Celebrating the life of Jo Cox
June 17th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Today the one subject on the mind of everyone in Britain is the appalling murder of Labour Member of Parliament Jo Cox. As we mourn her death, we should celebrate her life and it was a life dedicated with passion to the cause of social justice, as is explained in this profile.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (2)
One less thing to worry about in this troubled world
June 16th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I drink a lot of coffee – especially cappuccino. Since 1991, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, has classed coffee as “possibly” carcinogenic. But the expert group has now decided there is insufficient evidence to say whether it causes cancer or not. I’ll drink to that.
More information here.
Posted in Miscellaneous, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
73 thoughtful stories, motivational tales, and pieces of wisdom from around the world
June 14th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I like to collect stories that make you think and my collection is one of the most visited of the 200 or so pages on my web site. I’ve just added a new story titled “The battle of the beetles”, so you might like to check out some of the stories here.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
President Barack Obama reacts to the killings in Orlando
June 13th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
For the 15th time in his occupancy of the White House, President Barack Obama has made a statement on a mass shooting and this time the massacre in Orlando is the worst incident of its kind in US history. What can he say that he hasn’t said before? What can he do that he hasn’t already tried to do?
No wonder that he sounded full of resignation and despair and sadness. The key part of his statement is surely this:
“This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that allows them to shoot people at a school, or a movie theater, or a church or a nightclub.
“This could have been any one of our communities … We have to decide whether that’s the kind of country we want to be. To actively do nothing is a decision as well.”
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Where is the ‘Windsor hum’ coming from?
June 11th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
In the summer of 1966, I was 18 and had just finished secondary school. I was selected, with a group of other British schoolboys, to make an educational tour of eastern Canada. It lasted about month with a week-long sailing from Liverpool to Montreal and a return week-long sailing from Montreal to Southampton.
In Canada, we visited wonderful cities like Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara Falls and Sudbury plus some smaller towns like a place called Windsor in Ontario. Now this week, I learned that the poor citizens of Windsor have been plagued on and off for six years by a mysterious hum. It is believed that the cause of the noise is a US Steel plant on the island of Zug which is American territory.
But so far there is no certainly of the cause and no plan for a remedy.
You can read more here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Elizabeth Warren eviscerates Donald Trump
June 10th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
This contribution to this week’s gathering of the American Constitution Society by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is 30 minutes, but it is worth watching in full as a masterclass in speechmaking – both for what she says and how she says it.
It is a devastating analysis of how Republicans and their business allies are attempting to undermine the judicial arm of American government and half way through she simply eviscerates the bloviating Donald Trump.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the movie “The Nice Guys”
June 10th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Russell Crowe. Ryan Gosling. Humour. Violence. But how well does it work? You can read my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the film “Money Monster”
June 10th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
George Clooney. Julia Roberts. A kicking for the financial markets. What’s not to like? You can read my review here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
U.S. presidential election (28): Hillary makes history
June 9th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Say what you like about Hillary Clinton – and she’s had an extraordinary amount of criticism (most of it undeserved) – but that woman has resilience.
Eight years after conceding defeat to Barack Obama at the end of one set of Democratic primaries and after a bruising further set of primaries in which Sanders has pressed her very hard indeed, she has become the first female presidential candidate of a major American party in the 240-year history of the republic. It is an incredible achievement.
I do so hope that she now trashes Trump and wins the presidency. This is a woman who has spent four years as Secretary of State and the world would be in safe hands. For a flavour of how she would exercise power, read my review of her State Department memoirs here.
Posted in American current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)
The Arab Spring (4): where and why did it fail?
June 9th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Last weekend, I attended the first a number of short courses that I will be attending this summer at the City Literary Institute in central London. The title was “The Arab Spring” and the lecturer was Dr James Chiriyankandath of the School of Advanced Study in the University of London.
Regimes fell in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen – but what about elsewhere?
In Syria, the civil war began in the spring of 2011. Since then, some 400,000 have died with many others injured and millions displaced in the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. International pressure forced the regime to give up its chemical weapons but the west was otherwise not willing to become involved in the conflict. In this chaos, Islamic State was able to gain strength and eventually create a caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq. Meanwhile the Bashar al-Assad regime has been sustained in power by Hezbollah and Russia
Bahrain was the only Gulf state that had significant unrest and this was suppressed by external intervention as Saudi forces clamped down on the majority Shia population.
In Morocco, Jordan and Oman, the regimes were not as repressive and made some concessions. So Arab monarchies were seen as having more legitimacy and showing more flexibility.
In Algeria, memories of the civil war prevented major protests.
So why did the Arab Spring fail?
The diversity of the Arab world always made it unrealistic that there would be a common transition to liberal democracy. In any event, the common slogan of the protesters – “The people demand the end of the regime” – was not a cry for democracy but rather a protest against injustice and repression.
One of the reasons for the failure of the protests was the lack of an organised opposition. The exception was the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In so many Arab states, political repression was so total that there was no organised opposition ready to take over power. But the mosques were a focus for limited dissent and Islamist movements were better organised and able to offer an alternative to failed Western values.
In the one relative success story of the Arab Spring Tunisia, many of those in power had important positions in the old regime. As our lecturer put it: “You cannot start with a clean slate if you throw away the chalk as well”.
Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (0)