Humans threaten one million animal and plant species with extinction
May 6th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Three years in the making, a global assessment of nature draws on 15,000 reference materials, and has been compiled by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It runs to 1,800 pages.
The brief, 40-page “summary for policymakers”, published today at a meeting in Paris, is perhaps the most powerful indictment of how humans have treated their only home. It says that while the Earth has always suffered from the actions of humans through history, over the past 50 years, these scratches have become deep scars.
You can learn more here.
Posted in Environment | Comments (0)
A review of the new movie blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame”
May 5th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I can remember a time (1990) when “Die Hard 2” could shock audiences by featuring the death of 230 passengers and crew on an aircraft which crashes thanks to terrorists taking over the air traffic control system. But the Marvel movies have taken death tolls to a whole new level. In “Guardians Of The Galaxy”, a total of 83,871 characters meet their end, although that’s largely down to the 80,000 Nova Corps pilots who lay down their lives in defence of their planet in the closing scenes.
And then we had “Avengers: Infinity War”, the prequel to “Avengers: Endgame”, when – with a snap of his fingers – the evil Thanos uses the power of the six infinity stones to wipe out half the population of the Marvel Cinematic Universe including many of beloved superheroes.
This is serious stuff and we’ve had to wait another year to find out if this horror can be reversed (no spoilers coming or needed) and how (a post-credits scene in “Avengers: Infinity War” made it clear that the ‘quantum realm’ would be involved – but not as Einstein or any real-world physicists would understand it).
It is all immense fun with some version of all our favourite superheroes making a return, although Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larsen) have new haircuts and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) have new figures. If there is a central player, it is Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) which is as it should be since he started off the whole franchise.
But it is long: a full three hours (even the prequel was ‘only’ two and a half hours).
And it is complicated: this is the 22nd movie in the MCU released over 11 years and, even if you have seen them all (I have viewed everyone except “The Incredible Hulk”), unless you have seen them several times reasonably recently you won’t catch all the allusions to earlier storylines. I guess this will encourage many fans to see the movie several times and, even without that, it is set to beat “Avatar” as the biggest money-making movie of all time.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
How do you spend a penny?
May 3rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Older (British) readers of NightHawk will remember that using a public toilet used to cost one (old) penny – hence the expression “to spend a penny” when using the toilet. More recently, using a toilet on a railway station could cost you up to 50 (current) pence, but now all toilets on London stations at least are free at last.
Meanwhile we have the situation that the use of the penny (and two penny) is decreasing rapidly and indeed the use of cash itself is falling fast. This week, I bought a medium latte on a railway station for £2.99 and I paid with cash because I wanted to get rid of heavy coins. I put the penny change in a charity box.
So do we still need cash? A government consultation has found that 2.2 million people in Britain are still reliant on cash, so an earlier proposal to scrap the 1p and 2p has been abandoned. That leaves the problem of what most of us do with those pesky little copper coins. This BBC web page has eight suggestions.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
How can we make sense of Israeli politics?
May 1st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Israeli is the only country in the Middle East which, despite criticisms of its treatment of Aran citizens, operates a democratic political system, so it is surprising that the world’s media gives so little attention to its political system and its politics.
Three weeks ago, Israel held a general election in which the two main political blocks tied with 35 seats each in a Knesset of 120. The incumbent and long-standing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is best placed to put together a coalition that will have a majority in the legislature.
Israeli democracy is a source – simultaneously and in almost equal measure – of both pride and frustration.
Israelis are rightly proud that their country is the only genuine and functioning democracy in the Middle East, a region dominated by repressive and dictatorial regimes. It is a democracy that has survived repeated wars and that, with a conscript army and formidable military apparatus, remains on a war-like footing. It is a democracy in which the rule of law is so strong that even a president (Moshe Katsav) or a prime minister (Ehud Olmert) can be indicted (for rape and bribery respectively).
On the other hand, Israeli’s strange electoral system and fractious political parties virtually guarantee that the government will be a coalition of very different political parties with a strong likelihood that at least one will be a nationalist or ultra-religious one with disproportionate influence in the government. This makes ruling and legislating – even more negotiating with the Palestinians – very difficult, so that on average Israeli governments last only half their permitted term (two years instead of four).
For an explanation of how the Israeli political system works and the result of the recent general election, check out my guide here.
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A guide to the 20 hopefuls running to be the Democratic candidate for the American presidency
April 30th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In Britain, Brexit may have gone quiet but, in the United States, politics never stops – thanks to constant tweets from President Trump and regular announcements of yet another Democratic politician who would like to be the person to knock Donald out of the White House in November 2020.
The list of declared candidates in now 20 – the largest in modern political history – with the latest being the one currently in the lead in the polls: former Vice-President Joe Biden. And it is an amazingly diverse field.
In terms of age, Joe Biden (76) and Bernie Sanders (77) are more than twice the age of the youngest candidates (37 year old Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard). In terms of experience, it ranges from being a two-term Vice-President (Biden) to being a city mayor (Buttigieg) to being a spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey (Marianne Williamson). Six of the runners are women and six are people of colour. One is openly gay (Buttigieg again). And there are some colourful names ranging from Beto O’Rourke to John Hickenlooper to Pete Buttigieg (yet again).
Most importantly, as we will learn more and more, in policy terms the consensus has shifted leftwards (thanks largely to Sanders’ run in 2016), but there are still significant differences between the candidates with plenty of time for new policies to be unveiled.
It’s going to be a fascinating race of worldwide importance and there are bound to be many highs and lows with plenty of scope for scandals and gaffes. You can find short profiles of the 20 Democratic runners here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
What do you know about the nation of Nauru?
April 29th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I am a fan of the American television series “Madam Secretary” which is broadcast in the UK on the Sky Witness channel. A strength of the series is that – as with “The West Wing” – it features very contemporary and controversial political issues. So, for instance, a recent episode highlighted the impact of climate change and featured the annihilation of the Pacific Island of Nauru.
I realised that I knew so little about Nauru but found information on Wikipedia:
Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country in Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the east. With only a 21-square-kilometre (8.1 sq mi) area, Nauru is the third-smallest state on the list of countries and dependencies by area behind Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest state in the South Pacific Ocean, the smallest island state, and the smallest republic. Its population is 11,347, making it the third smallest on the list of countries and dependencies by population, after the Vatican and Tuvalu.
Settled by people from Micronesia and Polynesia c. 1000 BC, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops, who were bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968, and became a member of the Pacific Community (SPC) in 1969.
Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations. When the phosphate reserves were exhausted, and the island’s environment had been seriously harmed by mining, the trust that had been established to manage the island’s wealth diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre. From 2001 to 2008, and again from 2012, it accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, an offshore Australian immigration detention facility. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, many sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia
You can access the full Wikipedia page on Nauru here.
Posted in Environment, World current affairs | Comments (0)
50 years ago today, I joined the Labour Party
April 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I guess that I’m tribal in my politics: I’ve never missed an opportunity to vote, I’ve never voted anything other than Labour, and I now have half a century of continuous membership of the Labour Party.
The Party has been through many travails in that time and indeed is going through great difficulties now with Corbynism, anti-semitism and Brexit – but I’m sticking with it as the only possibility of a fairer government.
You can check out my political evolution here.
Posted in British current affairs, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
“Observer” journalist Carole Cadwalladr calls out the tech giants in this TED talk
April 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
A review of the novel “Ordinary People” by Diana Evans
April 21st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In the United States in 1976, there was the publication of a novel called “Ordinary People” by Judith Guest which four years later was made into a film of the same title that won four Academy Awards. I saw the film before then reading the book. In Britain in 2018, there was the publication of another novel called “Ordinary People” but this time the author is Diana Evans and the locale and characters are very different and the title borrows from a 2005 track by the singer John Legend.
The first novel involved an affluent white American family dealing with two traumatic events. The more recent novel revolves around two black British families facing the more ‘ordinary’ challenges of relationships and childrearing. Both novels are set over a year and, in the later case, the chronology is bookended by the election of Barack Obama and the death of Michael Jackson in 2008/09.
Melissa and Michael have been together 13 years, have two children, and live in the Bell Green part of south London. Damian and Stephanie are married with three children and live on the outskirts of Dorking. Both couples are in their late 30s. The issues that they face might seem quotidian but Evans has a wonderful writing style that makes this an enjoyable read even if there is no easy resolution on offer.
Evans is the daughter of a Nigerian mother and an English father and grew up in Neasden, north-west London. Her knowledge of the capital imbues the narrative as she writes of “one of those Londoners who perceived the south as another state” and comments that “London does not know what to do with snow”, while she captures well the struggles of modern urban life – especially for a woman – as she refers to “the strangulating domesticity” of a relationship and opines that “motherhood is an obliteration of the self”.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “Red Joan”
April 21st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Melita Norwood was a British civil servant who was recruited as a Soviet agent in 1937 and passed on valuable information about creation of the atomic bomb, yet managed to escape exposure until 1999 when she was 87.
Her story is the inspiration for this film in which the character is named Joan Stanley and played by Sophie Cookson as a young woman and Judi Dench at the time of her belated arrest.
It is a competent enough work with able performances and fine costumes, but there is no real excitement and too little of Dench.
You can learn about Norwood here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)