Blake and Mortimer: Huit heures à Berlin (Eight Hours in Berlin).
This new album of Blake and Mortimer adventures has received excellent comments from the faithful readers. It is the first time that José-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental and Antoine Aubin work together and they make a great team.
For several years, the combinations of authors and artists have followed one another to ensure a constant rhythm of publication, that is to say, one comic book of Blake and Mortimer per year.
For Dargaud-Lombard, this is a significant source of revenue, as the series has had a worldwide following for several decades.
“Eight Hours in Berlin” plunges us into the Cold War, at the time the Berlin Wall was just built. Older readers will be familiar with the events surrounding the construction of the wall, but for younger readers it will generally be a first but accessible approach to this period.
Everything is well thought through in this album: there are notions of history and politics, period reconstructions of the exterior architecture, beautifully designed furniture, superb vehicles and the colors are judiciously chosen by Laurence Croix.
The scenario brings us between Germany and the former communist bloc countries. As we progress in the story, we walk through a tunnel created at the time by the West to listen to the conversations taking place in East Berlin, we enter an old asylum supposedly abandoned long ago, etc. Moreover, as always in this comic book, the mixture between reality and science fiction adds to the interest.
The authors try to rejuvenate the old Mortimer a little without losing the fans along the way. The women get a positive or a negative role but they are no longer handbags holding potiches. It’s hard to imagine that we would have ever seen a nude on a garage calendar in an album of this series. What a scandal! It wouldn’t have been accepted at the time Edgar P. Jacobs wrote his first album, after having worked with Hergé for the Tintin albums…
In short, this twenty-ninth album of the series is a great success. It is obvious that this trio of creators will be entrusted with other albums.
Proceeding step by step, Donald Trump is setting the table for a political system transition in the United States.
As he often impulsively says what he really thinks ( his numerous tweets are proof ), his recent visit to China convinced him that it is possible to change the american political system.
He said that it would not be a bad idea to think of a way that would allow more than two successive political terms, something that is actually forbidden by the Constitution of the United States. In order to do that, he proceeds in a similar pattern as Mussolini did and changes the American system step by step.
Not only does he attack the institutions representing the legal system, like the FBI, but he also attacks the media that do not think like he does. We could eventually see the creation of a Trump owned media that would become the official communication channel of the President.
Trump creates fictive foes by selecting several countries whose citizens are denied an entry in United States. All statistics show that crimes and attacks are in the vast majority committed by people that are already American citizens.
Donald Trump wants to become, for his supporters, the only object of their confidence and trust. He wants to be seen as the only shield that can protect them from the imaginary foes that have been created. He invents the idea of a wall that would supposedly be paid by Mexico, a ridiculous proposition that shoud have made everyone laugh from the very beginning but which nonetheless convinced the American voters. That says it all!
The vast majority of his supporters do not have the interest, or the ability, to analyze his empty rethoric and lies, his transformation of reality. Ignorance is what creates the fear of others. He counts on the cowardice of several elected Republicans who stopped asking questions about the actions of the President in order to concentrate only on a necessary reelection.
Those who consider Donald Trump lightly risk a lot. How many had even realized that, in order to prepare his political campaign, Cambridge Analytica was already at work?
Click on the link for other articles on geopolitics on my blog.
The way Mexico is treated by Donald Trump’s government is not politically astute. Because of a disagreement on illegal immigration between the two countries, the American President has deemed necessary to solve the problem in the public arena by using statements that make the Mexicans lose face on the world stage. When a country’s government loses face, it is a sure recipe to stall negotiations and escalate political tensions. Saying to the Mexicans that they will pay for a wall that forbids them to enter in United States is reckless.
The economic input of Mexicans in United States
The American economic growth has always relied on a good proportion of workers accepting low salaries and poor working conditions, especially when they are considered illegal workers and come from Mexico and Central America. To eliminate that manpower and force the employers to double if not triple the salaries will only help increase the price of American products and risk a decrease in competitiveness. This will also impoverish Mexico and increase the inequalities between the two countries, since many “illegal workers” send money to their family abroad.
A wall that will be inefficient in controlling the influx of drugs into the United States
While generating endless tensions between land owners, political parties and countries, the wall will also require tremendous expenses that will in the end not really help to slow down the importation of drugs into the USA. Why? 95% of the containers coming in from Europe and Asia are not inspected in depth due to lack of human resources and material, as much as for the desire to expedite commercial operations. Time is money. So there are still important holes in the screening process. The book “Ninety percent of everything”, by author Rose George, develops on that very subject:
There is no easy way of stopping the importation of drugs in America or any other country. The importation of drugs will continue until the most serious gaps have been filled, and that means efficiently controlling what is inside the containers. This is where the billions of dollars have to be invested, not in the construction of a wall…
For more articles on geopolitics on my web site, click on the following link : Geopolitics
Trump’s political slogan “Make America great again” does not make any sense when analyzed against the nominee’s words and actions.
You cannot make America great again if your political platform does not present a clear plan of action for the American population. Formulas like “Look at this crowd!”, “We’re going to build a wall” and “I would have liked to punch him in the face” are not promises for a brighter future.
You cannot make America great again if your economic ideas involve isolating America from its long lasting commercial partners. America created 255,000 jobs in the sole month of July (2016). For a country that, according to Trump, loses everything to its commercial partners, it sounds somewhat contradictory. A populist platform will not help the American population grow up and understand how business thrives.
You cannot make America great again by building up tensions between ethnic groups within the United States.
You cannot make America great again by constantly lying. Numerous declarations by Trump have been found untrue.
You cannot make America great again if the few general proposals you put forward contradict each other. Trump promises to lower the American deficit ($23 trillion dollars) and, at the same time, repeats that he will spend billions and billions of dollars to refurbish and bring the military capacity back to what it used to be. This is totally contradictory. It implies that the American population will pay for the new expenses while having to deal with serious cuts in the nation’s budget. Since the rich American does not want to contribute more than he actually does, and that the poor American is already almost unable to survive, it implies that a disappearing middle class will foot the bill. This will not make America great again but instead create the worst internal crisis ever in the United States.
You cannot make America great again by being rude, bullying, insulting and mocking whoever does not agree with you. That attitude does not help to build a greater America.
You cannot make America great again by being condescending towards prisoners of war. While some Americans where being made prisoners of war, Donald Trump was enjoying a comfortable living in the security of his home.
You cannot make America great again by lowering the political debate to a level never seen before.
You cannot make America great again by considering that dictatorship is synonymous of strong leadership. Under this angle, Hitler would be a great leader and we all know the consequences of his actions. Give the presidency to a gigantic and uncontrolled ego and the Americans, as well as the rest of the world, will pay the price.
You cannot make America great again by ridiculing Mexico, an extremely important neighbour. This country is a major commercial partner of the United States and has also a fantastic culture, for whoever is curious enough to open a book and read about it. But it takes curiosity and the feeling that there are other important people around the world than oneself.
You cannot make America great again if the republican vice-president and president nominees contradict each other about very serious matters on national TV, and if the vice-president nominee finds himself unable to defend the presidential nominee’s positions.
You cannot make America great again if the republican presidential nominee does not understand the consequences of being a populist nationalist. The Germans went through that in the past. I have included a video that is worth taking the time to listen to:
Let’s just hope that the current resentment from having received over one million refugees in Germany in a very short time frame will not help the extreme right to gain momentum and repeat the mistakes of the past.
You cannot make America great again by governing on fear. That does not make for a great future. You then have a population who needs several guns per person in order to be able to sleep at night.
You cannot make America great again if you continue to push for the population to be armed like no other country in the world. The shootings among Americans places the country in the top most violent country in the world. You can make America greater by reducing the number of guns in circulation and increasing the control on who can acquire guns.
You cannot make America great again if you do not understand, as a President, what is really going on in Syria in 2016. Summing it up to a simplistic description only adds to the confusion. In Syria, there are war crimes being perpetrated. The civil population and hospitals are deliberately targeted to protect and improve strategic military positions.
You cannot make America great again by stating that Hillary Clinton will be sent to jail if you are elected as President of the United States. This is done under authoritarian regimes around the world, and certainly is not a promise that will help the United States increase its credibility in the free world.
You cannot make America great again by destabilizing your NATO allies, or saying that you would use the nuclear bomb against Europe if necessary.
You cannot make America great again by promising that you will put forward tax reforms that will hurt your own businesses. Somebody who has fought to keep his hotels and casinos alive will not suddenly change his mind if elected President and start putting in place measures that will endanger what he has taken so much time to protect. It is nonsense. The person who is well positioned to modify a tax code that could hurt companies is someone who does not himself own the targeted companies.
You cannot make America great again by electing somebody who hates very frequent briefings. Being President of the United States requires being available, interested and able to listen to the frequent daily briefings. You must have the personality to cope with them, even if you would like to be somewhere else.
You cannot make America great again by staying silent on how to realistically lower the difference in revenues between Americans. I am not talking about equality between revenues, but lowering the extremes between the rich and the poor. This would certainly help to bring the American dream back to life, lower the social tensions and crime rate and give more sense to the theme “Make America great again…”. But I guess we are not there yet…
The 2016 televised political debates on CNN between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump put forward the topic of racism in the United States. Chicago was specifically mentioned as it detains the national record for violent deaths. The book “Histoire de Chicago” allows, among other subjects, to better understand what feeds social inequalities between Blacks and Whites since the creation of Chicago.
The reader understands that it is not the cultural deficiencies that are at the base of the problems but an institutionalized racism and the economic choices of the different municipal administrations.
The city grew set against a background in which the color of a person’s skin determined the type of work that he or she was allowed to occupy. Eventually, even urban planning was designed so that Blacks and Whites would be separated: the artificial walls created by the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway or the Dearborn Park are in themselves good examples.
In 2016, the polls show a strong support for the Unites States republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump knows Chicago very well and he had his “Trump Tower” built there.
The republican candidate takes over in his political platform some of the elements that have made the popularity and success of the Daley family who ruled over Chicago for decades: the exploitation of fear between ethnical groups to build and maintain a political power, the idea of building a wall and the use of torture as a simplistic solution to complex problems.
This populism attracts a certain class of American electors who are easily scared by the differences between people and cultures.
The book “Histoire de Chicago” is very much a reflection of what is happening today and the authors do no fear to raise delicate political subjects.
Cover of the book “Histoire de Chicago” by Andrew Diamond and Pap Ndiaye
Chicago
Chicago became a territory of the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Subsequently, natives progressively lost their lands through different manoeuvers, among them the signature of contracts while they were drunk. Around 1830, when the Indians were definitely gone, the speculative fever started.
Railways
Starting around 1860, Chicago organized itself to become the main hub for the most important railway companies of the United States. The city grew very quickly. Passengers, livestock, cereals and other merchandise had to transit through Chicago. The city depended on the train to grow, and the railway companies depended on Chicago to be profitable.
The rapid growth of Chicago’s population was essentially the driver of migration from Europe (Irish, Germans, Polish and Italians). The evolving and often violent relationships between Chicago’s ethnic groups is well explained in the book.
Retail stores
Just before 1900, the Chicago population witnessed the creation of the first retail stores in which a customer could order through a catalogue and use credit. New categories of employees and managers were added to the working population and helped shape the middle class.
Black immigration in Chicago
Around 1910, there was an important increase in the Black immigration coming from southern United States. Chicago was an abolitionist city. This does not mean that it was favoring racial equality but that it was against slavery. In fact, Chicago progressively became the most segregated city in the United States.
Blacks were massively arriving from southern United States, not only for economic reasons but also to get away from the slavery, racial violence and segregation that was the norm in multiple states. Although far from ideal, the situation in Chicago was better than in the south of the country.
The First World War considerably reduced the number of immigrants coming from Europe. This created a serious problem for a city that was benefiting from numerous military contracts and needed a very high number of employees in its manufacturing companies. This also favored the “great migration”, which is to say “the spectacular intensification of the Afro-American migration towards the North-East and Middle West major urban centers […]” (p.143)
Chicago’s slaughterhouses
Chicago was renowned for the very high number of its slaughterhouses, in particular its pork slaughterhouses. The smell and pollution created by this activity was terrible. Chemical laboratories allowed for the commercial use of all parts of an animal. The writer Georges Duhamel wrote in his book that in Chicago “nothing leaves the slaughterhouse but the squeal” (p.63).
Black workers did not have the right to work in the Chicago steel industry and had to limit themselves to slaughterhouses where they were hired as manual workers. They had no access to qualified jobs.
The Second World War
During the Second World War, Chicago was competing with other major American cities to obtain huge military contracts. The city did not manage its efforts to show it supported the American government. Chicago eventually received billions of dollars for the construction of tanks, tractors, torpedoes, bombs and aircrafts (among them the B-29 bomber aircraft).
To compensate for the lack of manpower, since a lot of men enrolled as volunteers and had gone to war, women massively entered the workforce. Employers saw an opportunity to maximize their profits by reducing the salaries of working women, which corresponded only to 65% of the men’s salary for the same work. This represents the way women were thanked for their effort and collaboration.
Transformation of the Chicago economy
A United Airlines Boeing B747 is taxiing over the expressway at the Chicago O’Hare international airport (on aviation postcard)
Chicago experienced a profound transformation during the ‘70 s. The closure of the slaughterhouses in 1971, and the diminishing demand for steel mills products signalled the end of the industrial era. It was followed by an opening on the international and the development of a new economy based on specialized services like finance, real estate, insurance, marketing, publicity and legal services.
The Chicago mayor, Richard M. Daley, fostered the establishment of a new socio-professional class of creators in the city (design, arts, music, etc.) by considering it like another “ethnic group” who needed privileged space to express itself.
The development of housing estates and complexes during the ‘60s and ‘70 s
During the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Chicago landscape was profoundly modified. Huge housing estates and complexes were built (Magnificent Mile, Sandburgh Village, Marina City, Lake Point Tower, Dearborn Park) where the White population lived, in the north part of the city. The Chicago Tribune said of Dearborn Park that it was “a fortress reserved for Whites and aimed at protecting the financial district against the Blacks”.
The Daley administration had to fight against urban sprawling and consequently favored the construction of skyscrapers to maintain the presence of Whites in the central area while receiving more property taxes. Two stock exchange institutions were created, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The creation of those two institutions as well as of the complexes did not do anything to change the dynamic between the Whites and the Blacks.
The racial segregation
Although Martin Luther King was a dominant figure in the fight for the civil rights of the Blacks in the United States, the authors underline that the black population of Chicago had not waited for a leader to promote their rights as they had already started to mobilize themselves years before.
Martin Luther King’s ideas on the integration of Blacks did not receive the support of everyone in the black community, especially the Chicago black politicians who benefited from a special treatment from the Daley machine, which favored the status quo.
Chicago’s mayor Richard M. Daley experienced much success. To stay in power, the Daley Machine “rested squarely on the continued separation and competition between communities”. (p.322-323) The separation between Blacks and Whites was planned and maintained. There was and there are still two Chicagos.
A highway, the Dan Ryan Expressway, was even positioned in such a way that it would create an artificial wall between the Daley’ s district, Bridgeport and the Black Belt: “This was the most massive obstacle that the city could build, other than a wall, to separate the white South Side from the Black Belt” (p.259).
The Daley Machine
We cannot talk about Chicago without underlining the importance of the Daley family and its political machine: “Through an authoritarian control of the “machine”, Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M. Daley, each one in his own style, dominated the Chicago political scene for forty-three years, between 1955 and 2011.
During that period which saw the development and the subsequent decline of modern civil rights, the ghettoization of huge parts of the West Side and South Side, a massive immigration wave from Latin America and the transformation of the city from an industrial giant to a world-class global services economy center, Chicago barely knew one legitimate municipal election or one real debate at the municipal council” (p.16)
There was rampant corruption and secret budgets in the Daley administration. In total opaqueness, the City Hall diverted the funds reserved to disadvantaged neighbourhood and distributed it to the privileged ones.
“[…] While important businessmen, Mafiosi and others who had links with the Daley machine were getting richer, Blacks and Latinos in need were shot in the street or tortured in the precinct’s’ back rooms” (p.394)
Law firms and entrepreneurs gave huge sums of money in exchange for important contracts. The Daley Machine was never short of money.
Beechcraft N35 Bonanza N545T in flight during the years when the Daley family was reigning over Chicago (on aviation postcard)
Racial tensions and repression policies under Mayor Daley
“By the 1930s, Chicago had become, according to the historian Frank Donner “the national capital for police repression” (p.321)
The black migration that took place during the 1940s and 1950s scared the Chicago population that felt besieged. This increased racial tensions that were already present and maintained. It was easier to accept more policemen than social housing.
The muscled tactics of Mayor Daley were the most obvious during the 1968 Democrat Convention, when policemen and 7000 National Guard soldiers “went down hard on the [crowd of 10,000 young protesters] in an explosion of mindless violence” (p.315)
The exploitation of racial fears was quite successful. Daley was defending his policies by saying that “ most people are more worried about a black uproar than of a mayor that orders the use of lethal force to put an end to it and they recognized themselves far less in pacific protesters than in policemen that hit them with truncheons” (p.319).
Media propaganda and the Daley Machine’s police were efficient in convincing the Blacks to respect the established order. Torture was common in the zone 2’s precinct, in the South Side, between 1972 and 1991.
The expected arrival of a new black mayor, Harold Washington, during the 1980’s, increased the fear that everything would change in Chicago. Everything was done to undermine Washington’s candidacy, but he eventually won helped by the black vote.
There were several left-wing political movements which all had their own objectives and were unable to unite under the same progressist banner. This provided the necessary margin of manoeuver to the Daley Machine, who worked in cooperation with the federal authorities to organize the state repression.
Back cover of the book “Histoire de Chicago”
Social problems in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
During the 1995 heat wave, 739 persons died in Chicago. The social precarity helped increase the number of deaths, but it was easier to determine that the victims were responsible of their fate.
The Blacks and Latinos believed, and still do, that the problems related to their school system and neighbourhoods come from some cultural deficiencies, but in trying to understand the real nature of their problems, they overlook the ongoing racism and economic choices of the different city administrations since the creation of the city.
“The 1980 census showed that ten out of sixteen of the poorest neighbourhoods in United States were in Chicago, in the Black Belt, of course”(p.334)
In 2002, Chicago was the American murder capital, with 647 victims. In 2008-2009, the city held the record of students killed in public schools which were gang related.
Today, there are two Chicagos
Today, Chicago benefits from well-defined ethnic neighbourhoods that attract tourists in search of diversity. However, the sustained racial segregation policies have isolated the black neighbourhoods and in 2016 Chicago still has the sad reputation of being the murder capital of the United States.
“The Chicago situation looks more and more like a science-fiction scenario. While part of the city has an economic capacity that sets it among the five first in the world, the other part is frozen in an austerity situation that could very well become irreversible” (p.443)
