A review of the new film “The Trial Of The Chicago 7”
November 11th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The late 1960s was a terrible time in the United States with race riots and anti-war demonstrations. The film “Detroit” powerfully depicted the outcome of a riot in that city in 1967 and this movie looks at the aftermath of a demonstration in Chicago in 1968. Eight activists – one was severed from the case – were prosecuted by the Nixon administration in a farce of a trial that shamed this democratic nation. The demonstration involved a number of political groups and the trial lasted months but writer and director Aaron Sorkin has done a masterful job in synthesizing the events and focusing on the issues.
There is such a richness of talent in this work. Besides Sorkin who is himself an Academy Award winner, the cast features two Academy Award winners, Eddie Redmayne and Mark Rylance, as well as three Academy Award nominees, Sacha Baron Cohen, Michael Keaton, and Frank Langella. In this very American story, no less than four of the leading actors are British: the aforementioned Redmayne, Rylance and Cohen plus Alex Sharp.
I saw this powerful film during the period between the US presidential election and the news four days later than Trump had been defeated. The divisiveness and intolerance and cultural clevage of 1968 have their profound echoes in contemporary America. As Sorkin has put it: “The script didn’t change to mirror the times. The times changed to mirror the script.”
Wikipedia page on the Chicago Seven click here
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
How many cases of coronavirus been caused by touching contaminated surfaces?
November 6th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The World Health Organization has warned about surfaces being a source of transmission, while conceding there are no reports demonstrating infection in this way. It said: “Despite consistent evidence as to Sars-CoV-2 contamination of surfaces and the survival of the virus on certain surfaces, there are no specific reports which have directly demonstrated fomite transmission. People who come into contact with potentially infectious surfaces often also have close contact with the infectious person, making the distinction between respiratory droplet and fomite transmission difficult to discern.” Some suggest that surface transmission has been overplayed as a cause of infection at the expense of warning about airborne transmission.
However, as the WHO says, it is difficult to isolate the risk that surface transmission poses. At any rate, washing deliveries is deemed unnecessary by the Food Standards Agency, which says Covid “is not known to be transmitted by exposure to food or food packaging” and says the risk is “very low”. It says staff handling food in shops and other food businesses are required to take precautions and emphasises the importance for consumers to do so too, by regularly washing hands with soap and water.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of “China’s War With Japan 1937-1945” by Rana Mitter
November 5th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The Second World War is generally thought to be clearly delineated as taking place from 1939-1945, although the two major allied nations – the Soviet Union and the United States – did not enter the conflict until 1941. For China, though, the Second World War can be seen as a major period in a wider epoch of almost two decades of war.
This started with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, a humiliation about which the Chinese Government was able to do little. Open conflict between China and Japan broke out with the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 and did not end until the Americans dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. This was not the end of hostilities in China, however, since there was then a civil war between Nationalists and Communists until the latter won in 1949.
In this book, Rana Mitter, a British historian of Indian origin who specialises in the history of republican China, provides a brilliantly researched, well-written and commendably balanced account of the war of 1937-1945, although he frames the story with some information on the periods before and after.
This is not a simple tale of aggressor versus victim, since the Japanese were dealing with three different Chinese groups: the Nationalists in the south and centre led by Chiang Kai-shek headquartered in Chongqing, the Communists in the north under Mao Zedong based in Yan’an, and a collaborationist group in the east headed by Wang Jingwei based in Nanjing. Each of these three groups had changing relationships with the others and each ran an espionage network seeking out spies and dissenters.
As if this situation was not complicated enough, various areas were controlled by Chinese warlords who had evolving alliances with the three main Chinese groups. Corruption was rife and Chiang Kai-shek’s nickname was ‘Cash My Check’.
Most of Mitter’s account is focused on the Nationalists since they did almost all the fighting against the Japanese with the Communists confined to a guerilla campaign in northern China. The Nationalists maintained some four million troops in the most populated parts of China, helping to tie down some half a million or more occupying Japanese soldiers who could otherwise have beem transferred elsewhere.
It is a tragic story.
Mitter narrates the doomed attempt to defend Shanghai which involved more than 200,000 Chinese soldiers, the six-week ‘rape of Nanjing’ by Japanese soldiers in a horrific war crime which caused up to 300,000 deaths, the short-lived Chinese victory at Taierzhuang, Chiang’s decision to breach the dykes of the Yellow River causing the death of half a million Chinese, the Japanese victory at Tianjiazhen achieved with the use of poison gas, the Nationalist burning of Changsha to prevent it falling to the enemy. the endless Japanese bombing of the Nationalist capital Chongqing, a famine in Henan province which caused another four million Chinese deaths, and the messy fighting in Burma.
Meanwhile the United States felt unable to provide more than minimal resources and gave Chiang an American chief of staff Joseph ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell whose abrasiveness still echoes in Sino-American relations to this day.
Most people appreciate that the Soviet Union suffered a much, much larger death toll than other combatant nations, but very few comprehend the price paid by the Chinese. According to Mitter, the war against Japan resulted in an “unimaginably great” toll of between 14-20 million dead and 80-100 million refugees plus the devastation of infrastructure. He refers to China as “the forgotten ally” whose contribution to the war was not appreciated at the time and is still not widely understood.
Interestingly it is not just non-Chinese who have neglected the country’s wartime role; it is the Chinese themselves. Since most of the fighting against the Japanese was done by the Nationalists who lost a civil war to the Communists and fled to the island of Taiwan, the events of 1937-1945 do not fit into the mythology of the Chinese Communist Party being the source of all the nation’s success.
The war ended what the Chinese call ‘the century of humiliation’ (1842-1945), when a variety of imperial powers (notably Britain) controlled key parts of the country’s territory and trade, and the Chinese leadership is now determined to see the nation as a global power equal to the United States. As Ritter summarises the Chinese view: “at an earlier time when its contribution was needed, China delivered, and it should now be trusted as it seeks, once again, to enter international society playing a wider role”.
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How does the United States elect its President?
November 3rd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Today, those Americans who have not already voted by post or in early balloting – as an astonishing nearly 100 million have done – can go to their polling station and vote for the next President of the USA.
In fact, the President is not elected directly by the voters but by an Electoral College representing each state on the basis of a combination of the number of members in the Senate (two for each state regardless of size) and the number of members in the House of Representatives (roughly proportional to population). The states with the largest number of votes are California (55), Texas (38) and New York (29). The states with the smallest number of votes – there are seven of them – have only three votes. The District of Columbia, which has no voting representation in Congress, has three Electoral College votes.
In effect, therefore, the Presidential election is not one election but 51. In virtually all cases, the winner of the presidential election in any given state secures all the Electoral College votes of that state. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska.
The total Electoral College vote is 538. This means that, to become President, a candidate has to win at least 270 electoral votes. The voting system awards the Electoral College votes from each state to delegates committed to vote for a certain candidate in a “winner take all” system, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska (which award their Electoral College votes according to Congressional Districts rather than for the state as a whole).
In practice, most states are firmly Democrat – for instance, California and New York – or firmly Republican – for instance, Texas and Tennessee. Therefore, candidates concentrate their appearances and resources on the so-called “battleground states”, those that might go to either party. The three largest battleground or swing states are Florida (29 votes), Pennsylvania (20) and Ohio (18). Others include North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6) and Nevada (6).
This system of election means that a candidate can win the largest number of votes nationwide but fail to win the largest number of votes in the Electoral College and therefore fail to become President. Indeed, in practice, this has happened four times in US history: 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. On the last occasion, the losing candidate (Hillary Clinton) actually secured 2.9 million more votes than the winning candidate (Donald Trump).
If this seems strange (at least to non-Americans), the explanation is that the ‘founding fathers’ who drafted the American Constitution did not wish to give too much power to the people and so devised a system that gives the ultimate power of electing the President to members of the Electoral College. The same Constitution, however, enables each state to determine how its members in the Electoral College are chosen and since the 1820s states have chosen their electors by a direct vote of the people. The United States is the only example in the world of an indirectly elected executive president.
The Electoral College does not actually meet as one body. Instead, since 1936, federal law has provided that the electors in each of the states (and, since 1964, in the District of Columbia) meet “on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment” to vote for President and Vice-President. After the vote, each state then sends a certified record of their electoral votes to Congress. The votes of the electors are opened during a joint session of Congress, held in the first week of January.
In the event that the Electoral College is evenly divided between two candidates or no candidate secures a majority of the votes, the Constitution provides that the choice of President is made by the House of Representatives and the choice of Vice-President is made by the Senate. In the first case, the representatives of each state have to agree collectively on the allocation of a single vote. In the second case, each senator has one vote.
This has actually happened twice – in 1800 and 1824. In 1800, the House of Representatives, after 35 votes in which neither Thomas Jefferson nor Aaron Burr obtained a majority, elected Jefferson on the 36th ballot. In 1824, neither John Quincy Adams nor Andrew Jackson was able to secure a majority of the votes in the Electoral College and the House of Representatives chose Adams even though he had fewer Electoral College votes and fewer votes at the ballot boxes than Jackson.
So now you know …
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the new movie “On The Rocks”
November 2nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The weekend before a second lockdown to tackle the coronavirus crisis, I was so keen to enjoy the cinema experience before it was denied to me once more. So I managed to catch “On The Rocks” on the big screen while most people will see it on Apple’s streaming service.
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, this is a comedy-drama with a hint of Woody Allen since it is set in New York and involves elements of neurotic anxiety. Rashida Jones plays writer Laura who needs to know who to trust: her father Felix (Bill Murray), an inveterate womaniser with a certain charm who is protective of his daughter, or her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans), a hard-working, often-travelling founder of a start-up who is acting suspiciously in relation to a hot colleague.
It is all rather slight and light but it has some appeal and is watchable enough.
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Who are Americans voting for this week?
November 2nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Tuesday 3 November 2020 is a big day in the United States with a massive amount of balloting going on.
Everyone knows that Americans will be electing the next President and Vice-President for a four-year term. The choice is between Donald Trump and Mike Pence for the Republicans and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the Democrats.
But there’s a lot more going on.
All 435 members of the House of Representatives are up for election for a two-year term. Currently the Democrats have a majority in the House.
One third of the 100 members of the Senate are up for election for a six-year term. In fact, this year 33 seats are up for election on the normal routine with two more seats to be filled as special elections, making 35 in all. Currently the Republicans have a narrow majority in the Senate.
But that’s not all.
There are 13 Governor posts up for election – 11 in states and two in territories.
There are 86 state legislature elections too (all states – except one – have bicameral legislatures).
That’s still not all.
Arizona, South Dakota and Montana are voting on legalising recretaional marijuana; Maryland is voting on legalising sports betting; Mississippi is voting on a new flag; and Puerto Rico is holding a non-binding referendum on statehood (for the fifth time).
That’s far from all – but you get the idea …
And campaigning in these elections doesn’t come cheap – especially when effectively there are no limits on what can be legally spent, This year’s election campaigns will spend a total of nearly $14 billion.
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What is the most important relationship in global politics?
October 30th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
In my last posting, I wrote about a talk hosted online by the London School of Economics. The talk was delivered by Fareed Zakaria who is an Indian-American journalist, political scientist, and author. He was introducing ideas from his new book “Ten Lessons For a Post-Pandemic World”, The session was chaired by Andrés Velasco, formerly finance minister of Chile and currently the Dean of the School of Public Policy at the LSE, who led the discussion which followed.
Velasco asked Zakaria whether populism, which we have seen in Britain, the United States, Brazil, Hungary and elsewhere, would be a winner or loser from the coronavirus crisis. Zakarai believes that the pandemic will dramatically increase the already severe inequalities in income and wealth with smaller businesses and sectors like retail and hospitality being hit especially hard.
He expects that, as a result, there will be a push for an expanded role for the state which would favour centre-left political parties rather than right-wing populist parties. As a believer in the benefits of free markets, he would not wholly support this. He spoke in favour of the Danish model where there are both strong markets and strong government – what Velasco called “flexi-security”.
A key issue for both Zakaria and Velasco was trust. Populism has denigrated the expertise of scientists and elites but they expected the coronavirus crisis to correct some of this. At the international level, Zakaria wanted to see a better integration into the world order of the rising economies of of China, India and Brazil. He identified the relationship between the United States and China – currently so tense – as the most important in global politics.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
“The next crisis could be the last crisis.”
October 29th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Before the global pandemic, I would regularly attend free evening lectures at the London School of Economics. Now such events are all online and this week I attended a particularly fascinating talk by Fareed Zakaria who is an Indian-American journalist, political scientist, and author. He was introducing ideas from his new book “Ten Lessons For a Post-Pandemic World” which I have now ordered.
Zakaria emphasised that with globalisation “We have been living a life of greater risk” with faster growth but more inequality and instability. He contrasted the terrorist threat of 9/11 and the economic crisis of 2008 with the current global pandemic and underlined that, in the case of Covid 19, “It has affected every human being on the planet” and so “This is the most universal crisis which has faced us”.
He explained that zoonotic viruses which jump from animals to humans have always been with us, but that modern methods of food production almost guaranteed a new pandemic. He pointed out the fallacy of believing that “nature has a fondest for human life”. Chillingly he asserted that, unless we change the way we live, “The next crisis could be the last crisis”.
He pointed out that countries which have faced previous zoonotic crises like SARS and MERS have learned the lessons and acted more decisively this time. This has been the case with nations like China, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam. But he was not confident that Western countries would learn the lessons of Covid because of our sense of inertia and superiority.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
What the United States Supreme Court now looks like
October 27th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
A mere one week before the US presidential election when it looks as if the Republicans will lose both the White House and the Senate, Amy Coney Barrett – nominated by Donald Trump and approved by the Republican-controlled Senate – has been appointed to the country’s Supreme Court.
- In the history of the United States, there has only been five women members, two black members and one Hispanic member of the Supreme Court. Following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her replacement by Barrett, the present membership of the Court includes three women members and one black member.
- Following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the appointment of Barrett, six of the justices are Roman Catholic and two are Jewish. Neil Gorsuch was raised Roman Catholic but now attends an Episcopal Church.
- Following the appointment by President Trump of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, there is now a conservative majority on the Court. All the conservative members were appointed by Republican presidents, while all the liberals were appointed by Democratic presidents. Since Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett are young by Supreme Court standards, Trump is viewed to have a secured a legacy that will last decades.
However, as I wrote in this blog posting, if the Democrats take both the White House and the Senate in next week’s election, it would not be unreasonable if Joe Biden nominated two additional members to the Court, although currently all he is promising is a six-month review of the Court.
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A review of the new film version of “Rebecca”
October 26th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
If you’re going to remake a classic movie, you need a lot of confidence and talent and perhaps a new angle.
English novelist Daphne du Maurier wrote the famous “Rebecca”, published in 1938, and Alfred Hitchcock directed the film version of 1940 which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was an impressive cast: Laurence Olivier as wealthy widower Maximilian de Winter, Joan Fontaine as his new second wife, and Judith Anderson as the domineering housekeeper Mrs. Danvers.
This 2020 version simply lacks the same star power. Director Ben Wheatley is no Hitchcock, most of his previous work being for television, and the ballroom sequence in particular is rather histrionic. American Armie Hammer was presumably cast as Maximilian in order to make the movie more marketable to US audiences, while Lily James as the ingénue does her best but was probably cast to win over younger viewers.
Where the remake scores over the original is in the sets and settings. Hitchcock shot his version in California, whereas Wheatley – reflecting the English location of the novel – gives us some wonderful locations in Dorset and Hertfordshire for the stately home of Manderlay and in Devon and Cornwall for the coastal sequences. Also Kristin Scott Thomas is chillingly wonderful as Mrs Danvers.
Released online at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has closed most cinemas and postponed many other films, the new “Rebecca” is worth watching but no challenge to the 1940 classic.
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