Chris James's Blog, page 13

That was the decade that was

Spoiler alert: This is a very wordy post.  A decade ends tonight and I would like to voice some opinions on it and forecast what the 2020s will bring.  There are not many pictures, but what pictures there are, are I think quite nice.

[image error]Somewhere in the endless expanse of the continuum there is an alternate reality where the UK referendum on EU membership in June 2016 resulted in a 52/48 vote to remain.  Today, a newly elected centrist government is about to enact a “hard” remain, where the UK will join the Schengen free-movement area and adopt the Euro.  The losing leave voters bleat that the vote to remain only meant keeping the status quo; they complain that the remain campaign broke electoral law and nothing’s been done.  Perhaps there is also a polarising, high-profile court case where a Polish or possibly Romanian shopkeeper is being prosecuted for murder when he killed a young English nationalist who had smashed his shop window and set the premises afire.  But in our reality, it is the reverse: campaign criminality by Vote Leave has been disregarded; their lies and half-truths wither from public discourse like a boy-band that’s abruptly dropped out of fashion.

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The trouble with identifying recent historical turning points is temporal proximity.  A glance at the 2010s suggests two pivotal events, both of which took place in 2016.  However, future historians will lump the UK’s vote to leave its closest trading partners together with the humiliation at Suez 53 years earlier: proof that the British are the only people on Earth who can’t accept that their empire is dead.

Regarding the US, it is tempting to conclude that the country has reached its Caligula moment.  But this does not take account of the underlying forces driving this self-destructive change.  From the end of WWII until the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989, the capitalist system had to be seen to work, to be broadly fair.  This was because there was another, competing system in the world, a choice, and Western governments could ill afford a majority of their poorer citizens to feel the Soviet system might be fairer and thus preferable.  However, the last 30 years have seen a vast sea change among the ultra-wealthy.  Since 1989, there has been no choice except unfettered capitalism.  In the West, the richest 0.01% have watched Russians steal and rape their motherland with impunity, and not unreasonably, they concluded that it would be rather nice if they could behave like that in their own countries.  Of course, a semblance of democracy has had to remain, but that semblance is beginning to fade.

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So, here goes: next month will see Trump “beat the rap” as my American friends probably don’t say anymore.  In another delicious irony, so-called “Republicans” will vote to acquit Trump, thus handing him unfettered power to abuse his office.  With copious assistance from Moscow, Trump will be re-elected next November and use that to claim he should be appointed president for life, and the presidency should become, finally, hereditary.  Don’t laugh: look at the Kennedys, the Bushes and even the Clintons—Trump and his supporters will merely argue that a hereditary presidency has been a long-time coming and the subsequent “stability” will be fantastic for the economy.  The script for this scenario is easily written by any hack.

Brexit will happen and will cause a great deal of damage to the poorer regions of the UK.  But the Conservative Party will have five long, fruitful years to gerrymander existing Parliamentary seat boundaries; the working-class people who helped land Johnson with such a healthy Commons majority on 12 December can now look forward to at least ten years of regret.  (As an aside, it is ironic that those qualities the UK’s middle classes abhor in the working class—fecklessness, idleness, drunkenness and dishonesty—are no barrier to giving a member of the aristocracy who displays exactly the same qualities the highest office in the land.)

Again, and as with the US, it debatable whether the UK will still be a functioning democracy by then.  Given its hopelessly outdated first-past-the-post system, the UK has a far shorter distance to fall before what weak and malleable checks and balances there are on the incumbent government can be side-lined or neutered altogether.  As with Trump, by 2024 Johnson and the Conservative Party will be overwhelming favourites to win again, aided by all of the assistance Russia can offer.

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The most powerful person in the world today in Vladimir Putin, and he will remain so for the foreseeable future.  Over the last 20 years, he has built up a wholly unassailable position as leader of one of the most powerful yet corrupt countries on Earth.  Any Russian who crosses him usually loses their life without much fuss.  Indeed, Putin can even send his assassins to commit murder in the UK without any material comeback whatsoever (not so tough on crime when Putin’s doing the murdering in your own backyard, are you, Tories?).

To me, the most shocking fact as the 2020s begin is that no one in any position of political power in the UK or the US appears to know anything about the history of Russia in general or Putin in particular.  Perhaps, as I’ve noted above, it is a question of the ultra-wealthy banding together irrespective of country loyalty to stymie and smother even the remotest possibility that they should be obliged to forego even a tiny fraction of their enormous wealth.  The ultra-wealthy have become a pseudo-nationality who help each other to protect their fortunes.

On the other hand, perhaps the young KGB agent who watched in dismay as his beloved Soviet Union fell apart because of those ungrateful Poles, in whom bitterness welled as Western conglomerates tried to move in on Russia like victorious carpetbaggers, perhaps he still festers inside that pig-eyed, ageing murderer in the Kremlin?  He has known since 1989 he could never hope to defeat NATO militarily and make the West pay for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but there have been other avenues, different bets, some of which have paid off handsomely.  Next month, Putin’s asset in the White House will be exonerated of the most outrageous high crimes and misdemeanours of any president in US history.  Trump will then be unassailable.  Putin will have orchestrated this.  And he will have done it without his military firing a single shot.

In the UK, 2020 will see Brexit happen and the EU’s and Britain’s economies suffer grievously.  Again, Putin’s bots in Moscow and his vast array of useful idiots inside the UK will smother and obfuscate, additionally supported by UK press owners who see eye-to-eye with Putin when it comes to paying higher taxes (and if you follow that second link, scroll down to figures 2.1 and 2.2).

Ultimately, as the 2020s begin Putin’s two aims remain unfulfilled: political destabilisation of the EU and subsequent disbanding of NATO.  Putin very much wants these organisations finished because they represent a viable countenance to Russia’s growing economic and military power.  Will he achieve them?  What unforeseeable advances and setbacks will happen over the next decade?  It is worth noting that just a few days ago, Putin unveiled the newest Russian missile capable of delivering a two-megaton nuclear warhead anywhere in the world at an impressive Mach 27.  That’s right: at 27 times the speed of sound.  NATO has nothing to match it.  For the first time in history, Russia has the most advanced military capability in the world.  What do the Republicans have to say about that?  Trump?  The Tory Party?  Johnson?  The silence is deafening because the US president and the UK prime minister are muffled by being in Putin’s pocket.

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Worst of all is that the one vital issue facing the world today gets repeatedly pushed down the agenda in the face of such political posturing: climate change.  Recently I had a difficult conversation with my eldest daughter.  She wanted to know how anyone could refute the fact of climate change in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence.  I found myself obliged to tell her what happened decades ago, when I was her age, and when doctors first discovered a link between cigarettes and increased occurrences of various cancers and heart disease, how the tobacco companies found their own “doctors” who claimed smoking was perfectly healthy, how the tobacco companies produced allegedly impartial studies saying that smoking caused no ill effects.  Even as late as the 1980s, people still insisted it was stress that killed people young, only it was “easier” to blame it on cigarettes.  And now exactly the same thing is happening not with people’s health, but with the planet’s.  Some things never change.

Thanks for reading.  Happy New Decade.

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading

I’m not quite sure how yet another year has almost run away and escaped into the past.  This one has been quite a year, although rumination can be left for a more appropriate and wordy post next week at the year’s end.  For this Christmas evening, here are a few photos from our traditional Wigila.  I offer my gratitude if you spent time reading my writing this year, and my wishes that wherever you are, I hope you and those you care for are as well as can be.  Merry Christmas.

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1 November in Poland (2019)

As regular readers of this blog know, All Saints Day is a very special yet sombre day in Poland, a day when Poles flock to their cemeteries to remember the dead.  Every year I am rendered speechless by how beautifully the graves are adorned with flowers and candles, and this year is no exception.  All of the images below were taken this evening at the Remembertow Cemetery in Warsaw.

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More autumnal shots and the newest member of the family arrives

Yesterday the newest member of the family arrived, and he doesn’t even have a name yet.  As with all of our pets, he’s a rescue animal that, judging by his reaction to men he doesn’t know, has had some trouble in the past.  I’ve started working on him with lots of hand-fed reclaimed meat and strokes and cuddles, and he’s already calming down.  Take a look at these photos of him and if a name jumps out, please let me know in the comments below:

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Elsewhere, this morning saw a glorious sunrise with a deep blue sky.  I grabbed my camera and tried to capture what I could, including a woodpecker that I caught in mid-batter and which ignored me as I snapped away.  As last year, the weather is far too mild for October in Poland, but the colours are again outstanding.

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Autumn returns

Every summer I tell myself that this year I shan’t bother taking any photos of autumn because I already have so many nice photos from past years.  Then the season arrives and I am gripped by a childlike fascination of why some leaves go: “Oh my god!  The temperature has dropped below 25 degrees and I can’t cope!  I’m dying!  Arrgggg!” while other leaves look on in sympathy and reply: “Yo, dude, what’s up?  It’s, like, not even cold.”

So, the only novelty I can offer with these shots is their modernity, in that I took them all today in my local forest in a south-eastern suburb of Warsaw, Poland.

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Documenting the New Motorway, #8: Panic at the Bridge?

For the first time since I began posting occasional updates about the new A2/S2 motorway extension two years ago (and click here to see how the bridge looked then), today Mrs James and I were challenged and warned off going too close to the construction site.  This was a shock, to say the least.  Yes, notices are posted along the border, but, hey, this is Poland.  The last time we visited, six months ago, as usual no one was working on a Sunday and there were no security guards to warn us off.  Indeed, last March I clambered up scaffolding to get an ace shot of the supports for the new bridge.

Today, however, not only was the place very well furnished with uniformed security guards, but patrol vehicles cruised the perimeter warning people to stay away.  In addition and for the first time I’ve seen, construction workers were beavering away on a Sunday.  Now, perhaps there have been some thefts recently.  Another theory might be that as this bridge and accompanying stretch of motorway are scheduled to open in just 11 months’ time, next August, someone at the construction company might have read the penalty clause in the contract for failing to meet the completion deadline, muttered “Oh shit,” and reacted accordingly.

In any event, it made getting some decent shots today a little tricky, and these were the best I could do:

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Something tells me it’s all happening at the zoo

Youngest Daughter and I have a tradition going back a few years now: visiting Warsaw zoo together, just the two of us.  I’m not sure it’s quite as exciting as it used to be for her because she’s growing up quickly.  However, I’ll keep taking her for as long as she wants to go, mainly because it gives me some invaluable quality time with her.

So here are a few shots today of some of the residents/inmates (delete as applicable) at Warsaw zoo.  At the end is a video of the Simon & Garfunkel song from which the title of this post comes.

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Three years of gratitude

I published Repulse, Europe at War 2062-2064 three years ago today.  If you’ve read it, thank you.  If you’ve read it and left a review, a very big thank you indeed.  If you’ve read it but not left a review, then please go and bloody leave a bloody review, for Pete’s sake! thanks anyway for your time.

This was only the beginning.  There is still much more to come.

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A Morocco moment

Here are a few shots from the first vacation Mrs James and I have had without kids since 1996.  We stayed in Agadir on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, and from the enthusiastic-amateur-photographer’s point of view, there were some terrific point-and-click scenes on offer.  We also took a day trip to Marrakesh (which confirmed that one day is nowhere enough for that remarkable city), and trekked into the Atlas Mountains.  And by “trekked”, I mean in the comfort of an air-conditioned 4×4 *cough*

First, Agadir, which has an impossibly long and sandy beach.  The first shot below is from up on the casbah; there’s a Ferris wheel that works in the evenings; and the Arabic words written on the hillside read: “God”, “King” and “Country”.

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Next, a few shots from Marrakesh.  I’m not an especially seasoned traveller, but I can’t imagine another city like it.  These images don’t really convey the heat or the vitality.

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Finally, we went into “Paradise Valley” in the Atlas Mountains for a day.  Our guide was at pains to point out that those houses are not roofless, but merely have a terrace that looks like an unfinished floor.  Apparently, no roof means the house is not finished, so fewer taxes have to be paid.

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Peak summer

There must come a moment in each season, unknown and probably unknowable, when that season reaches its apogee, the maximum extent of its effects, and thereafter it begins to wane; imperceptibly at first with barely the faintest suggestions of its impending demise, certain only that the majority of its gifts have been bestowed.  I think that happened with summer this week, but then it has been a disagreeably tough week, so I could be wrong.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  Anyway, here is a selection of the activity in my garden today.  And yes, a hen will jump that high if you offer her unripe grapes