Today is International Slavery Day …
August 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
… or, to give it the full official name, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the tragic trans-Atlantic slave trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history.
23 August of each year is the day designated by UNESCO to memorialise the transatlantic slave trade. This date was chosen because, during the night of 22/23 August 1791, on the island of Saint Domingue (now known as Haiti), an uprising began which set forth events which were a major factor in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
So UNESCO Member States organise events every year on this date, inviting participation from young people, educators, artists and intellectuals. As part of the goals of the intercultural UNESCO project, “The Slave Route“, it is an opportunity for collective recognition and focus on the “historic causes, the methods and the consequences” of slavery.
Here in the UK, three cities are especially associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Liverpool, Bristol and London. It was in Liverpool last week that I first visited the International Slavery Museum and first learned of International Slavery Day.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How Netanyahu could lose; how Boris could be beaten; and why voting matters
August 19th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There’s an election going on in Israel right now and incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely expected to retain power, but my friend Eric Lee has written an interesting column for the “Times of Israel” explaining how Netanyahu could lose. The argument rests on the supposition that Israeli Arabs – who comprise a fifth of the nation’s population and have the vote – actually use that vote in similar proportions to Jewish voters.
This column brought to mind the situation in the UK where Boris Johnson is a Prime Minister willing to take the country out of the European Union in a no-deal Brexit although there is no majority for this option in Parliament. There is currently lots of speculation about how he could be blocked and even deposed, but the easiest option would be for the seven Sinn Fein MPs elected in Northern Ireland to take their seats and vote against a Brexit which threatens the Good Friday Agreement, yet this article explains why it won’t happen..
Last Friday, I was in a very wet and windy Manchester to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre of 16 August 1819. That demonstration was a demand for the vote at a time when the suffrage was tiny and Manchester did not have a single seat in Parliament.
While I was in Manchester, I went on a two-hour guided tour of sites associated with Peterloo and an explanation of the historical context. To my astonishment and annoyance, our guide seemed deeply cynical about the capacity of representative democracy to affect meaningful change and, when I engaged him at the end of the tour, it became clear that he was an anarchist.
I have spent my life believing that voting matters and can change things – in Israel, in Britain, in the United States, wherever democracy, however flawed, is available – and I have never missed an opportunity to vote.
Posted in British current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)
The inverted yield curve – or why the American economy might be heading for a recession (followed by the world economy of course)
August 18th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“Every recession of the last 60 years has been preceded by an inverted yield curve. The term is off-puttingly wonky but it just means investors see trouble ahead.
There’s some argument that the oracular power of inversions ain’t what it used to be thanks to the aggressive monetary policies that have been pursued by central banks around the world.
US treasury bonds are regarded as safe investments. Usually investors expect higher returns for tying their money up in long-term bonds than they do for short-term bonds. When long-term bonds offer lower interest rates than short-term ones, the yield curve has inverted.
This week yields on the 10-year treasuries fell below two-year yields for the first time since 2007. Looking at yield curves, the New York Fed now puts the probability of a recession by July 2020 at 31.5%– close to one in three.
But Gus Faucher, PNC bank’s chief economist, still sees inverted yields as “a very reliable indicator”. Faucher is betting on a slowdown rather than a recession next year but either way he argues inverted yield curves are bad news.”
Quote from today’s “Observer” newspaper
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Actor Jeff Daniels warns of the end of democracy in the United States
August 13th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of “Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw”
August 11th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Since the first film in 2001, the “Fast & Furious” series has become Universal’s biggest franchise, currently ranking as the tenth-highest-grossing film series of all time with a combined take of over $5 billion. Now I am not in the demographic at which these films is aimed, but this is the second time that I have allowed a younger friend to take me to a component of the franchise, this one the ninth but the first stand-alone spin-off.
This time eponymous American Luke Hobbs (the huge Dawyne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) and British Deckard Shaw (hard man Jason Statham) are reluctantly compelled to join forces to tackle a scientifically-enhanced villain called Brixton (Idris Elba), each of whom offers and receives considerable bodily violence in the midst of the franchise’s trademark feature of plentiful action sequences usually involving various modes of transport.
We’ve seen Hobbs and Shaw before but a newcomer is Shaw’s sister Hattie played delightfully by Vanessa Kirby and cameo performances come from the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Hart and Helen Mirren. The action is leavened with much humour and the funny lines continue in a whole series of scenes interspersed in the credits.
Just leave your brain at the door of the cinema and enjoy the ride.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Interesting use of language
August 11th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
UK becomes a nation of streamers… but traditional broadcast TV leads the way on UK content.
August 9th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
UAround half of all UK homes now subscribe to TV streaming services, according to a major Ofcom report revealing rapid shifts in the nation’s viewing habits.
Ofcom’s Media Nations report, a comprehensive study of major trends in UK television, radio and audio, published recently finds:
- The number of UK households signed up to the most popular streaming platforms – Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV and Disney Life – increased from 11.2m (39%) in 2018 to 13.3m (47%) in 2019.
- While traditional TV viewing continued to decline in 2018, the UK’s public service broadcasters – BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C – showed more than 100 times more original, homegrown shows than the overseas streaming platforms.
- Traditional viewing still accounts for most TV time (69% – or 3 hours 12 minutes, on average, per day), but this fell by nine minutes in 2017, and by 11 minutes last year.
- Viewers now watch 50 minutes less traditional TV each day than in 2010. This shift is most pronounced among younger people (16-24s), whose viewing of traditional TV has halved in that time.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (2)
A review of the novel “China Dream” by Ma Jian
August 5th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Ma Jian was born in the Chinese city of Qingdao in 1953, the same year as Xi Jinping who is now President of China without term limits. Both men were caught up in the horrific events of Mao’s Cultural Revolution which killed anything up to three miliion and ruined the lives of many millions more. Since 2012, Xi Jinping has used the phrase “the Chinese Dream” to describe “the great rejuvenation” of the nation. However, following the publication of his first book in 1987, Ma Jian has had all his work banned in China, where consequently he is unknown, and he now lives in exile in London.
The protagonist of this short and disturbing novel is Ma Daode, the director of the newly created China Dream Bureau, dedicated to ensuring that the Chinese Dream enters the brain of every resident of Ziyang City. Like so many Chinese officials, he is corrupt and a philanderer but working hard to reconcile his personal memories with the contemporary dominant political ideology. He would dearly like to forget the Cultural Revolution which caused the suicide of his parents but is hardly discussed in China today.
His brainwave is to develop the China Dream Device, a microchip to be implanted into the brain of every citizen so that painful memories can be replaced by the thoughts of the political leadership. Since this is clearly going to take some time to design and his personality is already falling apart with ever-more frequent memories of the Cultural Revolution, he attempts to concoct something called Old Lady’s Dream Broth, a substance with revolting ingredients and dubious efficacy.
This Chinese version of “Brave New World” or “1984” is not going to end well for Ma Jian. But what about for Xi Jinping’s China? I’ve visited the country four times and travelled extensively within it and the simultaneous growth of both the economy and the repressive regime makes one wonder whether the dream might one day become something of a nightmare.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
My Thought For The Week reaches 1,000
August 4th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
For the last 20 years, week in and week out, I have send out electronically a motivational thought to what is now a list of around 1,500 friends, colleagues and contacts.
It goes out each Sunday and this week’s thought is the 1,000th:
“Do we settle for the world as it is or do we work for the world as it should be?”
Barack Obama as quoted by Michelle Obama in her memoirs “Becoming”
If you would like to see previous Thoughts For The Week, you’ll find them all here.
If you would like to receive my Thought For The Week each Sunday, please e-mail me at: rogerdarlington@dsl.pipex.com
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Ilhan Omar: so patient, so eloquent, so right
July 31st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)