How can you cope with Brexit, Trump, North Korea and all the crazy things happening in the world right now?

November 5th, 2017 by Roger Darlington

A feature in the colour supplement of this weekend’s “Guardian” newspaper concludes with five pieces of advice.

1 Look after yourself
“Self-care” has become a cliche, but while it is far from the panacea it is sometimes claimed to be, it is a crucial ingredient in staying sane. You may be surprised how frequently even the most dramatically apocalyptic thoughts and feelings turn out to be down to insufficient food or sleep. Meanwhile, plenty of research testifies to the enormous psychological benefits of even a small amount of time spent in nature.

2 Limit your exposure
The straightforward advice issued by the American Psychological Association during the US election campaign – “If the 24-hour news cycle is causing you stress, limit your media consumption” – still applies. Every news update trumpets its own importance, but it hardly follows that each one matters.

3 Stop fighting reality (or your feelings)
According to several schools of psychotherapy, a great deal of the unpleasantness we attribute to external events, or to our emotions, arises from resisting them. It is worth remembering that “anxiety and similar feelings are fairly appropriate reactions, normal responses, to completely abnormal things going on,” says therapist Paul Saks. There is no need to feel bad about feeling bad.

4 Take real-world action
“Solidarity is huge and being active really matters,” says therapist Emmy van Deurzen. Any actions you consider meaningful will start to replace feelings of helplessness – which are closely associated with depression – with a sense of agency. If possible, keep the emphasis on those involving direct interaction with other people, rather than online “slacktivism”.

5 Keep a sense of perspective
None of this means the end of the world. (Well, probably not – and not just yet.) “Keep in mind that there’s a longer game to be played,” Saks says. Especially in the current climate, news that seems monumental today may not seem very significant in a month or two, let alone a year or more. “Not to negate the fact that real harm is being done now, but we’re resilient and, in the long run, this will pass.”

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Who would want to be Prime Minister of Lebanon?

November 5th, 2017 by Roger Darlington

It is disturbing news that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has resigned, saying in a televised broadcast from Saudi Arabia that he feared for his life. Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, was assassinated in 2005.

In 2011, I visited Lebanon (having previously toured Syria). During the trip, I read a fascinating book called “Beware Of Small States” and my review of the work is essentially a very brief history of Lebanon. You can read this here.

In my web site account of our time in Lebanon, I wrote an introduction to the country which brings the political history up-to-date. You can read this here.

Hariri’s resignation is a feature of the current profound conflict in the Middle East between the Sunni and Shia strands of Islam, the former led by Saudi Arabia and the latter led by Iran.

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The centenary of the Balfour Declaration

November 3rd, 2017 by Roger Darlington

This week has marked the centenary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which led to the creation of Israel in 1948. The letter stated:

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

I watched a BBC 2 television programme about the Declaration and its consequences, presented by Jane Corbin, a long-time reporter from the Middle East and a relative of Leo Amery who was one of the drafters of the document.

I have read at least one book on the Arab-Israeli conflict [my review here] and, as well as visiting surrounding Arab nations, I have been to Israel itself [my account here]. Despite Jane Corbin’s faith in the Oslo Accords of 1993, there seems little prospect of substantive progress in this conflict any time soon.

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Not the film I was expecting (1): a review of “Thor: Ragnarok”

November 2nd, 2017 by Roger Darlington

This is the not the film I was expecting. As the third entry in the “Thor” franchise, I anticipated a traditional super-hero movie like the previous two: lots of drama and threat and the occasional humorous one-liner. But this is actually the funniest by far of all the works in the Marvel canon (now 17 films) and has clearly been influenced substantially by the commercial success of the two “Guardians Of The Galaxy” movies which came out in between “Thor: The Dark World” and “Thor: Ragnarok”. This makes for an immensely entertaining outing but inevitably dials down the tension. As well as different writers, we have to thank for the new style New Zealand director Taika Waititi who additionally voices the granite character Korg who could have stomped straight out of a “GOTG” film.

As always with super-hero movies, we have lots of noise and colour together with splendid sets and effective special effects, but ultimately what makes this movie work is the cast. As well as Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as brothers Thor and Loki, we have the wonderful Cate Blanchett as their gorgon-like sister Hela, another enjoyable female actress Tessa Thompson as a Valkryie, Mark Ruffalo as the Incredible Hulk, and the delightful Jeff Goldblum as an unlikely-looking villain called simply Grandmaster. The plot is rather confusing (but essentially Ragnarok = the destruction of Asgard) and the humour sometimes juvenile (a cosmic stargate is called “the Devil’s Anus”), but the whole thing is such F-U-N.

Marvel movies always have a teaser clip at the end and this time we are treated to two: one early in the credits and one at the very end. The humour never stops.

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Not the film I was expecting (2): a review of “The Death Of Stalin”

November 2nd, 2017 by Roger Darlington

This is not the film I was expecting. Knowing that it was both written and directed by the British Armando Iannucci who gave us the outrageous delights of “In The Loop”, “The Thick of It” and Veep”, I thought that I was going to encounter a full-blown, satirical comedy (and the trailer had confirmed this impression), but instead – while there are certainly plenty of laughs from a sharp script – this is an altogether darker work, full of foreboding, terror and casual slaughter, than I was anticipating. It is not just the tone that is off-kilter; the brilliant cast makes no attempt to effect a Russian accent but offers everything from a Yorkshire accent to an unashamedly American one. Iannucci has moved from contemporary Whitehall and Washington to take us to Moscow in 1953 but, if we were expecting “Carry On Up The Kremlin”, we have something much more gut-renching and all the more effective.

Several of the characters (the dictator himself played by Adrian McLoughlin) and his eventual successor Khruschev (Steve Buscemi) are known to everyone, but others – like war hero Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) and spy chief Beria (Simon Russell Beale) – will be less-known and still others – such as Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) and Molotov (Michael Palin) – will be unfamiliar to many viewers, so you need to be something of an enthusiast for Soviet history to pick up on all the allusions. And real historians will rightly challenge some of the detail because there are some major errors (three of the major characters did not at that time hold the posts attributed to them) although these might be excused as deliberate distorions to enhance the plot.

A few weeks before the release of this film, I was in Georgia and visited Gori, the town near where Stalin was born. The year after Khruschev denounced Stalin, a museum was opened in the town to venerate Stalin’s leadership and essentially (and astonishingly) the messaging remains unchanged to this day. Oh, how I wish they could show this chilling movie at that museum.

 

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In praise of the 10-part television series on “The Vietnam War”

November 1st, 2017 by Roger Darlington

Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched recordings of every episode of a new 10-part American television series titled simply “The Vietnam War”. The script was written by Geoffrey C. Ward and narrated by Peter Coyote with direction by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. In the USA, the series was broadcast by PBS while, here in the UK, it was shown on BBC4 (two episodes at a time over weekly intervals). The whole thing runs to seventeen and a quarter hours.

I was a young adult at the time of the Vietnam War, so I remember all the major events and all the controversy. Indeed I spent three months in the USA in the summer of 1970 in the middle of it all. As someone who is British, I acknowledge the wisdom of Harold Wilson, our Prime Minister from 1964-1970, in resisting American pressure to commit British troops to the war.

In 2006, I visited Vietnam [my account here] and, during my journey, I read a novel by a former North Vietnamese soldier who is one of the 74 interviewees in the television series [my review here].

I’ve been enormously impressed by this series: the stunning – and often very disturbing – visuals, the eloquent – and often intensely moving – personal testimonies, and the balance provided by so many ground-level views from both American and Vietnamese participants.

Perhaps the major theme of the whole series is that, from an early stage, the most senior political and military figures in the United Sates knew that the war could not be won but felt that America as a super-power could not lose face by giving up on the South Vietnamese. And a result, so very many died unnecessarily: 58,318 Americans and anything between 2-4 million Vietnamese. Richard Nixon is revealed to have cynically blocked a peace initiative to assist his presidential election campaign.

Another theme, on the other side of the conflict, was the utter determination – and indeed ruthlessness – of the North Vietnamese leadership (notably Le Duan) which sacrificed huge numbers of young fighters to advance the Communist cause.

The series contains so many memorable incidents that it is invidious to single out one, but I was stuck – perhaps because I was unfamiliar with it – by the story of American soldier Hugh Thompson Jr who tried to halt the My Lai massacre and highlighted it to his superiors only to suffer ostracism as a result.

If you failed to see the series or cannot find it on catch-up-up TV, you can buy the DVD set.

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How can you understand what’s really going on in the world’s conflict zones?

October 30th, 2017 by Roger Darlington

There are so many conflicts around the world and each has its own complexities which are rarely covered in the media. Recently, a briefing was put together for British Parliamentarians by a significant number of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under the leadership of the Humanitarian and Conflict Policy groups of the organisation Bond for which my son now works as Campaign Director.

You can check out the sections on individuals countries – with a note on key challenges and recommendations for Government action – here:

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A review of the under-known and under-appreciated 1971 film “The Last Valley”

October 29th, 2017 by Roger Darlington

Over my many years of cinema-going, I’ve viewed a whole range of movies with titles beginning “The Last ..” including “The Last Emperor” (1987) and “The Last Samurai” (2003). “The Last Valley’ may not be the best-known film with this kind of title, but it made an impression on me when I first saw it at the cinema in 1971 and still resonated with me when I viewed it again on DVD some 46 years later.

It is partly the unusual historical context: the story is set during the repeated bloody clashes of Catholic and Protestant armies largely in German-speaking continental Europe in the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 and reference to a particular battle in a line of dialogue places the period more precisely in late 1643 and early 1644. It is partly the important subjects that it addresses: the narrative is a sharp critique of the role of religion and superstition in fostering hatred and war and the leading character eventually shouts at the local priest: “There is no Hell. Don’t you understand? Because there is no God. There never was. Don’t you understand? There is no God! It’s a legend!”.

This British film was written, produced and directed by James Cavell before he became famous for his blockbuster novels. The 17th century village in question was recreated in the valley of Trins in the beautiful Tyrol region of Austria. The Catholic villagers who live there may look rather too clean and well-clothed for the period but the mainly Protestant soldiers who occupy the valley certainly look the part. The music is from John Barry who had made his name with the early James Bond movies.

At the heart of the story is the changing fortunes of the characters as they are subject to competing sources of power: civil authority in the shape of the head villager Gruber (Nigel Davenport), religious dogma provided by the village priest Father Sebastian (Per Oscarsson), military authority imposed by a character known only as The Captain (Michael Caine), and the voice of reason and tolerance offered by the academic refugee Vogel (Omar Sharif). In the course of the story, each will have his moment of triumph but each will suffer grievously in this under-known and under-appreciated film.

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This is a (very, very scary) story of which I previously knew nothing

October 28th, 2017 by Roger Darlington

“A senior officer of a Soviet submarine who averted the outbreak of nuclear conflict during the cold war is to be honoured with a new prize, 55 years to the day after his heroic actions averted global catastrophe.

On 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was on board the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba when the US forces began dropping non-lethal depth charges. While the action was designed to encourage the Soviet submarines to surface, the crew of B-59 had been incommunicado and so were unaware of the intention. They thought they were witnessing the beginning of a third world war.

Trapped in the sweltering submarine – the air-conditioning was no longer working – the crew feared death. But, unknown to the US forces, they had a special weapon in their arsenal: a ten kilotonne nuclear torpedo. What’s more, the officers had permission to launch it without waiting for approval from Moscow.”

This is the opening of a short piece in today’s Guardian” newspaper which you can read here.

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The unequal distribution of wealth in modern Britain

October 26th, 2017 by Roger Darlington

Last week, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published the latest in a series of discussion papers for the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice. “Wealth in the twenty-first century: inequalities and drivers“, by Carys Roberts and Mat Lawrence, sets out the facts and trends on the distribution of wealth in the UK. Stark inequalities exist between individuals and families, between areas of the country, generations and genders, and between people from different ethnicities and class backgrounds.

The report’s key findings are as follows:

  • Wealth inequality is twice as great as income inequality. The wealthiest 10 per cent of households own 45 per cent of the nation’s wealth, while the
    least wealthy half of all households own just 9 per cent. The wealthiest 1,000 individuals and families in Britain have a combined wealth of £658 billion. By contrast, the net wealth of the lowest 30 per cent of households is £200 billion.
  • The next generation is set to have less wealth, largely due to housing inequalities. Fewer than half of ‘millennials’ (those born between 1981 and 2000) are expected to own their own home by the age of 45, based on current trends. Every generation since the post-war ‘baby boomers’ has accumulated less wealth than the generation before them had at the same age.
  • Among the least wealthy half of Britain, the average household has on average just £3,200 of net financial, property and pension wealth. This compares to the £1.32m held on average by the top 10 per cent. The total wealth of the top 10 per cent of households is 875 times the total wealth of the poorest 10 per cent.
  • Debt is likely to rise faster than disposable income over the next decade. In 2017 prices, household disposable income is forecast to rise by 10.3 per cent by 2027 (from £48,000 to £53,000). This implies an average debt per household in 2027 of £85,700, a 21.8 per cent increase from £70,400 in 2017. This includes a projected £28,400 of unsecured debt, a 39.8 per cent increase from £20,300 in 2017.
  • London and the South East are pulling away from the rest of the country. The total value of housing stock in London is now greater than the housing stock of all of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North combined. Median household wealth in London increased by 14 per cent between 2010 and 2014, but in Yorkshire and the Humber it fell by 8 per cent. By 2030, it is estimated that a quarter of homes in London will be worth £1 million or more, compared to fewer than 1 per cent of homes in the North East, Yorkshire and The Humber, North West, Wales, Scotland and East Midlands. If house prices per square metre continue to grow at the rates they have in different regions since 2009, by 2027 a square metre of property in London will be 10.9 times the price of a square metre in the North East.
  • A majority of people want the Government to take greater action to reduce wealth inequality and think 18–24 year olds will have more debt and less wealth than previous generations. New polling for this report shows that 57 per cent of people think the Government should do more to reduce wealth inequality. 74 per cent of people think 18–24 year olds will have less savings and investments than previous generations and 72 per cent think they will have less housing wealth. 80 per cent think they will have more debt.
  • Trends in the labour market, capital returns and technology threaten to increase wealth inequality. The longest pay squeeze in 150 years, combined with growing labour market insecurity, is making it harder for many people to save. Real returns to capital have risen at an average rate of 6–7 per cent per year since the 1980s, much faster than earnings, further driving disparities of wealth between lower and higher income households. The concentration of wealth is likely to be exacerbated by automation and digitalisation in the economy, as the returns to capital increase and the returns to labour decline.

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