NightHawk

Having just read "The Kite Runner" - the first novel written by Khaled Hosseini [my review here] - I'm now reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns", the second novel by this master storyteller.

Even more than the first book, this work spells out what it has been like to live in Afghanistan in the last few decades. I've reached the part of the novel that deals with the period of the Taliban.

It pays to remember how the Taliban treated women in the so-called name of Islam - not least because the Taliban is far from defeated.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

To be honest, the thought had not occurred to me until I read this article today. I had not appreciated that apparently the Welsh are unhappy with the current flag because it does not include the the cross of St David or the Welsh dragon.

Our flag was introduced in 1606 following the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne as James I when the cross of St George was combined with the saltire of St Andrew. This principle continued in 1801 when the St Patrick cross was incorporated following the Union with Ireland Act 1800.

You can read a fuller history of the Union Jack - as the UK's flag is commonly called - here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A month or so ago, I blogged about the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project pioneered by Nicholas Negroponte. I pointed that, following support at a critical time from the then President of the Nigeria, Negroponte decided that the laptop would bear that country's national colours of green and white.

But that was then and this is now. It is reported that the new Government of Nigeria does not seem to have the same enthusiasm for the project. Indeed a spokesman for the project is claiming that a lack of "big thinking" by politicians has stifled the scheme. But Negroponte is not a man to give up.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As a Londoner who doesn't drive, I use the London Underground a lot and constantly hear the injunction "Mind the gap". Today we have the news that the woman whose voice makes these and other announcement for LU has been told she can no longer do work for the organisation.

It seems that Emma Clarke offended LU bosses with her criticisms of LU. As a result of all the publicity, her web site is overwhelmed by visitors who want to download MP3s of her spoof Tube announcements such as :"We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.".

It looks like London Underground has shot itself in the foot here. I wouldn't be surprised if public reaction forces LU to change its mind.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It is reported that the Secret Intelligence Service (that's MI6 to you and me) is mounting a recruitment drive this week to attract budding James Bonds, though without the licence to kill. Like its sister agency, the domestic Security Service (or MI5), it wants to "broaden its staff base" to "better reflect the ethnicity of the community we serve".

Now I like to ask foreigners where they come from and try to respond by using a few words of greeting in their language. I do this in taxi cabs, restaurants, shops and the like.

I'm often asked how I know the language (of course, I don't - I've just memorised a few greetings from my travels). Sometimes, if I'm feeling mischievous, I say that I used to be a spy and had to know a lot of languages because I never knew the destination of my next mission.

It's clear from the responses that some people think this is a likely explanation - but I think that I'm too old now to be a spy (I've seen "Casino Royale" and I can't run like that). However, if you'd like to consider joining MI5 or MI6, the BBC web site has interviews with some young operatives to give you an idea of what is wanted.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 03:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I live in a leafy part of north-west London where there are lots of trees. As I turn from my street into the main road, there's a tree that has a black plastic bag fluttering from one of the branches. It's been there years and years and years. It's a constant reminder to me of how plastic bags are messing up our environment and how incredibly slow these things are to decompose.

In my book, therefore, Rebecca Hosking is a heroine. She managed to persuade all 43 shopkeepers in her home town of Modbury to replace the use of plastic bags with reusable cloth bags. Nearly 80 other towns are now in various stages of introducing their own bans. Last week, the 32 London boroughs said that they would seek a new law to enable them to do the same. This week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he would seek a meeting with supermarkets to see how plastic bags could be eliminated.

You can read a profile of Rebecca Hosking here here and learn how to make your own cloth bag here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In an earlier posting, I pointed out that Spain translates in one year the number of books that have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years.

I was aware at the time that there is a project designed to address this and this week that project announced the first works that it will translate into Arabic. I very much welcome this project as helping international understanding and the dissemination of knowledge and culture.

The project is called Kalima ("word" in Arabic) and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage is financing the translation and publishing exercise The project unveiled the first six translations this week and it aims to publish 100 books from 16 languages in its first year and 500 titles a year by 2010. The first six translations include "A Briefer History Of Time " by Stephen Hawking [my review here]

You can find more details on the first books in the project here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Paul is in his late 30s and has recently come out of a painful divorce. The idea of dating again was, in many respects, an uncomfortable one. He recognised that he had a fair bit of emotional baggage and that meeting someone who understood him and shared his interests was not going to be easy.

He joined an Internet agency and eventually struck up an on-line friendship with a woman living at the other end of the country whom he who would never have met in the physical world. They got to know each other well through the Internet and phone calls before actually meeting and they now live together at what was her place."

This is a quote from one of my monthly Internet columns which I wrote four years ago. This week, I had lunch with Paul (not his real name) and his relationship is still going strong.

I suspect that more than ever people are making new friends and even meeting new partners by initially making contact on-line. Has this happened to you?

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In the mid 1980s, I saw the film "The Killing Fields" which graphically depicted the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in Cambodia in which 1.7 million people died, nearly a quarter of the population. A couple of years ago, in Siem Reap I visited one of the many killing fields and found it a moving experience which I have described here.

This week, the UN-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia staged its first historic hearing. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, the head of the brutal regime's notorious Toul Sleng torture centre, appeared before the panel of five judges on Phnom Penh's outskirts, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You can read more here.

This is good news for the people of Cambodia but it is almost 30 years after the end of slaughter.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's a week now since I bought my new iPhone. I still have a lot to learn about it, but already it is a sheer joy to own for the following reasons:

1. It is a wonderfully elegant design and very small and light considering what it does.
   
2. It powers up much quicker than my previous phone a Nokia N80.
   
3. The user interface is very user-friendly and intuitive.
   
4. I don't need a stylus to input text as with my Palm Tungsten T3 PDA.
   
5. The virtual keyboard has letters much larger than my old mobile or PDA.
   
6. I can access the Internet as much as I want for no cost above the monthly subscription.
   
7. The screen - which can be used portrait or landscape - is large enough to make web pages readable.
   
8. By 'pinching' the screen, one can easily magnify text.
   
9. I can find any place in the UK on a map.
   
10. I can find satellite pictures of any location in the UK.
    
11. I can instantly obtain a seven-day weather forecast.
    
12. It is a great talking point at meetings and dinner parties.
    

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my favourite sayings is: "It's isn't over till it's over - and then it isn't over." You think something is history and then somebody or something comes along to change your perception of things.

The child who finds that her parent is actually not her parent at all because she was in fact adopted. The wife who finds that her happy marriage was a sham because her husband has been having an affair for years. The relative you thought was dead who turns up alive.

The discovery of the Gnostic Gospels that changes our view of Christianity. The body of Christopher Columbus in Seville Cathedral that turns out not be be him. The weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam Hussein that turn out not to exist.

In this vein, there's excitement among my American brethen because it may be that a new photograph has been discovered showing Abraham Lincoln arriving at Gettysburg to deliver his famous address. You can check it put here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Most of us like to think of ourselves as peace-loving but equally we like to feel that we care about injustice in the world and want to do something about it. Sometimes these values come into conflict and the right thing to do is to intervene with armed forces. This approach is sometimes called "liberal interventionism" and the concept was defended this week in a thoughtful speech by Jonathan Powell, former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair when the latter was Prime Minister. You can read an extract from his speech here.

Powell very briefly reviews Blair's wars, of which there were four: Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Generally speaking the first three of these are judged to have been the right thing to do. Iraq is seen as 'a war too far' and certainly it it was executed in disastrous fashion by the United States, but this does not invalidate the case for "liberal intervention" although it may well weaken the resolve of the Western powers to carry out further such interventions in the future.

This is not an academic matter. Even now, as explained in this article, Kosovo and Bosnia (which I visited recently [my account here]) are in a terribly fragile state that might well require some military muscle behind efforts at diplomacy. Kosovo wants independence - as I explained in my "Forgotten World" series here - but, if it acts against the will of Serbia (backed by Russia), Serbia could back a breakaway by Serbs in Bosnia leading to the collapse of that state and possibly more bloodshed.

Of course, we do not have the moral right or the military resources to intervene everywhere that repression and war is threatened and, in his speech, Powell reminds us of the five conditions proposed by Blair to justify "liberal interventionism":

1. We need to be sure of our case. War is a very imperfect instrument for righting wrongs, but armed force is sometimes the only way of replacing dictatorships.

2. Have we exhausted all diplomatic options? We should always give peace every chance.

3. Are there practical and sensible military options? Sending gunboats to Zimbabwe won't work.

4. Are we prepared for the long term? We talk about exit strategies, but we cannot just walk away when a fight is over.

5. Do we have national interests engaged? That does not mean oil, but do we promote our own security better by protecting the rights of others in a particular situation?

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's an amazing fact that:

"Although Arab culture, from Baghdad to Toledo, led the world in the art of translation in the 8th and 9th centuries, transmitting ancient Greek and Latin texts that helped fuel Europe's renaissance, the UN estimates that the entire number of books translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years is the same as that now rendered into Spanish in a single year."

On the other hand:

"After the 1988 Nobel prize for literature was awarded to Naguib Mahfouz, the sole Arab recipient to date, Edward Said wrote that 'of all the major literatures and languages, Arabic is by far the least known and the most grudgingly regarded by Europeans and Americans'."

These are both quotes from an interesting article in today's "Guardian" newspaper.

Another way of better understanding the Arab world is to visit it and I've been fortunate enough to travel to Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In Russia, there will be elections to the State Duma in December 2007 and to the Presidency in March 2008. In preparation for these elections, I've added Russia to the series on my web site of short guides to various countries' political systems.

There are now eight essays in the series. You can read the one on Russia here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The ring tone on my mobile is the same as that used by the phones in CTU in the television series "24". Of course, the series is noted for its use of advanced IT - but this amusing clip suggests what Jack Bauer would have had to suffer if the series was shot in 1994.

Of course, these days Jack should go nowhere without his iPhone.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The iPhone was launched in Britain at 6.02pm on Friday. I've been saying to myself for months that I'd buy one as a Christmas present to myself. But I just couldn't wait.

I bought one this afternoon. Now I have to activate the thing and learn how to use it. I wish that I had a youngster at home to help, but hopefully it won't be too difficult.

Up-date: I registered on-line without difficulty before i took Vee out for a birthday dinner. By the time we returned, the iPhone had been activated. Now I start to play ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:42 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I attended a conference on telecommunications regulation organised by the London Business School. As a result, I was a guest at a meal hosted by BT and held in the Media Centre of Lords Cricket Ground in north London. This provides stunning views of the cricket field. There were just a few problems:

a) It was nighttime so one could barely see the field.
b) It's winter so there's no playing there anyway.
c) I'm an atypical male with no interest in sports.

But it's an impressive building - and the meal wasn't bad.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Vee and I spent Saturday and Sunday on the Isle of Wight visiting our good friends Trev and Tess Jessop. It was a time for friendship and food rather than sightseeing.

They live in an amazing place called Span Lodge which was bulit in 1805 as a home for the gatekeeper of the southern gate of a stately home called Appuldurcombe House. They have built a wonderful conservatory and are now adding an extension and the whole house is full of Trev's paintings. They have even created a new copse filled with 15 different varieties of trees, numbering some 1,000 in all.

Appuldurcombe House itself is an 18th century Palladian house which, as a result of a bomb that fell nearby during the war, had its windows blown out and roof destroyed. It has been partially restored and is now privately owned but open to the public. The impressive grounds were designed by Capability Brown. We had some walks around the Lodge and the House and also through the village of Bonchurch and the town of Ventnor.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today is Remembrance Sunday.

Harry Patch - now aged 109 - is the last surviving British soldier of the First World War. You can read his story here.

Lest we forget ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In all my nearly 60 years, I've only been once to the Isle of Wight - and that was almost 30 years ago. But this weekend, Vee and I are off for couple of days to visit Trev and Tess Jessop whom we befriended on our holiday in Indochina. Trev is an artist and you can see some of his excellent work on his web site.

More than half of the land on the Isle of Wight is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty and the island attracts more than 2 million visitors a year. Yet, although the island is known for its wealthy yachting community, it now has the second lowest wage levels in the UK, more than 25% of people are on benefits, and nearly half the 130,000 inhabitants are over 50.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The very earliest days of blogging were a decade ago. I've been blogging for almost five years now and usually blog every day.

A full-page feature in today's "Guardian" news paper claims that, of Britain's 26 million Internet users, 15% run a blog and that almost one in five of them blog at least once a day. So there are some 4 million British bloggers out there keeping me company in the blogosphere.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Saint Martin is a small tropical island in the north-east Caribbean, approximately 300 km south-east of Puerto Rico. The 87 square km island is divided roughly in half between France and the Netherlands and it is the smallest inhabited sea island divided between two nations.

The northern French half is a overseas collectivity of France.The southern Dutch half is part of the Netherlands Antilles. The population on the French side is 35,000 and on the Dutch side is 50,000, but there is an average of 1,000,000 tourist visitors a year.

According to legend, Columbus sighted and perhaps anchored at the island of Saint Martin on 11 November 1493, the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours. In his honour, Columbus named the island San Martin. In 1648, the French and the Dutch agreed to divide the island between them - and so it remains today.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Kaliningrad by the Baltic Sea is one of the strangest territories in Europe. The region was part of Germany until annexation by the USSR following World War II when it saw bitter fighting and suffered rampant destruction. The German population was expelled or fled after the war ended. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, this Russian enclave now has no territorial connection with its mother land, since it is sandwiched between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east, both of which are now in the European Union.

Some 430,000 people - 80% of them ethnic Russians - live there. Kaliningrad is still of great strategic importance to Russia since it houses the Russian Baltic Fleet at the port of Baltiysk and this is the country's only European ice-free port. Russia keeps a wary eye on developments. Moscow is particularly sensitive about calls from within the region for a referendum on whether to seek greater autonomy within Russia with a view to seeking to strengthen ties with the countries of the European Union.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Lots of people seem to have colds and flu at the moment (not me yet, thank goodness), so I thought this video clip from the television serious "Manstokewoman" might amuse:

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:45 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Djibouti is a small (population 721,000) African country by the Gulf of Aden that is surrounded by Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the west and Somalia to the south. It was a French colony until 1977 and France still has thousands of troops stationed there.

The country has two main ethnic groups: the Issa of Somali origin and the Afar of Ethiopian origin. A civil war between these two groups in the early 1990s eventually led to a power-sharing settlement.

Djibouti's location is the main economic asset of a country that is mostly barren. The capital, Djibouti city, handles Ethiopian imports and exports and its transport facilities are used by several landlocked African countries to fly in their goods for re-export.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The London Eye - which stands at 135 metres - is now an iconic feature of the capital's skyline and I've been on it several times. On a recent visit to Manchester, I found that this city now has a Wheel of Manchester too, rising 60 metres. For a time, there was a wheel in Paris. Then, of course, there is the famous ferris wheel in Vienna - which I have ridden - which is a mere 34 metres.

It seems as if wheels are becoming more popular. China already has a wheel which is much taller than the London Eye: the 160-metre Star of Nanchang beats the 135-metres of the London wheel.

Now it is planning an even bigger wheel: the Beijing Great Wheel - which began construction this week - will soar 208 metres (680 feet).

More information here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Laos was originally known as Lan Xang (which means the Kingdom of a Million Elephants) when it was founded by the legendary Fa Ngum. It gained its independence from France in 1954, but became embroiled in the Vietnam war since the Ho Chi Minh trail ran through it. By the end of the Vietnam war, the American carpet bombing campaigns had given Laos the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country in the history of warfare. Some 3M tons of explosive were dropped on the country - one ton for every person. There are still tons of unexploded ordinance in the fields and jungles.

At the same time as the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam, in Laos the Vietnamese-supported communist Pathet Lao took control of the country and detained all the members of the previous establishment, including the royal family, in so-called re-education camps where most of them died of malnutrition and ill-treatment. The ruling communist Lao People's Revolutionary Party is still the only legal political party.

Slightly larger than Britain, Laos only has a population of 6M, so it is very sparsely inhabited, and some 80% of people are still involved in agriculture, so it is a very rural society. Outside the capital, many people live without electricity or access to basic facilities. But Laos is banking on the anticipated returns from a billion-dollar dam scheme, intended to generate electricity for export to Thailand, to boost its economy and infrastructure.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In Britain, this evening is celebrated as Bonfire Night - a commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, the failed attempt by the Catholic Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up the Protestant Parliament in 1605. But how exactly did Fawkes die?

After being found guilty, the conspirators were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster and St Paul's Yard, where they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Fawkes, however, managed to avoid the worst of this execution by jumping from the scaffold where he was supposed to be hanged, breaking his neck before he could be drawn and quartered.

So, what exactly does it mean to say that someone was hanged, drawn, and quartered? You can learn the details of this revolting form of execution here.

No wonder Fawkes jumped ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

On 21 occasions now, I've had a week-long feature devoted to parts of the world that tend to be under-reported or even forgotten. It's some time since I did so, but this week I am going to run another series of postings on this theme.

Mozambique is a country in South-East Africa with almost 20M people which has been battered by colonial rule, civil war, floods and famine. Between 1977 and 1992 up to a million Mozambicans died from fighting and famine in a war that ruined the economy and much of the countryside. The country has been left with a legacy of land mines and amputees.

However, since a peace deal ended 16 years of civil conflict, the country has made big strides, becoming a magnet for foreign investment. Progress has been slower than hoped because in 2000 and 2001 the country was hit by floods, which affected about a quarter of the population, and then in 2002 a severe drought hit many central and southern parts of the country, including previously flood-stricken areas.

The country's politics are still dominated by political parties that are the successors of the rival armies in the fight for independence: Frelimo (which forms the government) and Renamo (which is a substantial opposition grouping).

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Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I found myself at London's Heathrow airport having a light lunch before boarding an aircraft for Inverness. In a busy cafe, I sat at a table where someone was already eating and got talking to him.

Martin Parson turned out to be a freelance aeronautical engineer working in Preston on something called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme which has resulted in a fighter aircraft called the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. Since I have a lifelong interest in aviation, I was fascinated to hear him talk about this extraordinary project.

You've probably never hear of it but, at $276.5bn (£140bn), it is the world's most expensive military project. The first flight of the aircraft was on 15 December 2006. and some 2,400 of the aircraft are expected to be in service by 2027.

Britain's BAE Systems is one of the key players in the aircraft's development. It has pumped $2bn into the project, with the UK expected to take delivery of 138 fighters.

Along with the US and Britain, the F-35 is being co-financed by Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Turkey. Total combined purchases for the F-35 could be up to 3,100 aircraft.

There are four variants of the F-35: one for the US Air Force, one for the US Navy, one for the US Marines and the fourth for the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.

If this photograph excites your interest ...

... then check out this video

Both my father and my father-in-law were fighter pilots in the early 1940s. They could never have dreamt of the power and versatility of the F-35

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:04 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

No, neither had I - until recently when I was on a business trip to Croatia and visited the Museum of Zagreb where the event was mentioned in a display. However, if you are Croatian, it will be a very familiar and sensitive matter. It shows how little we know of other nations' history.

You can read about the Bleiburg massacre here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

You'll find nine so-called 'proofs' here.

Although this is of course an amusing spoof, it encourages me to mention my essay on "The Trouble With Religion".

Posted by Roger Darlington at 03:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This is the first day of the month that we in Britain call November. In Latin, 'novem' means nine and November was the ninth month in the Roman calendar. It is now the eleventh month in the Gregorian calendar which is the most widely used in the world.

But, in the calendar of the Czech Republic (a country I visit often), this month is called Listopad. The name means 'falling leaves' and obviously refers to what we see at this time of year. We find the same name for this month in the Polish calendar.

However, in the calendar of Croatia (where I was last week), last month was Listopad. The Croatians reckon - probably correctly - that leaves fall more in the ninth month of the year than in the tenth (indeed that's why Americans call Autumn 'the Fall').

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)