The death of a talented pilot and the end of an historic aircraft
August 17th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
A few days ago, there was a tragic accident at an air display in Cheb in the Czech Republic. The pilot was Petr Paces who was a very experienced MiG 21 fighter pilot and captain of the Boeing 737 airliner.
Nothing is more important that the death of this man, but I have to record that the aircraft that he was flying was a World War Two Hawker Hurricane painted in the colour scheme of the aircraft flown in 1942 by the Czech RAF pilot Karel Kuttelwascher who was the father of my ex-wife.
You can read more about Karel Kuttelwascher here. You can read more about the Hawker Hurricane here. And you can see below a video of the aircraft which crashed at Cheb being flown by Petr Paces the day before his death.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
On the 75th anniversary of independence for India, how much is there to celebrate?
August 16th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Politics in India is much rougher and much more corrupt that in the democracies of Europe and North America. Assassination is not uncommon: the revered Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, and the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 were all murdered, although it has to be noted that these were not really political assassinations which happen more at local level.Communal, caste and regional tensions continue to haunt Indian politics, sometimes threatening its long-standing democratic and secular ethos. The language used by political candidates about each other is often vivid. Nevertheless, for decades, India was a poster child for democratic development: a poor, sprawling, ethnically diverse country that nevertheless had regular elections and peaceful transfers of power – the hallmarks of a functioning democracy – albeit with the flaws inherent in such a system, including a single dominant party.
The parliamentary scene has been transformed in the last eight years with the BJP winning an overall majority in both the elections of 2014 and 2019. The leader of the BJP Narendra Modi is a dominant figure who is both popular and populist. He is the first prime minister since 1971 to win majorities in parliament in back-to-back elections and a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies found that nearly one-third of people who voted for the BJP last time did so in support of Modi, rather than the party or their local candidate.
But Modi is a divisive figure who has been accused of an increasing personality cult and a serious undermining of democratic institutions and practices. Writing in “The World Ahead 2022” published by “The Economist”, Ramachandra Guha – an historian and biographer – has declared: “In the seven years that Narendra Modi has been prime minister of India, he has not formally proclaimed a state of emergency – but then perhaps he has not needed to. For he has ruthlessly used the instruments of state power to undermine the functioning of democratic institutions. He has tamed the media (India is currently ranked 142nd on the World Press Freedom Index), set the tax authorities on his political opponents, and jailed dozens of human rights activists. He has also sought, with some success, to bring under his control previously independent institutions such as the army, the central bank, the election commission and the higher judiciary.”
In a March 2022 article in the “Observer” newspaper, Nick Cohen wrote: “Narendra Modi and the Hindutva right are turning the world’s largest democracy into the world’s ugliest democracy. Muslims are denied the security of full citizenship. The independence of the Indian courts, the civil service, the electoral system and the media has been horribly compromised as the Bharatiya Janata Party creates, if not a one-party state, then at least a state where only one party can win.”
This is the conclusion of my guide to the Indian political system which you can read here. I have visited India and you can read an account of my travels here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the recent French film “Who You Think I Am”
August 15th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Juliette Binoche is a talented and beautiful actress who has now appeared in over 60 French-language and English-language films. I really admire her work and must have seen over a dozen of her roles.In this French-language work from 2019, she plays Claire, a 50 year old professor of French literature, who uses Facebook to create a false persona of Clara, a 24 year old working in the fashion business. The framing device for the story is a series of conversations between Claire and her psychotherapist.
The reasons for, and the consequences of, this subterfuge are only slowly revealed in a tale about identity, illusion, obsession and abandonment. Binoche, as always, is captivating.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Aircraft carriers: how many of them are there and who has them?
August 14th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Currently I’m reading a book by American researcher Rush Doshi entitled “The Long Game” and subtitled “China’s grand strategy to displace American order”. Recently I read the section on China’s development of aircraft carriers which led me to wonder: how many aircraft carriers are there in the world and which nations have them?
As usual, a good source is the relevant Wikipedia page. From this, we learn that at present there are 46 aircraft carriers in service. The countries that have such vessels are Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Most of these nations – 10 out of 14 – only have one or two (Russia only has one just now and the UK only has two). Two them have four: China and Japan (but China has two more undergoing trials). Not surprisingly, the US has the most: 20 with another six in reserve, undergoing trials, or under construction.
I’m no military expert, but I wonder how vulnerable aircraft carriers are in the age of cruise missiles. I hope that we never have to find out.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (2)
Because it’s the weekend: k d lang sings “Hallelujah”
August 12th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
How would you like to die?
August 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was just over 50 years ago but I still remember it. I was in my early 20s and very active politically in the Labour Party. I had represented my Constituency Labour Party at the Labour Party Annual Conference and I went round all the wards giving my report of the event.
This particular meeting was held in the living room at the house of an elderly couple of longstanding Party members. I gave an eloquent report and looked forward to questions. But then the lady in whose home we were meeting noticed that her husband was sitting very still and looking extremely pale. He was dead.
Now I know what you’re thinking: I had bored him to death. Whatever the true cause of his demise, the circumstances were remarkable. It had been so sudden and so pain-free that nobody had noticed. He died at home with his wife and his comrades. What a way to go.
This astonishing incident came back to my mind this week during a conversation that I had with an elderly patient in a local hospital where I am a volunteer. She told me about her husband – aged 99 1/2 and looking forward to a message from the monarch. Astonishingly he had never been in hospital and took no medication.
But one evening he was feeling tired, so he had a bath and went to bed early. He had eaten little that day so his wife – herself a sprightly 91 year old – took him some cereal. She gave him a spoonful but he did not swallow it. He looked her directly in the eyes, closed his eyes, and died. He did not make a sound. What a way to go.
By contrast, I’ve been visiting a woman of around my own age (mid 70s) who is suffering from motor neurone disease. It affects her from the neck upwards.
She cannot hold her head up without supporting her head with her hands. She cannot eat or drink so she receives nourishment through a tube in her stomach. She cannot speak so she writes on a small whiteboard. She cannot swallow so she has to use a suction machine to remove the phlegm. She fears that she will die from choking.
She is very clear. She wants to die. But she cannot kill herself and the law does not allow anyone to assist her in ending her life.
I guess we would all like to die like the first two people that I mentioned – quick and painlessly. But increasingly many of us are living longer in circumstances that we would like to bring to an end. We need a calm and rational debate about end of life and personal choice and politicians need to listen to the public and to the medical profession.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (6)
A review of “The Good Shepherd (currently showing on Netflix)
August 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This 2006 movie is something of a cinematic curiosity since it has so much talent on both sides of the camera and yet the outcome is so disappointing.It purports to tell the story of the formation by the United States of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War and its transformation into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as the Cold War took hold. Very loosely based on a number of real life American and Russian figures in the espionage world, its leading character is the upright, laconic Edward Wilson played by Matt Damon who does not seem to age in the two-decade narrative. The character is partly based on James Jesus Angleton, who was chief of counterintelligence for the CIA, and partly on covert operations specialist Richard Bissell.
There is so much talent here. The director is the acclaimed actor Robert De Niro (who has only directed one other film “A Bronx Tale) and he has a cameo role as the head of the OSS. As well as Matt Damon, others in the star-stunned cast list include Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Joe Pesci John Turturro and Michael Gambon. In spite of this, the film is over long, over complicated and just too leaden. So I cannot really recommend it; yet, if you’re a student of cinema, I think that you have to see it.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new action movie “Bullet Train”
August 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I once took a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto but it was nothing like this crazy movie which looks like something that British director Guy Ritchie and American director Quentin Tarantino might have made if ever they teamed up for a joint production. In fact, the director is David Leitch whose last work was “Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw”, which might give you some idea of what to expect, but the over-the-top action and gory violence originate from the Japanese book on which the film is based.Now Leitch is a big fan of Brad Pitt (so I am) and he was Pitt’s stuntman on many movies (I was busy), so it’s not surprising that Pitt is the lead character in this adventure and he is eminently watchable as one of five assassins on a speeding train whose back stories are gradually interlinked as the narrative unfolds. I don’t think that I would be spoiling your viewing if I told you that the end of the line is not the end of the story and not everyone who looks dead is dead. Madness and mayhem.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
How strong is China’s claim to Taiwan? And what about Mongolia?
August 6th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago. In the 17th century, large-scale Han Chinese immigration to western Taiwan began under a Dutch colony and continued under the Kingdom of Tungning. The island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty of China, but ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895.The Republic of China (ROC), which had overthrown the Qing in 1911, took control of Taiwan on behalf of the Allies of World War II following the surrender of Japan in 1945. The resumption of the Chinese Civil War resulted in the ROC’s loss of mainland China to forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and consequent retreat to Taiwan in 1949. Its effective jurisdiction has since been limited to Taiwan and smaller islands.
So China controlled Taiwan for two centuries before surrendering control over a century ago. Communist China has never controlled Taiwan.
What about Mongolia?In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism spread to Mongolia, being further led by the Manchu-founded Qing dynasty, which absorbed the country in the 17th century. However, after the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Mongolia declared independence and achieved actual independence from the Republic of China (ROC) in 1921. At a stroke, China lost some 1.5M square kilometres of land or about 14% of its total territory.
Shortly afterwards, the country became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which had aided its independence from China. In 1924, the Mongolian People’s Republic was founded as a socialist state. After the anti-communist revolutions of 1989, Mongolia conducted its own peaceful democratic revolution in early 1990.
So, after three centuries of controlling Mongolia, China has not been in control of the territory for the last century and it has shown no interest in regaining the territory.
Why does China want to take over Taiwan and not Mongolia?
It cannot be a matter of geographical size. Taiwan is a tiny fraction of the area of Mongolia which is the 18th largest country in the world. It could be a question of population: Mongolia only has 3.4M citizens compared to Taiwan’s 23M. It could be a matter of wealth. Mongolia has nothing to offer China, but Taiwan is a thriving economy of world-wide importance (two-thirds of all the most advanced chips are manufactured in the country).
Above all, it is a matter of ethnicity and politics. There are no Han Chinese in Mongolia but 95% of Taiwanese are Han. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees control of Taiwan as unfinished business from the civil war. The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China (ROC) and forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), on and off between 1927 and 1949 when the Communists completed control of mainland China and the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan. For the CCP, the war is not over and the country remains to be fully united.
Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (2)
Word of the day: exeat
August 5th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This word actually came up in a conversation over coffee that I had this week. It was totally new to me.
Exeat means official permission for a student to be absent from a college or university.
It is the third person singular present subjunctive of the Latin verb expire which means to go out.
So now you know.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)