Happy Birthday, Markos Vamvakaris (deceased)

May 10th is the day Markos Vamvakaris was born, back in 1905. He was one of the first and finest Rebetiko musicians.




Markos Vamvakaris was born into a poor Catholic family on the island of Syros in 1905. His father played the greek bagpipes called Gaida and Markos would accompany him on a dog-skin drum. When Markos was eight years old he left school to work with his mother in a cotton thread factory, which he promptly ditched and started picking up odd jobs like newspaper boy, butchers assistant, eventually getting mixed up with the underworld of the streets. He ran away to Piraeus in 1917, supposedly thinking the police were after him for some piece of mischief. There, he worked in a series of gruelling, poorly paid jobs. This was tough, low-down work, but the nights were all about hashish and women.


He frequented the tekedes and by his early twenties had taught himself bouzouki and begun to write songs.  He was kept in fine clothes by an older whore and hung out at the tekes every night. In 1925, Markos heard Old Nikos play bouzouki and was immediately hooked. Six months later he was playing at a teke when Old Nikos stopped by, he couldn’t believe it was the same kid who’d never even played a few months earlier. Nikos said they’d show Markos something in the morning and he’d come back and play it better than them in the evening. 

Even after he began recording, around 1932, and had gained a measure of fame, he continued to work at the Athens slaughter house. His early songs dealt with drugs and underworld themes. He broadened both his lyric base and his appeal when censorship was imposed on the music industry in 1937, though his music always remained within the rebetiko idiom.











Because the bouzouki was considered a low-class instrument, it had not been recorded commercially until 1932 when Yiannis Halikias (aka Jack Gregory), a Greek-American, recorded his “Minore Tou Teke“. The record was very popular, so Spiros Peristeris, who was working as a record producer, composer and instrumentalist for Odeon records in Greece, convinced Odeon to record Vamvakaris. In 1933, Peristeris supervised, and played guitar on Markos’ first recording session (although he had recorded two songs in 1932 for Columbia, they were not released until later). Markos recorded one zeibekiko, O Dervises, and one Hassapiko, O Harmanes. Markos hadn’t considered himself a singer but ended up doing the vocals on these records. They were very successful and Markos’ rough and powerful singing became fashionable.

Markos eventually teamed up with singer Stratos Pagioumitzis, baglamatzis Giorgos Batis, and bouzouki player Anestis Delias to form his famous Piraeus Quartet. 












His popularity was sustained throughout the 1930’s, despite growing political turmoil. The fascist Metaxas ordered the record companies to stop recording hashish songs and make rembetika respectable entertainment. This coupled with the new Greek passion for Italian cantades resulted in enormous changes in Greek rebetiko. And with that came the minor and major scales of piano, guitar and accordion none of which could play the quarter tones required by the old tradition. As a result the oriental flavour of rembetika started to disappear. Vamvakaris and his brother had a brief flurry in the late 1940’s with the famous Kalamata group which included famous musicians like Papaioannou, Hadzichristou and Mitsakis.

















Eventually the style of rebetika that Markos had pioneered became more mainstream, and by the 1940’s Tsitsanis had started changing the subject matter to be about love and less about hashish, prison and other rebetika topics. Likewise, Hiotis started changing the sound of the music, adding two more strings to the bouzouki in 1956 (although he was not, as many claim, the first to do this) and moving towards a more flashy, electric and westernized sound. Markos continued to record in his older style through this period. He died in 1972.

Fragment of a novel found near a time portal

So, how does it
work?
What?
Well, you have some
sort of weird money substitute here. I have heard of Dogecoin, and there were
lots of things like that around, and it seems as if there is some kind of money
behind your society. But I don’t see any notes, or coins, just touch screens that
people do things with. What is going on?
Ah, the screens.
Those are available to everyone, but nobody owns them, unless Central does.
Central?
The Central Bank of,
well whatever. Promises, obligations, it carries out transactions of value, is
how I heard an academic describe it once. Look, it’s a set of rules on a
central computer system, that handles what money turned into.
Rules?
Yes. The first rule
they had was that each identity, each person, has an amount of what you would
have called money, or credit, or value. And there was a basic weekly input that
was worked out to be enough to provide food and shelter for one person. Each
week that gets put into your account. Go shopping, and the value of the
shopping is taken out. Simple enough.
And your wages go in
there as well, presumably?
Oh yes. If you do
some work, you get some value paid in to reward you for it. But it doesn’t come
from the company or whatever that you work for. Central pays it. That’s because
companies are not people, workplaces are not people. So they can’t have identities,
and if there’s no identity there can’t be owned value at Central.
But you’re getting
paid for your work?
Somebody tells
Central you have done something of a certain value for them, and Central
rewards you. But there are no billionaires owning the factories and
accumulating huge wealth from them. If you want to start a business, or just
need help to do more of something you want to do, that creates value, Central
will accept your statement that you are doing it. They’ll take your statement
that an identity deserves a certain reward, validate it, and put it in your
credits.
Why would anyone do
that if they can’t get rich from it?
That’s one of the
really funny things. What we used to call businessmen, entrepreneurs, you know
them, well, it turns out they just like to do what they do, even if they don’t
actually become so rich that nobody else has any money. They do it anyway. Sure,
they get the basic input every week, and they get the value of the things that
are sold.
Then surely, they
can become very rich?
No. The rule you
need to know about next is what stops that happening. It’s quite complex, and
is a sort of smoothing. Each week, all accounts are smoothed. If an identity
has a lot more value than the average, it is reduced. They don’t lose it all,
but they can never build up a huge amount either. Crazy overspending doesn’t
all get repaid, but if you have less than you will need to stay alive it will
be partly repaid so you will not starve. Nobody starves any more. We are rather
proud of that.
Is there a book of
rules?

There must be,
somewhere, but mostly there are a lot of computer programs and a rather big
database. There are programmers as well, constantly refining the system. I know
some of them. Maybe we will go and see a few, soon.

A Noble Scientific Experiment

In which I experiment on myself…

This magnificent weed appeared in the same spot as the smaller version that grew last year. I was pretty certain it wasn’t anything we had planted. 


I asked about it on Google+ and +Andreas Katifes said “We eat that!”


Then, being a cautious type, I asked one of my brothers, who is a famous botanist, and he confirmed it’s a sow thistle, or Sonchus, and is edible.


In fact, it’s one of the kinds of plant that you get in Greek tavernas, served as “Horta”. I rather like it when I’m in Greece, so I decided to give it a try.

I picked a good big bunch, and washed it thoroughly in cold water. It’s growing fairly near our bird feeders, and I didn’t fancy eating anything the birds might have garnished it with. It’s quite impressive how well it repels water; the bits in the picture have been underwater several times.


I picked the best looking parts of my harvest, getting rid of some of the bigger stems and tough, old leaves. Here it is, in water in a stainless steel pan, with some salt and a teaspoon of chopped garlic. There’s nothing fancy to any of the horta recipes I found online; bring it to the boil, and give it however many minutes of that you think best. Some recipes say half an hour, others as little as ten minutes. I settled for fifteen minutes.

And here’s the result!


It has shrunk down quite a lot, the way spinach does. I’ve dressed it with some Greek extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of lemon juice.


I really enjoyed it. It was very similar to the horta I’ve eaten in Greece, which I’m pretty partial to. I think it would be even better if I located a few more of the different weeds that the Greeks use, and mixed them in. I also think ten minutes would have been plenty of time to cook it.


Don’t just rip weeds out of your garden and dump them. See if they can be eaten, that’s my advice.



Ken Clarke is keen on TTIP, but not on us knowing what it is.

George Monbiot wrote an article on the Guardian web site about the so-called trade agreement that is being secretly forced on us by the Americans.
Here.
Tory “grandee” Kenneth Clarke wrote an attempted critique of it.
Here.
George Monbiot’s replies were in the comments, in sections. I’ve gathered them together here:
Blimey, what a remarkably complacent response. There’s a lot to get through here, so I’ll answer your points in a number of comments.
1. You say that
“By the best estimates, it will deliver a £10 billion annual boost to the British economy alone, increase collective output by as much as £180bn, create thousands of jobs and deliver lower prices and more choice to consumers.”
These “best estimates” are looking decidedly shaky. They have been ripped apart by Gabriel Siles-Brügge and Ferdi De Ville at the LSE, who expose the impossible assumptions on which they are based.
You then claim that TTIP cannot affect the “standards of protection for consumers, the environment, workers or anyone else. Regulations are made by governments and parliaments.”
Using the example that every defender of TTIP uses, as it sounds more benign than any other, you say “American cars are no less safe than those in Europe, yet having two separate sets of regulation loads extra costs on to exporters and consumers.”
In other words, one of two things has to happen. Either both trade blocs have to adopt the rules which currently prevail in one of them, or they have to find a compromise between the two. In other words, regulations will be changed by the TTIP negotiators. And as governments on both sides of the Atlantic are clamouring for standards to be cut, not raised, any conflicts between the standards in the US and the EU are likely to be resolved by cutting whichever is highest.
2. Mr Clarke, in case you hadn’t guessed already, has one hell of a brass neck. Last time he responded to an article I wrote about this trade treaty, he stated that “Investor protection is a standard part of free-trade agreements – it was designed to support businesses investing in countries where the rule of law is unpredictable, to say the least.”
So what, I asked in my article, is investor-state dispute settlement, which was designed, as he says, to protect investments in failed states, doing in a treaty between the EU and the US? Are our domestic courts so riddled with corruption that they need to be bypassed by an offshore arbitration panel of corporate lawyers? Which of the parties to this treaty are countries “where the rule of law is unpredictable, to say the least”?
He ignores that question, and instead tries to assure us that panels of corporate lawyers, which elsewhere have proved notoriously friendly to corporations suing governments that seek to defend their citizens, can’t do us any possible harm.
Why don’t you answer the question first, Ken? Then we can address your claim about the investor-state dispute settlement threatening to do not “the slightest damage to consumer protection, our sovereignty or our NHS”. We could draw upon grim examples of the kind I’ve listed in previous columns, in which the governments of Germany, Australia, Canada, El Salvador, Argentina, Ecuador and others have been sued under ISDS for the removal or prevention of laws protecting their people and the natural world.
3. But where your response becomes most revealing is in its blithe dismissal of the basic safeguards I suggest as a minimum defence of democracy. You maintain that “Nothing could be more foolish than releasing a negotiation position to every lobbyist before sitting down to negotiate with the other side.”
What I’m talking about are positions that the EU and US have already tabled: in other words that the other side already has sight of. Why should these be kept secret? How can we be asked to trust the negotiators if we have no idea of what they are proposing?
What makes this worse is that these positions are likely, as early leaks suggest, to have been produced with the help of corporate lobbyists: as the US Chamber of Commerce and BusinessEurope boast, they are “essentially co-writ[ing]” them. They get advanced sight of these positions while the rest of us are left in the dark. How democratic is that?
Democracy rests upon transparency. Here you are unashamedly promoting opacity, and to sustain this position you need to produce a very good reason. But you produce no explanation for your contention that “Nothing could be more foolish … “. What actual harm would be done by allowing the voters of this and other countries to see what is being negotiated in our name? Why shouldn’t we have a say in it and be able to argue about it, rather than wait until it’s too late to see what you have been doing?[Emphasis by Walrus.]
4. In response to my second proposal, that every chapter of the agreement should be subject to a separate vote in the European parliament, you say, “This would wreck the whole process.”
Quite right too: we can’t have those nosey elected representatives interfering in this process, can we? Far better to do it all in camera, out of sight of either the public or their members of parliament, and then dump it on the EP as a done deal: take it or leave it. Previous trade deals have been riddled with clauses inserted by corporate lobbyists, which are good for them and bad for the rest of us. Why shouldn’t they be properly scrutinised and subject to a meaningful vote, as opposed to “yes to all of it” or “no to all of it”?
What’s the big rush? Isn’t it better to have a democratic process which takes a long time than an undemocratic one done in a hurry?
5. In response to my third test – a sunset clause – you tell us that “the full benefits of the deal may take a decade to become clear”. That’s a rather different impression to the one we’ve previously been given: that we’ll quickly feel the benefits of this deal (if there are any benefits at all – please see point 1.)
By the way, if you are, as you claim, in this for the long term, it gives extra weight to my question: why the rush?
But OK, if you really believe that TTIP will take so long to produce results, I’m happy to negotiate. Let’s say a sunset clause after 10 years. Do you object to that? If so why?
Let’s consider the alternative: a treaty that lasts indefinitely, that contains no easy means of revocation by the nations that have signed it, even if it turns out to be a disaster. How democratic that does sound? Why should the unelected negotiators be granted power not only over this generation but over all those that follow?
6. You say: “I am not a creature of giant business”. Just the former deputy chairman of British American Tobacco.
“I fear it is Monbiot who inadvertently supports the reactionary, protectionist positions of vested interests.” Look, I’m the one who’s trading here. I’ve offered three conditions which could allow me to accept TTIP. You have dismissed them all out of hand, slamming down these attempts to make it more democratic and transparent.
How does that look, do you reckon? Who looks as if they are supporting the reactionary, protectionist positions of vested interests?
Without the proposals I suggest, TTIP looks like little more than a charter for corporate power. Why should anyone accept that? And should we not be able to suggest improvements to the proposed deal without being told that we are reactionaries and protectionists?

When will Labour wake up?

I fear I may have a surplus word in that title. Perhaps we should all be asking “Will Labour wake up?”


They currently seem to be drifting along, occasionally announcing some trivial alteration they will make to the disaster the Tories are making of everything except making rich people richer, poor people poorer, and the NHS utterly destroyed.


If I was one of their “leaders”, I would be announcing that I would reverse all the damage the Tory scum have done, and then moving things even further along in the direction of decency, freedom and general common sense.


If this is some bloody fool Labour PR person’s idea of an “election strategy”, it’s a ruddy disaster. 


Meanwhile, there are huge numbers of people organising something better, and thank you for that, the Peoples’ Assembly. And all we get from Labour is a fund-raising campaign on Twatter, like this…







I’ve been wasting my time asking them questions like that for months and months on end. I know they should be jolly busy, and one voter is utterly unimportant to a millionaire like whichever Miliband it is that didn’t piss off to New York in pursuit of more money, but come on, guys! Try to make it look a bit like you might be about to wake up from your fucking five year coma.





A pet peeve…

I went to see an opera on Saturday. Please, if you think that means I’m rich, bourgeois, or otherwise evil because of that, take your complaints elsewhere.

This is about typography. Annoying typography.

The opera was the Ellen Kent presentation of the Chisinau National Opera’s Aida, and it was very enjoyable. The stage at the Bristol Hippodrome is rather small for Aida, but they coped. The orchestra was pretty good, though some of the brass players were at times not very subtle. Most of the singers were excellent, and the rest were very good. The dancers were entertaining, and it was good to see dancing done by normal shaped women instead of twigs. Perhaps the largest dancer would have benefited from a good sports bra, and the smaller dancer I privately nick-named Fallout Girl was very professional about what is known as a wardrobe malfunction. In fact, there were only two things that annoyed me. The pair of amateur dramatics fanatics in the row behind us were incapable of shutting up, preferring to keep up a clearly audible conversation about the mechanics of the staging through the whole performance. Quite a lot less annoying than these selfish twits was the logo.

You can imagine the designer thinking “What can I do to make this look oriental?” They chose to use what they no doubt thought was a trendy letter A. And to many, that’s all it is. But it’s actually a letter of the Greek alphabet, Lambda. It’s an L.

So what that says, when I look at it, is LIDL.




Please, designers, don’t use Λ as an A. It’s neither big nor clever. And people in amateur dramatics, shut up when you are in a show other people have paid to see. If I hadn’t been with my family, I would have been arrested for punching you unconscious.

Sharing a post from Tom Pride.

I like Tom Pride’s blog a lot. So if he asks readers to share something, well why ever not? Especially if it is a post about something that could affect me.

 It seems the police in Hastings have been helping a bad landlord to threaten somebody who has complained. The police have claimed that using cartoons as part of a website that complains is illegal.

 Tom Pride’s blog post about cartoons and Hastings Police.

And this is the site that has the cartoons.

Let us be quite clear about this. In some countries, it may well be illegal to draw cartoons. But not this country. Otherwise it wouldn’t be safe for me to put any text on this nice picture of some of the Hastings police.