Word of the day: gobbet
February 26th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
A gobbet — from the Middle English word for a chunk of meat — is an extract from a primary source put forward for analysis.
I’m doing a history course at the City Literary Institute in central London and our lecturer assigns us a gobbet each week to consider. It is literally a ‘chunk’ of history.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
Not only does slavery still exist, but more people are enslaved than any other time in history
February 25th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“The word “slavery” conjures up images of shackles and transatlantic ships – depictions that seem relegated firmly to the past. But more people are enslaved today than at any other time in history. Experts have calculated that roughly 13 million people were captured and sold as slaves between the 15th and 19th centuries; today, an estimated 40.3 million people – more than three times the figure during the transatlantic slave trade – are living in some form of modern slavery, according to the latest figures published by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation.”
This is the shocking opening of a briefing on modern slavery published today by the “Guardian” newspaper.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
When 10,000 people turned up for a lecture on cosmology
February 25th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Actually it was called “a show” but it filled the SSE Arena at Wembley in north-west London on Sunday evening as people of all ages arrived for the sell-out performance. The show was titled “Universal Adventures In Space And Time World Tour 2019” and delivered by Professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester and television fame with some support from guest Brian Ince.
The visuals were stunning with huge screens showing photographs of planets and galaxies taken from recent satellite launches and visualisations of various galactic phenomena such as a black hole and a supernova.
Cox is an assured and fluent presenter who spoke without any notes or aids. I feel that his first part explanations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the nature of black holes were challenging to understand, but his part two expositions on the creation of the universe and the chances of life beyond our Earth were more intelligible.
Cox managed to convey powerfully just how small we are in relation to the universe as a whole and indeed suggested that it is widely accepted now that there are multiple universes, while emphasising just how special we are in being atoms that can think about atoms and possible unique in our universe. We have a great responsibility to live wisely on this small blue dot we call home.
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A review of the new film “If Beale Street Could Talk”
February 24th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Writer and director Barry Jenkins won the Academy Award for Best Picture with “Moonlight” and, two years later, he has another artistic success to his credit. Again he both writes and directs; again he uses James Laxton as cinematographer; again he adapts an existing work (this time a James Baldwin novel); again we have a starring vehicle for a roster of little-known black actors (only two small roles go to whites); and again the pace is slow and very measured.
This time the story is set in 1970s Harlem with the Beale Street of the title simply being a metaphor for anywhere that African-Americans struggle to live in an essentially white society where the odds are stacked against them. The style is plainer than in “Moonlight” and the narrative is quite slight for this achingly moving story of love between Trish (KiKi Layne), the teenage narrator who is pregnant, and Fonny (Stephan James), her older boyfriend who is in jail charged with a rape which he did not commit.
This is not a movie that will achieve great commercial success, but the art house crowd – which includes me – will love it as much as Trish and Fonny care for each other.
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The making of American power (1): the end of the Second World War
February 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This week, I started a new eight-week evening class at London”s City Literary Institute. The title is “The making of American power: US foreign policy from the Cold War to Trump” and our lecturer is Jack Gain.
Week 1 of the course discussed the nature of state power and the post-war reconstruction of Europe.
State power can be seen as a spectrum from hard power to soft power. Hard power involves the deployment of military and intelligence assets. Soft power is about the use of diplomacy and cultural forces. In between, one has economic options, whether positive such as trade agreements and preferential treatment or negative such as tariffs and sanctions. US foreign policy employs all of these options.
The post- Second World War foreign policy agenda of President Harry Truman involved the Marshall Plan of aid to Western European nations (the UK was the largest recipient with 24% of the total), support for European integration (leading eventually to the European Union), the creation of the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and the Bretton Woods financial system involving the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World bank.
Less visible was the co-operation of America’s security and intelligence agencies with those of its European allies with the first successes being intervention in the Italian election of 1948 and involvement in the Greek civil war of 1946-1949.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Thought the American mid-term elections were over three months ago? Well, not in North Carolina.
February 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This week, North Carolina election officials ordered a new contest in the 9th Congressional District, ending a dramatic months-long investigation into allegations of widespread ballot-tampering and potentially refocusing the national debate about election fraud.
The board voted unanimously to throw out the November results between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready after Harris, an evangelical minister from Charlotte, admitted under oath that he was mistaken in earlier testimony earlier in the day.
Nationwide, Republicans, led by President Trump, have alleged widespread voter fraud, particularly among non-citizens, and have advocated strict ID laws and criminal prosecutions. Democrats have argued that the kind of in-person fraud Republicans have targeted is rare and have accused their opponents of ignoring actual evidence of campaign-driven fraud because it benefited them.
The “Washington Post” has the full story on election fraud in North Carolina here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
Time to bring Facebook to book
February 18th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“Facebook is an out-of-control train wreck that is destroying democracy and must be brought under control. The final report of parliament’s inquiry into fake news and disinformation does not use this language, precisely, but it is, nonetheless, the report’s central message. And the language it does use is no less damning.
Facebook behaves like a “digital gangster”. It considers itself to be “ahead of and beyond the law”. It “misled” parliament. It gave statements that were “not true”. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has treated British lawmakers with “contempt”. It has pursued a “deliberate” strategy to deceive parliament.
In terms of how lawmakers across the globe need to think about Silicon Valley, the report is a landmark. “
These are the opening paragraphs of a piece by “Guardian” reporter Carole Cadwalladr on today’s Select Committee report on fake news.
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A review of the recent film “Funny Cow”
February 17th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I saw this film this weekend in a church hall in London’s Winchmore Hill where it was shown by a community cinema project called “Talkies” and followed by a question & answer session with Lindsey Coulson, a local actress who plays the drunkard mother of the titular character, a comedienne attempting to succeed in the working mens’ clubs of the north of England in the 1980s.
The work had a very limited theatrical release and one can understand why. Whatever the title, there is little humour here, but instead almost unremitting misery. Furthermore the chronology is fractured and confusing, there is an odd mix of presentational styles, and it is very unclear what writer Tony Pitts and director Adrian Shergold are trying to tell us.
So, why see it? Mainly for a powerful performance by Maxime Peake who, as the eponymous ‘cow’ (the character is never given a name), is rarely off the screen and is compellingly watchable.
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And how did you spend Valentine’s Day?
February 15th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I visited Manchester for the day with my new partner. We went to the People’s History Museum to join a special tour of the main galleries and hear about love stories through history – an event billed as “a perfect date for romantic radicals”.
Mary Wollstonecraft strongly disagreed with the treatment of women within the institution of marriage, even though she would go on to marry her lover William Godwin. Friedrich Engels discovered love when he was researching the lives of the working class in the slums of Manchester, meeting Irish immigrant Mary Burns with whom he had a relationship for over 20 years. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, who as a couple played a huge role in the formation of both the Fabian Society and the Labour Party, did not marry until after the death of Beatrice’s father, and after much persuasion.
If you’ve never come across the People’s History Museum – also known as the national museum of democracy – you’ll find more information here.
Posted in History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
How a slave revolt in Haiti doubled the size of the United States
February 14th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I used to love “The West Wing” not just for its entertainment value but because I learned things. To some extent, the same is true with the current political series “Madam Secretary”.
It was thanks to a episode recently screened in the UK (we are behind the US) that I learned how the United States was doubled in size thanks to the Louisiana Purchase which in turn was prompted by a slave rebellion in Haiti.
You can read the explanation here.
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