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)
The Arab Spring (3): where did regimes change?
June 8th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
At the 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.
Out of all the countries in the region and all the various protests that occurred, there were only four countries where regimes actually changed. In each case, a strong man at the head of the patrimonial state was overthrown. In these cases, state structures themselves were weak. All of these states were poor without the income enjoyed by other rentier states such as those in the Gulf.
In the first state to topple Tunisia, uniquely in the Arab revolutions trade unions were a significant force for change. The dictator of 24 years Ben Ali was forced to resign in a matter of weeks in January 2011. In the second half of 2011, successful elections were held. Although an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist party there was the most open to the plurality of opinion in the Arab world so, when it won the most seats but not a majority, it was willing to work with others to some extent. Since then, following a dramatic Nobel prize winning intervention by civic forces to keep democracy on track, a four party coalition led by a secular president has come to power. So only Tunisia has managed the transition to some kind of democratic government.
In Egypt, the strong man of 30 years Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign following mass demonstrations, most notably in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. In the elections that followed, Egyptians elected a Muslim Brotherhood government but the president Mohammad Morsi proved clumsy in relations with the opposition and the so-called deep state was working to undermine him. Following massive protests and a military intervention, the elected government was overthrown, so we now have a new dictatorship led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that is more repressive than the previous Mubarak regime.
In Libya, the revolution started in the east which was more marginalized politically and economically. In this case, western governments intervened to protect people besieged in Benghazi. Following the execution of Colonel Gaddafi who had been in power since 1969, the country descended into warlordism and chaos. There are now two different governments, one based in the west of the country (Tripoli) and the other in the east (Tobruk), with a new internationally-backed national unity administration trying to establish a measure of control. Islamist forces have now gained significant footholds throughout the country.
After 13 months of protest in Yemen, the corrupt dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down but subsequently there has been civil war between the northern-based Sunni (Al Qaeda and Islamic State) and the northern-based Shia (Houthi). Today the president is Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who was elected unopposed in 2012 but he is simply clinging to power.
So, of the four countries that witnessed regime change as a result of the Arab Spring, only one – Tunisia – remains in any a sense a democracy and a fragile one at that.
Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (0)