Unredacted Steele

A curious book, in which Christopher Steel reveals much of his life story. From school to post-Trump legal battles. I was expecting more new stuff, but I think I'd desk researched much of it previously, so the surprises were limited. 

Steel comes across as earnest, thorough and meticulous, and with huge depth, although his detractors vehemently consider otherwise. A major premise is whether Russia (Putin) interfered in the last US election (probably) and what The Kremlin is doing in the current one. Steele posits that Putin wants Trumpi to win and that the Kremlin have so much Kompromat on Trump that they can easily manipulate him.

He adds, later, that the Kremlin is cultivating anyone they expect to have significant influence, so even if the dice were to fall remarkably in the other direction that things would be covered. I'm guessing that is an increasingly unlikely outcome.

My sense is that Trump has probably done so many terrible things, that most people are inured and desensitised to whatever is discovered next. By hand-selecting most of the High Court Judges, Trump can also leap free from just about anything. I read Company Intelligence Report 2016's rebuttals by Trump's Council and laughed out loud at the very explicit denials.

Then we see that the FBI seem to have played Steele through the more recent events. Someone called Amy was initially a real person and then turned into an anodyne bot respondent to string Steele along in the later stages. He doesn't say that in his book, although I started to get a sense of a Gogol storyline playing out.

It seems as if many people in power don't want his perceptions to surface, presumably because they bring down many houses of cards. Easier to 'move along, please' instead.

So it's an interesting quandary. I suspect Steele, drawing from many detailed sources, is fundamentally correct in his analysis, although he is subjected to an absolute torrent of challenge, from Trump, Trump's supporters, the far right as well as (contrariwise) many people of power in Russia. It means he has somewhat lost his voice in this heady mix of well-known names.

And Steele suggests the shift in emphasis of the Kremlin influence model, with Sergei Kiriyenko in charge of foreign election interference. Not simply US elections, but any where there is a significant angle. 

Trump and others continue to use 'Lawfare' to try to block any attempts to be corralled and we see certain august bodies watching it all from the sidelines. These bodies are not even daring to probe senior resettled Russian officials such as Oleg Smolenkov and others who know what's on the various undisclosed tapes.

We can look at this as the early stages of strategic chaos and as Steele describes it, a new world disorder.

a few more days

I've mainly tuned this one out. It was shouty enough when I was in New York recently. Christopher Steele's book considers the Trump win a catastrophe.  A "new world disorder".

Strategic chaos.

Wobble the market

 

Goofing around, I thought I'd try this little micro-economic exercise in the FT. Interesting...I got it close to the balanced numbers but had to break a couple of Fiscal Rules that the government recently declared. The effect was to make the markets wobble, but I think it says more about the vacuousness of the markets holding the economy in their thrall.

It takes about 5 minutes to set up the parameters for a round. Fascinating.

Chunks of German with the fabulous Anja

I'm pretty sure I blogged once before about Anja, who is teaching me German. The amount of equivalent English words makes German a natural for me.  Some sample Denglisch : Apfel, Baby, Ball, Blau, Boss, Buch, Bus, Computer, Eis, E-Mail, Ellbogen, Finger, Glas, Gras, Hobby, Hotel, Information, Job, Jewel, Knie, Kuh, Milch, Meeting, Mutter, Name, Neu, Park, Radio, Reporter, Radio, Ring, Schule, Sweatshirt, Taxi, Tourist, T-Shirt, Wasser, Zoo. Other words are available.

I'm in a regular German Stammtisch every week and we chat together and discuss German grammar und so weiter. They also make fun of my use of (for example) einchecken - for check-in. I guess you could say registrieren.

I'm always the one who protests at having to learn all of those tables of 'der, die, das' and so on and say it interferes with speaking to one another. I say I prefer a 'Lego block' approach to a language where I can assemble pre-formed phrases to make longer sentences. 

Well, it turns out that Anja agrees and she calls it 'chunking' - from the British Council origination of the word - although I can't help thinking about tinned carrot jokes. 

Anyway, yesterday was a case in point where I was on a one-hour 'party' call with Anja and then jumped off the call onto Zoom with my Stammtisch buddies. For personal reasons I've missed several of the Stammtisch calls and they were surprised to see me return. However, I was immediately asked if it was alright to be tested on definite and indefinite articles and found myself in a world of nominative musculine singulars and so on. 

Now I'm more of a bluffer, so I'll admit my word-endings can sometimes come out wrong, but on the whole I go for what I think 'sounds right'. Anja has the precision to know the grammatical underpinnings and will correct mistakes, but I think we both agree it's better to have a go at the sentence rather than to remain quiet. Here's an introduction...

a Rorschach of my crash - Rachel K.

Rachel's on the left with Emily, in a Photo Booth in Woolworth's. It's not now. 

I'm mad keen on Kushner's The Flamethrowers and also just read (I'll do it again) Creation Lake. I'll review it sometime, - spoiler- five stars. 

Because of Creation Lake, I also read The Hard Crowd, which comprises essays from Kushner on many topics from her life. Starting with the Los Cabos bike race, the Baja 1000, where she's injured as she crashes a 130-mph bike when someone pulls out in front doing 30 mph. The essay evokes the grit, oil and attitudes of the riders. Something of Reno's wipe-out on the salt flats in Bonneville. With a 20-year old's perspective, so not all-knowing.

The inspirations for The Flamethrowers crop up a couple of other times in the collection, notably when she describes some pictures, which I could recognise as the novel's cover art. Weirdly I checked the current cover and found it was something different. 

Kushner is one of the coolest friends you'll meet. From Eugene, Oregon, to San Francisco, working in nightclubs, with the biggest rock bands, mentored by Don DeLillo, time in Cuba, also Jerusalem,  New York, France and Italy. And an interior worldview packed with intelligent and provoking outlooks. 

Always on and challenging. High stakes.

The internet

It's becoming worse. 

More of the systems that I use are exhibiting faults. 

I listed the undeclared change to Microsoft email yesterday. They'll, no doubt, say it was fully documented. But I didn't get or read the memo. It's a more pervasive problem. 

In the days of programmers and analysts, there was a testing protocol for new additions which ran something like - code test, module test, integration test, system test, operational proving, live. Modern systems are rebuilt daily with all the new candidates slapped in. So the effect can be somewhat wobbly.

Breughel was prescient with his tower of Babel painting illustrating Genesis 11: 1-9. One of the earliest puns, too: “Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.” - A play on Babel and Balal "to confuse". Whatever it is , there are daily bugs and mis-fires all over the system now. 

My typical morning as far as 10:05...

1. I see a friend pop up on Facebook - I'm alerted via email. I try to read his message, but it suddenly wants a recovery code. I request one, but nothing appears. I don't respond to my friend. 
2. I want to check something in my medical records, yet find that all the older ones have mysteriously vanished from the system. 
3. One email system stops working mid-September, yet doesn't issue an alert. 
4. My electricity supplier has recently installed two new smart meters but can't pick up their data in the internet control panel. I have a new home display but find it inscrutable.
5. I try to bookmark an article but the subscription service it is from tells me incorrectly I have used my free download limit. Yes, I'm signed on. 
6. A service that I use swamps me with marketing messages becasue it hasn't separated out tranactional responses.

I could go on but I think that's enough.  

I know, I should focus on all the other systems that do work properly.

As useful as...

So now Microsoft have sheepishly stopped the routine access of Outlook from MacOS. I had to search the internet to find a notification. I've had to reset everything using Exchange now. 

"The safety and security of your information is top priority for Microsoft. To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods. If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th." 

 Lucky I don't depend on Microsplot mail for anything. Modern authentication methods.

Cyber

Tesla have previewed the cybercab. One has to separate the technology from the personality histrionics of its chief advocate. I'm pretty sure it will work though. My own Level 2 car with its Full Self Driving is pretty cool. It does all the stuff that my old Merc did - intelligent cruise control, speed limit adherence, self parking, and so on. 

I realise it's more about my confidence to let it get on with the driving now. I'm still nervous when it's reverse parking in a close space, say to back up to a charger point. Or that it can do a kind of controlled overtaking where it puts a blue box onto the diagram of where it intends to position during the manouevre. 

It begs a question though. The cybercab is doing all of this in a form-factor hardly any different from a regular car. But then something like Waymo takes a Jaguar and adds enough gadgetry to make it a candidate for a robo-cop movie.

I guess I'd be more cautious around a tricked out iPace.

Isle and Empires, Stephan Roman

I've been reading a book about the Romanovs and their visit to the Isle of Wight in the early 1900s. It was recommended to me by the owner of the house where we were staying and then, when in Cowes, I enquired about it (not remembering the title nor the author) in a friendly bookshop. 

True serendipity when the bookshop owner knew the book and mentioned that he had published it. Sadly it was out of print. 

Then the magic words... "I think I may have a copy around the back, let me have a look." 

Minutes later he returned saying he'd found the very last copy. A signed copy no less and Stephan Roman is related to the Romanovs. He's updated the book to include reflections upon Putin and Ukraine in a 2022 preface. 

 It's a fascinating read too, though not for the faint-hearted because it deals with the period leading to the Russian revolution when Bolsheviks gained control and the ex-Tsar was moved to the Russian town of Ekaterinburg. 

 The prisoners were the Imperial family: the former Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and their children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey. Thirteen days later, at Commandant Yakov Yurovsky’s command, and on direct orders from Moscow, the family was gunned down in a blaze of bullets in a basement room.

In the main setting for the book, centred around the Isle of Wight we see the imperial yacht Standart escorted by Russian cruisers and destroyers, bringing Tsar Nicholas, the Tsarina Alexandra and their children to the island and a spectacular welcome by King Edward VII with a review of the Royal Navy in its then awe-inspiring might. 

 While cannon thundered, bands played and seamen cheered, the British royal yacht Victoria and Albert steamed slowly between the lines of warships. 

The two monarchs (remarkably similar in appearance) stood on the yacht’s deck saluting in response, with Nicholas in the uniform of a British admiral. 

 It was the week of the Cowes Regatta, the climax of British smart society’s summer season, and Spithead was crowded with launches and pleasure steamers full of spectators. In the evening, King Edward entertained the Russian party to dinner on the Victoria and Albert and there was presently a dinner party on the spacious Standart. 

Tsar Nicholas had meetings with Prime Minister Asquith and Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. The visit lasted only until August 6th. The two royal families were closely related and on friendly terms. 

Nicholas was a nephew of King Edward’s consort, Queen Alexandra, and the tsarina was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. King Edward had been one of her godfathers and treated her very affectionately and she had fond memories of England. 

The king’s grandsons, David and Bertie, the future Edward VIII and George VI, were cadets at the naval college at Osborne, but Bertie developed whooping cough and was not allowed near his Russian relatives for fear of infecting the tsar’s haemophiliac son Alexei. 

David showed his ‘Uncle Nicky’ round the college, astonished at the elaborate police precautions that surrounded his every move. No one could foresee the dark days ahead, when George V refused to allow Tsar Nicholas and his family to escape to England from the Bolshevik Revolution such that the last Romanovs were brutally murdered in Ekaterinburg in 1918.

Mer means Meh.

I've driven about 25,000 miles in my electric car now. It charges swiftly and has lost 1% of its original capacity in around 2 years. 

That's from 336 to 328 miles for a full charge. I cannot say enough about how good the Superchargers are, compared with many of the other offerings. Fast, simple, reliable, hassle-free.

Last week I was in Ventnor, and tried the central car park EV chargers. The first two were out of order (Mer). The next two said they worked but would not accept credit cards. 

I tried the Mer App instead; it didn't work about half a dozen times (Definition of insanity springs to mind). I went to another street recharger (also Mer). Guess what ? it was a different style of unit but also didn't work. I note that these have all been installed with Isle of Wight funding, so there a reasonable follow-up for someone. 

 Meh. 

 I did finally recharge in a friendly hotel, enough for my 130 mile homeward journey, part of the way by ship.

Sublime - Will Young

Like we had a concert in our lounge. 

Will Young and Christian on keys plays and Will sings many tracks perfectly as acoustic renditions from both Will's back catalogue and newest album. Sublime. Get tickets and go.

Henged

Seeing as I was right by Stonehenge a few days ago, I thought I'd pay it another visit. I'd been staying in the nearby hotel which I also used as a car booster charge.

My recollection was of a long walk from the visitor centre to the actual stones. I wasn't disappointed and the route was across some fields with n'er a sighting of the stones until very close. I guess it was about 2 miles. 

You can just make out the stones in the middle of this picture, some distance away.

As always, there was a large group of people walking around the monoliths, but I was surprised to see that the photo guides to the stones have been modernised and offer suggestions about the best selfies and quirky pictures to take. I found this slightly disappointing, considering we were marvelling at 4,000 years of history. 

I also felt that I was kept further back from the stones now. I seem to remember almost being able to drift through them, but I suppose it's my unreliable memory playing tricks. This time I was a long way from the stones, aided by my iPhone's zoom lens.

The most uncomfortable part of the experience was the lengthy delay to buy a ticket and get into the visitor centre. It took ages; maybe it is done to manage the flow of people to the monuments? Once past the queue, I was able to find the museum and walk through it to get some sense of the history of all the henges.

Then the walk to the actual stones. There's a full account of them here: http://www.stonesofstonehenge.org.uk/search/label/Slaughter%20Stone

and it includes putting the record straight on a few, such as the 'Slaughter Stone'.

And here's a look back after the experience. Quite a line of people. Soon they will all be in the rather packed gifte shoppe.

And maybe,  back in the day, there were even more people attending the special ceremonies at Stonehenge? Was it for funerals? Spiritual matters? astronomical observance, or perhaps to recreate stories from the past, handed down as word of mouth and as re-enactments.

 

Creation Lake - before*

{Rachel Kuschner on a Ford Galaxy}

Some may recollect I started a journey around the UK in April, visiting friends before heading for the island of Rhodes and then catching an ocean-going liner to New York.

At the start I was recommended a bookshop in Frome, where I was unsuccessful in obtaining Slouching Towards Bethlehem, although I did get to hear the story of Joan Didion's smokin' banana yellow Corvette.

{Joan Didion smoking on her yellow Corvette Stingray}

The Frome evidence is all here, right back from that original post. A more recent signifier is the life passage of the Atlantic Ocean passing by every day. A voyage of clarity as well as a new supply of Jelly Beans of Thought.

And now it's September and I think I should declare at least a Waypoint in my trip. My white car has been depranged too, but I won't be sitting on Alice's bonnet.

I'm waiting to read Creation Lake, by Rachel Kuschner, who first ensnared me with The Flamethrowers, many years ago. All motorbikes and urgent Italian rebels.

Her Hard Crowd car pose is no accident- a full hat tip to Joan Didion. My experience of Kushner’s writing is fluidity and clarity, possessing a rhythm as determined as any ocean. There's vibrancy, strangeness, parallels, poise and wariness. She writes like she has reached the next level, or two, probably at 140 mph.

She is a champion of other, often parallel realities. I'm anticipating Creation Lake to promise similar intrigues.

Espionage, seduction, and the allure of the past as a ruthless American female agent for hire is sent to the French countryside to mix things up with French environmentalists. Blend in some humour, sparkle and philosophy and what's not to like?*

*I'm guessing at the moment but have high hopes. It's out next week.

A Chorus Line

 

We decided to see A Chorus Line once more. It's a simple premise as the potential cast for a chorus line are assembled and divulge their back-stories, hopes and aspirations. 

No need to worry about attendance. This is still a hot ticket!

And I still remember all of the lyrics for most of the tunes. Disorienting to see it in London  because it is set in New York a few days after we returned from Broadway.

One Singular Sensation.

Points, prizes, and elephants

 I used to base myself around Times Square when in New York. 

Then I branched out to a few other venues.  The Waldorf Astoria, when I still had points make prizes, and I could get invited out of the checkin line to the special checkin with champagne service. Sadly the Waldorf looks like a building site at present - undergoing renovations, which include reducing the number of rooms. Sounds expensive.

Then there's the Pierre, up by Central Park. Another old-school ritzy type of venue, where I was fortunate enough to be placed in the spacious Presidential Suite - with its own manned elevator. I was fronting a group of high rollers on that occasion, but came out as the top banana. I still remember hiring a ballroom and the $38,000 bill (not just for me, I hasten to add). I asked for the bill to be printed and received about a foot of fan-folded paper (which had certain blackmail potential).

Subsequent visits have been more modest but I was still able to stay at (for example) The Soho Grand, which is like an all-night party.

And this time still spiffy on the 10th floor in Chelsea.

So back to Times Square. I've stayed at The Sheraton, The Marquis and the W, from each of which one can tip out onto the bustle of -er- tourists in Manhattan. My stay at any of them would be courtesy of cashing in  loyalty points. 

The thing about Times Square is its busy-ness. Nightime cab tail lights aglow and everyone walking in the road. 

We decided to see a show on Broadway and the criteria was a musical not already in London. 

We picked Water for Elephants. which was playing along the busy part adjacent to Broadway, yet is reminiscent of a building site. London's West End is certainly tidier. 

Oculus

 

Different visits to New York have seen the area around the World Trade Center redevelop. Now it incorporates the transport hub known as The Oculus. 

It's a structure that shouts 'photograph me!' and its size is enormous. My picture shows One World Trade Center in the background and the mega-structure of the Oculus in the foreground. 

Peek inside and it's a transport hub underground, with a massive Westfield shopping mall at a convenient shopping level, complete with all the usual suspects. 

Between the shopping Mall and the new World Trade Centre are the two ominous black squares and the monument where the original twin towers stood. 

High Line ramble

 

The High Line is quite an attraction, leading along the old train tracks from Chelsea Village up into midtown. 

At various places the original tracks are still visible, where freight trains used to chug along the edge of the Hudson River, until the the line was closed and then saved from piecemeal redevelopment. 

Instead it became a linear park dotted with cafes and stalls. It turns inland to midtown behind the Hudson Yards where Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) trains are stored to support 200,000 daily passengers. 

The midtown end settles close to W 34th Street, which flourishes Penn Street Station, Madison Gardens, Macy's and the Empire State Building. Decidedly walkable with the wild flowers contriving to make it seem not a lot slower than a taxi.

Industrial heritage becomes mindful.

The view from the 67th floor.

One of the well known views in New York on my iPhone. From the Rockefeller Center facing towards the Hudson and with the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Oh yes, and One World Trade Center in the distance and the Empire State Building prominent in the foreground. 

Skew

Oh yes, there were red baseball caps on sale on street corners. 

The TV channels were mostly polarised. Fox vs MSNBC. Choose your rhetoric. 

Curiously it was similar with the Olympics coverage. The US channels seemed to only feature America, except when Frenchman Leon Marchand won the swimming - but even then they found the story that he had been trained in the USA. 

Lunchtime Paris 2024 cafe society at the Rockefeller Centre

Constitutional

The very first time I ever visited New York, on a stopover from Charlotte, NC back to the UK, we had about 10 hours in the city. We took the Staten Island Ferry (25cents) to pass the statue of Liberty, We travelled up to the top of The World Trade Centre, and also to the top of Empire State. We grabbed a fast lunch in Times Square and took some time around Wall Street and then Greenwich Village and South Sea Port. I guess taxis must have been involved, and I even brought back a New York Snowman - melted of course.

I can't really believe we did it all in a single day, but somehow, we did. 

Nowadays we'd do some of those sights in depth and take a whole day, like on this trip we did my first ever trip to the Statue of Liberty and to Ellis Island.  I've flown around them in a helicopter previously. Both are interesting, although they don't really tell you about the very long queues to get the ferries. And we were queueing in a New York heat wave. 

I've hidden the 4th July proclamation being held up in Liberty's other arm. I'm  not sure how well it is stacks up at present. 

As PJ Harvey's soundtrack says:

"Can you hear them 

 The helicopters 

 I'm in New York 

 No need for words now"

Ruins of Empire II or The Earth Swallows the Master's House

We were right by the Whitney Museum as well, so it was well worth a visit. It's also a good point from which to pick up the High Line, but more of that later. America is in the run up to the Presidential elections and we once again found ourselves in the middle. I was struck by this artwork, which is a piece of the White House, made from earth and fixed to the roof of the Whitney. Being made of earth it has a strange life of its own, which includes baking in the summer heat and significantly crumbling away.The stars and stripes flutters upside down from its roof. The artist Kiyan Williams is somehow an activist and their other work, also on the roof is a likeness of Marsha P. Johnson.

Some will recognise the original protest photo from which this was taken and which showed Marsha P (Pay it no Mind) Johnson outside Bellevue Hospital, captured by Diana Davies.

Oh yes, we visited the New York Public Library too. And here's the version of the picture, as a sculpture on the roof of the Whitney.

“I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong.”

And there's so much more, just within the walls of this one building.

I need you, I don't need you and all of that jivin' around.

This time we were staying around Chelsea, an area I once worked close to and rather different from the part of New York that most tourists gravitate towards. We were staying close to the Chelsea Market and the High Line, both of which are busy yet different somehow from the Times Square vibe.

Of course the Chelsea Hotel is well-known and had rebirth recently, under new ownership. 

Many well know of the folk that have stayed there: I'll list a few: Chet Baker, Nico, Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jeff Beck,Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Iggy Pop, The Grateful Dead, Edith Piaf,Bob Marley, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollack, Cher, Madonna, Dee Dee Ramone, Joni Mitchell, John Cale, Marianne Faithfull, Bette Midler, Stanley Kubrick, Sid Vicious. Nancy Spungen, Jimi Hendrix, Canned Heat, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin, Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Jane Fonda, Viva, Elliott Gould, Edie Sedgwick, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mark Twain, Arthur Miller, Arthur C. Clarke, Tennesse Williams, Sam Shepherd, Jack Kerouac, Quentin Crisp, Valerie Solanas, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso

...to name but some.

And the immediate area has the pretty cafes like in Europe. We enjoyed lunch in Pastis, a twist on a French pavement cafe. People from the ship, natives of New York, had recommended a whole string of places to us, all within short idle. 

Just around the corner is the bustle of the Chelsea Market and we're only a couple of Blocks from the Hudson River.

Oh, and did I mention that the cabs have changed? They used to be slab-like Ford Crown Victorias, but now they are nearly all Toyota SUVs or similar van creations. I could still spot the cabs from across the river which still looked traditional, but even the green suburban cabs have changed. Apparently Ford stopped making the iconic taxicab in 2011 and now there are just two left in the city.