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A View From Across the Pacific

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https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1209123.shtml

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1209123.shtml

Patient Reader, take the smack along with the truth — I did, and found it bracing. Every American should read this. Imagine if America’s press — sorry “digital media sources” — weren’t all billionaire-owned ratings-obsessed algorithm-pumping commercial-spewing video galleries, nonsensical Twitter tirades, and screens full of jangly click-bait. What might we do with the truth printed like this?

We are not used to being taken to School for Statecraft by China, especially on questions of public health. But China has emerged, seemingly along with the virus, as a leader and organizer and donor to many countries around the world, actually helping them. I looked up This Date in Chinese History: On December 6, 1912, the newly-formed, newly elected, newly-seated legislature of the newly-won Republic of China, which had, led by statesman Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, overthrown the Last Emperor of the decrepit Qing dynasty, passed a Declaration of Universal of Human Rights.

I was inspired for ten seconds. Universal Human Rights was a high point of achievement for Dr. Sun and the Assembly controlled by his republican Kuomintang party. But Dr. Sun, not a fighter and anxious to be relieved of administration, handed military power to Yuan Shikai, commander of the Beiyang Army, the crack division of the old Imperial dynasty. A few days later Yuan Shikai assassinated Song Jiaroen, Dr. Sun’s hand-picked Party Leader, the army took over, and Yuan eventually declared himself the New Emperor, etc., etc. By 1921 — ten years! — the Communist Party of China is already founded.

Thus 2021 will be an anniversary of the founding of China’s ruing party. They have come a long way in 100 years in earning the respect of the world, as we have come a long way in losing it. They are, by far, our largest and most irreplaceable trading partner but we have failed to see them as an important, grown-up force in the world. Let’s hope in 2021 the new Biden administration gets America’s head out of the Cold War sand, in order to cooperate with China and the rest of the world to finally control this ghastly pandemic. Then why not work on global warming in 2022?

‘555 Fulton’ Corruption Scandal Disgraces Another Official

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It’s amazing, but the legal rakes are still dragging the depths of the muck — ordinary bribery and slush — and dredging up more wallowers in the City’s construction permitting process.

https://news.yahoo.com/san-francisco-public-utilities-chief-022246061.html

So what? Municipal bribery, blah blah The reason it’s in View at all, is that my brother Chris used to live at that address, when it was a fantastic, unique, funky (affordable) old light-industrial mixed-use loft. It is important to remember that even when the building was torn down for spec luxury condos six or more years ago, the avalanche of homelessness, the displacement and diaspora to the East Bay of maybe 100,000 dyed-in-indigo San Franciscans, the loss of civic identity, dying local businesses, and collapse of affordable livability, were already in full swing and much discussed. Yet this project and thousands like it, were then and are still being, built. And sitting empty. Where once lived thousands of folks.

https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/28/21157317/555-fulton-nuru-housing-development-san-francisco-fbi

https://sfist.com/2020/02/27/14-subpoenas-issued-by-city-attorney-relating-to-555-fulton-project/

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/amid-coronavirus-lockdown-sf-supervisor-calls-on-building-owner-to-house-homeless/
Empty spec buildings are still going up as coronavirus surges — all over California. But they’re too gleaming to ever use.

https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/11/21174475/tom-hui-fraud-scandal-555-fulton-san-francisco

It’s not “the market” that’s hollowing out America’s cities, not when greedy developers are flinging their phony money around to undermine or skirt regulations and approvals. The market MEANS, that there are rules and regulations and truth and clarity in the transaction, so that when something is valued, it is actually valuable. There is nothing healthy or natural about turning cities into grids of dead empty boxes on spec.

It’s Not Max Weber, But…

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THE DISMAL SCIENCE DEPT.

Classical economics is the bastard offspring of capitalism, which is itself the misbegotten love-child of the Protestant Reformation. That’s not me, it’s him: https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2013/SOC571E/um/_Routledge_Classics___Max_Weber-The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism__Routledge_Classics_-Routledge__2001_.pdf

Thus I found the following article somewhat compelling, but ultimately a bit irritating. On the one hand: it’s a rare example of history written by economists rather than historians. On the other hand: it’s an example of history written by economists rather than historians. (Assume a Reformation...) Anyway, the article demonstrates how computer number-crunching allows for new statistical analysis of meta-data, to shed light on historical events already well-covered by generations of historians. The implications are thousand-fold; but you can mumble those over yourselves, at your leisure, which, if you’re a good Protestant, or a good capitalist, you shouldn’t have any of. It’s a fast, easy read and it’s fun to try to decode the maps (Since they don’t give you any help identifying cities, I offer a map, presumably NOT made by economists).

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/11/spreading-like-wildfire-luthers-network-and-the-early-reformation.html

Mingulay; Caller Herrin’; Fishgutters; Mac Fisheries; Brexit?

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THE DISMAL SCIENCE DEPT./
FOLK SONG ARMY HQ

https://news.yahoo.com/scottish-fishermen-aim-bullying-eu-124554059.html

Scotland, which overwhelmingly DOESN’T want Brexit, might very well vote to break the Union (1707) if Brexit goes through. Or they still might, even if it does, with a deal that sells out the Scottish fisherfolk. Essentially the big sticking point comes down to fishing rights — which sounds arcane and small bore and pettifogging; but it isn’t for Scotland. What they’re saying seems to be, we don’t want to leave Europe, but if we do, we don’t want to see bloody Dutch and French and Danish trawlers up and doon the herring banks. It could all come down to fish, on Dec. 31. Here are three fantastic fish songs: get the roll of the swell in your legs, the whip of salt in your face, and that fishy tang in your nostrils.

You’ve GOT to sing along when it’s the Corries. Swing that octave leap into the voce, you’ll need it later.

How about that octave leap fish call? No Leith wife ever shouted Caller Herrin’ – fresh fish — into the wind like Jean Redpath. My God, what a voice… The words are by Lady Nairne; it was the first of her songs I ever learned.
Of course you can’t be shy singing in the Scottish idiom; cock an ear to Christine Kydd, belting the AMAZING Song of the Fishgutters, preserved with all its folkloricum, on the Scots Language Center website:

https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/396

Finally, the View recalls the fascinating saga of Mac Fisheries, and of Lord Leverhulme, who tried to buy the Isle of Lewis (as in the British film, I Know Where I’m Going)l; and the emergence, from mountains of Scottish fishguts, of Unilever as the gigantic industrial-products globalist octopus that was partly the impetus for the EU in the first place.

They once cornered the British fish market, but are now defunct. Click for a Wayback Machine Archive of Mac Fisheries:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161019054149/http://www.macfisheries.co.uk/index.htm

Mac Fisheries was a branded United Kingdom retail chain of fishmongers, founded by William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, the co-founder with his brother of Lever Brothers, which later merged to become Unilever. In his thirties, Lord Leverhulme had taken a boat trip and fallen in love with the Western Isles of Scotland. In May 1918 at the age of 66, he bought the Isle of Lewis for £167,000. Convinced that he could resurrect the fishing industry, he set about investing in all aspects of the supporting industries and supply/distribution chain. Leverhulme’s plan was to build an ice-making plant in Stornoway, building refrigerated cargo ships to take fish to a depot atFleetwood, where he would build herring-curing facilities, a canning factory and a plant installed to make fish cakes, fish paste,glue, animal feed and fertiliser. To create a market for the fish, he started buying up independent fishmongers throughout Britain, rebranding them Mac Fisheries. But in 1919, servicemen demobilised from World War I and promised land, started occupying plots on the Isle of Lewis. Leverhulme protested and took legal action against the people he considered squatters, but the Scottish Office took the side of the ex-servicemen, leaving Leverhulme’s plan in tatters. Leverhulme announced that he would leave Lewis in 1923, offering to gift the Isle to the locals. But suspicion ran so high, that he was forced to sell again to long-term absentee landlords.

— Quoth Wikipedia