Accepting Defeat?

In the first clip below the fold, Pepe discusses a French intellectual's new book. The writer suggest Trump's job in the first two years will be to help America (NATOstan) accept that Russia defeated us in Ukraine. Somehow I can't see Trump selling that notion. This week Alex Krainer asks (below) 'will the US continue it's bullying posture or act like a polite guest at the world table of equal nations?' I simply don't see that happening given US arrogance and false sense of superiority. In fact it seems just the opposite in the new found neo-colonial attitude of Trump to acquire Panama, Greenland, Canada, and the "Gulf of America". My guess is he will first target Venezuela and Nicaragua because their leadership continues to serve their peoples needs and not US corporate interests. All that and much more below the fold.

Afternoon folks!

This week we have an album of great saxophone blues playing to start us off by Big Jay McNeely, followed by Shuggie Otis' (son of Johnny Otis) debut album with Al Kooper. Following that, we've got 70's blues-rock one-hit-wonder Norman Greenbaum - you can be one of the few to listen to the whole album! After that there's some r&b with Rufus and Chaka Kahn's album featuring their big hit, "Tell Me Something Good." After that we radically shift gears for some acoustic blues and bluegrass with Norman Blake and then, screee ... it's some high-octane rock and roll with Alvin Lee and Ten Years Later.

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Good morning, good people!

It is solidly back to work for those who do, holidays are over. Most of the time I am out of the office, I still work. Stolen babies, evictions gone wrong, calls from jail, and on and on.

But this time, it was a real time off. Only casual questions to answer. Otherwise, enjoy the beach, enjoy the meals.

Then, work resumed, and I noticed my temper got short when I answered a client's question for the tenth time. I refused to take cases for people I knew damn well wouldn't listen to me. I then had a visit with a lawyer of my age, my experience, and she said she felt the same thing this past week and we decided what we were going through was the mind-set of a retired lawyer. I may be closer to retirement than I thought. We both agreed our clients had traits: they read some law on Google and told us what to do. They were greedy. They were violent. They were unwilling to listen. We wondered if we were going to be able to help folks, and what is our purpose if we can't?

Well, it's the whole world that is getting like that. Society has degraded, culture has degraded, and she and I are out of place now.

All I've got today is an announcement.

It's time for a change. C99 is going to get a face lift. No, scratch that, a totally new face.

We're going to get a new site. It will be different than this site. How different I can't say yet, but it will be significantly different. It will still be a blog with essays and a comment section but with a new look.

The Decline of the Eastern, aka Byzantine, Roman Empire

I happened across an article about the decline of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire a week or so ago and found it quite interesting. It's called 'What Brought the Decline of the Eastern Roman Empire - and What Can We Learn from It?' by Lev Cosijns and Haggai Olshanetsky.

Basically, the authors contend that the supposed decline does not seem to be a result of climate change. Yes, a volcano exploded in Iceland in 536 AD (and others erupted throughout the following decade) and the volcanic dust, etc, did block the sun in various places and perhaps caused a lowering of temperature - maybe around the world, maybe not. But there aren't any textual records of this happening (dust veils and extreme cold) in the Eastern (Byzantine) empire in the mid 500's.

The authors note that first instance of the Justinianic plague in the Eastern Empire happened from 541 to 544. This supposedly caused the death of millions of people in the Mediterranean (and other) areas. However, the authors of the paper don't think the plague started the decline of the Eastern Empire. In fact they see the 6th C as one of prosperity with economic stability for the Eastern Empire.

Detail of a contemporary portrait of Justinian I in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna. Nice earrings! From worldhistory.org