Eating In Russian Kitchens

“The Secrets of Russian Cuisine.”

This is a more elegant phrase employed by Western publishers to render a rather genteel english translation of the title of a book by East German Spymaster Markus Wolf, which was really called “Secrets of the Russian Kitchen.”

The subtle, nuanced difference, is that of the difference between a culinary art, and the results or consequences that require to be hidden, concerning what scullery maids get up to with the lord of the manor.

Personally, I'd love to categorically delineate who I think are 'the good guys' and who 'the bad.' Unfortunately of course, it is impossible to shake off those romantic myths and legends from the mindsets of the ordinary folk. I speak of myths and tales by which those who steer the course of State - exploit and manipulate the masses. The James Bond myth. The noble english lord myth. The honest policeman myth... The licence granted by the State...

A Great Russian Design

But look here, when you understand that the upper echelons of recent United Kingdom political leadership consists of mostly sunset industry moghuls – to put it at its very kindest – then you may begin to see that a huge tobacco company, for instance, is staring down the barrel of a total laying waste to the lifestyle that its bosses a long time ago became accustomed to... And that, it's entirely possible that those bosses in their social 'kitchen cabinetting' with political and even government, administrative, senior executives, asked for some leeway or relief from the rules and from the law, in order to protect their revenue and their lifestyle. And far be it from me to suggest that they might have been able to unduly influence the answers given, and/or the future policy of government!

However I have no such illusions about Russian realpolitik or at least, realforeignpolitik.

I am quite certain that Marcus Wolf had long established a system and a regime of generating, educating, or cultivating deep cover operatives who were aimed very specifically, at the very highest echelons of establishment power all around the world.

In my personal view, this establishment, asked for and got, during the Thatcher era, not a 'licence to kill,' but a 'licence to thieve...' And I further think that this misbehaviour has extended into the present climate of fear of terrorism in all its reputed forms – from home-grown nutjob to full-blown external sovereign insertions – in order to exploit this justification regarding 'saving us all from terrorists,' as the moral behind why some big players and their guided missile men, are allowed to defraud, forge, hack into, and steal from, whoever they designate as an 'open season target.'

But, as they say in the sporting world in which I sometimes dwell: "don't forget while you're thinking that you are invincible, that the other team is also going to turn up on the day and play too."

One of the very largest top echelon companies in England is Hanson PLC – a first class asset stripper that would make Mitt Romney blush. Baron Hanson partnered with a certain Lord White of Hull to form Hanson Trust originally. But – neither Hanson nor White are what I would call genuine aristocrats. There was a something-or-other of Hull, but that was long ago, before the Constable of London, Oliver Cromwell, did away with his opponents in the real aristocracy. And so all these modern this, that, and the other of so-an-so a place in England somewhere (and sometimes not even!) are all manufactured 'life peerages' handed out during Thatcher and afterward too, generally on account of massive successes in asset stripping, vast redundancies, abandonment of research and development, and grabbing their hands onto a lot of immediate CASH.

But the game of chess is slow and terribly fair.

Listen to me – I don't need anything Julian Assange has in order to kick the establishment in the balls.

Here is a picture of the young inheritor of the Hanson Empire – Robert Hanson – a wonderful fellow, highly-educated at the very best of toffy schools, wealthy beyond your, yay even YOUR dreams, and his wife the onetime Russian model Masha Markova.

Now when I say that certain people have been doing some bad stuff that involves gross illegality, I literally do mean exactly that. And sad to say, the police and the courts and government agencies and bureaucracies have protected them. Just as in the days of old Cromwell – who also, was saving the honest citizenry from the terrible misdeeds of tyrants and the unfaithful. Young Hanson is not guilty of anything that I am aware of, but I do rather think that he is now a leaky sieve, as it were, in a Russian kitchen, so to speak. Or, if not, very like unto those situations of a similar kind then that strangely enough involve some bright young thing, of very very well-trained origin. If you know what I mean.

Well, I think 'watch this space' is inadequate; I confidently predict for you, the utter demise of many once-were establishment lords and kings. And dare I say, I notice a few luxury product websites prognosticating that SINGAPORE, of all places, 'may by 2050 be the wealthiest nation on earth.' Oh, okay then. However, I always like to underscore the strong connection between London City and Singapore's oligarchic 'elite.' One falls from this sort of tree they all will fall. And that will be the end of that! The cause of my animus? Oh dear. Just stop listening to the myth-making! There is no James Bond. There has never ever been a James Bond. There is a BP, a British American Tobacco, and a Philip Morris, a Hanson Trust, and so on, though. And none of them are working for the taxpayer or the citizen. And no politician who goes along for their ride is looking after your interests. And the reason there is a banking problem today, is precisely because in stealing from everyone, the 'elite' has lost all capacity to use its brains. If Marcus Wolf were alive today, I'd be eating in his kitchen everyday. HE was the suave and cultured superspy. And HE has descendents even now.

I'm just an observer though, who once had uncles in the oil business, who left me with the luxury of being able to know a few handy names, and sit around a lot and 'read the play.'

The Silence That Falls...

Friday I have a good muslim friend of mine turn up and we have coffees, teas, even cigars maybe, and talk about good wine and blonde women, generally.
It is just past the middle of Ramadan at the moment and ye Muslime Friend - let's call him Hakim Philby - should be at the mosque. He is, however, over here.
He doesn't feel that welcome at any of the local mosques, because, unfortunately, not only is he regarded as 'Westernized' but probably corrupted by his expensive Western schooling as well. And that is not to say he is altogether understood and accepted either, by those current crops of privileged kids of African dictators and 'democratic leaders' who also went to places like Eton and Oxford and so on.

Turk's hats... in the cold snow

My friend is from a past generation.
This was the Golden Generation where money didn't mean a thing compared to principles, be they religious, moral, political or merely civic ones.
(I'm not completely sure such a generation ever really existed of course but I seem to recall that it may have...)
So... He should be fasting during the day.
Anyway, he brought over some chicken and a few odds and ends of ingredients and I went to work in my kitchen observing that both he and my wife and the next door neighbour were acting a bit like schooling sharks.
The whole mob of them were as noisy as all hell. There was a copy on the dining table of the very latest Marie Claire magazine filled to the brim with risque tales and over-skinny models and sex advice.
Nobody at my place lets me make Beef Burgundy or any of the Russian or Hungarian things that I personally like to make and eat. So I'm stuck with a sort of Tamil chicken curry and white rice with a touch of sesame oil in it. Not every Friday but well, fairly often.
I bring these two great tureens out and then all of a sudden there's this dead quiet and nobody says a word and the intensity and seriousness with which people serve themselves and get down to work eating is fascinating.

The silence - that kind of silence - is gratifying for any cook.
I'm not sure I will over a short term be able to introduce things like pickled cucumber and vodka or caviar or borscht because these things are a world apart from food you eat IN TOTAL SILENCE.
However it's very cold in places like Kiev or even Red Square often and you don't want to talk in those sorts of places unless someone absolutely insists that you do.
There is a certain pure functionality about some Russian cultural motifs, although there can be some ornateness present too.
You can see I'm doing a Russian theme at the moment. There may be a reason. In fact I'll tell you what the reason is - take the two cultures, American, and Russian, and take from out of them the best that you can find in both... ...and let's just dump all the Karl Rove, Ben Bernanke rubbish and propaganda. I'll bet there are some REAL problem areas in the Russian culture too that people there very familiar with it would also love to dispose of permanently. I'll ask my spy friend - not the Muslim guy, a different friend altogether - and let you know in another post what lunatic nonsense self-important but scene-grabbing people and ideas Russians themselves would like to do away with.
Oh yes, and there IS something going on at the Kremlin right now. You can be very sure of that. Whose side must I be on? Actually I will still be here each Friday; Mohammed and Marx can come visit anytime if they like. Well okay, maybe Tamerlane and Kruschev! I don't want to be bored!

Russian Firebird

Any time you encounter a folk tale or fairy story or fantastic myth involving 'a garden,' you are dealing with the classical 'Garden of the Hesperides' story. This is an unusual story because it is never very prominently rendered by the Greeks themselves, who have a few writers and philosophers who endeavoured to explain it. As is quite typical of them, though, they actually try to place the garden in a real place somewhere in the world, usually suggested to be 'somewhere in or near' modern day Spain.

Ksenia O.

If you ever get the chance to go and see the great ballet 'The Firebird,' you will observe that it is just when the day begins at last to turn towards the night, when all the critical action happens, and when the Firebird herself, fatefully takes the stage. ...Glowing like red-orange embers, strange dark and upward slanted eyes, and supernatural and with divine powers.

Fatefully... takes the stage.

Remember those words.

Classical myths and folk takes become popular and resist the changes of time and mere fashion, because people discover that they are at heart fundamentally sound in some crucial respect, either granting an insight into something that is impenetrable by ordinary perceptions and thinking, or symbolically describing some happenstance or event of human lives that remains a mystery to science and to The O'Reilly Factor.

I was absolutely astounded just the other day, when I heard that runaway from London City, Piers Morgan, give it away on television, that Western governments (and he quickly implicated England and MI6 by name also in his words) 'use everything at their disposal, all their resources, and throwing all their efforts' behind 'undermining the capability of people who might finance Islamic terrorism...'

Oh dear. I know what that means. It means that certain people are justifying criminal acts and illegal practices, in the name of destabilizing foreign terrorists, with possible negative effects on – quite possibly – totally innocent and uninvolved bystanders including bystanding corporates.

Same Russian Ballerina

Meanwhile, no doubt Standard Chartered Bank must be playing official double agent and handing over commissions from Iran secretly to the City of London somewhere, does it?

So am I saying that Syria and Iran are nations that have moral right on their side? What a laughable thought. No, indeed no. They are scandalously immoral. Moreover both practice computer attack strategies and tactics that harm and injure us 'ordinary man-in-the-street' folk.

What I am saying is that one ought not to assume that those who have their dirty little hands all around all the levers of State in their official capacities over here on the 'good side,' do so for only purely honourable and altruistic reasons that we would all approve of and applaud.

If, like me, you spent a few seconds wondering why the Russians really are supporting those miscreants in Syria, let me suggest to you that it might be because in listening in on what is being said inside Whitehall in private rooms and chambers, it must have occurred to the 'Czar Valdimir the First of This Century' – following which he consulted with Roman Abramovich and his colleague George Soros – that the fair thing to do in the circustances, was to interpose some hindrances in the way of Karl Rove and his artistes of propaganda, as he, Rove, creeped his way around Europe infecting politicians everywhere with the Gospel of Libertisation. And let me hint, that the power of the Greeks, as always, resides in and at that moment where they appear to drift into the twilight... My money is not on Germany. And as we see profits drops everywhere, no miracle will alter that fate even for Germans either. Stay away from Germany and German companies. Just a guess, of course.

The Champagne And Club Sandwich World

And then all of a sudden a thing is right there before your eyes in reality – rather than just on the net!

And the reality teaches you a great big lesson.

A Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato sandwich can be staggeringly good. That is, if it is made with the right kind of bacon, and if the mayonnaise is top notch. To hell with all this stuff nowadays about salt. It's got to be made PROPERLY in order to be any good.

But if it is good it is sensational.

Of course in the old days this thing was known as the 'club sandwich' and it might have had all kinds of other things in it too. My personally preference is to add a few thick slices of white chicken breast.

In a day and age of great pretentiousness – hey just look at the Fed – there are those who seem to believe you have to go to a Michelin 3-star restaurant in order to open a decent champagne with a meal, and that just simply isn't the case.

Chicken goes with champagne. A few bits of chicken in a first class BLT (therefore 'plus chicken') and you can certainly justify getting out the Mumm or the Veuve Cliquot.

And what a satisfying course all of that is!

There is 15 kilos of gold-leaf spread all over the newly renovated Bolshoi Theatre - so we are told - and the carillon bells ring out at each premier night of a new ballet or opera. The beautiful red velvet drapes hang against the sides everywhere and of course also over the private boxes, and a huge glittering chandelier dazzles atop it all inside the main hall. There, indeed you can open the great champagnes and imbibe the scents of Robert Piguet's Bandit French perfume and the effluvia of the underarms of Russian mistresses and second wives in their Imperial Bargunzinskya Zobol coats...

The function of money as expense, is never matched by its ability to reward. The scale of reward from a great BLT and a glass of even vin ordinaire, is exponentially 'off the scale' as they say compared to its dollar cost. Although I'll admit that a well-prepared night at the opera or ballet equates. But only equates, mind you, in the sense that it too goes exponentially 'off the scale' of value for money. The two sorts of things are good, put it that way. And I never resist either, when opportunity puts them in my way. They are both very very satisfying experiences.

Best to All,

Calvin J. Bear

What Barry Meyer Thinks, Maybe!

A sort of type of thinking that gives me a really comfortable feeling at night – or anytime when I'm on the verge of sleep – is this fantasy of being like one of these current-era suburban or country doomsday preppers who is lying in wait for alien zombies or reptilian aliens disguised as government people or politicians. And, having and hording weapons and hi-tech equipment and things.

But what I think of is aiming a Springfield Armory M1A SOCOM with a side-mounted laser optic and other fancy fruit at some tin can or metal sign or something and blasting some fragging round into it. Or into a zombie alien, literally – that is, if such a thing existed; which it does do of course in that place between awake consciousness and deep dark sleep.

Caption? Are you kidding!

The worst thing I could think of, and not comforting at all, is shooting a human being. Even the odd few real villains and enemies I know, I'm not really certain it would interest me to shoot and kill them...

Self-defence? Not really an issue with me. I have an unusual amount of prescience, you might even say, capacity to read minds. At fifty-three I don't bother to argue the 'science' of it anymore with my own mind – I have done it too many times to bother or care to doubt myself anymore. But you don't have to believe that bit of course.

I can appreciate a piece of mechanical engineering, whether of fine wood, or machined metal, or complex synthetics – just for what it is, rather than what it claims to be able to do.

I come from a long long and ancient line of people who really know how to be angry and to cause a lot of damage.

All this nonsense that spreads out everywhere these days about people being scared of evil conspiracies and crooked governments and corrupted banks and malicious dark overlords against whom there is a deep social angst – is all simple-minded nonsense to me.

You have a choice to slump into or wallow in a myre of all-deprecating self-misery and anti-everythingness. Without wanting to turn off here, those who admire him, Richard Dawkins is another one of these one-sided self-proclaimed super-'scientific sceptics.' If anything at all, though, to me, he does genuine science a great disservice. There is a modern tendency to keep saying 'science knows thus far, but it could change its position when further science tells it different...' No. It doesn't and it couldn't. Dawkins is symptomatic of a grand social malaise that stems from the inability to take charge.

The most dangerous person you know is a philosopher, that is, the genuine philosopher. Not the mad or even the mind-controlled gunman. I have read in several different places that the head of Warner, Barry Meyer, thinks that if he can control the roughly-on-average 3000 thoughts a day that the average person thinks, he can affect directions of business and buyers' interests and tastes.

And I think he's right – that is, if indeed he ever did really say such a thing.

But there is such a thing as a David-and-Goliath effect in philosophical thought, too. A densely-packed complex idea with a small cross-section of signal, can be leveraged up against all the photons of Fox TV, if it is capable of being augmented by other intelligent minds. That is, it has to be rational. Can be wildly unlikely, but still possible...

Let me give you an example:

I learnt this from J. Paul Getty, who I met once as a young boy in Singapore through my uncle who was then a director of Shell Far East.

Getty said that he was able to observe the incredible value enhancements of technology – for instance as they did away with entire office blocks and stenographers and typists (and their attendant costs), through for example the invention of the Xerox copier. And that he adjusted how he himself operated along with those technological advancements that he could see cut down capital costs and operating expenses.

If I look at Daimler the automotive manufacturer, and consider the huge capital investment base they have to work from, I have to laugh about what they consider is a great achievement for them, say, something like their Mercedes SLS AMG. How can you produce what is essentially only a copy of someone else's past design, admittedly with current materials and technology, when you have so much capital at risk?

The car has some nice aspects, but it also has some desperate flaws.

The Alfa C8 Competizione gets me more interested...

We are thinking entirely incorrectly when we still give face to banks and governments and so-called ratings agencies and to the pop media and their running dogs in politics. Cut all of this expense out. In the sense of stop being concerned that the big financial solutions to modern markets must come from any of these. The big solutions will come from guys with just a few computers, iphones, ipads, usb sticks, video cameras, printers, satellite connections, and basic (by modern standards) software programmes. We make a huge mistake in not personally accounting for the frankly, billions of dollars of capital cost savings, that we make, when we can successfully integrate these bits and pieces of common technological gadgets, and link with even half-way decent individual brainpower.

I'm not really in the mood for self-critique, or morose whining about moribund banks and sharemarkets, when right now I get to play with effectively greater resources than NASA had in the Sixties. Okay, maybe I'll come up with only a decadent way of using them. But so what?!! There's a lot of freedom and power in there. And I'm not feeling either powerless, or suppressed, or concerned that there will be a lot of hyper-deflationary forces out there. Those forces are only applying to the dying economy of the office blocks and the sunset methods and thinking styles.