield and his friend were murdered by Baldwin-Felts agents.

This event made things even worse, and the violence increased. This culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, where a force comprised of volunteers and members of the West Virginia National Guard and State Police met thousands of angry miners, resulting in several hundred deaths. The former used leftover bombs and poison gas from World War I in the course of the battle.

Once federal troops arrived, the miners, many veterans, refused to fire on US troops, and returned home.

After the subsequent arrests and trials, union membership in the United Mine Workers dropped from 50,000 to 10,000 and stayed low until the depths of the Depression in 1935.

It was not until the mid-1950s that unions became respected and the hard physical jobs well-paid. And that only lasted for 20 years or so, after which the Reagan administration tried to copy the model of Margaret Thatcher and reduce their power.

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Cañón del Río Lobos, by JD

Travel writers sometimes tell us to step back from the Costas and seek out something different but usually they direct us to the big cities where we can spend even more money.

There is an alternative, a hidden Spain, well off the beaten track but you need a guide and if you are with somebody who knows then there are some beautiful places hidden away “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”

One such place is the Cañón del Río Lobos in the province of Soria (Castilla y León) and this really is in the heart of Spain a long way from the usual tourist trails.

After parking the car, we set off following the course of the river along the pathway among the trees. We exchange greetings with a shepherd and step to one side for him as he moves his flock of about 200 or so raggedy looking sheep (not bred for their wool by the look of them.)

And on we walked for about a mile or maybe more, still following the river, watching eagles and vultures flying above the walls of the canyon. Then we came into a large clearing….

….and in the distance the San Bartolomé Hermitage. A small chapel, literally miles from anywhere, which is all that remains of the monastery said to have been built by the Templars in the 13th century.

To the right of the picture is la Cueva Grande, the largest of many caves in the valley and this one has a few rock carvings and cave paintings showing evidence of occupation of this area dating back to the bronze age.

This next picture is also from Google Maps. It is not a painting. It really does look like that, blue and gold striation. Very psychedelic, especially in the sunshine.



And YouTube has a number of videos worth seeing although their commentary is in Spanish, obviously, but the videos do convey some of the atmosphere of the place.

Saturday, May 07, 2022

WEEKENDER: The English vineyard, by Wiggia


 I was asked to contribute recently to a paper on aspects of horticulture, mainly because I still retain a decent library of old tomes and modern ones on the subject.

This is a small part of that cut and pasted from the whole, and re-arranged for putting up on here.

Whilst the fact that the Romans planted vines with varying degrees of success even in the north and did make wine is taken for granted, we have little or no knowledge of what that wine would have been or the vines used. Naturally they would have been imported, and they certainly imported wine as amphora discovered in large amounts testifies to that fact, so the actual amount that was made here could have been quite small. However there is evidence of some vine planting with the discovery at sites of grape seeds and stalks, and aerial surveys show vineyards in the Nene Valley area that were for wine production.

The fossilised remains of Vinus vinifera sub sylvestris have been found growing in the Hoxnian period,  an interglacial time when it was again warmer than today, though this was some 400,000 years ago when mainland Britain was still joined to continental Europe. It is the second sub species Vitis Vinifera sub vinifera that is the base for all the cultivated vines, some 8-10,000 up till today.

Of interest re the Romans is that they introduced the Elm to Britain or the Atinian clone of it, sadly now all but wiped out. Why did they import a tree species? It is believed they used it to grow vines on, a method widely used then and even into the 19th century.



One aspect that crops up over the time since the Romans planted vines is the climate that has been through several phases of hot and cold periods. The time span for each has been variable such as the big freeze in 1963 when we had three months of snow; in past times the Thames would freeze and frost fairs were held on the ice, especially between the early 17th and early 19th centuries when we were in what is now known as the Little Ice Age.

Most frost fairs were held on the upper reaches where the tide was least likely to interfere with the freezing, but the removal of the old multi-pier London Bridge helped the tidal flow and further finished the freezing effect as we came out of the Little Ice Age. This is one of the many indicators as to weather over the centuries that affected the way we lived.

We also had warm periods during this time and before: the Roman period of 2000 years ago was warmer than now and very warm between 21 and 50AD and continued and tapered to around 300AD,  so it is not surprising they grew grapes and made wine here.


The medieval warm period lasted even longer, from circa 950AD to 1250 AD. Despite no continuing Roman influence it is surprising to find that the Doomsday book records around 40 + vineyards in the south of the country, so somehow the growing of vines and the knowledge of how to had been retained. Or was it? Details of these vineyards is scarce as the Doomsday book is not exactly proficient with detail.

This period falls within the time of Norman Conquest and the expertise of the monks in wine-making and the monasteries that made wine is all well recorded. The Conquest also coincided with the warm period so wine-making was not a difficult task for the experts from France.

It would be nice to think that some vineyards had survived since Roman times until the second warm period, but it is highly unlikely that any grape growing was going on after the Romans left; what was left behind would have soon been lost without their expertise.

The second warm period also came in very quickly at a time of no industry, so man-made climate change can be ruled out of that one.

Records at Evesham, a monastic establishment in the twelfth century, show that five servants of the monastic staff were employed in the vineyard. In the thirteenth century the Archbishopric of Canterbury was supplied by just two vineyards at Northfleet and Teynham in Kent; Teynham was considered to be the parent of all fruit orchards in the land.

However, over time increasing trade with Europe and especially France and Spain made making our own wine became a lost cause and it diminished, finally disappearing after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536; besides, the ending of the warm period put paid to the practical side of grape production.

Not entirely though, there are always exceptions to the rule: Tudor times saw the first real interest in gardens and gardening after the Renaissance fed its cultural changes into all of Europe. Everyone wanted to be part of this movement and early horticulture was part of it.

It has to be said that early Tudor times saw little merit in the design or construction of gardens and gardeners were hardly recorded in logs of the time and had little status in the general employment of the time. Yet one entry during the reign of Henry V111 does show that a certain Lovell was retained to supply the King's table with ‘damsons, grapes, filberts, peaches, apples and other fruits, and flowers, roses and other sweet waters’; it is as far as can be ascertained the only mention of gardening, which consisted of food production as the main component, at that time. It wasn’t until late Tudor times that gardening took on any importance.

Again documents show that there were over 130 vineyards in the country when Henry came to the throne. Nearly all would have been in monastic hands and we all know what happened to them

The building of Hatfield House in 1607 is recorded in many detailed documents still existing. The enormous undertaking of the renovation by Robert Cecil the Earl of Salisbury of the old episcopal palace which the King had persuaded Cecil to exchange for his then property Theobalds, included large garden works and it included a vineyard. 30,000 French vines, varieties not recorded, were presented to the Cecils by the wife of the French minister, Mme de la Boderie.

We really have to jump to Jacobean times to start to see references to grapes in a broader sense. A well-known correspondent of the time John Chamberlain who partook in ‘week ending’ country house visiting, mentions visiting, not for the first time, Ware Park in Hertfordshire in 1619, where he speaks of the “ the best and the fairest melons and grapes”; this was after a long dry summer. And again at Lord Savage's house at Long Melford, Suffolk, where the mention of actual wine production is recorded: “ here you have your Bon Christian pear and Bergamot to perfection, your Muscadell grapes in full plenty, that there are some bottles of wine sent each year to the king.”

By the mid-1600s in the reign of Charles 11 gardening had become more mainstream and much improved and the influence of the French in growing choice fruits was permeating across the Channel. Sir Ralph Verny at Claydon in Buckinghamshire after a trip to France spoke of the abundance and quality of the fruit and vegetables, he himself had planted “good eating grapes of several sorts.”

Alexander Pope had a property on the Thames between Hampton Court and the London Road; there is a detailed drawing of the layout and it shows a vineyard within the grounds.

The mention of grape growing is scarce to say the least until market gardening to supply the increasing population of London gets mentioned in the 1700s. By the middle of that century London ‘kitchen gardeners’ or market gardeners today had become highly skilled in the art of fruit production. Fertile Thames side districts such as Westminster, Fulham and Chelsea are mentioned and it is assumed that this skill was being employed elsewhere. The use of hot beds, cloches and inter-row cropping was yielding produce all year round and it is amazing to think we were exporting to the Continent. The range of fruit for instance was astounding for the time: in cultivation during this period were forty-five types of pear, twenty-eight plum, twenty-three apple, fifteen of peaches!, fourteen of cherries, twelve different grapes, seven of apricots, five nectarines and three figs. Some private gardeners offered more: one Rev Hanbury of south Leicestershire offered for sale nearly forty types of vine among his other fruits, quite an astounding range.

This expertise was further advanced during the next century when a seven mile stretch along the north bank of the Thames was all market gardens. They further advanced the stretching of the seasons not by using glass but by building south-facing embankments to grow less hardy produce out of season; it is suggested that this technique was copied from the pictures and accounts of steeply sloping continental vineyards - there is no documented proof of this but by then knowledge of the methods would have spread widely.

Of course it is not easy to tell what and how much of the vine growing resulted in actual wine but one nursery does record the fact. It was called the Vineyard and was a walled area at Hammersmith; it was producing wine in the 1600s under the title ‘Burgundy wine’ though there is no evidence it continued the early seventeen hundreds. The site is now under the Olympia exhibition centre, and again there are no surviving documents of the type of grape being used.

Several of the new rich and landed gentry of the 18th and 19th centuries had vineyards as part of the new 'lanskip', all part of having the most and the best of plants design, and doable by the sheer wealth of the landowners. Most of these vineyards did not survive.

So we come to modern times. Not until after the Second World War was there an effort to research the type of grape needed to produce wine in this climate.

Ray Barrington Brock was a research chemist who set up a private research agenda to find the most suitable grapes to grow in England. His mistake was to assume that the hybrid crosses that the Germans had produced to combat colder climes were the answer; sadly it transpired they were not. Yes they grew, but they produced insipid wines in this land: who today goes looking for Seyval-Blanc, Muller Thurgau,  Huxelrebe, Ortega etc? The thinking was that as they were early ripening that would solve the climate issues, but what was forgotten, or ignored, was that these varieties were not really intended for anything other than the bulk white wine trade in bad vintages or for blending in poor harvest conditions; most of these varieties are in decline in their homeland and now here, but it set the ball rolling.

So from between the two world wars when apart from a few hobby vineyards there was not one in commercial activity, we have moved to a period of growth with 700 vineyards of all sizes recorded across the UK.

Friday, May 06, 2022

Those Mariupol refugees

We're getting coverage of people released from the steelworks at Mariupol, plus affecting accounts of what it's like to be in a shelter when the area is being shelled.

Naturally the narrative we're encouraged to adopt is the relentless wickedness of the Russians, and first-person witness accounts load emotion in so that we can be distracted from a cooler look at the bigger picture.

But if I were a civilian and knew that the enemy was focusing on a strategic objective like the steelworks, why would I choose to shelter there?

An alternative interpretation I can offer - perhaps we will know the truth one day - is that the besieged Ukrainian fighters have seized non-combatant hostages as a human shield; and that the siege has caused food supplies to run low so the fighters have released a number to extend their own holdout period.

I read from various sources that the military trapped in the steelworks have been told to resist to the end; that they are likely to include elements of the extremist Azov battalion, whom the Russians are determined to kill immediately, or otherwise put on trial and sentence to death, as fascists, so these will see no point in surrendering; and that there may also be some foreign military with them, perhaps American and/or British special forces.

Meanwhile our grandstanding Prime Minister has delivered a sub-Churchillian speech to the parliament of Ukraine and agreed a £300 million package of military 'support.' With similar subventions from other foreign sources this will of course prolong and intensify the losses and suffering on both of the sides that are actively involved in the conflict.

One cynical remark I have read says that America is determined to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

I fear that in the event of a long stalemate we may eventually see the use of battlefield nuclear weapons.