This Christmas will be spent without my father who passed away this past January.  He was a great man in so many ways, it is impossible to list them, but thought a couple of things could be said as well as a personal and endearing reflection.  He was a family man who did his best.  He remained married for 40 years and raised six children.  Along the way, he anonymously gave to charity in prosperous and struggling times.  Extended family knew they could ask him for money and he would often give it, always without condition.  He said “there is no such thing as lending unless you are a bank.  It is nice if they repay, but never expect it.”  He had few friends, but the ones he had were true.  He understood the meaning of friendship better than most.  He was a hard charging man who lived life to the fullest, yet always had the patience to understand the moment.  He had a presence few possess and it was never abused.  He was a noble and good man.  He was smarter than any intellectual, yet practical and of action.  The very traits intellectuals lack and cause them such great frustration.  He was never frustrated.  He was at peace.

One of his great loves was music and his taste was varied, yet preferred the old crooners, such as Cole, Sinatra, Williams, Anka, Damone and the like.  I would often try to impress my father by introducing him to modern popular music, but nothing ever seemed to be to his liking.  He would usually reply, “That isn’t Sinatra.”  About a year and a half ago, while studying Russian culture, I came across a folk song written in 1954.  Upon hearing the song and reading the lyrics, there was no doubt my romantic father would love this song.  It had a great melody and timeless meaning.  So off it went by email to my father, then the next day, asked what he thought.  His reply, “that sure isn’t Sinatra.”  He then proceeded to discuss work and anything and everything, but the song.

It was a somewhat sad moment and I couldn’t help but feel how difficult it was to please him.  I really wanted to impress my father as a younger man, but in his dying year, it was more about making him happy and this song was probably my last attempt with music, one of his great joys.  After about two weeks he answered my phone call and in the background could hear the song playing.  Excitedly, I said “dad you are playing the song”, he replied, “Yes, it is beginning to grow on me.”  My immediate thought was if the song is growing on him then he has been listening to it and must really like it.  He was a proud man, too proud to tell me he really loved it after earlier saying “it was no Sinatra”, but over the next few months while calling it could be heard from time to time.  Later while present and calling on other family he would tell them, “let me play this song for you” and played it, he would.  This was one of the happiest moments of sharing with my father during his dying days.

Dad, I am going to share the song with others today in remembrance of you.  I will always love you and miss you dearly.

Your son,
Darrell

The song is called Evening in Moscow, Moscow Nights or Midnight in Moscow.  My favorite version and the one shared with my Father is performed by Italian singer Toto Cutungno Russian singer Надежда Кадышева.

Listen to the song here.

Lyrics to the song.

Not even a whisper is to be heard in the garden,
Everything has calmed down until dawn.
If you only knew how dear they are to me,
The evenings near Moscow!

The river is moving and (sometimes) not,
All made of the moons silver.
A song sounds and is not to be heard
In those quiet evenings.

Why do you, darling, look at me from the side,
Bending your head so low?
It is not easy to tell
All the things that are in my heart.

And dawn is getting more and more visible.
So, please, be so kind:
You, also, don´t forget
These summer evenings near Moscow.

There are many forms of beautiful music and most have attributes which resonate on many different levels.  At the turn of the 20^th century there was a move away from complex Romantic towards the minimalist which would come be to known as popular music.  Debussy said of Wagner who passed in 1883, “His music was a wonderful sunset people have mistaken for a dawn.”  Art like music took on a new form called Dada typified by artists such as Picasso and Warhol.  A revolt against the established art world, many considered and still consider the work the absence of art.  Anyone could become an artist and musician in this new dawn.

Einstein Thought of Bach as the naked performer who created works too emotional.  In a recent biography the author recounts how Einstein viewed the German military he watched drill outside his window as robotic and lifeless marching to a set mechanical beat, yet his preference was Mozart over Beethoven.  Mozart’s music is nothing if not mechanical in nature and although complex, devoid of emotion.  He was minimalist before minimalism, minimal emotional playback.  It is “instrumental” when looking at modern music for an effort by the artist to make that emotional try.  Debussy might be right and the sun has set, but that doesn’t mean a light cannot be shed from here and there.

When compiling the yearly best of list, my search is for that glimmer of light.

Here are a couple of selections for the year 2008.  A complete listing for 2008 will be released on January 1, 2009.

 Lykke Li- Little Bit

Hot Chip – Ready For the Floor

“I didn’t realize how many bad guys there were until we had broken through the enemies’ lines and forced them to retreat.  It was roughly 250 insurgents against 30 of us,” the corporal said.  “It was a good day for the Marine Corps.  We killed a lot of bad guys, and none of our guys were seriously injured.”

Read it here

Conrad Black

I write to you from a US federal prison. It is far from a country club or even a regimental health spa. I work quite hard but fulfillingly, teaching English and the history of the United States to some of my co-residents. There is practically unlimited access to e-mails and the media and plenty of time for visitors.

Many of the other co-residents are quite interesting and affable, often in a Damon Runyon way, and the regime is not uncivilised. In eight months here there has not been the slightest unpleasantness with anyone. It is a little like going back to boarding school, which I somewhat enjoyed nearly 50 years ago (before being expelled for insubordination) and is a sharp change of pace after 16 years as chairman of The Daily Telegraph. I can report that a change is not always as good as a rest.

However, apart from missing the constant companionship of my magnificent wife Barbara, who visits me once, twice or even three times each week and lives nearby in our Florida home with her splendid Hungarian dogs, I enjoy some aspects of my status as a victim of the American prosecutocracy.

My appeal continues. Given the putrefaction of the US justice system, it is an unsought but distinct honour to fight this out and already to have won 85% of the case and 99% of the financial case. The initial allegation against me of a “$500m corporate kleptocracy” has shrunk to a false finding against me - that even some of the jurors have already fled from in post-trial comments – of the underdocumented receipt of $2.9m. There is no evidence to support this charge.

It has been a grim pleasure to expose the hypocrisy of the corporate governance establishment, who have bankrupted our Canadian company and reduced the share price of the American one from $21, when I left, to a miraculous two cents (yes, two cents). They have vaporised $2 billion of public shareholder value; fine titles in several countries have deteriorated; and for their infamies, the protectors of the public interest have cheerfully trousered more than $200m.

US federal prosecutors, almost all of whom would be disbarred for their antics if they were in Britain or Canada, win more than 90% of their cases thanks to the withering of the constitutional guarantees of due process – that is, the grand jury as an assurance against capricious prosecution, no seizure of property without just compensation, access to counsel, an impartial jury, speedy justice and reasonable bail.

We did not know the grand jury was sitting, have never seen the transcript of its proceedings and I was denied counsel of choice by the ex parte seizure, which the jury later judged to be improper, of the proceeds of the sale of an apartment in New York that I was going to use as the retainer for trial counsel.

The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice.

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.

I wish to advise Lord Hurd that when I return to the UK I would like to take up more energetically than I did initially his request for assistance in his custodial system reform activities.

Obviously, the bloom is off my long-notorious affection for America. But I note from recent comment in Britain and Europe that the habit of blaming anything that goes awry in the world on the US is alive and well. However, the United States has not disintegrated and American capitalism is not dead, nor even in failing health. The recent financial upheavals have exposed the folly of the US Congress and Federal Reserve and will aggravate a cyclical recession and take some time to shake out.

The United States has just retained the riveted interest of the whole world, most of which does not wish it well, in the billion-dollar vulgarity of its election process for an entire year. And it surely has earned the respect of the world in elevating a very capable leader as the first non-white man to head any western nation.

I would be distinctly consolable if the United States really was in decline and I have more legitimate grievances against that country than do The Guardian or the BBC, but it is still a country of incomparable vitality even as its moral, judicial soul atrophies and reeks.

This is an edited version of an article by the former Daily Telegraph proprietor that appears in the current edition of Spear’s Wealth Management Survey magazine

I disagree with his view that we have elected a capable leader, but understand his disgust with the establishment and McCain is part of that establishment.

The Republican party must reform and nominate Conservatives or the Conservatives must leave the Party.

Published by Gerard Group International. October 11, 2007

From 1976-91 Mr. Preobrazhenskiy served as an officer in KGB Intelligence. His last position was as personal advisor on China, Japan and Korea to Major General Leonid Zaitsev, the Head of the Scientific and Technical Intelligence (Directorate “T”), Deputy Head of the KGB Intelligence (The First Chief Directorate).He was also the senior officer at the KGB station in Tokyo, Japan where he was ostensibly the correspondent of TASS, Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union.

“Chinese and Russian spies are stalking the United States at levels close to those seen during the tense Soviet covert espionage duels of the Cold War.” This was testimony by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell during a House of Representatives hearing on September 18, 2007, and he called their intelligence network among the most aggressive in the world.

But McConnell did not say a word about how Russia has modernized its intelligence methods since the Cold War, nor about how it is able to carry out espionage against the United States so successfully. America’s preoccupation with political correctness may have constrained him from mentioning one of the most egregious methods - the use of its own churches as a cover for its espionage activities. It might be understood as a violation of the principle of separation of Church and state. Moreover, American counter-intelligence is even said to be prohibited from investigating clergymen as possible foreign spies!

And this is just what Russian intelligence needs! American political correctness opens a doorway to the US through the Moscow Patriarchate, which has been a tool of KGB intelligence since it was founded by Stalin in 1943. The principle of separation of church and state, a basic component in American law and tradition, is proclaimed by Russia too, but only on paper. Russians are not devoted to political correctness as Americans are.

Here then is the story of how Russia uses America’s own sensitivities to forward its espionage program.

On May 17, 2007, Russia gained a historical victory over America. It opened its province here, called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Of Russia. On this day it had formally recognized Moscow’s superiority by signing an Act of Canonical Community with the Moscow Patriarchate, controlled by the Russian government.

Though a part of the Russian Church Outside Of Russia has refused to come under Moscow’s rule and retained its independence, many thousands of Russian-Americans and their children are now nourished in the spirit of loyalty to authoritarian Russia, which is becoming more hostile to America every day. Their churches have become insidious fronts for Russian state interests. No matter how our relations evolve in the future, the churches will remain a stronghold for Russian intelligence.

In preparation for the seizure of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Of Russia, the KGB has been infiltrating it for over 70 years. And since 2000, this mammoth KGB operation has been guided personally by President Putin himself.

This operation has succeeded, to the accompaniment of America’s recognition of Russia’s “democracy”, though, in fact, Putin has trampled its first weak roots. Russian espionage is not driven by America’s behavior at all, but rather is directed from inside Russia, according to a Russian agenda. Putin is putting the screws to it there by provoking anti-Western hysteria. Interestingly, a lot of Americans are not familiar with this fierce state-run anti-American campaign in Russia, which is even stronger than it was during the Cold War. Anti-Americanism has become an ideology of post-Communist Russia.

Did America think that by displaying unfounded delight in Russia’s democracy it could manage to keep good relations with Russia? In fact, that delight has been returned to America in a form of aggressive Russian espionage.

In March 2003, the famous Russian human rights activists, Elena Bonner and Vladimir Bukovsky, wrote in their open letter to President Bush the following: “The danger of ‘partnership’ with criminal regimes is that they never stop until they make you an accomplice of their crimes. Slowly but surely, the Russian rulers force their Western partners to accept their crimes in Chechnya as a part of their common struggle with terrorism”.

Unbelievably, their prediction has begun to come true. President Putin has succeeded, to some extent, in making President Bush an accomplice of Russia’s crimes in Chechnya! In March, 2007, he provoked President Bush to accept a notoriously known Russian General, Vladimir Shamanov, accused of committing military crimes in Chechnya and other violations of human rights, into the Oval Office.

This meeting caused a squall of indignation by both American and Russian human rights activists. The White House said it was not aware of the allegations against General Shamanov. But how could this be possible? They openly discussed the subject with the Russian media while it was still relatively free. It is impossible to believe that America was unaware of this discussion.

General Shamanov was presented to President Bush as a co-chairman of the U.S.-Russian commission on missing soldiers. But I am sure that President Putin appointed him to this post in 2005 with only one aim: to sully President Bush by creating a situation that would cause him meet with General Shamanov on multiple occasions.

Russian intelligence has never been as self-confident and unrestricted here since 1945, when it succeeded in having a Soviet agent, Alger Hiss, promoted to the position of the first Secretary General of the UN. At that time, Russia was enjoying America’s full trust and respect as an ally in the Second World War. But this fact did not prevent Russia from spying on its ally, while America did not spy on Russia during the war.

Nowadays, Russia enjoys a similar privilege as America’s ally in the war on terrorism, though in fact their cooperation in this war is mostly rhetoric, because world terrorism was invented by the KGB and has been consistently backed by it.

The success of Russian espionage against the US today has been facilitated by the following conditions:

1.  Widespread liberal and leftist political views, inherited from the period of popularity of socialist ideas initiated by Moscow after World War II.

2.  An inaccurate perception of Russia as a free, democratic country, propagated by some American specialists on Russia, journalists, and think-tanks. This image induces America to make faulty decisions in its politics and policies concerning Russian.

3. Widespread anti-American movements all over the world allow Russian Intelligence to recruit en-mass from the enemies of the U.S.A. and facilitates anti-American espionage in the “third world” countries.

4. The great influence which has been retained by Communists in all Russian top ministries. It facilitates cooperation with China in anti-American spy activities.

5. The KGB (now known as the FSB) is not restricted by any laws in or outside Russia. Nobody controls the KGB in their home country and it enjoys the ownership of state power. While their American counterparts are dependent on their government and are obliged to follow laws, the KGB’s privileged position in Russia gives it unrestricted freedom to maneuver all over the world.

6. Today’s Russia, following the tradition established during the Second World War, continues spying on its American ally, using the dynamics of the 21st century to advance their espionage program against us.

Hat Tip: Chronwatch Member C o d e Penguin

Once Bush leaves office, we are going to see despots invading countries all over the world. Chaos will reign supreme now that there is no American leadership.

There are going to be people in the film industry having trouble sleeping tonight.  It might not be the 5dII, but for sure, Canon and others are changing the game.

Great film Vincent.  You are a master of the craft and it goes to show that still photographers are going to be a major force in near future, in the movie industry.

Click here to watch his film Reverie.