I guess I'll see you in another lifetime

'Birth' is an underrated movie. It's both intimate and detached. Some scenes (the opening run thru wintry Central Park, the 'Valkyrie' Prelude scene, the heartbreaking beach scene to close) will become famous as the images sink in; such stuff as dreams are made on.

Intellectual disgrace

Colin Powell in Kuwait:

Asked if he sees a U.S. war on Iran coming, the retired U.S. general said although no American official will say the option was "off the table," he did not see prospects of a military conflict.

There is no base of support among Americans for such an action, Powell said, adding that the U.S. military already has enough on its hands in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I say Powell is wrong on all counts, but suppose he's right, then here's what he's telling Iran:

The US President is bluffing. Go ahead and call him.

Here's what he's telling Saudi Arabia:

The US President is bluffing. He can't stop Iran. You'd better find your own deterrent.

The best railway station in the world

I prefer the US version of the TV comedy 'The Office', set in Scranton, PA, a town dubbed "armpit of America". I'm not so sure about "armpit"... these ex-industrial downtowns look and feel pretty copacetic when injected with a little life and love; Asheville, NC, for instance. The original 'The Office' is set in the English town of Slough, which you fly by 5 minutes before landing at Heathrow. Slough is an archetype of the British gift to the world known as "crap towns".

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath....

'Slough' by John Betjeman (1937)

John Betjeman was a champion of Victorian architecture, when that style was despised as pastiche Gothic, obsolescent, fussy and unmodern, fit only for demolition to make space for '60's and '70's brutalism. Boy, was he ahead of his time.

He campaigned to save St Pancras, a decrepit Victorian railway station. Betjeman is dead. St Pancras is re-born as the London terminus of Eurostar, the 2 hour train service between London and Paris. St Pancras is said by the head of French rail to be possibly the best station in the world. Also 

St Pancras is gorgeous. Some of it is almost lickable.....St Pancras is Betjeman's. His statue stands in pride of place above the undercroft, a few steps away from the old booking office. A pointy bronze overcoat flaps behind him in the non-existent breeze, as he tips his head back to stare in awe and wonder at the magnificent ceiling. A swirl of poetry spins around his feet, with additional lines and verses etched into the paving slabs nearby. He looks both delighted and startled to be here, as do we who follow in his footsteps. We wouldn't be standing here today without him. There'd probably be a ghastly identikit office block on site by now had he not stepped in during the 1960s and raised his voice for posterity. Thank you Sir! 21st century London will be forever in your debt.

 Also

Next door, at King's Cross station, Hogwarts Express may depart from Platform 9 3/4 but Harry Potter fans will be fascinated to know that it is the stunning Victorian gothic architecture of St Pancras that is used in the films. St Pancras Station and St Pancras Chambers have also featured in Batman Begins......

in which movie St Pancras is the set for Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.Like Grand Central Station, St Pancras is a grandiose meeting place, a heavenly setting for a champagne bar. Unlike Grand Central, the railway engineering is for glorying in. 

What a happy ending! This:

instead of this:

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Footnote: I just realized that 1937 was the year of the German bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, perceived as the symbol of terror bombing of civilians. Betjeman's sly poem of that year therefore is spiked with extra acid. As contrast note Picasso's painting of the bombing of Guernica, his most famous if emotionally fraudulent work:

If you want peace, prepare for war

Drudge leads with DECISION TIME OVER IRAN THREAT

Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN's nuclear watchdog reported last night.

It's past time to hit Iranian nuclear facilities, air defences and air force. I think that Mick and Dave doubt that Bush will do it as he's a man of principle and won't start something that he won't be in office to see thru, but I guess that Bush's principles will lead him to strike Iran. It's risky, but less so than not hitting Iran in good time, as below:

Risk 1:  Iran gets nukes or just the practical knowhow or just the credible threat of having a nuke.

Risk 2: Bush defers the decision and his successor is an appeaser.

Risk 3: America's word carries no weight. That will invite horrors in future.

Risk 4: Iran's blatant acts of war against America in Iraq and terrorism against the world find no retribution, another come-on to horrors in future.

Risk 5: A deferred decision loses the moment when Brown's and Sarkozy's mood music is supportive and gives time to Russia, China, Iran, the IAEA, the Democrat Party and the MSM to frame a narrative starring America as the Big Bad Wolf and Iran as Little Red Riding Hood.

Pet post

My wife overrode me and paid $1,000 for this schnauzer, Trixie, now 4 months old. Here I'm training her to bite my wife on the nose. They say that puppies are baby substitutes. Trixie's so cute, I'd say it's the other way round.

The Moving Finger

We were walking in the heart of America the other day (to Spooky Canyon near Escalante, Utah), when the proprietor of Uncorrelated.com asked me, 'So why are oil prices so high?' This is why:

On the back of sky-high minerals prices and record profits of $17bn a year, BHP is on a roll. "I'm not saying the sector is immune to the business cycle," Kloppers said recently, "but a seminal event is happening in the world: two billion people are entering the industrial age. It's like rebuilding Europe after the Second World War but on an even bigger scale."

(Kloppers is an ex-colleague from Billiton. Now he's the new CEO of the biggest mining company and has just launched what looks like the biggest takeover in history by approaching RTZ).

I'm an Americaphile, but here's what I sense:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

The USA has gone ex-growth.....intellectually, spiritually, economically. It is super-affluent and lacks the stimulus of creative immigration. War, serious war, may re-invigorate America, but war may not be a happier state than stupor. Nor China, nor India, nor Europe has replaced America, but America's psychological dominance is waning. Interesting times.

Cronos eating his children

Mick mused on marriage, children, grandchildren and continuity. My story is less virtuous and so are my intentions. I write from the perspective of a grandfather and father of a herd of beautiful girls. I mean to start a political party with the sole policy of exploiting our children. We'll do it by borrowing trillions of dollars to buy votes from identity groups, provide ourselves with healthcare, pay the crowded retinues of perfumed senators, refurbish the UN, and all the other good works to promote the interests of self-important parasites and entitlement junkies. And this is the great part....we'll get all this bounty from the full faith and credit of our children and grandchildren. So what if it's immoral, they'll learn from us to do the same in turn. Wait. You say it's US policy already? It's just called something else? Damn!

Time to get up

Escalante, Utah.
Yesterday I arrived here at the western end of a journey from The Red Sea to London to New Jersey to Salt Lake City to Escalante. In about an hour at 5am I'll drive an hour south to Bryce Canyon to shoot the dawn. I've been a few times, but it's a first for my brother-in-law. As well as the time-zone changes in this journey over 2 weeks, there were distinct "fall backward" time adjustments in London and Utah. Whisky fortunately sooths my skittering internal clock.
UPDATE:

Go west, old man

It's 6.30am. I'm about to leave my London flat for Gatwick, then Newark for a few weeks stay in the US. I've carry-on only, as ever, stuffed with camera gear mostly. I set my alarm for 3am to allow time to pack and, more important, riffle thru a multi-month pile of bureaucratic envelopes, selecting the ones that look like they'll cost me if I ignore to jam into my bag so that I can continue to procrastinate in the States. I'm still somewhat elated from my recent whale shark trip and some fine games of soccer (I played fine, that is) and I'm elated at the prospect of some family delights later today and Utah in a few days. A sort of glow has been cast on it all by a call last night from a very old Sherpa friend (now an eminent sirdar and mountaineer in Kathmandu) to discuss a long dreamed of expedition to Kanjiroba Himal in the far West of Nepal, a return to a moumtain I failed to make a first ascent on in 1984. So I also jammed some old rudimentary Himalayan trekking maps on top of the tax demands. Jersey, I'm on my way.

Why they hate us..

Chatting with a young, educated Russian I was struck how thoroughly his policy choices were inspired by lust to do down America, a psychological condition distinct from a cold-eyed assessment of Russia's self-interest. He agreed when I said so, but straightway reverted to glee at America's supposed humiliations at the hands of Putin and Islamists. He believes US policy is constructed to humiliate Russia. He's not interested in collaborating with the US on the more proximate threats to Russia from Islam and China.

I've seen the same obsession in a Russian emigrée who's lived many years in the US. Despite her in-depth exposure to the US and close American friends, she believes what she wants to believe. She can do no other.

The same hurt-collecting sense of shame at their own failures motivates many educated people everywhere, even a fair number of Britons, tho I reckon the tide has turned especially since the BBC's bias became so widely acknowledged, and the British variant is relatively superficial.

I dub myself an honorary American in order to say: they hate us because they are ashamed.

NyLon

I love this:

..consultants at McKinsey & Company released a report in January, which argued that the tough regulatory environment in the United States was driving private equity and initial public offerings across the Atlantic. But this morning .... Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — fresh from a visit to England, during which he stayed at his London apartment...

I doubt if 'Red Ken' Livingstone, the execrable Mayor of London, has an apartment in New York, tho possibly in Caracas or Havana. By the way the jew Bloomberg might reflect on Livingstone's notorious anti-semitism and Islamofascistophilia.

In a comment here I wrote:

Anyone who alleges that NYC is the centre of the world is stuck in a time warp. It's London. Reasons why: time-zone, globalization of the US economy, immigrant energy, tax-breaks for non-residents, Russian and Indian billionaires, Sarbanes-Oxley. Polish accents are everywhere, but so are American accents and French and German and Russian and,and. NYC is the financial hub of America in America, but London is the financial hub of America in the world. London is still creating a new past. NYC is maintaining its old past. Having grown up in London I'd say it's the best of times now especially in the East End. I'll give myself a break by flying to Newark on Monday for a couple of months in the boonies of NYC and environs.

This must have provoked Mayor Bloomberg whose lackey wrote (from London) the next day:

Whenever the media pick up on a trend in financial markets, it is usually much too late.

This month, the New York Times ran a long article explaining how New York had surrendered its status as the world's financial center to London.

Right on schedule, the very opposite appears to be true.

After at least five years during which London pulled ahead as a finance hub, several catastrophic mistakes by the British capital are about to put that into reverse.

London has blown its lead. The way is now clear for New York to stage a recovery.

There is little question that London enjoyed higher status..

Actually I agree with Lynn's underlying thesis that London's status is undermined by the government's incompetence, but today the FT reports that Mayor B, Hank Paulson et al realise that it's not a zero-sum game:

Michael Snyder, the City of London Corporation’s policy chairman, attended the meeting at Gracie Mansion, Mr Bloomberg’s official residence .

He said: “’London versus New York’ is often how the show is billed - but the real game is ’efficiency versus economic drag’....“Clearly if we are to get deeply liquid markets, we need to be as joined up as possible and that will help in engaging with and indeed helping the markets in Mumbai, Shanghai or Hong Kong,”

"Engaging with and indeed helping" is snotspeak for "undermining".

A little lateral thinking yields a plan: let New York City secede from the USA and thrive as part of NyLon Inc, UK plc, a binary city of colossal financial might. New Yorkers would be rid of the hated Bush and the threat of a conservative successor. They could taste the rancid fruit of social democracy and depraved culture that most of them vote for AND the money fruit of barrow-boy capitalism. It would be a good deal for the rest of America too ..... if you insist we'll hold our nose and take Hillary in the package. She can be Queen.

For a complementary view see 'New York, not my kind of town'.