Lunacy normalised

It’s a little old news but as this is my first post in a good, long while, the relative timeframe is kinder to my endeavours. The decision by the US government to recognise Jerusalem officially as the capital of Israel has sparked criticism across the spectrum asides from the Israeli government, nationalistic Jews and evangelical Christians (the latter actively trying to nudge the ‘end of world’ ever nearer, as was evident in their support for Gulf War Two). So, one might like to see a cogent, coherent counter-vailing view to the orthodoxy, that Trump’s ‘mashing of buttons’ (to adopt a gaming term) actually works, even – or especially – if it is to the horror of the establishment.

Sadly but perhaps inevitably, such evidence is scarce, so some hoops will need to be jumped. Doing what even George W Bush though passé and stupid are further grounds to believe that Donald Trump will be ranked one of the worst presidents ever, to sit alongside the antebellum’s three immediately preceding presidents and the 1920s Warren G. Harding. Yet still a solid 37% believe in their man and, by electoral college mathematics, that may be enough for re-election.

To return to the main topic, The New York Times could find someone to defend the decision to sit alongside many other excoriating ‘think-pieces’. It was just a shame they found someone who had emerged from the boondocks. There’s being contrarian and then there’s asking the inhabitants of Arkham Asylum their opinions on law and order in Gotham City. According to Bret Stephens, it was all the fault of the Palestinians! They should shut up and reform their “klepto-theocracy” (the kind Ted Cruz would have initiated had he won the presidency instead of Donald Trump) rather than “fuelling a culture of perpetual grievance” because southern conservatives have long accepted the outcome of the American Civil War…

And no right-wing snarling would be right without a piece of erroneous mythos, that the Palestinians could have had their own sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital if the had only accepted offered at Camp David in 2000. No matter that they were worse than the Oslo Peace Accords which Israel and Palestine had already agreed seven years earlier (George H W Bush paying the political price for pressuring Israel and Bill Clinton reaping the subsequent diplomatic reward). No matter that in 2008, the Palestinians, now under Abu Mazen, conceded virtually everything, including a much reduced right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants (capped at 100,000) and conceding 95% of Jerusalem to Israel, far from the pre-1967 borders that would see Israel permanently retain the whole old City and the Greek and Armenian Quarters. No matter that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that even such heavy concessions were not enough. No, let’s focus on the abortive Camp David Talks in 2000 for which the Israelis were just as much as the Palestinians for ending.

Finally remembering that his brief was to talk about the Trump decision, Stephens says that Jerusalem is already Israel’s capital, with the Knesset based there and where Israeli leaders entertain visiting US presidents. To finally bow to the will of the US Senate in 1995 (a nutty, right-wing one) merely aligns “deed with reality” and honour a campaign pledge. Yes, because diplomatic fictions count for nothing. Why not advocate a genuine two-state solution – that there are two Chinas, one in Beijing and one in Taipei. Oh that’s right, China might be so provoked as to invade Taiwan and what was all that talk about branding China a currency speculator – disappeared into the ether. Why worry about the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova – just align deed with reality that Crimea is part of Russia now, that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are ‘independent’ statelets and Transdniestr will not be returning to the Moldovan fold anytime soon. It makes things all so simple. Why not go further and say there is no ‘special relationship’ between the UK and USA that is anymore special than with two dozen other states. It’s a diplomatic fiction – abolish it! This is what the people of Pennsylvania voted for – plain speaking. And if you tread on anyone’s toes and they pipe up, you punch them before they can punch back. If the world is against you, 128-9 despite your threats, then screw them. Come in Space Cadet Stephens, you have normalised lunacy.

Trump dumped in Queen's Speech

As the Queen’s Speech became a game of Bingo for the commentariat on what measures would not be included that existed in the Conservative manifesto (conveniently deleted from the Conservative Party website), the humiliation continued for Theresa May and her backers in the press.  The Daily Telegraph worked itself into a lather about, “outside, the revolutionary mob,” threatening democracy and the government “calling for its violent overthrow in the streets,” as if it was the last days of the Russian Provisional Government holed up in the Winter Palace in October 1917, rather than those justifiably outraged at the Grenfell Tower disaster and the policies of May and the Tory government.  But while the right-wing press tried to restore the status quo ante of upholding the rich and denigrating the poor, that other disparager of the less well-off was missing from the Queen’s Speech: Donald Trump and his mooted State visit.

Though the government and the White House administration are circling the wagons, Trump is prone to his own Custer-like sallies.  Like a recidivist arsonist who remains at large, he starts more fires while his lawyers and aides are extinguishing his previous conflagrations.  Trump has suggested that he won’t go to London if there are protests, delicate flower that he is.  If only the signatories of the petition to block Trump from coming at all knew it would be so easy.

This inevitably ties into whether he should be accorded the honour of a State visit at all.  Many proponents on the right carp that no such protests or censure from the Speaker of the Commons occurred when President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China was accorded a State visit, having selective memory of demonstrations by pro-Tibetan and Hong Kong groups.  President Xi, though vigorously expunging the already extremely truncated civil liberties that previously existed, does not pose a threat to Britain’s national interest.

The Queen has had to make nice with various unsavoury characters to advance her government’s foreign policy from Nicolae Ceaușescu and Mobutu Sese Seko to kings of Saudi Arabia.  The first two were viewed through the prism of the Cold War while the latter make lucrative arms purchases.  Disreputable but not against the national interest (though Saudi Arabia might be).  Donald Trump unquestionably is against British national interest.  From equivocating on upholding NATO’s collective defence through pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords to picking a fight with London Mayor Sadiq Khan just hours after the London Bridge terrorist attack, Trump manifestly undermines Britain.  It goes deeper too as Trump shreds the very civilizational values that Western Society has built up, thumbing his nose at adherence to the rule of law to threatening the Fourth Estate with prison.  He is a signal danger to Britain.

Yet Trump might not come at all.  Though the talk is of a ‘date not set’, it is highly unusual for a State visit not be included in the Queen’s Speech – as evidenced by the announcement that the King and Queen of Spain will visit in July.  It may be that Trump does not want to come as his ally, Theresa May, could fall at any moment and that there could be a very different prime minister in charge when he arrives (one that takes a dim view of making political capital out of terrorism).  Ultimately though Trump is a narcissist and cannot countenance anything that might detract from his success from rigged elections denying him the overall popular vote to faked inauguration crowds.  For Trump, Theresa May is a failure for losing her parliamentary majority and to appear next to her would be associating himself with failure.  As the Tories show no intention of rescinding the premature invitation, it would be the best thing he could do for Britain by not turning up.

A wonderful few days

I cannot recall three days where I have been so regularly uplifted.  First of all the General Election result, then its aftermath, polished off with the sweet dessert of England winning the Under-20 football World Cup, a first such triumph in a major tournament since hat trick hero Geoff Hurst and the boys hoisted the Jules Rimet trophy more than three score years ago.
All three elements had a bit of nervous tension to them.  To start off with the last, England won 1-0 against a for-once formidable Venezuela (a team who previously have fallen short in qualifying for tournaments), meaning that all the result was continually in the balance, never more so than when Venezuela were awarded a penalty (with the assistance of the 'video referee').  However, not only did Freddie Woodman (on the books of Newcastle United) save it after initially almost going under it, but he pushed it to safety too.  His opposite number in the Venezuela goal was on course for the best goalkeeper of the tournament prize but if you save a penalty in a World Cup final, then there can only be one winner.  And so, gloriously, England are World Cup winners (at Under-20 level).  Cue much fist-pumping from me.  Kudos to the BBC for broadcasting it too.
When I had a regular exercise work-out from so much fist-pumping over about two hours and much hearty laughter to boot was the General Election result.  I had gone to bed just after checking out the exit poll and would wake up the next morning to see how it panned out (this makes me a 'normal person' according to Emily Maitlis).  I was pleased with the exit poll seeing the Tories 12 short of a majority, rather than the landslide the last polls predicted and recalled how this was the YouGov poll (which used the same methodology to predict a 'Leave' win in the Brexit referendum but had been suppressed because of pollster herding) that took so much abuse - YouGov were so unnerved that they released a later different poll using the old flawed methodology.  I was warned that exit polls can be wrong and so I dreamt that the Tories had in fact secured a small majority (a humiliation in itself).
To wake up and find the exit poll was almost dead-on was by turns both brilliant and hilarious.  Solemn faces from the punditocracy proclaimed a hung parliament was bad for Britain (the same pundits who had failed miserably to predict this outcome).  For me though, a hung parliament was the best that could have been hoped for, seriously hurting the chances of a hard Brexit and five more years of Tory austerity.
Jeremy Corbyn, no longer shackled by selective media and with some media training of his own, was terrific.  Even I came close to voting for Labour (I voted Lib Dem in the end, as much a protest vote as anything).  A 40% share of the vote, the biggest since 2001.  A 12% increase in the share of the vote - the biggest for Labour since 1945.  Sure they fell short and Corbyn will be unshakeable until the next General Election (either prospect no longer so bad) but they disrupted the disastrous plans the Tories had lined up.
There were some stand-out results of the night.  Alex Salmond and SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson losing their seats and to the Tories at that.  Nick Clegg departed as Sir Vince Cable returned.  There were some earthquakes in England too. A 10% swing took out Ben Gummer, previously tipped as next Brexit Secretary, in Ipswich.  Julian Brazier, a 30 year stalwart in Canterbury, which the Tories had held for more than a hundred years, fell to the student vote as Labour took it for the first time ever.  After a third recount (with the interval of the counters being sent home through exhaustion) saw Labour beat the Conservatives for the first time since its creation in 1974 in the constituency of Kensington, the wealthiest seat in the country (albeit very unevenly spread).
Almost as noteworthy was Labour's capture of Peterborough.  There were many reasons why this was delicious.  After the successful Leave vote in the Brexit referendum, The Daily Mail (and what a humiliation for this staunch May backer) emblazoned on its front page 'Heroes of Britain' or some such guff with a big picture of a ragtag of Conservative and UKIP activists applauding the result.  There, in the middle of the photo, was Peterborough MP Stuart Jackson.  But there is more because he is a nasty piece of work.  After JK Rowling wondered aloud on Twitter on her trauma at the outcome, Jackson, gratuitously and offensively, tweeted at her, 'Deal with it.'  What an absolute dick.  And now he's lost his seat.  Interviewed later, he said he'd had a commiserating call from David Cameron but nothing from Theresa May or Conservative chairman Patrick McLoughlin.  Jackson carped, "It is poor."  Jackson should 'deal with it'.
Now the dust is starting to settle and May is trying to pretend all is business as usual but the shockwave of this humiliation and her cheerleaders in the press cannot all so be easily swept away.  For the second year running, a Conservative prime minister has called a ballot they didn't need to call for the sake of party management.  Now the knives are out and we will see for how long May can hold them off.  This vote was a smackdown to contempt and incompetence and austerity until 2025.  If it results in a softer Norway-style Brexit, then so much the better.

Seeking to divide

In the James Bond film Goldeneye, M, played by Judi Dench, in emphasising the value of British Secret Intelligence, contrasts it with our friends across the Pond: "Unlike the Americans, we prefer not to get our news from CNN."  That was 1995.
Now things have changed in the White House.  CNN is shunned while Fox News is lapped up ad nauseam.  This is of big concern as Fox News, as conceived by that ultimate conservative, the disgraced, late Roger Ailes, is a hive of lies, half-truths and false narratives that unites to push a right-wing extremist agenda (often successfully but to the detriment of decency).  How else would Donald Trump take the London Mayor's comments so out of context?  It wouldn't be from his intelligence briefings and he wouldn't have the gumption to seek out independently the comments of Mayor Sadiq Khan.  No, they were twisted and presented on a platter to him by his Islamophobic favourite news channel.
To recap, Khan, who when running as a candidate for London Mayor was on the receiving end of a string of innuendo about being a Muslim from his Conservative rival, said "people shouldn't be alarmed at seeing armed police officers on the street."  Trump willingly believes that Khan said people shouldn't be alarmed about a terrorist attack and goes on tweet about that and that British people should have had guns because the attackers only had a vehicle and knives (a crashing illogicality in that if the populace at large had access to guns so would the terrorists, who would then do far more damage, plus the only injury of an innocent civilian from a bullet was someone accidentally shot by police).  Trump also seeks to make political capital out of the terrorist attack by calling the resumption of his travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, even though that would have had no impact because this happened in Britain (and the attackers may well turn out to be British citizens).
The Mayor has chosen not to comment directly, leaving his spokesman to trash the president curtly.  Yet when Theresa May, the prime minister, calls for unity, her biggest friend, the man on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seeks to undermine trust in the mayor of her capital and divide the country.  She won't condemn Trump as her intellectual vacuity leads her to believe she must uphold the transatlantic relationship at all cost. But what cost if that victimises one of the main officeholders of the UK, who just happens to be Muslim?  Megaphone diplomacy is usually crude and ineffective but in this case it's the only way to make a president using his own megaphone hear and desist, if not from our entreaties, then from the condemnation of his own electorate.

Tweaking the law

Another day, another waking up to a terrorist attack in this country.  The Westminster Bridge attack, a later knife attack outside the Houses of Parliament, the Manchester Arena attack, today a London Bridge attack.  More people die, more people injured when they were just going about their daily business.  The threat level is critical yet still the security services seem unable to prevent these things happening.  No doubt in the days to come there will be stories of how those who did this latest terrorism were known to the police, maybe even warnings were given to the police but that surveillance failed at a key moment.
Even during the IRA years the frequency (at least in Britain, specifically England) was never on this level.  It is estimated that our security services are keeping tabs on 18,000 people who potentially want to this country harm.  There has been talk of internment which is horrifying and invokes the shame that the USA has to this day when interning Japanese-Americans in World War Two (the same never happened to German-Americans).  However much these fanatical murderers of innocents want it, we are not at war
That is not to say nothing should be done.  The security services it seems are overwhelmed, foiling multiple terror plots yet still some get through.  Clearly the situation as it currently stands is untenable and though this will come across as a kneejerk reaction - the 'something must be done' which leads to bad laws - I hope whatever the government has planned (if it has anything at all, which is a doubt under the intellectual vacuity of the prime minister) would be along these lines.
This country operates a law where things in court must be proved beyond reasonable doubt.  For those who plan terrorist acts maybe that threshold should be lowered to 'on the balance of probabilities'.  Therefore the bar for deportation should be lowered and if UK-born, house arrest without internet access.  The bar is lowered but not precipitously so.  For some, that will go too far (leading to abuses), for others, not far enough.
Habeas corpus is not being suspended as Lincoln did during the Ammerican Civil War.  To ensure it is used only when the circumstances dictate, it should be a 'sunset law', to be renewed by parliament every year.  France has imposed a state of emergency.  I don't think putting troops on the streets will in any way enhance our security as it is Intelligence that is the real driver to preventing terrorism.  Yet there are many who live in our society who wish to destroy it along with everything it represents and everyone who operates by it.  They are pyschopaths and it is playing with fire to let such people be free at this moment in time.

Slow news day?

There's a lot of hoo-ha both domestically and abroad of Theresa May 'activating' Article 50.  The BBC calls it 'historic' and a 'momentous day'.  Well, sorry Beeb, but the world didn't move for me.  We've known about it for so long but it's purely an administrative procedure.  In future histories of Brexit, it will get one line in the tomes, if that.  The momentous day will be when the UK finally does leave the EU (even though Lord Kerr, who wrote Article 50, says it is not irrevocable and a country can change its mind at any time during the process).
Once again, the prime minister exhorts the country to unite in support of Brexit - namely her version of it - as if those who voted Remain can overthrow their principles as easily as this former Remainer.  This fundamentally shows the lack of imagination that has often been levelled at her, unable to see the other perspective.  It informs May's betrayal of the promise to fight on behalf of both sides of the voting divide, as she has been going for a hard Brexit because this what the zealots in the Brexit press demand and without a mandate from the country to be prime minister, she dare not contradict them.
David Cameron, the man whose hubris caused this mess, has recently said that Brexit can be a success if done properly.  May is the wrong person because she has not a clue how to do it properly.

Who needs SS-GB?

When Prince William went on his skiing holiday and shared a dance, he would not have conceived that he would get a roasting as being a ‘slacker’ from the generally pro-Royal Family press. The Duke of Cambridge was the latest target in the age in which we now live – the age of Brexit. While it is widely accepted, despite official neutrality, that the Queen (as with most in her age bracket) supported Brexit and is heartily cheered, early on in the campaign the prince gave a speech seen as favourable to remaining in Europe (as with most in his age bracket). Now, in the hiatus between the parliamentary vote giving the prime minister a blank cheque and the start of actual negotiations, there was a lack of an enemy of the people in the news. Now the Duke of Cambridge is being warned by The Daily Mail that he imperils the future of the monarchy!
If ever anyone did a thought experiment as to what the UK would be like if it was run by The Daily Mail, this would be abandoned as redundant as the country clearly is in this snare today. Theresa May is powerless to resist, even if that is what she wanted. The Mail backed her leadership campaign, making her beholden from the start. Since she has no mandate beyond the acclamation of 200-odd Conservative MPs, she clings to the vote to Leave the EU as her right to be prime minister and her mandate comes through the ‘Hard Brexit’ demanded by The Daily Mail, more so than her vituperatively Europhobic backbenchers.
At the onset of her premiership, May said she would govern the country on behalf of both sides and be a unifier. She has done nothing since to implement this pledge, tacking to a ‘Hard Brexit’ that maybe many in the 51.9% who voted ‘Leave’ did not envisage when casting their ballot. But The Mail under its editor, Paul Dacre does not recognise compromise as anything other then detestable weakness. May has been accused by those who worked under her at the Home Office of being so ruthless a negotiator as she lacks the imagination to see the argument of the other side. In several television and radio interviews and Prime Minister’s Questions sessions, she has shown a lack of ability to think on her feet. But she is driven not to compromise as that would deviate from the line of The Mail.
David Cameron rode the tiger for his own benefit at the General Election before being consumed as he tried to step off ahead of the EU referendum. Allegedly, he tried to get Daily Mail and General Trust proprietor, Lord Rothermere, to sack Dacre to ensure a smoother passage in the referendum. Apparently, when he learnt of this, Dacre was incandescent with rage (though as this is his default setting, how could one tell?) and worked even more furiously to win the referendum. The lurid front pages attacking immigrants (along with The Daily Express and to a lesser extent, The Sun) can be said to have led to a surge in racial hate crime that has not abated since last June. In line with The Mail’s 1930s past, anti-Semitic incidents have risen to record levels in 2016 in the accompanying xenophobia. The Mail’s criticism of the Dubs Scheme bringing in child refugees from Europe has seen it brought to an early end, with May citing lack of capacity but stonewalling on where she gets her data. Unhappily, The Mail of the 1930s also attacked Kindertransport (of which Lord Dubs was a member as a child).
Most high-profile was The Daily Mail going full Robespierre/Trotskyist in calling High Court Judges ‘enemies of the people’. The Daily Telegraph chimed in with a similar headline, ‘The Judges versus the People’, but using a phrase that was deployed to brand many innocents as traitors and send them to the guillotine of the firing squad was a rupture with Britain’s traditionally tolerant and inclusive past. From Edmund Burke onwards, the British have often looked down on foreign revolutionary fervour (ignoring the English Civil War), welcoming many fleeing from that. And what did the Judges do to incur such wrath and have their personal lives dissected – by upholding the sovereignty of the British parliament that was a major plank of the Leave campaign! The government signally failed to protect the judges, May going as far as to defend the Brexit press, who are more enough powerful to look after themselves. The denigration as ‘Remoaners’ as those who oppose ‘Hard Brexit’ also continues relentlessly.
But The Daily Mail has come up against an even bigger bully than itself – the President of the USA. Donald Trump exhibits many despicable traits but these are wide-ranging. After MailOnline (a big source of Dacre’s power) published (and rapidly retracted) a disobliging article about Trump’s wife, Melania, it was hit with a $500m lawsuit from Trump. And if Lord Rothermere must shoulder a half a billion dollar loss, all the money Dacre has made will be set at nought and the sack, finally, beckons.

The Bat is back

And he's made all of Lego [trademark]!
Following on from his immense popularity in The LEGO Movie, Batman gets his own role in The Lego Batman Movie.  And its brilliant as it is created by people who don't just love LEGO but also love Batman - the character, the tropes and the history.  People who know how to make Batman's legendary po-faced demeanour funny.
Like with LEGO with its almost infinite combinations, there must be a thousand plus mini-jokes in this film, promoting rewatching.  They also take Batman on a narrative that he's never encountered before, primarily by making his adult character have the personality of a 15-year old.
The makers also right wrongs - Billy Dee Williams comes back as Harvey Dent/Twoface after being paid off from his film contract by Joel Schumacher so Schumacher could draft in an OTT Tommy Lee Jones for Batman Forever.  Dee Williams only gets a few lines to himself as the main action is between Batman and Joker but it's a nice touch all the same.
If I have criticisms, they don't really detract from the movie that much.  The opening set piece is a little cluttered and hard to know exactly who is whacking who.  The daleks (yes, they make an appearance, alongside Ctulhu, Voldemort, Jaws, Jurassic Park dinosaurs, King Kong, Agent Smith from the Matrix) are called 'British robots' - presumably to avoid copyright but inaccurate as they are cyborgs (but Cyborg has already appeared so that might have been confusing).   They could have been called British alien thingies.  Product placement is a bit too prominent but also subverted (they whip out an iPhone, which is twice their size!).
Watching it with my young daughter at the cinema, me enjoying it on my level while she enjoyed it on hers, is something that cannot be replicated.
Overall, five out of five.

2017 taking over where 2016 left off

Wow first post of 2017.

Yesterday Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (or T-P-T as she preferred to be known, though it sounds like a defoliating chemical used by the US Army during the Vietnam War) died, aged merely 45-years old.  By some strange co-incidence I had been thinking about this celebrity relic from the 1990s yesterday morning.
I was dressing my little daughter for her pre-school and I was lamenting the bruises on her legs.  It made me recall T-P-T explaining her choice of footwear reflected a neurotic desire to hide her ankles which she professed to be 'ugly'.  My daughter's legs were covered by the regulation woollen tights.
It is just a coincidence because although T-P-T was discovered yesterday, neighbours had not seen her dead.  First thoughts of mine was that it was a drug overdose, given her detailed descriptions of cocaine use and other substance abuse.  Yet she had been diagnosed with a non-malignant brain tumour in 2013.  So her death is currently unexplained.  It reminds me of the film Ivan's XTC (derived from a Dostoevsky novella) about a hedonistic Hollywood agent (played by Danny Huston) who dies suddenly.  The industry and his associates (he doesn't really have friends) at a loss to explain it and with a need to gossip about it assume it was an overdose or that Ivan had AIDS.  It never crosses anyone's mind that he might have succumbed to something as prosaic (to them) as cancer.
T-P-T brief flit across the news sky was far less important than the Swedish statistician Hans Rosling.  Effortlessly charismatic, he desired to create a more fact-based world.  I first encountered him at university, not in person but on a programme he had done.  I later saw him on Newsnight explaining why global population growth will plateau using toilet rolls.  T-P-T died at 45 but she had little to contribute to the public sphere in the first place and nothing now.  But Rosling dying at 68 is too young for he could have been extolling the benefits of his knowledge for another decade and more, inspiring countless numbers to follow where he had led.
Also of immeasurable importance though from the past was Alan Simpson, one half of a writing duo with Ray Galton, producing memorably Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe and Son.  He has died aged 87.  There are tributes galore but his working life had concluded.  There was me thinking yesterday was a slow news day and then these three tragedies in their own way occur.

UnChristmassy movies

2016 kicked off its death roster of clebrities early this year, with Alan Rickman.  Myself and a friend had watched only a month earlier the original Die Hard at the cinema, claimed as it was (somewhat ironically) as a Christmas movie.  Now, in the wake of Rickman's passing, Die Hard is acclaimed uncritically as a Christmas movie.
I have no problems with that.  There are other films which definitely do not fit the Christmas spirit.  A colleague of mine at work said he got this family to watch Requiem for a Dream on Christmas Eve.  A compelling picture, apparently it was so distressing it ruined Christmas day for everyone.  Other movies that can sour the festive cheer could be ones like The Piano Teacher and Mystic River, though my colleague says he has learnt his lesson.
On Christmas Day this year, on Channel 5, The Dallas Buyers' Club was broadcast.  I knew it was about AIDS and was a critical smash, but maybe not your average Christmas flick, yet I was determined to see it.  To my surprise, I didn't find it depressing - despite downbeat events throughout, I took from it a vibrant human desire to not just survive, but live and there was much ingenuity on display against the odds.
The story arc was fairly standard - bigoted man has life-changing event/news and comes around to value though he once treated with contempt - and those representing Big Pharma a little too unctuously villainous and money-grabbing.  This, however, could not detract from a film with powerful performances and enough local detail (1980s Texas and its gay scene, government agencies and hospitals in hock to Big Pharma, the entrepreneurial creation of buyers' clubs), plus topicality with LGBT rights, to give the film a grip it doesn't loosen.  In the end, a man who was given 30 days to live by his local hospital, managed 2,557 before succumbing to the consequences of the virus probably acquired through unprotected sex.  What I took from the movie though was how life-affirming it was and the ordinary person's struggle against malign corporate forces and bought government agencies and medical professionals acting as henchmen.  In some ways, maybe it was an appropriate Christmas film.

Gambia riven by vengeance

Early hopes that Gambia can prove a bright spot in 2016 by moving to a democracy seem to be hanging in the balance. President Yahya Jammeh’s U-turn on accepting the election results that were won by his challenger Adama Barrow throws this small West African country into more turmoil. Jammeh’s latest move to prop up his rule has been to put troops onto the streets.
It is widely thought that Jammeh’s change of heart came after Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang, chair of Mr Barrow’s coalition, threatened to prosecute the president. Jammeh had said he would return to his farm following the conclusion of his dictatorship in which he once threatened to rule for “a billion years”! But instead of emulating the Roman politician and dictator Cincinnatus, Jallow-Tambajang claimed he would start an uprising from the farm.
Though it might be expected to have a certain naivety in political discourse after Jammeh’s long autocratic rule, it is common sense not to threaten a rival when the latter still holds onto the levers of power and you do not. Had Mr Barrow and his allies contented themselves with fairly neutral statements such as returning to the Commonwealth until his swearing-in, things may have gone well. However, none of that is now certain with the unpredictable eccentricity of Mr Jammeh who has claimed to have invented a cure for AIDS.
Mr Jammeh is certainly guilty of heinous human rights abuses documented by western NGOs and punishment would be fitting. In a new democracy though, it can serve a greater good of stability both internally and further afield to not prosecute your political opponents. Mr Jammeh could not have committed his crimes without significant help from people who may also fear the accession of Mr Barrow and thus would stir up trouble. Also, many despots often cling to power because they fear their rivals taking revenge should they become the government. The more examples where this does not happen, the more likely democracy will spread.
Even in mature democracies, it is accepted as not the done thing to attempt to imprison those whose viewpoints differ to your own or have been an election rival. One of Barack Obama’s first acts was to give amnesty to all US intelligence agents who had committed torture. Even Donald Trump has rowed back from his campaign promise to appoint a special prosecutor to send Hillary Clinton to prison.
One striking example from the same continent of Africa was the acquittal of Frederick Chiluba, former president of Zambia on corruption charges. The trial lasted from 2003 to 2009 and several of his aides and even Chiluba’s own wife were found guilty but Chiluba himself walked free. Transparency International Zambia lambasted the decision. Chiluba was also not impressed at the attempt to convict him but in not going to prison, Zambia’s fledgling democracy was left on a firmer footing.
South Africa, a country with sharp divisions and a controversial history, found a way to confront the demons of the past without them imperilling the post-apartheid constitutional settlement. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) gave immunity from criminal proceedings to all those who appeared before it. Many harrowing stories were recounted and sometimes those who had committed atrocities broke down in acts of contrition. Others showed no remorse for their actions and such brazen attitudes enraged those who wanted ‘justice’ of a harder kind. The TRC was not perfect and reconciliation was not always forthcoming but it provided an outlet for past tensions to be aired peacefully rather than violently.
Whatever now happens to Gambia, the best course of action would be for the opposition to grant Mr Jammeh and his associates immunity for historic crimes (while leaving open a legal avenue should he rebel in the future). It may not seem like justice in the short term but in the long term it will be the justice of an established democracy.

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.