USA in Pieces: the Perspective of Games

Having had to have my computer restored back to basics last week as a result of the viral attack, once I got it back I decided to take the opportunity to install different games on it. Like many people I am prone to shopping as a counteraction to upset or stress. Whereas women are purportedly supposed to go shopping, I go out and buy cheap computer games. This means I always have more than I can play at any one time and sometimes they sit unwrapped on my shelf and become incompatible with my current computer. I am also awaiting the arrival of 'Empires Total War' the latest in the Total War series which I have been playing since 'Shogun Total War' came out in 1999. I sometimes have issue with historical accuracy, but this has been an excellent series of games covering the Middle Ages and the start and end of the Roman Empire. There are loads of free fan-created downloads out there too if you tire of the vanilla version of the games. Anyway, 'Empires' is now due in March 2009 and features conflicts of the late 18th and early 19th century. For the first time in the Total War series you can actually fight naval battles ship-to-ship; they seem to have borrowed the only good part of 'Imperial Glory' (2005) an earlier attempt at Napoleonic wargaming for the PC with terrible land battles but good sea battling.

The games I have loaded up this time round include 'Faces of War' (2006) a squad-based battle game set in the Second World War, starting in Summer 1944. You can play as the Germans, Soviets and Anglo-Americans. Liking counter-factual I went for the former. Failing to blow-up the bridge at Nijmegen led to the war in Europe ending in January 1945 rather than May. I am now on the Battle of the Bulge, but facing 101st Airborne Division forces (made famous by the 'Band of Brothers' (2001) TV series) my squad keeps being eliminated the moment they get off the transport truck. Despite the AI (artificial intelligence) being vaunted on the box, the soldiers have none and run right up to the enemy and simply get shot to pieces. The sniper shoots someone then goes right to the corpse to check the soldier is dead. Very macho Americans without helmets or coats (despite the battle being in the midst of the Belgian winter and a very cold one) keep charging the German positions basically immune to bullets. Again I rather feel that US pride has prevented a realistic game. I know the Germans will lose but they do not have to be suicidal. Interestingly the German troops were reckoned to be 20% more effective in battle than US opponents, something not replicated in this game.

Anyway, putting these games aside, brings me to the key focus for this posting. This was stimulated by the game 'Shattered Union' (2005) which I picked up for £4.99. It is a turn-based wargame available for different systems, but I am concentrating on the PC version. What interests me about it is how it portrays the USA. You get an idea from the toppled Statue of Liberty and damaged Golden Gate Bridge on the cover. It is set in 2009 when rather than Barack Obama becoming president we have David Jefferson Adams after a tie in the electoral college (memories of 2000 there) and a decision by the House of Representatives. He is incredibly unpopular and uses Bush's Homeland Security legislation to declare martial law. In 2012 all other presidential candidates are disqualified and Adams gets a second term. However, the detonating of a tactical nuclear device during inauguration kills Adams and most leading politicians. In 2013 California then Texas secede from the Union (as I have noted before they are the 7th and 10th wealthiest 'countries' in the world on their own anyway); the European Union invades the DC district and Russia annexes Alaska. The different factions that develop are interesting. Unfortunately I cannot find a decent map of them and may have to create one, but for now these are the ones:

Independent Commowealth of Hawaii - well, this does what it says on the label and does not really feature in the game. With continental USA in conflict, I suppose these islands lying 3500 Km (2200 miles) from San Francisco would have to make their own way in the world, presumably making agreements with other island nations of the Pacific.

California Commonwealth - California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. This is possibly the most likely breakaway in reality though perhaps not that large; also trying to reconcile the Mormons of Utah with the gambling state of Nevada might be a challenge for the President of California.

Pacifica - Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. In reality I think this would be two states as the liberal Washington and Oregon are at odds with the four far more right-wing other states. However, the populations of these are pretty low and might be dominated by the coastal states.

Great Plains Federation - Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas and Nebraska. This is the unit I would envisage Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado adhering to, but for gameplay reasons I imagine they are apart. I also would expect a difference in this bloc between Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana and the others, because they have far more of an urban and industrial focus than the other primarily rural states.

The Confederacy - Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. This is the bulk of the CSA from 1861-5, though of course without Texas. In the game this is a surprisingly progressive bloc, but given what we know about the enduring racial tensions in these states and the heavy emphasis on robust Christianity, I think in reality we would see a 21st century version of the CSA for real.

The Republic of Texas - Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, parts of Arkansas and Missouri. This seems to be a feasible state and possibly Texas would seek secession, it is in a far better position these days than in the 1840s. Its wealth and political outlook might attract some of the southern parts of the Great Plains Federation.

New England Alliance - Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and parts of Ohio. This is the most densely populated bloc and I would envisage not only all of Ohio but the industrial states of the Mid-West adhering to this. This kind of bloc is not likely to happen these days but is the kind of set-up that may have appeared if French or even Dutch control in North America had persisted longer.

The European Union Occupation Zone - Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Well, one can only speculate on why the EU would feel it necessary to invade the USA and effectively create a kind of capital territory, though if they did, this area seems a sensible one.

Having looked at the 'what if?' of this game I was interested in other potential ones. Another game, not available for the PC but on consoles is 'Fracture' (2008). It has been panned for its poor audio and gameplay, but I am interested in the vision of the USA it sees. It is set in 2161 and envisages as USA split both physically and politically. Global warming has led to the rise in sea levels and a crack North-South running across the country (though I am not certain, this seems to come from the level of the Great Lakes rising and flowing South). Given flash flooding in the region, despite the shrinking of the lakes due to over-use, this seems quite feasible. In prehistoric times the USA had a curved sea stretching across the plains down to what is not the Gulf of Mexico. Anyway, the East-West split with the Atlantic side in co-ordination with the European Union emphasising new technologies especially cybernetics whereas the Pacific side in co-ordination with Japan-China are working on developments with genetic engineering. The Atlantic side has weaponry which can manipulate the landscape. Overall it sounds like an interesting cyberpunk set-up but clearly is simply there to provide a US civil war of a different kind. A novel first would have been interesting.

Focusing on the fragmentation of the USA has not only been the work of game designers but of political commentators. There is some discussion of the November 2008 claims by the Russian Professor Igor Panarin at: http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2007/08/window-on-eurasia-moscow-paper-outlines.html This blog refers back to 1991 when Russians predicted a fragmentation of the USA along the lines of what happened to the USSR. However, these neglected the fact that parts of the USSR had only been joined on late (the Baltic States in 1940) and had a far greater ethnic diversity across them but greater homogenity within states (I recognise many have numerous ethnic minorities), e.g. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkistan, Tadjikistan and Kirghizistan; some states had high Muslim populations. Parts of Central Asia were only gained in the 1870s-90s, after the American Civil War had ended. The population of the USSR was close to that of the USA (around 225 million) but it covered 22.4 million square kilometres compared to the USA's 9.2 million square kilometres. In contrast to the USSR, the USA, for all of its rising Hispanic population, tends to have a greater mixing of ethnic groups and Christianity and still English are uniting factors, though the rise of Spanish challenges this. Thus, the USA has more 'glue' than the USSR had. However, these days it might be correct to consider that economic factors would be the greatest contributors to secession.

I have colour-coded it to make it a bit easier to see the different states envisaged. The key is as follows:

1 - California Republic 2 - Mormon state of Utah 3 - New Mexico 4 - Indian Territories5 - Texas Republic 6 - Louisiana 7 - Florida 8 - The Confederation of the Southern States9 - South Canada 10 - Upper Michigan 11 - Maine 12 - New Hampshire 13 - Vermont14 - New England 15 - Free City of New York 16 - New Italy 17 - New Africa
18 - United States 19 - The Midwest Federation

Alaska and Hawaii not shown here are also envisaged to gain independence. Panarin also envisaged terrorist activity provoking a division. However, all of these commentators forget that such activity tends to bind states together. It is wealth in some areas and poverty in others which leads to tension, for example Yugoslavia and Italy. As with other scenarios California and Texas are seen as leaving first. A Mormon state of Utah is another easy one. Though as with 'Fracture', the ethnic tensions lead to splits, for example, with the area seen as Latino South of California leaving the rest of the state. Mexico would apparently expand North into Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. The revived Confederacy would apparently lead to blacks fleeing to southern Michigan which would become 'New Africa' and people from Italian backgrounds would lead to New Jersey becoming New Italy. Washington DC would only be able to assert power over some neighbouring states, the rump United States. There is no explanation why the Greater Lousiana would not adhere to this or the Mid-West Federation or why there is so much fragmentation in the North-East. If Upper Michigan would be close to Canada in political terms, why not New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine? Whilst I could see Washington and Oregon becoming part of Canada, again Idaho, Montana, etc. are different in outlook and their right-wing attitudes would jar with Canadian liberalism especially on guns. As for New York City becoming independent that is just like 'Escape from New York' (1981) and that implies a widespread meltdown. I think whilst the peripheral states California, Texas, Utah and possibly Washington, Oregon and the North of New England might go the bulk of Mid-West and South-West America would stay together. There are racial tensions in the USA but no state has yet a sufficiently homogenous ethnicity to allow a clear association with the state. Similarly the mass migration to southern Michigan is unlikely. Black migration has always been towards urban areas and why would blacks not go to New York or Chicago or Los Angeles as in the past?

Panarin did also outline a simpler fragmentation into six parts - '... the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.'

The Americans always have a difficulty facing people not seeing the shape and size of the USA as it currently is as some kind of 'manifest destiny'. Look back at all the fuss over the Absolut vodka maps. Paul Goble's comments on Panarin at the link above begin to fall into this trap dismissing this as a misplaced sour grapes by the Russians upset at the loss of their empire. What he and others miss is that the rest of the world can see the fragmentations in US society along economic and ethnic grounds. They may not lead to the actual breaking away of states, but they have already led to the fragmentation within cities and states, something more akin to Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' (1995) with mini-states and nations to which people are affiliated represented in districts of different towns. It is interesting that these popular culture references about fragmenting USA look at this happening on a geographical basis but in fact the USA itself needs to consider the social fragmentation which is unlikely to be this tidy.

What If Britain And Russia Had Gone To War In 1878?

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘Down Other Tracks: Alternate Outcomes of the 19th Century’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Down-Other-Tracks-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0087QDK88/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338820140&sr=8-1

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Down-Other-Tracks-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0087QDK88/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338820087&sr=1-5

Canadian readers might like to access it through: http://www.amazon.ca/Down-Other-Tracks-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0087QDK88/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1376043896&sr=8-3&keywords=Rooksmoor

A Change in the Weather; UK in Chaos

They say that one of the key topics of conversation in the UK is the weather. To some degree it is unoffensive so can be the basis for discussion between strangers (though saying this, the rise of bigotry in the UK shown by the current industrial unrest in the UK against foreign workers, seems to make people think that condemning immigrants is also an acceptable topic these days!). The other thing is that British weather varies quite considerably. This stems from the fact that the UK is on the edge of a vast ocean yet has warm currents coming up from the Gulf of Mexico which moderate the fact that we are next to a large continent (large land masses tend to have wider extremes of climate both hot and cold, in any year) and get weather systems coming from the Arctic, Scandinavia and Russia but also from both northern and southern Europe and also sometimes North Africa. Thus the British Isles are a meeting place of lots of climatic occurrences which means the weather is particularly unpredictable even when compared to neighbouring countries on the continent. Britain (i.e. UK without Northern Ireland) get more extremes than say the Republic of Ireland where you can guarantee and average of +6ºC throughout the winter, the temperature that needs to be maintained for grass to keep growing. We tend to have mild summers and mild winters.

In recent years in particular snow has been far less common than in my youth which has led to a shift in some seasonal patterns of plants and animals. We do have some wet summers whereas in the 1970s it was dry summers, and yet even when we have had heavy rainfall, some areas like Kent in South-East England have had water shortages (though a lot of that is to do with how greedy and bad at their job utility companies are). There are mountainous regions in the UK which get more snow, but the bulk of the UK population lives in a broad corridor of land running from London North-West to Manchester. There are some uplands in that belt, but mostly it is undulating lowlands. Britain is an urban country and the heat from buildings generally stops snow falling in many areas or melting quickly if it does. There are oddities such as around the Bedfordshire-Buckinghamshire-Hertfordshire area North of London with towns such as Luton, Bedford, Stevenage and Milton Keynes often experiencing snow more than equivalent areas of southern England. Last October even, a football match in Luton was cancelled due to snow, something which did not affect the rest of the country. I put this anomaly down to the flatness of Norfolk-Suffolk-Essex to the East of this region and so exposure to winds off the North Sea and Scandinavia beyond.

People tend to think of December as the heart of Winter, with the shortest day and winter festivals. However, of course, in the UK the worst weather does not come until the new year and you are far more likely to see snow at Easter in the UK than at Christmas. However, so many people find this a difficult concept to accept. They think by February they are in the clear because they are not seeing snow scenes on Christmas cards, but of course in fact this is the toughest time. This is not only the case in the UK, the Russians used to talk about 'General February' being one of their strongest defenders against foreign invasion. I suppose if we had had this snow in December people would have been more mentally prepared. Having it now has caught them out.

The UK does not experience regular snow as, say, Belgium, the Netherlands and North-East France do. The British Isles stop the warm Gulf Stream reaching these regions (the Atlantic coast of France, Brittany, etc. benefit from this warm current the way Britain and Ireland do) so temperatures like -10ºC are not uncommon, whereas in Britain anything below -3ºC is rare. Similarly we tend not to have hot summers and anything over 22-25ºC is exceptional. Here is where I think the problems start that we are witnessing today across the UK. Generally we have a mild climate without the extremes of hot and cold. We have some frost, we have a bit of snow which melts quickly; in summer we might have a few very hot days but very rarely exceed 30ºC and generally we do not suffer droughts (1976 and 1995 are memorable due to this). This means we are unprepared when suddenly we encounter such temperatures and the weather they bring; things that neighbouring states have no problem with. London is as far North as Moscow, Newcastle is farther North than Copenhagen and Inverness is about as far North as Stockholm. So you would think we would be able to cope with the kinds of temperatures those countries face and the snow that comes with them.

Today has proven that the UK's infrastructure is unprepared for dealing with snow (just as it is with hot weather or heavy rain). London has a population of 10 million people and a further 15 million live in the region around it which is economically dependent on London. London's population is equivalent to that of one of Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, the Czech Republic or Belarus, it has 1 million more people than Sweden; the South-East region of England has more than a third of the population of the UK, more people than Romania or Canada. Yet, today, there are no buses running at all in London, despite the fact they are used by 6 million people every day (more people than the entire population of Denmark, Finland or Slovakia); only 1 of the 11 underground train services are running and train companies are advising people not to travel. Imagine if Sweden, Belgium, Portugal or Greece declared that there was not a bus running in the whole country, you would think the place had plunged into civil chaos.

Heathrow airport, the largest serving London, plus the smaller Luton and Southampton airports have all their runways closed. These are all in the South-East of England one of the warmer parts of the UK, not remote parts of North-East Scotland. Unlike continental countries, British railway tracks do not have heated points and even before this recent cold snap, a train at Weymouth froze to its tracks. Yet across Scandinavia, Russia, etc., aeroplanes are taking off and landing, buses and trains are running. How can they do it when Britain is unable to cope with one day's worth of snow? The temperature is not that cold, where I live it is only -2ºC; the BBC shows the bulk of the country no lower than -3ºC; London has +1ºC and this will rise to 5ºC by Wednesday. Snow fell in London today and will do so again on Wednesday. It is hardly a new ice age.

How does the Trans-Siberian Railway or the Canadian Pacific Railway keep running when you cannot even get from Brighton to London by train? Yet our transport system for our capital has effectively stopped. To some degree things such as the privatisation of transport companies and the related emphasis on profit has contributed to this failure. As the weather is not even this 'extreme' most years these companies take a gamble and do not bother with sufficient equipment to clear tracks or runways. Local authorities have sold off gritting lorries because they are short of cash and it is politically less sensitive to lose gritting lorries which many years will not be used rather than close a nursery or an elderly day care centre. Transport companies would rather throw their hands up in the air and say 'we can't cope' than put in the investment which would allow them to do so.

For the British public, masochistic as it is, this is wonderful, the attitude of the transport companies and local authorities fuels their greatest hobby, complaining. They can battle to reach work for employers who seem to assume that their workforce must not be affected by the weather, and feel they have that 'Dunkirk spirit' in the face of adversity when they have simply come through weather the average Swede or Russian would give no thought to. It will happen again precisely this way when we next have snow, nothing will change. No-one complains that by now we should have systems that can cope with a little snow (and the depth in most places is less than 5cm) rather than completely collapse. The extent of the paralysis of southern England as a result of one night's light snowfall is incredible. Of course, given the current bigotry foreigners will somehow be blamed. Wearing a fake fur hat the other day I had people bellowing at me in Polish and when I did not respond to their taunts started shouting 'don't you speak English then?' with no recognition that I had no desire to enter into a conversation with them. I am waiting for 'The Sun' newspaper to say that this weather was brought over by Polish immigrants.

Of course, being a Goth, I am far better prepared for cold weather than the average Briton. All Goths have long thick coats, usually have a range of hats and certainly have long and heavy boots which are ideal for navigating frozen pavements and wading through the piles of dirty piled up snow. As I strode out today just in a pair of Doctor Marten boots rather than any of my New Rocks; my ankle-length 'Matrix' leather coat; my leather gloves and fake fur Russian hat, I did notice than no-one was taunting today. If only we could get more Goths in charge of British transport we might not be facing such infrastructural paralysis which must be making us a great laugh for our northern European neighbours.

P.P. - 03/02/2009: well the weather has got worse with up to 30cm of snow in northern England now. In the South there has not been much more snow falling but chaos still reigns and this despite authorities having 5 days' warning of this weather coming. Now thousands of schools across the country are closed so the education system as well as the transport system is grinding to a halt. This latter problem probably stems from the fact that given the level of house prices thousands of teachers cannot afford to live anywhere near where they work. This is the stunning thing travelling along the motorways of southern England, how many teachers are on them in term time. In the 1980s there was a fear among many Britons of a Soviet invasion, it is clear they should have turned up during a cold snap because they would have found the UK utterly paralysed and unable to respond. People have pointed out that London was able to provide a better transport service at the time of the Blitz bombing raids of 1940-1 than it is today. Authorities and companies are unwilling to spend the money or make the preparations to deal with this situation and this time they have lost the gamble. The moron Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said yesterday it was not 'the type of snow' [!] which was the problem, 'but the quantity'. A 5-year old could have told him that. His current incompetence simply adds more weight to the need to simply remove him from office for being totally incapable to do the job.

Today 6000 schools across the UK were closed. Most winters there are a few schools in any large town which close due to problems with the heating, but yesterday there were numerous schools across the country closed. Some were closed to pupils but staff were expected to come in, suggesting the problem was not the difficulties of teachers reaching work that I anticipated. Though it has not been discussed I think it stemmed from the attitude of schools now that are so fearful of being sued if any child has a mishap. It is easier for them to close the school entirely than to clear snow from the playground. The impact on industry with parents suddenly having to stay at home was immense. The Director of the British Chambers of Commerce speaking from Brussels where they have heavier and more regular snowfalls, said that Britain was being ridiculed by the rest of the EU for being unable to cope with one small snowfall. Whatever happened to 'keep on, keeping on'? I am no fan of the faux wartime spirit, but we do seem to have become incapable of coping with anything even mildly away from the norm. Leaving aside the early 1940s, even just 35 years ago the British coped with the three-day week and powercuts. These days the threat of such action would paralyse everything. We do not need a terrorist attack to bring the UK to its needs simply some snow on London.

'The Day of the Jackal' Movie (1973)

As regular readers of the blog know, I am interested in the what might have beens of history.  One that has always intrigued me is the possibility of the assassination of General Charles De Gaulle, especially when he was the President of France (1958-69) and overseeing the withdrawal of France from its colony (since 1830) of Algeria.  He was a politically ambivalent figure seeming to side with the military and to reassure colonialists concerns, but also defending democracy and extricating France from Algeria.  However, the steps to leave Algeria, in the face of Algerian nationalist opposition to continued rule, provoked hostility from elements of the French Army.  The opposition element organised a terrorist group, the OAS, with the intention of killing De Gaulle and also staging a coup to overthrow the government.

De Gaulle faced 31 assassination attempts during his life. There are few people in history who could not have been replaced by someone else and the world have witnessed a similar outcome. However, I believe, De Gaulle stands beside Bismarck in terms of being a man whose death would immediately have led history down different pathways, even, one might argue, after they had retired, let alone at the height of their activities. I will do a proper 'what if?' posting on De Gaulle another time, but wanted to indicate why I have been drawn to the book, and especially the movie, of 'The Day of the Jackal'. The small differences between the story in the two formats are nicely summarised at IMDB, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069947/faq and there are more details on the Wikipedia entry for the movie.

The novel of 'The Day of the Jackal' was written by newspaper and television journalist Frederick Forsyth (born 1938) and published in 1971, the year after De Gaulle had died of natural causes. It was Forsyth's first novel of the fifteen he has published so far. He has also written non-fiction on aspects of African politics. He left the BBC in 1968 after allegations of bias towards the breakaway African state of Biafra and, in 1973, he helped finance a coup in Equiatorial Guinea. Forsyth has been a bestselling author with a number of his books becoming movies, including 'The Odessa File' (novel 1972; movie 1974, also features Derek Jacobi who is in the movie 'The Day of the Jackal'), 'The Dogs of War' (novel 1974; movie 1981) drawing on Forsyth's coup experiences and 'The Fourth Protocol' (novel 1984; movie 1987).

'The Day of the Jackal' begins with actual historical events, notably the Petit Clamart assassination attempt on Charles De Gaulle in which, in August 1962,OAS assassins fired over 100 bullets into his car in the Paris suburb of Petit Clamart. De Gaulle survived and was able to escape because he was in a Citreon DS.  All models of this car have specific self-levelling hydraulic suspension and so allowed the skilled driver to continue driving even when two of the tyres on one side had been shot out. The car did not have bullet proof glass. Aside from De Gaulle and his driver, De Gaulle's wife, Yvonne, and son-in-law, Colonel Alain de Boissieu were in the car.  De Gaulle was more angered that his wife, who was riding beside him in the car, had been targeted, (having been a soldier most of his life, he presumably had long ago reckoned he might be shot) and so accelerated the sentencing of the conspirators and insisted on their execution, generally ignoring the standard legal processes.

In the book and movie the next step the OAS take in 1963, following the execution of the Petit Clamart attackers, is to hire a British assassin to kill De Gaulle. Of course, we all know that the assassin, known as 'the Jackal', cannot succeed as this is not a counter-factual book, but the skill of the story is in still keeping us interested. To some extent, it is the technical aspects that draw us in and these come from two perspectives. The first is the preparations by the Jackal and the second is the work carried out by the French and British police to identify and try to stop him. This is the kind of challenge that the forthcoming 'Valkyrie' movie about the real-life attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944 will face, though it seems that they have engaged audiences through adopting a thriller-style approach.

It is difficult to put a finger on how the 'The Day of the Jackal' movie manages to make you interested in long-drawn out preparations, but it does. It is pretty tightly edited and various meetings among British and French security officials are handled differently on each occasion so that they do not appear too samey. There are some hurried moments, especially in the closing minutes of the movie, but, in fact, for a lot of the time things move very tranquilly, raising the tension steadily. The interesting thing is that there are large stretches of the movie in which no-one speaks and incidental music intrudes only from sources that the characters encounter. There is a long stretch in which we see the preparation for the liberation day ceremony in which we only hear background conversation and the music from the military bands.

One interesting thing about the movie is how amoral the characters are. Clearly the 'hero' is an assassin who we know has killed leading politicians before. In the movie he kills three people: a forger and a woman and a man whose house and flat he has used, respectively. This violence is often muted, shown in shadow or out of view. However, it does not make him a sympathetic character. He seduces the woman and the man simply so that he can use their properties.

Now, I think it is the casting of Edward Fox (born 1937), as the Jackal, which aided this element so much. Fox was 36 at the time and looked the archetypal English gentleman (he had been a lieutenant in the elite Coldstream Guards in his youth, one of his daughters is now a viscountess). He is very handsome, suave even, and this makes it credible that he could pick up women or men in the way that he seems to with ease. To some extent, this behaviour may be a touch anachronistic for 1963 and is more about 1973 moral behaviour, but it does not stretch belief that far. The way he goes about picking up and discarding people using sex, stands out even today and would no doubt have been quite stunning in 1973. Homosexuality in the UK had only been decriminalised in 1969 so, to see a straightforward, clearly gay pick-up, effectively 'normalised', was unusual especially in a movie which was about a different topic, not sexuality.


I cannot believe that the other candidates for the role of the Jackal would have worked at all: Michael Caine (born 1933), though possibly back in the days of 'The Ipcress File' (1965) he would have suited, but 8 years later, at the age of 40, he would have looked wrong. Jack Nicholson (born 1937) never could have been a convincing Englishman: his face is physically too American.  Roger Moore (born 1927 - so 46 by 1973) has the English gentleman appearance, but is useless at acting and would have seemed like a robot in this role that has little dialogue.

Fox works because he is convincing physically and acts well when not speaking. However, as was noted at the time, he was not particularly well known, in contrast to these other actors. I look at the other British actors involved below, but none of them, despite often having long careers was really a leading man. In addition, about half the cast was French making them unfamiliar to English-speaking audiences. De Gaulle is not heard to speak in the movie and is only seen at a distance, so there is no sense of him as a hero trying to avert an assassination attempt on him. In fact, De Gaulle, in reality, was very blase about attempts on his own life, especially having survived so many.  He did not even duck when the bullets tore into his car at Petit Clamart.


In 'Easy Rider' (1969), Nicholson, of course, had already famously played in a movie as a hero who dies at the end. Caine had notably appeared in 'Get Carter' (1971) which is again very amoral with the 'hero' acting in a brutal way throughout and dying at the end. However, I think his Jackal would have been a more working class, like Carter, than an upper class character. Perhaps his Jackal would have been like his anti-hero in the Harry Palmer films ('The Ipcress File'; 'Funeral in Berlin' (1966) and 'The Billion Dollar Brain' (1967)). It is interesting to think, given that Caine lobbied for the role of the Jackal, where he saw his career going in the early 1970s. A higher profile actor may have attracted a different audience, but it may have raised tensions.

In some ways it is clear that the movie was filmed in 1973. France was in a far better economic state than it had been in 1963. The movie is almost entirely shot on location, using real places such as the reading room of the British Library, run-down parts of Genoa and genuine locations in Paris, so the contemporary features could not be by-passed. The dress of the public is less stark than it would have been in 1963 and, as is noted on Wikipedia, there are vehicles featured that were not built in 1963. To some extent, the scale of the final scene with the public display compelled the movie makers to go with what they could get. The anachronisms do not jar immensely as they are background rather than where the focus of the story is. The abrupt change from hot sunny weather to post-rainfall when De Gaulle appears to give the medals is rather more unsettling. Trainspotters note that the Jackal sets off for Paris with one locomotive and arrives with a different one, but I imagine, as happens nowadays  in reality, even then, sometimes, locomotives were switched mid-route.

The other side, the authorities, you would assume, would have the moral authority to and that we, the audience, would be able to affiliate with them. However, quite cleverly, the story avoids that, even more so in the movie than in the book, primarily because the leading French detective on the case Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel (played by Anglo-French actor Michael Lonsdale (born 1931)) is not henpecked by his wife. We are interested in Lebel and his assistant, Inspector Caron (played by Sir Derek Jacobi (born 1938 - he holds both a British and a Danish knighthood) rushing all over France trying to track down the man, but they are working for an amoral government.

The British side are involved in a pretty half-hearted way, primarily given the frosty relations between the governments of De Gaulle and Britain's Harold Macmillan of the time. It is interesting in how they uncover what the Jackal has done, but you feel the British are not overly bothered if De Gaulle is killed. To some extent the British are shown almost as caricatures of southern and northern English detectives and officials. Terence Alexander (born 1923) is the mannered gentlemanly MI6 contact, Lloyd; Donald Sinden (born 1923) as the blustering, indignant leading Scotland Yard detective, Mallinson; Tony Britton (born 1924) as the northern English Special Branch detective, Inspector Thomas.  However, to some extent, that reflects how the audience would expect such characters to appear. British actors also play French: OAS members Colonel Rodin (Eric Porter; 1928-1995); Montclair (David Swift; born 1931) and officials General Colbert (Maurice Denham; 1909-2002); Bernard (Anton Rogers 1933-2007); Bethier (Timothy West; born 1956) and Italians: the Forger (Ronald Pickup; born 1940) and the Gunsmith, Gazzio (Cyril Cusack; 1910-93).

Now, as to the amorality of the French government. This is to a great extent based on reality. De Gaulle was willing to let the authorities behave in a way that is reminiscent of how the Israeli government agents behaved in the 1960s in seeking out Nazis and how the US government has worked to stop al-Qaeda. De Gaulle had the Action Squads, his 'barbouzes' as he called them, that could effectively act outside the law. This involved both abducting people from other states with no concern for what these governments thought and using torture to gain information. Thus, we know that, even the respectable policemen and officials shown in the movie, are working on information derived from torture.

This ambivalence was characteristic of De Gaulle's regime: it was felt necessary to behave in dictatorial ways in order to defend democracy from threat and that argument escapes generally unchallenged today. So, even though we may have sympathy with a couple of the authority characters, this is limited and we are left with agencies working with amoral/immoral methods to stop a man behaving both amorally and immorally. Perhaps this is why the movie was not a commercial success. People, even in the 1970s, wanted some genuine heroes.

The quality of the movie, I believe, stems in a large part from its director Fred Zinnemann (1907-1997).  He was the director of movies such as 'High Noon' (1952), 'From Here to Eternity' (1953), 'A Man for All Seasons' (1966), 'Julia' (1977) and what I feel is an under-rated movie, 'Behold a Pale Horse' (1964 - about the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War). Zinnemann who was born in Austria-Hungary never shied away from politically interesting movies, often featuring aspects of the fight against Nazism and the consequences of the Second World War as in 'Act of Violence' (1948) and 'The Men' (1950 about disabled war veterans). It might seem odd that Zinnemann, who had a vein of morality in his heroes, would come to the amoral Jackal. However, if we think about the fact that the state machine countering the Jackal also behaves in an amoral way, it does throw up interesting questions for those watching his movies that he might have sought to raise.

To some extent Zinnemann touches on similar issues in 'Behold a Pale Horse' but, given that the hero/terrorist/assassin is going up against General Franco's regime, and one particularly nasty police official, we can sympathise more easily with him than we can the Jackal. Zinnemann's skill lifts 'The Day of the Jackal' from being just another thriller and keeps that tension up even when you know the likely outcome. Thus, if you want a thriller which has interesting period feel (even with the anachronisms) and style, will engage you when you do not expect it and will leave you thinking about the behaviour of individuals and the state, then I recommend you watch this movie.

My Worst Week

Looking back in my life there have been bad weeks. Ones that probably stand out were in 1986 when I failed my 'A' levels and one a couple of years later in 1988 when I was diagnosed with diabetes. I forgot the week in 1993 when I failed my teacher training course and was bullied by one of the tutors standing on my doorstep trying to get me to sign a document absolving the college. Being dumped twice by the same woman in different parts of 2003 probably comes close and was no less painful the second time than the first. This week though, must be somewhere in that hall of notoriety. Given the physical symptoms I experienced and the exhaustion I have faced since, I think I was close to having a breakdown. I bellowed at colleagues and stormed out of a meeting. I think having six days of disasters of holiday last year as my only break and no holiday before that since 2005, plus the tensions of Christmas and worries over my employment prospects were already leading me into difficulties.

Taking some time off work and simply slumping in front of the television seems to have remedied things a little but there is still quite a toll to pay in the months to come for what happened this week. I know there are people out there suffering job losses, bankruptcy and house repossession so my worries must seem minor. However, this blog was always about getting the tension out of myself, in that Roman style throwing away that lead tablet in the waters of the internet and making myself feeling just a little better, so I make no apologies for doing that now. This week my computer gave up the ghost against the assault of constant Trojan attacks (surely they should be 'Greeks' rather than Trojans as it was the Greeks who built the horse that went into the city of Troy, so Troy represents your PC and the Greeks are the attackers; perhaps it is because Greece still exists and Greeks might be offended, but when did you last meet a Trojan and I do not mean the condoms). It took PC World 6 days to fix it. My car engine now sounds like it has a lawnmower in it, it is tapping in a strange way which could just be lack of oil or the big end having gone. I was told by my most optimistic boss that there is no hope for me at my current company. I have six months to find a job until my contract expires but it will mean moving yet again to find work, having been in this current house only 13 months so far and in three others since 2005.

The woman in my house is coming home early from the USA, having had her son removed from my care because I threw up my hands in despair at looking after him. In fact given the approaching breakdown though complex with hindsight it was probably the best thing to do. My girlfriend is also splitting from me too. I suppose given the need to move for work, perhaps these are not bad things and may make the next steps easier. Disentangling the mortgage is going to be the toughest aspect. I have absolutely no optimism for my future now. If it proves to be as tough as this week I imagine I will get clinically depressed or will collapse from excessive blood pressure as felt would be the case earlier this week. I have no doubts by January 2009 I will be writing this blog using a dial-up connection from a house in Coventry where I will be renting a room as a lodger. To reverse New Labour's terribly misplaced slogan, 'things can only get worse' and the newspapers, radio and television keep reaffirming that.

(The optical mouse I am using has started going haywire now too and keeps logging me out soe even this short posting has been a real labour. I feel at present everything I touch turns to dung.)

P.P. 29/01/2009 - well it may be becoming my worst fortnight. I managed to get the woman in my house back from the USA without difficulty. I think I was on the verge of a breakdown and having spent four days simply watching TV and DVDs feel a lot better equipped to face the world. However, the car problems got far worse and I had to take it in for repair as it began losing power. It turned out the head gasket had gone, a repair costing £500-£1000 depending on the damage and as I had only spent £1600 to buy the car, which is 12 years old now, even the mechanic said not to bother repairing it. We found it difficult to get a scrap merchant to take the car, two refused because there is a glut of scrapped cars (many newer than mine) in my home town, but ultimately I got £70 for it. Today I am off to see if I can buy a new car. I do hope that tomorrow, Friday, the current spate of problems will come to an end. It is both very wearying and expensive.

What If Kaiser Wilhelm I Had Been Restrained Less?

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘Down Other Tracks: Alternate Outcomes of the 19th Century’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Down-Other-Tracks-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0087QDK88/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338820140&sr=8-1

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Down-Other-Tracks-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0087QDK88/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338820087&sr=1-5

Canadian readers might like to access it through: http://www.amazon.ca/Down-Other-Tracks-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0087QDK88/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1376043896&sr=8-3&keywords=Rooksmoor

Never (Even Temporarily) Be A Father

Back in July 2008, I warned men about the hazards of becoming a father and advised that any sane man avoid doing it. To some extent circumstances have led me to go against my precept, but the outcome has simply reinforced my feelings on this issue. There may be some men out there who can be a father, though I think they are fewer in number than those men who think they can be a father, hence why so many men leave relationships when their children have not yet become adults. Regular readers of this blog know my domestic set up: there is me; a woman acts as kind of housekeeper whilst running her business from the property and there is her 7-year old son. Despite no legal grounds the boy often perceives me as a father figure. Despite the multiplicity of shapes of families these days it is incredible how children still expect some 1950s-style family. He goes to a Christian school so perhaps they teach that that is how families 'should' be (they teach Creationism too) and he has latched on to me as the missing piece to complete the jigsaw puzzle of a 'proper' family.

Despite having lived as a single parent for over three years the woman seems to totally underestimate the difficulties of raising a child alone. I do not think this is an exclusively female perspective nor than all women are good at raising children, some clearly are not. However, it is a very difficult job filled with constant stress even when the child is safely packed off to school. The woman has gone to the USA for about 17 days and convinced me that I could look after her child while she was away. These days schools are very strict about taking children out in term time and the school just pointed out that a child away for 10 days, i.e. two school weeks, would only attain an attendance level of 95.6% whereas the target for the school is 96.4%! For fear of losing a contributor to the mortgage at a time of such housing depression I complied. That was the worst mistake I have made in a long time and regular readers of this blog will know I am very good at making bad mistakes. She left on Thursday and we are now at Tuesday and the stress is causing real health issues. I have pain down my left side, my head feels like it is in a clamp, my breathing is laboured and there is so much acid in my stomach that I have retched close to vomiting already this morning.

Children of 7 have set patterns that they are unwilling to break even when circumstances have changed. You cannot get them to understand that they cannot continue behaving the way they do when Mummy is around when she is not around. If I could have done I should have taken leave for this whole period as holding down a job 30-46 miles (depending on which office I am in that day) from where the child is schooled makes things difficult. I pleaded with my employer (which is supposedly family-friendly) to not have things scheduled to clash with school times and they simply did the opposite. In addition, one department has kept setting meetings at short notice and moving them around as if we are all entirely flexible. To cope with the situation I have been compelled to use a childminder but it is very difficult if I have to keep ringing her up to say, do not collect the child this afternoon as the meeting is off, but could she do it on Thursday and then ringing back the next day to say, now Thursday is off, it is back to Wednesday. I know single parents cope with this kind of stuff all the time, but I imagine most do not work full-time in the next city along.

I lack the authority of a genuine parent, I accept that, so I am left with cajoling, bribing, threatening withholding of treats and simply begging to get the child to comply. I am effectively sharing a house with a 65-year old Classics professor, he is so pedantic and insistent that everything is done 'just so'. There is no room for variation. I imagine I would be a bad candidate for someone caring for an elderly person too. I have not even begun to explore that type of caring. I suppose I could just let the child do what it wants, stay up all night and live on crisps for 17 days, but I worry the school will then get upset and complain. His school is unwilling to act in loco parentis on any occasion (e.g. when the child is vomiting they simply stick him/her in the corridor and shriek down the telephone for the parent to come and collect the child no matter what they might be doing), but is happy to police what it feels is wrong at home. The lack of compliance with what seems even a sensible suggestion got me to such a state last night that I was tempted to telephone social services and get the child taken into foster care saying his mother had skipped off across the Atlantic, which, in fact is the truth. Selfishly, though doing that would mean the end of the mortgage payments from her and me having to move for the fifth time in four years. Of course if this stressful situation leads me to a heart attack then that will have to occur anyway, so it might be just a matter of time. There are 11 days still to go and a lot could happen in that time.

Anyway, men, learn from me. Do not let yourself be tricked into looking after a child for more than a few hours. It is a near impossible task especially as you are having to start from scratch with the child and they will fight tooth and nail to adhere to their normal day-to-day pattern as well as trying to see how far they can push you. If you find yourself in such a situation and are not trapped by financial arrangements, blame the mother for desertion and hand the child over to social services, they are trained for dealing with these things, you are not.

P.P. 22/01/2009, my health was deteriorating as a result of my blood pressure rocketing due to looking after the child. My head felt like it was in a vice, my breathing was laboured and I had pain all down my left side. My emailed demand to the woman to return from the USA led her to send her sister immediately to collect the child and he has gone away to stay with her. The woman is furious that I have failed in my duty and is trying to fly back early though this is proving difficult due to the Obama effect. Naturally she is equally angry that I have wrecked her holiday. I was in an impossible situation from the start, if I had tried to stop her going there would have been complaints (there are anyway now that I have asked her to come back) that I was restricting her life. Equally I am not physically or emotionally able to raised a child on my own, and I had said this all along.