The great survivor survives no more

There was once a joke about the longevity of Fidel Castro: On his 80th birthday, he was presented with a Galapagos tortoise (who can live to a century or more).  While welcoming the present, he lamented that owners tended to outlive their pets.  As it turns out, 90 years old was Castro's terminal destination, despite all those cigars (the Cuban variety fabled to have been rolled between the thighs of virgins), which he eventually cut out on doctors' orders.
Castro outlasted most of friends and foes.  His passing means that the last remaining titan (who was a world leader) of the Cold War is Mikhail Gorbachev (George H W Bush would have a very tenuous claim to being a titan of the Cold War) and Castro was most active at the very height of this exercise in competing ideologies and power politics.  There was the simple fact of establishing a socialist (later communist) government on an island 90 miles from the American mainland, the Bay of Pigs debacle for the USA, the Cuban Missile Crisis (a debacle in public relations for the USSR) and sending of troops and advisors to parts of the world courted by East and West, notably Angola and Mozambique.  All this while running a ruthless dictatorship at home, raising an outstanding healthcare system and surviving numerous assassination attempts by the CIA and Cuban exiles.  The pro-Republican Miami-based Cuban exiles have decided at least one US presidential election.
Castro didn't care much for nominal landmarks, handing over power to his brother Raul after 49 years as leader, rather than make the magic but meaningless half century.  Like with North Korea, Communist Cuba kept it in the family.  Castro's charisma and sheer force of personality means he will be more than a footnote in history, even if it was his close collaborator, the Byronic Che Guevara, who adorned countless students' walls.  El Comandante is dead though he seemed like he would go on forever, but the current Comandante has been in post for the past eight years.  Thus Fidel's death is not a landmark in any important sense but it's another burying of the Cold War.

Too many films predicting the future, not all get it right (what a surprise!)

Forget Back to the Future II and all the things like Donald Trump-inspiration Biff Tannen becoming true with the US presidential election. Everyone scorned Arnie's The Running Man in 1987. It's actually extraordinarily prophetic of Trump's America (and how the former reality TV host may deal with the incarceration problem):

The year is 2017. The world economy has collapsed. The United States has sealed off it's borders and has become a military controlled police state which controls TV, movies, art, books, communication and censorship. In the police state America has become, criminals have a choice. They can serve their sentences in prison or they can take part in "The Running Man" a government owned violent game-show where contestants running for freedom are pursued by "Stalkers", wrestler-like bounty hunters.

On another note in film, Sylvester Stallone's John Spartan was frozen twenty years (and three days) ago in Demolition Man.  For a 1993 film, it was exceedingly optimistic about cryo-freezing three years hence.

The people who really hate Britain

In these febrile days when the American president-elect has repeatedly threatened the Fourth Estate, both at home and abroad, one might feel an instinctive urge to protect the hard-won freedom of the press that is the cornerstone of any functioning democracy.  Freedom of expression is a right and a privilege often denied to many people in the world.  When it is deployed to incite hatred of the other, especially in the pursuit of financial gain, there would be many who would be nervous of such use.  When it is utilised to assault the rule of law, objective observers would say it has gone too far.
The power of the press in the UK has often been a matter of conjecture.  Some take the 'minimal effects' model of the USA, assuming the newspapers to be paper tigers in decline.  The pressmen assiduously advance this argument themselves - the 'poor little me' aiming for the sympathy vote.  Most students of the press though, if being honest, would recognise the considerable leverage the biggest selling publications can bring to bear on their hobby horses and how they seek to crush those who have offended them.
In the wake of the phone hacking scandal (furiously downplayed by the right-wing press), Hacked Off was formed of those who had suffered unjustly at the hands of journalists, such as previously unknown Christopher Jefferies (leading to the Attorney General censuring The Sun and The Mirror).  The response from print newsrooms of the right-wing though was to write them as a bunch of celebrity luvvie whingers.  The 38 Degrees group has launched a campaign to get The Daily Mail banned from airport departure lounges so foreign people will not think the worst of us as they go home. Now, Stop Funding Hate, the organisation calling on corporations to withdraw their advertising (and hence money) from those newspapers who villify those who do not have a platform to respond (usually migrants) are the target of the right-wing ire, The Spectator calling the activists' aim as a nasty, elitist campaign for press censorship and that intolerance wears a progressive mask.  The irony that The Spectator is calling others nasty, intolerant and elitist is the beyond parody times in which we live.
Like a mafia, unelected journalists know that power isn't given, it's taken and they jealously guard the heights they command.  The current editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, in The Daily Telegraph, regularly attacked the police and prosecution services who were investigating possible wrong-doing by journalists.  He wasn't the only one who furiously denounced the authorities when a journalist was acquitted and quietly ignored those who were found guilty.  When Andy Coulson - who had been convicted of phone hacking - was acquitted of perjury in Scotland, Nelson exalted the case as another example of the persecution of the press, even though Coulson was acquitted on a technicality (his false testimony wasn't relevant to the outcome of the case).  Thus, by implication, Nelson clearly believes that lying under oath is not despicable in the slightest.  This a major affront to the rule of law.
Even more grievously, right-wing newspapers attacked British judges for saying parliament must vote on the activation of Article 50.  Leaving aside the fact that the pro-Brexit newspapers were favouring the tyranny of the executive, after having fought for decades for the primacy of British courts, they deployed Blackshirt language of 'enemies of the people' or 'the judges versus the people'.  Not content with this inflammatory and misleading language, they tried to undermine the ruling by focusing on the judges' personal lives, calling into question the impartiality of the lawmen.  The strength of the pro-Brexit newspapers was illustrated in the cowardice of the government response, Justice Secretary Liz Truss silent on their action and Theresa May, in another example of her weakness, defending them.
Like a mafia as well, in the cabal-like nature, the journalists flit between publications like a nomadic 'old-school' (some might say has-been) football manager not being short of offers when let go from his current employment.  Take Tony Gallagher who bragged about the power of the newspapers in the wake of the Brexit referendum.  He was the respected editor of The Daily Telegraph who moved to become Deputy Editor at The Daily Mail and now currently edits The Sun.  One might say his trajectory of quality is downward but the reach of his voice has increased steadily upwards.  Kelvin MacKenzie, Rod Liddle and Boris Johnson are other high-profile examples of bouncing between the bastions of the press.  Very much an 'old boys' (and girls') club'.
But for all the hue and cry of threats to freedom of the press, such as when the Leveson Report was published, freedom of expression is a one-way street, especially for the right-wing press.  When Gary Lineker complained, without naming names, of the print media reaction to bringing in child migrants from The Jungle camp in Calais, The Sun called upon the BBC to sack him, thus trying to silence a voice of opposition to their beliefs.  He doesn't work in the BBC news department, but he is the popular anchor of football programmes.  The attack on the BBC is another threat to freedom of expression as The Sun didn't ask BT Sport to sack Lineker.
It is of a right-wing pattern to defend their power.  When the newspapers were reeling in the wake of the death of Princess Diana and faced serious threats to their power, they won back public opinion by scapegoating the royal family, deflecting anger away from themselves.  When the Leveson Report was published, the right-wing newspapers said its implementation would turn us in Zimbabwe, even though their recent attack on the judiciary means that they are turning Britain into Zimbabwe through their own actions.
A few years ago, The Daily Mail published a piece calling Ralph Miliband, deceased father of then Labour leader Ed Miliband, "The Man Who Hated Britain", openly saying that Miliband Junior also hated Britain.  When they gave Ed Miliband a right of reply, they re-published the original opinion piece and composed an even more angry editorial dripping in malice.  When it comes to fomenting hatred against the vulnerable, undermining the rule of law in this country and trying to silence the freedom of expression of all those who disagree with them, it is the right-wing newspapers' and magazines' editorial departments who are packed with people who hate Britain.

Banana Republic par excellence

It's now seven days since the grotesque became reality.  Amazingly, there are plenty of smug liberals going around saying "told you Sanders shouldn't have been the Democrat nominee."  Because their smugness will really help the poorest communities around the world suffering from climate change, whose subsidies (instituted by Obama) Trump will now remove.  The hatred of many liberals and millenials fro Hillary Clinton meant that they, with their privilege, were prepared to sacrifice the weakest in the USA and beyond.  If Trump supporters were deplorables, in Clinton's '47%-Romney' moment, these people (including their idol Julian Assange) are despicables.
But it's been a very good year for Vladimir Putin, as the West fractures.  He disowned Russian interference in the US election, asking if they were a banana republic that they had so little trust in their own processes.  But maybe this result shows that they are, especially when Clinton wins the popular vote by a total approaching two million more than Trump, more than many winning presidents.
In the computer game Tropico, Trump (and especially his campaign) have some very distinctive traits to be El Presidente.  His background could be 'Developer' - where the environmental faction respects you less but the capitalist faction likes you more and construction is 50% cheaper - or 'Silver spoon' - where he would start with more money (he is the 324th richest person in the world - and people mocked Romney for his wealth!) but be respected less by the communist faction.  'Man of the people' he would portray himself as but this receives less respect from the religious faction - in the USA the religious right did not respect him but still voted for him as "an instrument of God."  He might even qualify as 'pop singer', given his celebrity.
Although in rise to power, it is tempting to say he was installed by the KGB, properly (even if he doesn't govern as such) he was elected as a fascist.  People still feel 20% more liberated, although their democratic expectations are moderate rather than high (as with 'elected as a Socialist') or very high ('elected as a capitalist', 'elected for family values').  The military faction respect you more and crime is 20% lower (good for tourism).  In Tropico 3, there are nationalists who dislike immigrants, workers being paid too low a wage and El Presidente signs treaties with foreign powers; in Tropico 4, there are Loyalists who want a totalitarian cult - both would be a natural fit for Trump.
Positive qualities would be being involved in construction.  Trump covers most of the negative characteristics (moronic, ugly, gambler, etc) but the most fitting one would be compulsive liar.
So, it only four years (hopefully).  But in four years, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, set back civil rights for a century (1865 - 1965).  And then there's climate change, race relations, attack on abortion and rollback of gun restrictions, to name a few.  Trump may not be as bad as his campaign but following through on 80% of it is still disastrous.

Climate science is compatible with conservatism

Oh for the days when American, British and Australian conservatives didn't regard science as the enemy.  In the incoming Trump's administration's bid to exit the Paris Climate Change Accords as fast as possible (instead of waiting the mandated four years), there has been talk of voiding the agreement on the Rio accords of 1992, the parent treaty, signed by George H W Bush (who had watered it down) and most of the world's leaders.
But why this antipathy towards climate science in particular and scientists in general? Admittedly, especially in America, there is a line of conservative thought rooted in religious fundamentalism that rejects science and would prefer to return to medieval shibboleths - naturally, this is about power rather than morality as this would (and does) cement the hold the fundamentalists retain over their followers.  Yet, in general, science and scientific advances (outside of genetics) do not clash with a social conservative agenda e.g. on the debate surrounding abortions or gun control (and its absence).
Also, 'Anglo-Saxon' conservatives like the Republicans, the British Conservative Party and the Australian Liberal Party have been painted as the parties of business, especially big business.  Even here, however, there is no fundamental clash because if the 'green' technology of the future was harnessed by the private sector, with no government obstacles, that would benefit the economies of each country, such as solar panels have had for Germany and China (not coincidentally, the world's two biggest exporters).
The answer is that the megabucks fossil fuel corporations owned by right-wing billionaires have captured the movers and shakers in the Anglo-Saxon conservatives.  As such, they are turning the clock back far more effectively than the religious fundamentalists to a dead-end industry that could have a devastating impact on the world's climate, hurting the poorest the most (Trump is going to cut climate impact subsidies to the world's least wealthy countries and communities).

(Un)time(ly to go

In this week of trauma, two of my favourite famous people died - Leonard Cohen and Robert Vaughan.  They were both in their eighties but maybe their bodies thought, 'let's go out on our own terms, rather than the horror that awaits in January'.  Just need elderly liberal Supreme Court judges to hold out for four more years (please not wait).
Though I held Vaughan in huge esteem, Leonard Cohen was far closer to me.  On many occasions, I have listened to the late eighties album, I'm Your Man - sometimes I sing one of its signature tracks Everybody Knows to my baby son when he is awake at night.  His deep voice became even more gravelly since then but with my daughter obsessed with the fairytale 'Beauty and the Beast', she recently asked me on a a playing of I'm Your Man, "Is that the beast?" Very appropriate given the lyrics of the title song!
That's on CD.  I also had it as tape cassette.  When on a school trip back from Berlin, when people said no suicidal music like from Radiohead, I suggested Cohen as I find his lyrics, bittersweet, clever and poignant.  My history teacher demurred but he did change his opinion of me after earlier in the trip I had unwisely 'herded' with others in criticising his passion for The Jam - foolish on many different levels!  I've also grown into appreciation of his other poetic masterstrokes of songs, though everybody obsesses about Hallelujah.
Like David Bowie, Cohen released an album just before his death - perhaps an unintended farewell gift to fans.  No unfinished symphony there.  Though the fountain is now silent, the genius lives on in all those he touched.
Robert Vaughan I first came into contact via The Man From U.N.C.L.E. along with David McCallum (who has said in Vaughan's death he has lost a part of himself) and Leo G. Carroll.  A campy version of James Bond on television (and later as films), I had an instant pleasure in it.  Later on, he maintained his suave demeanour in Superman III.  More recently, I enjoyed him in Hustle and also watched The Magnificent Seven.  A truly great man in himself.

President-elect Trump - gah!

Well, unlike Romney's staffers, Trump's team were not delusional and really were storming places like Michigan and Wisconsin - taking Pennsylvania has to be the biggest shock (and indictment of Clinton) of the electoral map.  Iowa and Ohio (plus Florida) remain bellwether states.  Maybe the plain-speakers Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders would have stood a better chance against Trump (Sanders would not have lost the rustbelt) - coincidence that they are both men?  Democrats were sunk by their feeling that it was Hillary Clinton's turn (after Obama's) - that the White House was being shared around no matter what the voters thought.  That presumptuous purchase of fireworks the day before the vote a further nail in her bid's coffin.
I had gone to bed early and woken up after midnight to watch what I thought would be a victory procession for Clinton - the polls had been a lot more consistent than they were for Brexit.  Nate Silver of 538 copped a lot of flak for rating Trump's chances relatively highly, yet even his team were slightly caught out by the toppling of Democrat bastions.  Only the 'outlier' LA Times poll which was consistently favourable to Trump proved correct - bravely they refused to change their methodology and join in the 'herding' effect (when pollsters disregard unlikely outcomes).
Now, we have the biggest man-child of all who will assume the White House throne.  End of the world forecasts accompanied George W Bush's election and re-election, plus the bids of John McCain and Mitt Romney - none of the three voted for Trump.  So one must take Trump's ascension with a pinch of salt.  Yet let us remember the events of Dubaya's watch - 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and fatefully Iraq, the massive tax cut for the very rich (which Trump has promised to reintroduce) which added a further trillion dollars to the national debt, the response to Hurricane Katrina and topping it all, the collapse of the western banking system in 2008.  Trump's campaign pronouncements, from branding NATO obsolete (encouraging Moscow to take the Baltics), saying Saudi Arabia should have nuclear weapons, ripping up the Iran nuclear deal, promising a trade war with China to branding climate change a 'Chinese hoax', are incredibly reckless - one must only hope this compulsive liar surrounds himself with experienced people and listens to them and not what he himself said.
In a similar way, Italy regularly re-elected the party of their richest man, Silvio Berlusconi, making him prime minister.  Berlusconi shares many character traits with Trump but there is an key difference. Important as Italy is, it does not have nuclear weapons and cannot do the damage the sole superpower can.
Like with Brexit, people who had never voted before (except those that had turned 18 in the last four years) went overwhelmingly with Trump.  Their situation won't improve under his presidency and they will be even more disillusioned than ever.  Good because these people are the kind who just want to see the world burn because of their anger.  America needs to be made great again because by electing Trump it no longer is.

Fool's hope?

I remember four years ago on the eve of the US presidential election, Republican Mitt Romney's team were going to such Democrat strongholds such as Minnesota (home state of Romney's VP Paul Ryan admittedly) and saying to the media, 'we're doing really well where no-one gave us chance'.  What happened?  Barack Obama outperformed Mitt Romney (and the polls) in the key states and won handsomely in the Electoral College.
As Trump's team campaign in Nevada, Michigan and North Carolina, word for word, they're saying exactly the same thing as Romney's in 2012.  Now, it's likely that Trump will take Iowa easily and squeak in for Ohio (goodbye bellwether status for both).  He may even win the Electoral College, if his base comes out and Hillary Clinton's doesn't (though the latter is unlikely given her vast ground game of getting out the vote over Trump's staffers).  The polls seem to point to a popular win for Clinton and also in the 'battleground' swing states.  So it seems that the pronouncements of Trump's team may be as delusional as of those who worked for Romney but we'll know soon enough if that's an accurate assessment.

The lady is for turning, like a worm

When Theresa May became prime minister in what was effectively acclamation by Tory MPs, following the implosion of Andrea Leadsom's campaign and her withdrawal after making the final two, those in the liberal left who said she was not as impressive as the image she conveyed, I felt were just whingers, sickened that a competent Conservative prime minister had sewn up electoral dominance until 2030.  Now, I'm beginning to understand that thier years of close observance of her at the top of British politics might have been accurate.
The meaningless tautology 'Brexit means Brexit' trotted out every day as a mantra should have been a clue.  She makes one-time presidential wannable Marco 'Marcobot' Rubio look like Winston Churchill.  It now appears as a comfort blanket, a way to claim a mandate without one from the country or even her own party membership.  One Tory insider described Leadsom chaotically withdrawing from the race to be prime minister as the whole country 'dodging a bullet' and that hypothetical situation may remain the case, but it meant that May and her convictions were never tested in the heat of battle, even if it was with the crazies from the shires.  Unlike Thatcher who had time to modulate her style (and voice) in opposition, May has been thrust in the deep end without a chance to change her wooden delivery.
It is her capture by special interests though that is most disgusting.  The 'pause' on Hinkley Point with its ruinous post-completion energy tariffs was followed by a rapid 'unpausing' when Beijing made clear its displeasure as the UK showing its independence ('take back control?  Ha!).  The only hope now for the British taxpayer is that the whole project is never completed and the £2bn downpayment (more than all the annual cost of benefit paynent fraud) will have to be written off as a mistake by David Cameron and George Osborne.
Then there was the decision to go ahead with Heathrow but have a ludicrous delay of a year before it went to a parliamentary vote, all because Boris Johnson and Zac Goldsmith (who still resigned forcing a by-election) didn't like it.  Goldmsith will probably win his by-election as an independent as the Tories aren't fielding a candidate in the hope that he might return to the fold and the Labour Party are too pig-headedly doctrinaire (of which more later) to let the Liberal Democrats have a clear run at ousting the son of the Referendum Party founder, the late Sir James Goldsmith.
Now, following the High Court ruling that parliament must vote on Article 50 and the pro-Brexit newspaper hysterical backlash ("Enemies of the people", "The judges versus the people", etc.), not only has Liz Truss, the new Lord Chancellor, declined to criticise the press for trying to undermine the rule of law, May has gone further in defending them, her Robespierre to their Marat.  The jackbooted editors do not need defending and May comes across as the simpering schoolgirl who is in awe of the power posing of schoolyard bullies.  Had she told them that such rhetoric in attacking individual judges and their backgrounds was unacceptable, to who else would they have switched their support?  Labour?  Never, especially under Corbyn.  The Lib Dems?  Ha ha.  A UKIP in the process of meltdown and whose survival is uncertain?  This is why she underlined that parliament must vote for Article 50 (pretty much conceding that the Government's appeal to the ruling will fail), calling it 'an instruction from the British people', when the referendum was, legally, only advisory.  The legitimacy of tyrants can be incredibly fragile, needing rubber-stamping legislatures.
May is so weak.  It's why she bottling forcing an early election through calling for a vote of confidence in her government (fixed term parliaments stop a prime minister calling one of their choosing automatically).  The Conservative Party are storming ahead in the polls but that's because (1) the majority of people have yet to see beyond the facade of 'competence' that May pretended she had and (2) Labour have disappeared up their own doctrinaire backsides under Jeremy Corbyn and Co, completely abandoing the centre ground.  Yet Corbyn regularly bests her at Prime Minister's Question when Cameron used to run rings round him.  It was said that David Cameron was the Conservative party's best asset and that would still be in true had he not resigned and removed himself utterly from politics.  For all his flaws including U-turns and lack of strategic thinking, he is proving to have been a far more capable PM than May (or indeed anyone else at the top of the Tory party) could ever be.  In current US politics, the electorate are in despair at the choice before them - is there simply no-one better?  The UK is already in that post-US election state and we have to deal with a leader who had already failed before she got the job.

How a conspiracy gets started

I had a dream last night and it appeared quite vivid.  Hillary Clinton's team, I had read in my dream, was in crisis talks as the polls tightened and there was a fair old bit of panic.  Just before going to bed, I had observed on the 538 statistical analysis website that Trump was now a whisker of a percentage point ahead in North Carolina and Florida and Nevada was a dead heat.  Obviously this influenced my dream as I pondered in my unconscious how politicaal candidates can keep smiling as their ambitions crash and burn.
Now, it is true that Clinton is but a statistical polling error away from defeat to Trump and in the last two weeks the election has become about her rather than her opponent, to her detriment.  But I now see how conspiracy theories against the politicians people want to hate spring up.  I have no particular axe to grind against Clinton - in fact, no-one has ever been more prepared to become president (and in Donald Trump, least prepared - part of his attraction).  If Trump wins, I will be despondent and just hope Congress can keep him from being too egregious until 2021.
However, if was motiviated to do so, I could go on a site like 4Chan (which - like Trump - describes itself as 'politically incorrect' in trying to make mainstream its racism, misogyny and anti-semitism) and, without any evidence, say the Clinton camp was in crisis, gripped with panic.  It felt pretty real in my dream, so it must be pretty real in reality.  Then this spreads within the silo for the Republican-inclined and helps shore up the anti-Clinton vote for the GOP. 
And this is how conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones on InfoWars sustain their worldview - their wacko ideas seem quite likely to them and so they must almost certainly be true.  Evidence, pfft!  We'll cherrypick from here and there, make a leap of the imagination and, hey presto, it's suddenly a fact.  Maybe even the despised mainstream media will pick up on it and press those in the 'establishment' about it.
The things put out about Clinton are ludicrous (Trump only comes under attack when he shoots himself in the foot) and one can understand her misjudged comment about half of Trump's support being a basket of deplorables.  In the 1990s, she talked about a vast right-wing conspiracy attacking her husband.  It may have been true - it felt true but that doesn't mean it was.  Now conspiracies are coming back to haunt her and may even cost her the election.