Across the years I have somewhat pompously but with good reason ignored Valentine’s Day. “I will decide when to celebrate my love for Marilyn; when to offer her a present or flowers” was my precious stance. Perhaps I’m softening in my dotage. Tonight we will go to hear Maria Manousaki and Apostolos Leventopoulos weave their improvisatory magic in a programme of jazz and soul. And, before setting off, I will sing ‘My Funny Valentine’ on our terrace accompanied by the migrating love birds from Africa.

Love as Resistance: The Radical History of Valentine’s Day
The oligarchy does not want you to know the true history of Valentine’s Day.

I did not know this story and its alternative reading of the accepted narrative.

https://dorothylennonrevolutionary.substack.com/p/love-as-resistance-the-radical-history

One of my very favourite singers, Thomas Quasthoff in lieder and now jazz.

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Essay: Trump’s Triumph Or Tragedy

Might, overreach and war make work for idle hands

A powerful piece from a commentator it is difficult to pigeon-hole. Sometimes I am at odds. He disturbs the old Leftie in me, for whom old habits, ways of thinking die hard and are not lightly set aside. I’m grateful for his unsettling perspective.

The headlines should be full of contrition for the abuse of children. Instead the establishment media is doing its best to distract. It is a trans-Atlantic scandal that has exposed politicians and corporate leaders, under growing pressure to resign. The issue is not only abuse of children. It is the corruption of public morals that is a sign of societal decline, itself a symptom of the fall of the Western system built upon the exploitation of humans through empire.

https://moneycircus.substack.com/p/essay-trumps-triumph-or-tragedy

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