Joe Biden chooses Kamala Harris as his running mate and that is the right choice
August 11th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his Vice-Presidential running mate will come as no surprise.
Three years ago, I tipped her for the top in blog postings here and here.
Three months ago, I said that she should be on Biden’s ticket in blog postings here and here.
Given Biden’s age, if he wins the presidency, there is no guarantee that he will complete his four-year term. If he does, he will probably not run for a second term. So America needs a Vice-President who is qualified to take over at any time. Harris is up to the job and the first female president – and a woman of colour – would be a wonderful thing.
Meanwhile, Biden and Harris have to win. And hopefully the Democrats will take the Senate as well as the House,
My next tip? Susan Rice for Secretary of State.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
How did Lebanon get into this state?
August 11th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The Prime Minister of Lebanon has offered his resignation stating: “I said that corruption is rooted in every part of the state, but I found out that corruption is greater than the state.” This situation has come about because of the history of the state and the meddling of so many external players.
It may be helpful for me to reproduce a book review that I wrote just after my visit to Lebanon in 2011:
“Beware Of Small States” by David Hirst
The title comes from an 1870 quote by the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin who was writing of 19th century Europe. In fact, the state that is the subject of this book is Lebanon which is indeed small: no biggest than Wales in the UK or Connecticut in the USA. The author was a long-time former Middle East correspondent for the “Guardian” newspaper and he has lived in Beirut for some 50 years.
In 460 pages, David Hirst provides a history of Lebanon from 1860 to 2009 but, in doing so, effectively offers a history of the Middle East itself because Lebanon has so often been the subject of intervention by other states, whether the rule of the Ottoman Empire until the end of the First World War, France in the mandate period from 1918-1943, the presence since 1948 of Palestinian refugees and until 1982 the PLO, the support for different militias by various states during the horrendously bitter civil war of 1975-1990, the presence of UNIFIL peacekeeping troops since 1978, the invasions by Israel in 1982-1985 and again in 2006, the support of Iran for the militia Hezbollah since 1985, and the constant interference, sometime occupation, and repeated political assassinations by neighbouring Syria.
Towards the end of this complicated, twisting and blood-soaked narrative, Hirst summarizes the current (2009) balance of forces in Lebanese politics.
The 8 March bloc takes its name from a huge demonstration called by Hezbollah on that date in 2005. Membership of the bloc includes most of the Shia Muslim community dominated by Hezbollah led by Hasan Nasrallah plus Amal and the Maronite Christians led by Michel Aoun and (now 2011) the Druze led by Walid Jumblatt. The group is supported by Syria and Iran.
The 14 March bloc takes its name from probably an even bigger demonstration which was held on 14 March 2005, exactly one month after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Membership of the bloc includes the Sunni Muslims led by Rafiq’s son Saad and groups of the Maronite Christians led by Amine Gemayel and Samir Geagea. The group is supported by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
In short, Lebanon has never been master of its own fate. Hirst quotes the Iranian scholar R.K. Ramazani – “It is a truism that all things in the Middle East are interconnected” – and notes that “Nowhere did this truism manifest itself like it did in Lebanon”.
The reason for all this intervention and interconnectedness is partly Lebanon’s location in the cockpit of the Middle East and partly its complex religious and sectarian composition. From the beginning in 1943, this nation, which then had a mere one million citizens, reached an unwritten National Pact that specifically recognised and allocated political representation to no less than 17 groups. Today the population is some four million and a version of the National Pact remains in force with 18 groupings now recognised.
Hirst is incredibly well-informed and immensely informative but his history is not impartial. In particular he makes clear his opposition to Zionism and Israel, comparing the creation of the Jewish state with Lebanon itself and calling it “a vastly more arbitrary example of late-imperial arrogance, geopolitical caprice and perniciously misguided philanthropy”. But he is critical of the Arab states too, noting that “While Arabs may be abstractly passionate for Palestine the cause, they often display little such passion for Palestinians as persons”. He seems rather impressed by the Shiite Hezbollah though, describing it as “both the most influential political player in Lebanon and probably the most proficient guerilla organization in the world”.
I read “Beware Of Small States” while travelling in Syria and Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of the successful February 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and it certainly aided my understanding of the region’s complex history and fractious present.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
While you’re waiting for the “Top Gun’ sequel, here’s 63 other aviation films to watch
August 6th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Two of my many interests are aviation and cinema. I really loved the movie “Top Gun” which was released as long ago as 1986 and I can’t wait to see the sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” which is now not due to be released until summer 2021.
Fortunately there are many other aviation films around if you search for them and I’ve reviewed 63 of them here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Today my heart is with the people of Beirut
August 5th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Like so many others around the world, I was horrified to hear the news about, and see the pictures of, the huge explosion in Beirut. This is a country, and especially a city, that has already suffered so much in recent decades. Fortunately the people I know in Beirut are safe but shocked.
In 2011, just after the Arab Spring and just before the start of the Syrian civil war, I spent a few days in Lebanon, staying in Beirut. This is such an historic part of the world and it was such a marvellous experience.
You can read my account here.
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the 2017 film “The Shape Of Water”
August 4th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Somehow I didn’t manage to see this fantasy horror movie at the cinema and, by the time I viewed it on the television, it had collected a whole host of nominations and awards, including 13 nominations at the 90th Academy Awards where it won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score. I was not surprised, therefore, that I loved it.
The work is a particular triumph for Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro, who wrote and directed “Pan’s Labyrinth” (which I really admired), since he imagined the story and co-wrote and directed the movie. But it is also a remarkable performance by Britain’s Sally Hawkins who plays a mute cleaning woman in a secret American government laboratory in 1962 where she befriends a humanoid amphibian who has been found in a South American river and held for Cold War experimentation.
The ending is pure magic.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of a book on the Texel Uprising of 1945
August 3rd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Like his earlier book “Operation Basalt”, historian Eric Lee has managed to take a little-known and – in the grand scheme of the Second World War – small-scale incident and turn it in to a fascinating story by putting the events into a wider context with a variety of points of view.
Both “Operation Basalt” and “Night Of The Bayonets” are set on a Nazi-occupied island but, whereas the first was located on a tiny member of the British-owned Channel Islands and involved only a handful of deaths, the second took place on the much larger Dutch island of Texel off the west coast of the Netherlands and the death toll was more than 3,000 with probably three-quarters of them being Germans.
What makes the uprising between 6 April – 20 May 1945 truly astonishing is that it lasted more than two weeks after the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands and the attack on the occupying Wehrmacht was conducted by men wearing the same uniform: the Georgian members of the 822nd Eastern Battalion who had been taken prisoner from the Soviet Army and effectively forced to switch sides or instead to be killed or starved to death.
Commenting on the Georgians’ change of sides on two occasions, Lee states: They were young men who were simply trying to survive the war and get home”.
Lee only devotes some 45 pages of a main text of 190 pages to the Texel Uprising itself, what he calls “the final battle of the Second World War in Europe”, but cleverly and fascinatingly he goes back and forward in time to set the incident into a wider contect and to provide the reader with not just a story from history but an exercise in historiography.
So, drawing on another of his books (“The Experiment”), Lee takes us back to 1783 when Georgia lost its independence and became a protectorate of the powerful Russian Empire. He explains how, during the First World War, there was a Georgian Legion on the German side of the conflict and then, when there was an independent Georgia with a social democratic government from 1919-1921, the new state had the support of the Germans.
Therefore, by the time of the Second World War, relations between the Georgians on the one hand and the Russians and Germans on the other was not a simple matter.
Then, looking at how the Texel Uprising has been commemorated and memorialised from immediately after the war (when the returning Georgians were treated by the Soviet Union as heroes rather than as traitors) through successive decades leading to present-day independent Georgia, Lee revals how different parties at different times have interpreted and presented those weeks of battle on Texel in ways which have offered a self-serving narrative.
History may be in the past but it is never dead as this book illustrates all too well.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
A review of the new French film “The Truth”
August 2nd, 2020 by Roger Darlington
In the 1960s, I was a tiny bit in love with French actress Catherine Deneuve (“Repulsion”, “Belle De Jour”, “Mayerling”). For decades, I’ve been more than a little bit in love with French actress Juliette Binoche (“The English Patient”, “Chocolat”, “Clouds Of Sils Maria”). So the opportunity to see both in this (largely) French-language film, in which they play mother (actress Fabrienne) and daughter (screenwriter Lumir) respectively was a real attraction.
They are eminently watchable – as are the support actors including Ethan Hawke – but the movie lacks cohesion and spark, probably because Japanese writer and director Hirokazu Kore-eda, so accomplished as writer and director of the Japanese film “Shoplifters”, is operating outside his milieu and over-complicates the narrative with the emphasis on the making of another film within this film.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What excuse can any American possibly have for voting for Donald Trump?
August 1st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
We know that there is lots of life on Earth, but is there any lyfe on Mars?
July 30th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
For centuries, there has been speculation about whether there is any life on our nearest planet Mars. After all, there are those ‘canals’ and there is some kind of atmosphere.
Of course, it depends how you define “life” and, believe it or not, there is no absolutely agreed definition, but the American space agency NASA has a good working description: “a self sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”.
On this basis, there may be no life on Mars – but maybe we should have a broader definition.
Stuart Bartlett, a complexity scientist at Caltech, and Michael L Wong, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington, have developed a new hypothetical concept: lyfe.
They define a “lyving” organism as satisfying four criteria: dissipation (the ability to harness and convert free energy sources); autocatalysis (the ability to grow or expand exponentially); homeostasis (the ability to limit change internally when things change externally); and learning (the ability to record, process and carry out actions based on information).
With this definition, life is just one specific instance of lyfe and there could be a higher probability of finding lyfe – rather than life – on Mars.
You can find a fuller exposition of this fascination idea here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of the NEW film “Clemency”
July 25th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
After four months of the coronavirus lockdown, I was desperate to visit a theatre and see a new movie on the big screen. So I went to view whatever was showing on the first evening of the first cinema to open in central London. “Clemency” is hardly the most uplifting choice for such an occasion, since it is a serious and slow-moving work dealing with capital punishment in the United States and the impending execution of a black prisoner innocent of the murder for which he was convicted.
But this is an important film. both for its provenance and its subject. The writer/director is Nigerian-American Chinonye Chukwu; the lead actor and excutive producer is African-American Alfre Woodard who is the prison warden; and most of the leading roles are black characters including Aldis Hodge as the prisoner awaiting death. We see how the death sentence can not only be a terrible misjustice but a corruption of all who find themselves part of the process.
The film was released at an inauspicous time but should garner an Academy Award nomination for Woodard’s wonderful performance and stimulate further debate on this horrific practice.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)