Saturday, January 14, 2017

WWIII Political Mess: Bruce Springsteen tribute band say Trump inauguration gala is 'non-political'


Glenn Beck’s Regrets

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

An Enemy of the Kremlin Dies in London


Who killed Alexander Perepilichny?




UK Come back when he shags a dead pig, says jaded Britain Daily Mash. My initial reaction was along those lines….


trump
The house that Donald Trump couldn’t buy. circa 1991. The time Donald Trump’s empire took on a stubborn widow and lost – source.

They are really having fun
They are really having fun
drinking glasses of wine
and talking about things
that they like ...


Impasse
I talked a good hello
but she talked an even
better goodbye

Right Beside The Morning Coffee
If I write this down now,
I will have it in the morning.
The question is: Do I want
to start the day off with this?

and finally

For fear you will be alone
For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
That aren’t you at all... 


5 VUCA Books



Here's a guest KR Connect post from Michael Davies, a Lancaster Royal Grammar School history teacher and winner of the 2015 Mary Soames History Prize by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for his work on competing historical narratives of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Michael is currently on leave from the school working in New York with a software developer on new web/video resources for schools that address the difficulty of teaching the history of the conflict. "People are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that often they say nothing at all. My objective isn't to bring both sides together to create a unified history, but to encourage people to take a peek over the wall and see what the other side is saying." He has secured funding and endorsements from a range of Jewish and Muslim supporters in the UK and the USA to undertake the project. Here's Michael...

Kevin and I were talking about what business leaders could learn from history and he asked me to come up with my five best books as preparation for a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world.

#1: The Fall of Constantinople by Steven Runciman. The punchline here is that Constantinople (or Byzantium) was besieged and captured by the Ottomans in 1453, but the really interesting story is how did this eastern half of the old Roman Empire last 1000 years. Part of the answer is the rather unfashionable truth that it had a complex bureaucracy and very sophisticated diplomatic service at a time when its enemies were successful warlords, here today and gone tomorrow.

#2: 1929 A Year of Conflict by Hillel Cohen examines the causes of the rioting that broke out in Palestine in 1929, which might seem a rather narrow incident but Cohen's bigger idea is that "all history is constructed" - which is why there's a Jewish version and an Arab version of what happened. What he brilliantly shows us is how those two parallel but competing narratives have been created - useful for anyone who has to weigh up competing arguments and make a decision.

#3: Russian Voices by Tony Parker. In 1990 Parker visited the USSR as it crumbled and interviewed a wide range of ordinary people about their uncertain future. Well, thirty years on we know. Uncertainty created opportunities of enormous wealth to a few who grabbed the chance, but for the great majority they exchanged too much certainty for too little certainty. There are lessons here about managing change.

#4: The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg is her account of her life as an English woman married to a German bringing up three children in Berlin in WWII, and what happens when her husband is arrested by the Gestapo after the July bomb plot. It's about surviving and playing the cards that are dealt you, even if it looks like a losing hand.

#5: Ill Fares the Land by the late great Tony Judt. Published in 2010, this a historically-based argument that the economy should be run for society, not society run for the economy. This truth that resonated this year in the former industrial towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania


Donald Trump suggests he may scrap Russia sanctions if Moscow helpful in terrorism battle



US President-elect Donald Trump says he may scrap sanctions against Russia and will not commit to the "one China" policy until he sees progress from Beijing in its currency and trade practices, according to excerpts from an interview with the Wall...
CRS report via FAS – Inauguration Security: Operations, Appropriations, and Issues for Congress, Shawn Reese, Analyst in Emergency Management and Homeland Security Policy; Jacob R. Straus, Specialist on the Congress; Christina M. Bailey, Information Research Specialist. January 11, 2017.

No celebration associated with Donald Trump’s inauguration was ever going to be able to secure the services of Bruce Springsteen to provide the entertainment. But a Springsteen covers band? More doable. And so the Garden State Presidential Inaugural Gala – New Jersey State Society’s bash for a new president, held in Washington DC at every inauguration – booked the B-Street Band, exactly as it had done for the Obama inaugurations in 2009 and 2013. This time, though, given Springsteen’s own denouncement of the incoming president, the response to the booking was swift and condemnatory.

Even E Street Band bassist Garry Tallent was angered, tweeting: “Please tell me this is more fake news. Or at least a joke.”

The B Street Band themselves have been shocked by the response. “I’ve been beaten down. I haven’t slept. I’ve been up all night,” founder member and keyboard player Will Forte told Rolling Stone. He has also pointed out the event is a non-political New Jersey event and not associated with Trump, telling Billboard: “We’re just working stiffs, working musicians … who got invited to play a ball for guys like us, regular jerks, and it’s non-political and just a celebration of the changing-over of power.”