FRIDAY MUSIC: Mavis Staples, by JD

The general consensus is that Aretha Franklin was the 'queen of soul' She was very good but nowhere near as good as Mavis Staples, but that is just my opinion for what it is worth.

Mavis rose to fame as a member of her family's band The Staple Singers (she is the last surviving member of that band). During her time in the group, she recorded the hit singles "I'll Take You There" and "Let's Do It Again". In 1969, Staples released her self-titled debut solo album.

Staples was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, named one of the '100 Greatest Singers of all Time' by Rolling Stone in 2008; and enrolled in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2018, as a member of The Staple Singers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Staples

Nordstream, Russia and the US

Why were the Nordstream pipelines sabotaged? Cui bono?

Russia? Maybe, but I think not.

I’ve seen one theory kited that it was part of a grand plan by Russia to weaken Germany severely, thereby destabilising the EU and making its constituent territories vulnerable to conquest. On the other hand, the countries that have previously suffered Soviet rule would be extremely resistant to reliving a similar experience; I should imagine that Poland, for one, would fight almost to the last citizen.

Besides, if we are to believe Hillary Clinton, Putin is a right-wing nationalist, not a Communist. He has a stated interest in defending the rights of ethnic Russians who found themselves stranded in foreign countries following the collapse of the USSR, but even in the Baltic States they are a minority - about a quarter of the population in Estonia and Latvia, only 4.5% in Lithuania.

However, a 2014 survey of Russian citizens (possibly instigated by Putin) expressed concern about discrimination against Russians in these three states, which has worsened recently: there and in Poland, there have been reports of destruction of Russian monuments, and symbolic gestures of this kind can be a precursor to more direct persecution. Topping the list of victimised Russian expat communities was Ukraine.

One wonders whether the US would have waited eight years before military action to defend American citizens abroad who were under sustained attack with shot and shell. Even so, it seems obligatory for everyone in the West to say clearly and repeatedly that Putin’s intervention was foolish, criminal, inexcusable etc; instead of inevitable, however deplorable.

Is Putin a nasty piece of work? Would a sheep last long as the leader of a wolfpack? Even Ivan the Terrible seems to have started out fairly reasonable until the boyars poisoned his beloved wife. But if you think Putin is bad, consider who (or what junta) might replace him if he is overthrown. Let’s try to be realistic, not moralistic.

Russia has less than half the population of the United States and about double the land area. It is reasonable to suppose that she has her work cut out to hold on to what she has, especially facing a hugely populous China in the east, keen for lebensraum and envious of the wood, water and mineral resources of Mother Russia. Tibet has been abandoned by the British to China and its fate; Beijing is also eyeing disputed territory in northern India.

An alternative reading of Putin’s strategic aims as far as his Western borders are concerned, is that they are twofold:

1. Putin needs to be seen by his support base, his voters, to defend Russians, their culture and religion. A leader who fails to act on behalf of the 25 million ethnic Russians living in the 14 non-Russian republics is not much of a leader. Mixed in with that is an element of hurt national pride following the fall of the Soviet Union; if that seems trivial, think how the humiliation of Germany after WWI helped the rise of an emotionally stunted loudmouth who ruined Europe and killed tens of millions of Russians.
2. More practically, the bulk of Russia’s population lives in the western part and the trade routes along the Volga and Don are vital internally and also as a connection with foreign countries to Russia’s south and east. The Volga runs into the Caspian Sea which is bordered by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan as well as Russia itself.

The Volga is linked to the Don by the Volga-Don Canal, but 15 years ago, the President of Kazakhstan proposed a new Eurasia Canal, which if it is ever built will run directly from the Caspian to the Azov Sea, considerably shortening the waterway route and boosting trade.

The Don flows into the Azov and thence to the Black Sea, whose shores Russia shares with the EU’s Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Georgia, Moldova, Turkey - and Ukraine.

Ukraine’s maritime borders on the Azov and Black Seas are therefore strategically vital. If an enemy occupies these areas he threatens Russian naval and commercial shipping. There is a reason, I think, why the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ Battalion is so named.

All might have been well if Ukraine had remained non-aligned, or even agreed to regionalisation as per the Minsk proposals; but the application - recently repeated by Zelensky - to join the EU and NATO lit a match between Putin’s toes.

Surely it is reasonable to say that Putin has more to gain from peace and economic development than from the waste and bloodshed of war. Russia built Nordstream 1 to bypass potential interference from Ukraine (where major gas lines transit and two spurs cross in the Donbas, and which charges heavily for allowing their use), Belarus and possibly other third parties.

adapted from e.g. here

Germany has enjoyed economic advantage because the US and NATO have largely provided her military protection, but also from a long-term contract with Russia for cheaply priced gas. These are two factors in why Germany is (or was, until now) such an economic powerhouse and major sponsor of the EU. The second pipeline was to expand capacity. Germany and Russia as trade partners: win-win.

Germany has been persuaded to support Ukraine, but given the foregoing context, reluctantly one imagines. Now whether the story about broken Nordstream 1 pumps is or isn’t true, the sanctions against Russia prevent Siemens fixing them and at the same time certification of Nordstream 2 has been blocked. These are problems, but temporary ones, and could be used by both sides as levers in negotiations, with the prospect that an agreement might be reached and business as usual resume.

Not now, after the explosions; and not for a long time to come, if ever. The blow is devastating: US shipments of liquid natural gas - heavily priced and twice as CO2-producing as piped gas - can only satisfy some 10 per cent of Germany’s needs, and even then only when suitable port and processing facilities have been developed to receive them. The new Baltic pipe, owned by Poland and Norway, is said to be able to provide only another 10 per cent or so.

That’s assuming it all goes to Germany. The competition for gas energy supplies is going to become a sort of game of musical chairs, with the shortages inflating prices internationally. Even the UK could be facing cutouts.

This stands to ruin not only German industry but her agriculture - her imports of fertiliser are already dropping. Stand by for widespread food shortages and supply chain disruption all round.

So, cui bono; who benefits?

In 2019 the Rand Corporation stated baldly, ‘the United States is currently locked in a great-power competition with Russia.’ Turning Ukraine into a Vietnam soaks Russia’s resources and hampers her ambition to create a Eurasian EU using the trade routes along the Volga and Don and between the Caspian, Azov and Black Seas. And if Russia were to fall like Iraq, just imagine the feeding frenzy.

Will crippling Germany work as some allege is the intention, i.e. to cancel the possibility of Germany making a separate peace with Putin? These clever-clever plans have a habit of going wrong. In fact look at the trouble the CIA has sometimes caused for the US as well as its targets: the Gulf of Tonkin, the Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra, the Gary Powers/U2 ‘just one more overflight’ messup that halted the growing rapprochement with Russia under Khrushchev and drove Moscow into the arms of its hawks.

Is it really so important to be a dog in the manger, to stop other countries and blocs becoming more prosperous? If so, why did the West feed the Chinese dragon and immiserate its own peoples?

To reverse the quotation from Hamlet, ‘Though this be method, yet there is madness in't.’

Tory Party consternation

The new British Prime Minister and Chancellor faced an early setback on Monday, when a planned cut to the top rate of income tax (45%) was reversed.

Levied on incomes above £150,000 p.a., the cut would have cost ‘only’ £2 billion, but didn’t look good at a time when the general populace is hard hit by inflation - especially in energy bills - and the prospect of recession (or worse.)

This is the week of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham and PoliticsJOE interviewed some members for their reactions:

As it happens, I was pretty much next door then, attending some of the talks arranged by the Bruges Group at the Birmingham & Midland Institute.

The atmosphere at the BMI was interesting - I saw little groups of what looked like politicos on stair landings having discussions; not panic, but definitely an air of concern.

Similarly some of the speakers at the Bruges Group sessions - I am thinking in particular of respected economist Tim Congdon - had barely restrained passion in their voices. The 1 p.m. slot - ‘Getting Brexit Done and Overcoming the Economic Crisis’ - was notable for all the things that should be done as opposed to what is being done. There is a sense that we have been overtaken by events and at a particularly bad time, with an untested new leadership and (symbolically, but it matters) the recent loss of the Queen who so long represented stability and continuity for our country.

Having said that, Sir Bill Cash MP noted that the border-trade troublemaking by the EU in Northern Ireland is in the process of being addressed via the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, now going through the House of Lords, and said there would be trouble if the Lords try to block it. Tim Congdon reminded us of how much our membership of the EU had been costing us annually; now we have the liberty to rearrange our affairs without expensive and harmful interference from Brussels.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7886/CBP-7886.pdf

Just in time, seeing how the destruction of Nordstreams 1 and 2 seem set to plunge Germany into a slump and the EU itself into a possibly terminal turmoil.

As for the Chancellor’s U-turn, so far I haven’t heard a proposal to reverse the decision to remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, something that the financial sector welcomed as according to them it would ‘attract talent.’ This, I take it, would be the sort of ‘talent’ that triggered the Global Financial Crisis, that made a fortune shorting the pound last week and at the same time cost the taxpayer £65 billion in support to pension funds that had played with bond-related derivatives. My term for these vultures and incompetents is The National Lootery.

For me the question is, are we headed back to the 1970s, or the 1930s?

Worse than the present crisis is the one we face if the Blair-style revolutionary Sir Keir Starmer is able to exploit the public’s disillusion with the Tories sufficiently to win a General Election and complete the destruction of the country. Repentant former Trotskyite Peter Hitchens says:

Sir Keir’s unregretted former membership of a weird revolutionary sect (the Pabloites) is known but not understood. If he wins the next Election, we will all discover what a full-on Red-Green government is like. Good luck with that, as the taxes squeeze and the lights go out and both houses of Parliament become neutered chambers of unopposed Leftists, anxious to tax you and tell you what to think.

As for PM Liz Truss, she has previously tried to channel Margaret Thatcher in her photo ops, but Mrs Thatcher was highly intelligent, extremely hard-working and lucky. I’m pinning my hopes on Truss being very lucky; doesn’t look like it, so far.

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Back to Mono 3, by JD

…some more B&W pictures, this time with a few stanzas of poetry for each picture.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune,

It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and ’twas—the Grape!

And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel

And robb’d me of my Robe of Honour—well,

I often wonder what the Vintners buy

One half so precious as the Goods they sell.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;

Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke:

Care no more to clothe and eat;

To thee the reed is as the oak:

The sceptre, learning, physic, must

All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,

Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;

Fear not slander, censure rash;

Thou hast finished joy and moan;

All lovers young, all lovers must

Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!

Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

Ghost unlaid forbear thee!

Nothing ill come near thee!

Quiet consummation have;

And renownèd be thy grave!

Another stick-up from Microsoft !

From my Substack column - why not join for FREE updates?

________________________________________________

For a long time, Bill Gates’s outfit was fixing things that weren’t broke. Then it moved to breaking things that were fixed.

Now it’s doing it again, demanding money that I can’t easily afford since my energy bills have just more than doubled.

We’re all used to frequent compulsory ‘updates’ that interrupt your work, slowing the computer. A few years ago MS announced they ‘would no longer support’ the edition of Windows I was using and I had to go get a new laptop with the latest sparkly version of his software. At least the HP notebook was a pretty teal colour.

Waal, a few days ago I tried opening a Word document. ‘Updating Office’…ooh! … ‘Error.’ Seems it’s something to do with needing Windows 11 and please check your machine to see if it’s powerful enough to download. Oh and there was a reference to my existing Office licence being part of a bulk buy and its replacement is going to cost £80 a year, if I’ve got that right. Until then, no Word, no Excel - not even for access to documents I previously created.

But, haha, I can still open them, because I haven’t yet scrapped/donated the old computer; the one that starts up much faster, opens documents way faster and doesn’t shove black oblongs onto the screen with notifications that I didn’t ask for.

The corporations are making you purchase everything twice and three times. In music, vinyl to CD to a Cloud subscription system that may, who knows, suddenly terminate. In motoring, petrol to diesel then omigod not polluting diesel then madly expensive rare-earth electric. When they’re not ‘upgrading’ they’re keeping profits rising by making the product worse - remember the confectioners’ plan to produce Toblerone bars with fewer ‘teeth’ or replace the raisins in Cadbury’s Fuit and Nut with cheaper sultanas?

I think we reached ‘peak quality’ some while ago. When the market is saturated all that’s left is to heist the customers.

This is why I buy physical books (mostly) and DVDs - so cheap these days, hardly more than the postage. No batteries, no abrupt termination of service; can share, swap, resell, gift. Private property! The foundation of liberal democracy!

Bill, you’ve got all the money a man could ever want; why the hell didn’t you just go fishing, have a beer with your buddies, spend more time with your wife and children?

It’s a madness, this power thing. Include me out. Leave my stuff alone.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Shigeru Umebayashi, by JD

Shigeru Umebayashi (born February 19, 1951 in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka) is a Japanese composer. He is best known for his film scores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Umebayashi

UKROMANIA: The Texican War of 2072

From my Substack column - why not join for FREE updates?

This is set in a parallel universe; you can draw some parallels…

Seen in retrospect, the war was inevitable.

It was a long time coming. Back in 2041 the United States had fallen apart under the pressure of globalism, the FIRE economy and the over-concentration of wealth while public squalor grew. Out of the flames arose a new American Federation comprising most of the States and with a fresh Constitution, the nation’s third - as Jefferson had rightly said, the dead have no power over the living.

Most of the States, but not all. The ancient Mexican possessions had developed a different identity as their populations swelled with migration from the south. A group of territories including Colorado, New Mexico, Baja California and Arizona declared independence. Recognising that they were weak individually, over a period of years each joined the Latin American Union (LAU), flying its flag, a circlet of stars on a red ground, alongside its own.

Joining the LAU also meant becoming members of the Central American Treaty Organisation (CATO), sponsored by China and ostensibly formed to resist imperialist aggression. The creeping acquisition of non-aligned States had gone on despite Mexico’s assurances to the contrary, and made the government in Washington nervous. Accordingly, CATO had wisely desisted, at that stage, from stationing nuclear missiles in these areas.

One former US State with old Mexican links had remained neutral: Texas.

Potentially, Texas had vital military and economic significance. Its northern border was only some 500 miles from the AF’s Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. In the south, its western edge was a mere 100 miles or so from Monterrey and its eastern shores were in a position to control naval activity and maritime trade in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico.

Texas had a challenge to maintain order, what with the notorious corruption of its post-independence political establishment, the power of the oligarchs and the tensions beween its Hispanic and Anglophone communities. The government in Austin tried to maintain a balance between its two great neighbours, despite financial blandishments from both sides, but it was only a matter of time before somebody shook its tree.

For the hawks of Mexico City, the prize was too great to resist; it was the key to unravelling the American Federation. They coveted the immense natural and energy resources of the AF. Also, they disliked President Jackson, now in his sixteenth year of office. The President had disciplined the super-bandits that had been eating the country alive and he was popular with his voters, despite being portrayed abroad as an evil tyrant. He was proving himself a tough old bird.

It was time to pluck his feathers.

Mexico’s foreign intelligence agency, the CNI, decided on a policy of ‘overextending and unbalancing’ the Jackson regime, initially without direct military confrontation.

Canada was to be useful, having fault lines that could be exploited. There was the simmering separatism of Quebec, so mischievously played by France’s President de Gaulle on his visit in 1967; the enduring links between the Francophone populace there and their relations in New England; the activism of First Nation peoples of both countries, whose ancestral lands in many cases straddled the border; even some Georgist factions, descendants of the royalists who had been forced to flee revolutionary America three centuries before.

Accordingly, various Canadian provinces broke out in conflicts that spilled over into the northern AF; distractions that were difficult and expensive for the latter to settle, that soured relations with Ottawa and further served to confirm Jackson’s international profile as a warlike imperialist and oppressor of dissidents.

The hour seemed right to ignite the Lone Star State. In 2063 the President of Texas, urged by the LAU/CATO to submit to them, had opted instead for a closer-but-fraternal relationship with the American Federation, and a seemingly spontaneous wave of demonstrations broke out in Austin; perhaps not unconnected with Mexico’s CNI, whose Head had been spotted in the city at the time - there were even bizarre reports of snipers who shot not at one side but both.

The revolution in the following year replaced the President with another who not only agreed to join the LAU but set out to make Spanish the official language across the whole country (five years later in 2069, the Texan government passed a law to make Spanish compulsory in schools, universities and many other areas, including official departments, electoral procedures and political campaigning.)

This clove the nation in two. The predominantly English-speaking areas in the north understood that they would be victimised; the AF’s President Jackson annexed a portion of the territory and helped the citizens declare independence in a referendum. The new Texan President immediately sent large forces to besiege the Anglophone separatists and the shelling of Dallas began. A trilateral commission sought to resolve the conflict through regionalisation, but the ‘Austin agreements’ were never fully implemented.

After five years in office the President of Texas was himself deposed, partly because he was seen as grossly corrupt; his successor, President Zapata, came in on a platform of cleansing corruption and seeking to make peace, things he had promoted in his previous career as a television satirist. He soon became a cat’s-paw of the oligarchs who still effectively ran the Lone Star State; the oppression of the Anglophones continued and intensified. The Texan Army not only fought the northern militias but in towns where they gained a foothold they set up snipers to shoot civilians going about their daily business.

Jackson had started to champion the interests of former US citizens who now found themselves domiciled in post-collapse satellite states, often experiencing discrimination as English-speaking minority communities. A survey conducted in the AF - it’s not clear whose initiative this was - put Texas as the top place where Americans felt their former compatriots to be persecuted. The narrative suggested that part of Jackson’s role was to take action on behalf of ex-Americans.

After eight years of unarguably severe provocation, Jackson did what most of his voters thought right and much of the rest of the Western world saw as inexcusably wrong: he invaded Texas to combat the Lone Star forces.

This was a godsend for the LAU, who continued to stand off but provided enormous help in the form of money and arms, military training and advice. Jackson had fallen into their trap: Texas would be his Vietnam.

The personable and vigorous Zapata used his PR and entertainment skills to promote the image of the Austin government as victims. The Latin internet burst out in Lone Star flags, pro-American sites were censored, Zapata was invited to address foreign national assemblies and even open a session of the Mexican Stock Exchange to signal his willingness for Texas to be opened up to LAU capital.

Another attempt to make peace, in April 2072, was stymied when the British Prime Minister flew into Austin to tell Zapata that it would not be accepted by… those that mattered, even though continuation of the conflict was seriously hurting vital trade between the AF and northern members of the LAU.

The pro-Texan propaganda became so one-sided that even a distinguished journalist merely asking for open discussion felt forced to salt his article with condemnations of Jackson: ‘a sinister tyrant’, ‘regards dissent as treason’, ‘the invasion (w)as barbaric, lawless and stupid’, Jackson’s ‘idiotic crime, which has done limitless damage to the peace and security of that country for decades to come and perhaps forever.’

The rest of this old and tragic tale, you know.