A happy Juneteenth to all my American readers
June 19th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I confess that I had never heard of the American notion of Juneteenth until very recently. I suppose the Black Live Matters events of the last few weeks has brought the anniversary to more prominence outside the United States.
For non-Americans, Wikipedia provides an explanation of Juneteenth:
“Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth;] also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Liberation Day is an unofficial American holiday and an official Texas state holiday, celebrated annually on the 19th of June in the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two and a half years earlier and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.
A common misconception is that this day marks the end of slavery in the United States. Although this day marks the emancipation of all slaves in the Confederacy, the institution of slavery was still legal and existed in the Union border states after June 19, 1865. Slavery in the United States did not officially end until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States on December 6, 1865, which abolished slavery entirely in all of the U.S. states and territories.”
You can learn more here.
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Word of the day: Augean
June 16th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This is an adjective describing a task which is both difficult and unpleasant.
The origin of the word is a story from Greek mythology involving the king Augeas of Elis (in the western Peloponnesus) whose stables, filled with 3,000 immortal cattle, had not been cleaned for over 30 years. The cattle, moreover, were not only immortal but also divinely robust and healthy and therefore produced a prodigious amount of dung.
Hercules’ fifth task was to clean the dung in Augeas’ stables, a task that was deliberately meant to be humiliating and impossible. Hercules cleansed the stables by diverting the river Alpheus through them.
The word Augean entered English at the end of the 16th century.
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The legacy of white supremacy
June 15th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
An American friend of mine has put it succinctly:
“One of the many profound outcomes of the BLM movement is an awakening among many people (many are already quite enlightened on the matter) that racism is indeed systemic. The entire adventure of British, other European and American imperialism (as well as Japanese imperialism) was and remains founded on a belief in white supremacy. The genocide against Native Americans was premised on the idea that people of color were for the most part savages. Much of the most famous British literature (Kipling, Swift, Defoe, even Shakespeare) assumed white supremacy. Indeed, all of colonial history and the world as we know it is rooted in racist institutions, language, ways of seeing, common assumptions, etc. The changes needed toward anything in the direction of social justice are very radical in nature, almost too radical to imagine.”
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Is it time for Canada to invade the United States?
June 14th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
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Word of the day: racism
June 13th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has resulted in protest movements, both in the United States and around the world, that have raised so many important issues and so many interesting ideas. We are seeing debates ranging from the urgent need for police reform to the long-postponed removal of offensive statues and memorials.
Now we are even seeing a discussion about the word ‘racism’ itself. The term is not just a reference to the behaviour of individuals, whether intentional or not, but also a reference to the consequences of organisational behaviour, whether intended or not. It is important, therefore, that a definition of racism covers systematic or institutional racism.
In the United States, the dictionary produced by Merriam-Webster is to change its definition of the word racism after receiving an email from a young black woman called Kennedy Mitchum, a recent graduate of Drake University in Iowa. You can read more about this story here.
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A review of the 2013 film “Adore”
June 13th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I guess that many people would call this a woman’s movie. It is based on a short short by a woman (the novella “The Grandmothers” by Doris Lessing); it is directed by a woman (Anne Fontaine from Luxembourg); and the leading roles are taken by two women (Robin Wright and Naomi Watts as Australian best friends Roz and Lil respectively).
It tells the story of how Roz and Lil each falls in love with the surfer son of the other and how these complicated relationships work out. If you can forgive the unlikely plotting and some wonky dialogue, it is a visually enjoyable film because the four leads are so beautiful and the location shooting (Seal Rocks in New South Wales) is one long advertisement for holidaying in Australia
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A review of a 2001 biography of Winston Churchill by Roy Jenkins
June 9th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
In a public poll organised by the BBC in 2002, which generated more than one and a half million votes, Sir Winston Chuchill (1874-1965) was voted the greatest Briton ever. Certainly he was a remarkable man with some outstanding accomplishments, but he was a complex and controversial character.
The son of a British Lord and an American socialite, Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace and educated at Harrow School and always thought that he was destined for great things. Although he was often – but unfairly in Jenkins’ view – called a warmongerer, if there was a conflict in progress, he wanted to be part of it, starting with action in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War and the Second Boer War.
In 1900, he was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliamant and, in 1904 he defected to the Liberals. He held three ministerial positions in the Asquith Government: President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty. As Home Secretary, he was overly harsh in his response to industrial unrest in South Wales (although Jenkins lets him off lightly) and, as First Lord, he was forced to resign after the failure of the Dardenelles Campaign.
After some time in France serving in the Great War, he was back in government under Lloyd George, serving as Minister of Munitions, Secretary for War, Secretary for Air, and Secretary for the Colonies. After two years outside Parliament, he was back now as Conservative MP and served in Baldwin’s Government as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924-1929 when he returned Britain to the Gold Standard which Jenkins describes as “the greatest mistake” of that government..
After no less than eight ministerial positions, Churchill endured what he saw as the wilderness years of the decade 1929 to 1939. In that time, he was on the wrong side of history in opposing vehemently the notion of independence for India, but he was prescient (and well informed by key figures) in warning of the rising military threat from Hitler’s Germany and in resisting the appeasement policy of the Chamberlain Government.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was back in office as First Lord of the Admiralty again and then, following the disaster of the Norwegian Campaign, he became Prime Minister in 1940, providing strong leadership – and inspirational speeches – when Britain (and the Empire) stood alone in the Battle of Britain and until the Soviet Union’s switching of sides in mid 1941 and America’s entry into the war in late 1941.
As wartime Prime Minister, Churchill was the strategic military leader who concentrated on the conflict and relations with Roosevelt and Stalin but, as Jenkins makes clear, he was constatntly trying to interfere in operational matters and overly anxious about Operation Overlord. In government, he was wonderfully supported in terms of domestic policy by the Labour Ministers Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison.
Churchill – and many others – were stunned by the massive Labour victory in the 1945 General Election, but Jenkins points out that the polls had been suggesting such an outcome for years. Arguably he should have resigned the Conservative leadership then, but he stayed on until the Conservatives were back in power in 1951 when, in Jenkins’ words, he was “gloriously unfit for office”. He struggled on with the premiership until 1955, by which time he was 80, increasingly afflcted by strokes and unable to perform effectively.
Even then he could not give up political life and remained an MP for a further 10 years although he never spoke in the House of Commons again. The end came in 1965, just months after finally leaving the Commons and now a venerable 90 years old. He had been a Minister for over 28 years and an MP for 64 years fighting a total of 19 elections.
Although Churchill is primarily remembered as a politician and statesman, he was a prolific writer of letters, articles and books and produced no less than 32 volumes, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He was a talented painter and even an able bricklayer.
This biography by Roy Jenkins was published in 2001 but, such is its length (some 900 pages of main text), that I did not mange to find the time to read it until the coronavirus lockdown. In many ways, Jenkins is a suitable author for a work on Churchill since he himself had military experience, served in senior ministerial positions, and wrote around 20 political works. However, I did not savour the book as much as I hoped. Jenkins has a flamboyant writing style with excessively long sentences and ostentatious use of French and Latin words and he repeatedly goes into meandering details. Also I felt that he relied too heavily on correspondence from, to and about his subject.
Finally, although throughout the work Jenkins expresses judgements – by no means always supportive – on Churchill’s positions and actions, the biography lacks a concluding overarching assessment of the man. Instead we simply have one, final sentence in which, comparing Churchill to Gladstone, Jenkins opines: “I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street”.
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A review of the film “American Made”
June 5th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This 2017 film reminds me of “Charlie Wilson’s War” (2007) and especially “Air America” (1990) since all three deal with true-life covert American involvement in foreign wars which were so bizarre that the movies in question are a mixture of drama and comedy and, in the cases of both “American Made” and “Air America”, daredevil pilots are at the heart of the action.
This time the central character is Barry Seal, played by Tom Cruise, a former airline pilot who switches to smaller craft to smuggle drugs and guns into various Central American war zones on behalf of agencies representing Uncle Sam. It is only loosely based on Seal’s story with director Doug Limon calling it “a fun lie based on a true story”.
I confess I struggled somewhat with a film which makes such criminal activity look like fun and such nefarious characters as Colombia’s Pablo Escobar and Panama’s Manuel Noriega appear as business associates.
What makes the film appealling is Cruise with his boyish charm and the flying which is exhilerating. Director Doug Liman is himself a pilot and made sure that the aviation language and techniques are true to life, while Cruise does his own stunt flying with aplomb.
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Most people have never heard of the Treaty Of Trianon – but Hungarians have never forgotten it
June 4th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The Treaty of Trianon was signed on 4 June 1920 – 100 years ago today – at the Trianon Palace at Versailles in France. It was part of the settlement of the First World War and it was signed by representatives of Hungary on one side and the Allied Powers on the other.
Why did it take so long after the cessation of hostilities?
The Allies’ presentation of their terms for peace with Hungary was delayed first by their reluctance to treat with Bela Kun’s communist regime in that country and subsequently by the obvious instability of the more moderate Hungarian governments that assumed office during the Romanian occupation of Budapest (from August to mid-November 1919). At last, however, the Allies recognized a new government, and on 16 January 1920 at Neuilly, near Paris, a Hungarian delegation received the draft of a treaty.
What were the final terms of the treaty?
By the terms of the treaty, Hungary was shorn of at least two-thirds of its former territory and two-thirds of its inhabitants. Five countries were allocated bits of the former Hunarian Empire.
Czechoslovakia was given Slovakia, sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, the region of Pressburg (Bratislava), and other minor sites. Austria received western Hungary (most of Burgenland). The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) took Croatia-Slavonia and part of the Banat. Romania received most of Banat and all of Transylvania. Italy received Fiume.
Except for plebiscites in two small regions, all the transfers were effected without any plebiscites.
The Covent of the League of Nations was integrally included in the treaty. Hungary’s armed forces were to be restricted to 35,000 men, lightly armed and employed only to maintain internal order and to secure the frontiers. The amount of reparations to be imposed was to be determined later.
The seeds of much resentment, ethnic conflict, and interwar tension were sown through the treaty. Hungarian officials opposed what they considered its violation of Hungary’s historical character, as well as the displacement of so many ethnic Magyars, especially without plebiscites, in violation of the principle of self-determination.
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Word of the day: exonym
June 2nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
I confess that I had to look this word up when I saw in used by a friend in a Facebook posting (he’s a bit of a medical buff).
It means: a name used by foreigners for a place (such as as Florence for Firenze or Londres for London) or a name used by foreigners to refer to a people or social group that the group itself does not use (such as the inhabitants of northern Britain called Picts by the Romans or more recently the use of Germans for Deutsche).
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