Mick Hartley

Someone else’s metaphor

A fine essay in the Atlantic from Dara Horn, on visiting the new Auschwitz exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York:

The Auschwitz exhibition is everything an Auschwitz exhibition should be. It is thorough, professional, tasteful, engaging, comprehensive, clear. It displays more than 700 original artifacts from the Auschwitz site museum and collections around the world. It corrects every annoying minor flaw in every other Holocaust exhibition I have ever seen. It does absolutely everything right. And it made me never want to go to another one of these exhibitions ever again. [...]

He is young, this rabbi—younger than me. He was realizing the same thing I realized at the Auschwitz exhibition, about the specificity of our experience. I feel the need to apologize here, to acknowledge that yes, this rabbi and I both know that many non-Jewish houses of worship in other places also require rent-a-cops, to announce that yes, we both know that other groups have been persecuted too—and this degrading need to recite these middle-school-obvious facts is itself an illustration of the problem, which is that dead Jews are only worth discussing if they are part of something bigger, something more. Some other people might go to Holocaust museums to feel sad, and then to feel proud of themselves for feeling sad. They will have learned something important, discovered a fancy metaphor for the limits of Western civilization. The problem is that for us, dead Jews aren’t a metaphor, but rather actual people we do not want our children to become. [...]

That the Holocaust drives home the importance of love is an idea, like the idea that Holocaust education prevents anti-Semitism, that seems entirely unobjectionable. It is entirely objectionable. The Holocaust didn’t happen because of a lack of love. It happened because entire societies abdicated responsibility for their own problems, and instead blamed them on the people who represented—have always represented, since they first introduced the idea of commandedness to the world—the thing they were most afraid of: responsibility.

Then as now, Jews were cast in the role of civilization’s nagging mothers, loathed in life and loved only once they are safely dead. In the years since I walked through Auschwitz at 15, I have become a nagging mother. And I find myself furious, being lectured by this exhibition about love—as if the murder of millions of people was actually a morality play, a bumper sticker, a metaphor. I do not want my children to be someone else’s metaphor. (Of course, they already are.)

Skyscraper Gothic

Photo by Irving Underhill - November 20, 1912. "Woolworth Building, New York." 

[Photo: Shorpy/Irving Underhill]

At 792 feet (241 m), it was the world's tallest building from its completion in 1913 till 1930, when the "race into the sky" of the late Twenties and early Thirties saw the title of world's tallest building move in quick succession from the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building to the Chrysler Building and, in 1931, to the Empire State Building.

Karachi Harbour

Pakistani fishing boats are called back from the sea following a warning by authorities of Cyclone Vayu, on June 13:

[Photo: Fareed Khan / AP]

In tension with academic freedom

The LGBT charity Stonewall has a Diversity Champions programme, which UK universities are rushing to associate themselves with, thereby demonstrating their commitment to inclusivity and the battle against transphobia. Hidden away near the bottom of the Sunday Times letters page today, a large number of academics - mostly women - express their concerns:

As academics we are writing to register our disquiet over the inappropriately close relationship between the LGBT charity Stonewall and UK universities, via the Stonewall Diversity Champions programme.

The membership requirements of this programme are in tension with academic freedom. For instance, university members must instigate specialist trans policies, in addition to general equality policies, which outlaw “transphobic” teaching and research material but offer no clear definition of what would count as such.

Alongside Stonewall’s definition of transphobia as including any “denial/refusal to accept . . . gender identity”, this leaves academics unable to question the contested notion of “gender identity” without fear of sanction.

Equally, Stonewall’s guidance advises against inviting any speaker to a university who would deny “that trans people are the gender they say they are”. This is a further unacceptable restriction upon free academic debate.

The programme requires staff to undergo “trans awareness training”, during which tendentious and anti-scientific claims are presented to academics as objective fact, without the opportunity for scrutiny: for instance, that “gender is how people interpret and view themselves” and that “1 in 100 are born with an intersex trait”. In our teaching, we’re exhorted to “ask the pronouns” of students. Yet many of us would deny that pronouns refer to an inner feeling of gender identity, and wish to say so.

There are other areas that some of us wish to explore and question, such as the ramifications of Stonewall’s new doctrine that female-attracted trans women, with penises, are “lesbians”; an “affirmation model” for gender-questioning children; and the social changes caused by opening up women-only spaces to self-identified women. It is imperative to interrogate the radical shifts in thinking that all this implies, but we feel inhibited from doing so in the intimidating atmosphere produced by Stonewall’s influence.

We therefore urge Stonewall to clarify that it fully supports academic freedom of thought. Failing this, we ask universities to sever their links with this organisation altogether.

Female-attracted trans women, with penises, are “lesbians”?? Nice work if you can get it.

See also.

The Rohingya in Bangladesh

Balukhali-Kutupalong, in Cox’s Bazar in south-eastern Bangladesh, photographed here by Gabriele Cecconi, is currently the world’s largest refugee camp. 

Summer 2017 saw the latest mass exodus of the Rohingya people from neighbouring Myanmar, with over 1.3 million individuals displaced by targeted violence in their homeland. One of the country’s many ethnic minorities, the Rohingya Muslims, have faced persecution for decades, with a new wave of attacks in the Rakhine State provoking what the UN has described as the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. The UNHCR estimates that following their journey from Myanmar, over 900,000 people have landed in makeshift camps in the city of Cox’s Bazar, where the two largest hubs have overflowed into the surrounding areas. It is not this plight of displacement that Italian photographer Gabriele Cecconi has focused on in his work on the area, but rather the complex and precarious living conditions that the refugees endure on arrival.

Along with the terrible conditions that the refugees have to endure, there's the widespread ecological devastation caused by the presence of the camp.

Unchiprang refugee camp, Teknaf subdistrict, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. A child comes out of a huge water well in Unchiprang refugee camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

Unchiprang refugee camp, Teknaf subdistrict, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. A tree stands alone in the middle of the camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Marjon, aged 35, with her two-year-old son, Muhammed. Both of them suffer from acute respiratory infections. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Rohingya workers cross a flooded canal due to the rains in one of the new parts of the camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Sixty-year-old Abdul Salam inside a hole he excavated to build a latrine. © Gabriele Cecconi

Musoni refugee camp, Teknaf subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. A group of children play in the top of a degraded hill in Musoni camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. A view of Kutupalong refugee camp at sunrise. © Gabriele Cecconi

Moynarghona refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Rohingya await the distribution of water and food in Moynarghona camp distribution center. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh - Rohingya build a tube-well in Balukhali refugee camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Noor Hossain is a 30 years old Rohingya who was attacked and injured at the chest by an elephant in Lambaja, Kutupalong, on March the 3rd. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. A funeral takes place in the Balukhali camp. Shak Karim, 65, died because of Acute respiratory infections. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. A bamboo shelter in Kutupalong refugee camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Khotiza Begum, 67 inside her new shelter. © Gabriele Cecconi

Balukhali-Kutupalong refugee camp, Ukhia subdistrict, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Some Rohingya sheltering from the wind and the sand in a makeshift tent in Balhukali camp. © Gabriele Cecconi

The closing of the Conservative mind

Where are the Conservative leaders of yesteryear? A very good question, with Boris Johnson now leading a largely grim bunch of candidates to take over from the wretched May. Robert Saunders has a fine piece in the New Statesman - the first of a new series on the state of the right, we are informed - on the current sorry state of the Tory Party:

The party has been crushed at the local elections and came fifth in the European Parliament elections, posting the lowest share of a national vote in its history. It has no legislative achievements since 2016, no discernible economic policy and no obvious vision for the future.

The new leader will face a grim inheritance, because the crisis gripping the party stretches far beyond the leadership; far, even, beyond Brexit. A party that once set the agenda of British politics – birthing such big ideas as “Tory democracy”, “One Nation” and “the property-owning democracy” – seems worn out intellectually. A tradition that was once cautious of change – that distrusted what the conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott called “the jump-to-glory style of politics” – rushes eagerly towards the unknown; a party that once preached scepticism calls its disciples to “believe in Brexit”, and to the conduct of policy “by faith alone”.

British Conservatism has broken with three of its most important traditions. It has stopped thinking; it has stopped “conserving”; and it has lost its suspicion of ideology. Historically, the Conservative Party has been a party of ideas, but not of ideology. Today, that relationship has been reversed: a party in thrall to ideology is reduced to boardroom banalities and half-remembered hymns to a Thatcherite past. Like an ageing Eighties tribute band, the party flubs wearily through the same tired playlist, barely noticing that the stadiums are empty, the hairstyles ludicrous and the fans long departed. In this sense, its Brexit woes are only the manifestation of a deeper problem: the closing of the Conservative mind.

All true, no doubt. Sadly, the state of the Labour Party under Corbyn and his cronies is, arguably, a great deal worse. But that's another story....

Putting women before pronouns

Julie Bindel was assaulted by a transgender activist in Edinburgh last week. She wrote about it in the Sunday Times (£):

On Tuesday, having given a talk at Edinburgh University about male violence towards women and girls, I was attacked on my way to the taxi that was taking me to the airport. A man, wearing a long skirt and with lots of dark stubble, started screaming and shouting at me, calling me a Nazi and Terf scum (an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”).

I recognised the man from an earlier protest. A group of about 50 people, many young “woke” students with the requisite orange or blue fringes and a couple of trans women, had been holding signs with slogans such as “No Terfs on our turf” and chanting “Die cis scum” (a “cisgender” person is one who is not transgender).

The event, which the protesters had tried hard to get cancelled, was on women’s sex-based rights. In light of previous proposals by the government to allow a person to change their gender based on their own self-definition, some institutions and even local authorities have already put the policy in place despite it not yet being law.

As a result, male-bodied trans women have ended up in women’s prisons, hospitals and sports teams. Men self-identifying as women are now allowed into many women’s changing rooms. The ladies’ pond on Hampstead Heath, in north London, which for almost a century had provided a haven for female swimmers (there is also a men-only pond and a mixed pond nearby) now admits trans women despite the fact that most of them retain their penises.

The university event went extremely well, despite a group of trans activists attempting to set off stink bombs in the hall. The organisers had endured threats, bullying and intimidation since it was advertised, mainly because I had been invited. (In 2004 I wrote a column in which I railed against a trans activist who had tried to get a rape crisis centre in Canada closed down because it would not accept him as a volunteer.) A number of academic staff joined in with the students, claiming my presence on campus would cause “literal harm” to trans people and that I spout “hate speech”.

I was the final speaker, focusing on the amazing feminist activists I have met in countries around the world who are countering male violence such as prostitution, rape, sexual assault and forced marriage. My speech went down well and as I left the hall I received a standing ovation.

I went outside to wait for my taxi, followed by the security staff. As I was saying my goodbyes a man, who had clearly been waiting around the corner for me to emerge, ran up and began screaming in my face, calling me “scum”, “Terf” and “bigot”. He lunged at me and was a split-second away from thumping me full in the face when three security guards pulled him away. I took out my phone to try to record the attack. As I did this, the attacker lunged at me again and had to be restrained.

How have we arrived at this shocking state of affairs, where feminist campaigners are called “Nazi scum” and are no-platformed — denied a forum — for speaking out on behalf of marginalised and abused women?

You'll notice that Bindel here commits the unpardonable sin of referring to her attacker - someone who self-identifies as a woman despite having all the male genital equipment - as "he" and "a man". Oh dear. She defends her decision in today's article in Quillette - It’s Time for Progressives to Protect Women Instead of Pronouns:

I usually use female pronouns to refer to trans women, as a courtesy. But this is a courtesy I won’t extend to someone seeking to hurt me physically. This was a man—specifically, a misogynist who’d become notorious under the (since deleted) Twitter handle TownTattle. He was deeply offended that I’d been allowed to speak. That’s why he wanted to hurt me: for being a woman who opened her mouth.  [...]

One of the most hideous manifestations of this movement is the popularization of such memes as “Punch TERFs,” which present violence toward women as a cool hipster hobby. And it has led to real misogynistic violence. In 2017, a British trans activist in his 20s violently attacked 60-year-old Maria MacLaghlan as she was on her way to a feminist meeting. One of Wolf’s supporters, when asked by McLaghlan if she thought it was okay that that she had been punched and kicked by a man, responded, “It’s not a guy. You’re a piece of shit and I’m happy they hit her.” (Indeed, one of the calling cards of anti-“TERF” extremists is that they seem far more concerned about protecting pronouns than human bodies.) Earlier that year, trans activists stormed the opening of a feminist library in Vancouver, accusing the organizers of being not only “TERFs” but also “SWERFs” (Sex worker exclusionary radical feminists) before destroying books, tearing down posters and throwing wine on the walls. It was with all of this in mind that I had my guard up when I left last week’s Edinburgh University event in the company of Professor Rosa Freedman, a human-rights expert and fellow speaker. That’s when I was lunged at by the hater shouting “you’re a f***** c***, you’re a f****** bitch, a f****** TERF.”

My attacker, “Trans Tattle,” already was infamous for threatening feminists in the past. Yet reporters who cover such issues often tread gingerly in describing trans activists who engage in or encourage attacks against women. Sometimes they even suggest that these people have been provoked into violence. In my case, in fact, much of the coverage focused on the fact that the day before my speaking event, the school’s entire LGBT+ committee resigned in protest.

“Jonathan MacBride, who was the co-Chair of the university’s LGBT+ staff network until the entire committee’s resignation this week, said the university had not consulted with them before approving the event,” read one report. MacBride also complained that the university failed to “give out any statement of support of its trans staff and students.”

In one particularly absurd salvo, MacBride claimed that “Instead of supporting us, supporting our position, [the university] chose to censor us.” That’s right: He is using the word “censor” to describe the decision to permit women to talk about feminism....

I Cried For You

Helen Humes with Count Basie, probably early Fifties:

The Count seems in a good mood, greeting Helen's entry with a broad grin. And she herself sings with a permanent smile. Everybody's happy - except maybe Wardell Gray, who opens proceedings with a tenor sax solo.

Humes was with Basie in the late Thirties, replacing Billie Holiday:

On December 24, 1939, Humes performed with the Count Basie Orchestra and James P. Johnson at the second From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, produced by John Hammond. After this concert, most of her time with the Basie Orchestra was spent touring. In a 1973 oral history she described life on tour:

I used to pretend I was asleep on the Basie bus, so the boys wouldn't think I was hearing their rough talk. I'd sew buttons on and cook for them, too…in places where it was difficult to get anything to eat…down south. I wasn't interested in drinking and keeping late hours…but my kidneys couldn't stand the punishment of those long rides… then too I got tired of singing the same songs.

For these reasons, Humes left the group in 1942, as her health was not good and the stress of being on tour was too taxing.

So this session was a happy coming back together.

Wardell Gray entered LA noir legend in 1955 when his body was found in the desert outside Las Vegas with a broken neck.

Although there was a poor examination of circumstances, by most accounts, Gray's demise was ruled an accidental death. Foul play was suspected by some, especially given Gray's possible association with mob boss Meyer Lansky.

James Ellroy's novel The Cold Six Thousand contains a reference to Gray's disappearance and death: according to this, he was murdered by (fictional) racist conspirator Wayne Tedrow, Sr. for having an affair with his wife, Janice.

Bill Moody's book Death of a Tenor Man tells the story of a contemporary investigation of Wardell's death by fictional detective/pianist Evan Horne.

There's a Wardell Gray Webpage.

Phoney Boris

As Boris takes another step towards realising his great ambition - leadership of the Tory Party and Prime Minister - Nick Cohen reminds us that there is really nothing to the man except his ambition. Boris Johnson: everything about you is phoney:

Johnson believes in the advance of Johnson. That’s all there is. There’s nothing else. Most politicians, and many of the rest of us, are ambitious, of course. But politicians normally hope to advance a cause as they advance themselves. Johnson would have you believe that he is breaking with the establishment, risking all, because of his sincere conviction that we must advance the cause of saving Britain from the European Union.

His colleagues do not believe him. Nicholas Soames has called him a liar on Twitter. Jerry Hayes called him a ‘copper-bottomed, hypocritical little shit.’ The wonder of it is that they may have been understating the case for the prosecution.

After the Times fired him for making up stories, Johnson ended up as the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent. Once there, he was seduced by the most corrupting desire to afflict a journalist: the urge to give readers what they want. His tales of the EU punishing the rubber industry for making undersized condoms or ordering the straightening of bananas were so flimsy that, like dandelion puffballs, they collapsed with the first puff of scrutiny. They were a hit with his right-wing readers, but no one who knew him at the time thought that Johnson believed what he was writing. David Usborne, the Independent’s man in Brussels, told Johnson’s acidic biographer Sonia Purnell:

He played the Telegraph game brilliantly [and] compromised his intellectual integrity to get on. I assume that he has done that in the rest of his career.

Or again, more forcefully, there's the latest Private Eye cover.

Coal Wharves

Ca. 1907. "Coal wharves at Portsmouth, New Hampshire."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

With boats from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Perth Amboy NJ....

Dance Diagonal

It's Eastbourne, but not as we know it. Artist Lothar Götz has given the Towner Art Gallery a dramatic new look, with his multicolour geometric artwork Dance Diagonal. 

Götz, who is based in the UK, was chosen from 60 artists and designers from an open call for The Brewers Towner Commission to create an artwork to mark the 10th anniversary of the gallery’s move from its original home in Eastbourne’s Old Town.

Drawing on its architecture, angles and unique exterior recesses and alcoves, Götz’s mural – his largest to date – envelops the length and width of three sides of the award-winning building. "To paint the entire rendered wall space of the gallery offers an amazing canvas, and to realise a painting of that scale in such a prominent public position of Eastbourne really is a kind of dream project for me," says Götz.

[Photos: Eva Eastman]

Hydroponic meat

Back in 2005 I wondered about the possibility of zombie chickens:

In a sense, a chicken's genetic code provides a recipe for producing chicken breasts, chicken thighs, etc., ie the stuff we want from chickens, and what makes us keep millions of the poor little buggers in sheds for all of their short miserable lives. We're in the process of unravelling genetic codes and how they work. Is it reasonable to think that we might be able to produce these breasts and thighs directly, as it were? That is, without bothering with the actual chicken?

Well, progress has been made with so-called lab meat, and, unsurprisingly, Israeli tech entrepreneurs are at the forefront of this brave new science:

Last January, during a meet-and-greet of American food professionals and Israeli tech entrepreneurs at the headquarters of Start-Up Nation Central in Tel Aviv, I met Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms. Toubia, a bespectacled fellow wearing a yarmulke, spoke with a French accent, lending himself an air of culinary credibility—a good thing, seeing as he was there to talk about beef.

Toubia didn’t discuss grass-fed or wagyu or dry-aged meat. His startup raises what he called “hydroponic meat”—that is, meat that is grown in a lab from stem cells and nourished by a substance that mimics bovine fetal serum, which then develops into tissue that is chemically identical to meat. “We reproduce the same environment inside a bioreactor as what is inside a cow,” said Toubia.

And no cows die in the making of this steak.

According to Toubia, the animal isn’t harmed in the least by the stem-cell extraction. And while earlier examples of clean meat have been created using real bovine fetal serum, which is harvested from dead pregnant cows, Aleph Farms—part of the Kitchen Food Tech Hub, a collection of “food industry disrupters” founded by Israel’s Strauss Group—uses a plant- and yeast-based alternative.

So far, Aleph Farms has succeeded in generating steaks about the size and thickness of a credit card. There were no samples to be tasted, but the promise of what the innovation could bring transcends something as pedestrian as eating. Toubia foresees lab-grown meat as the potential answer to many of the world’s great problems—poor animal welfare, environmental damage caused by industrial farming, and the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, the cause of superbugs and antimicrobial resistance. It can even help reduce pathogens and foodborne illnesses in the food system and alleviate our climate crisis.

But - the big question - will this meat be kosher?

The Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex

Photos of North Korea's largest iron and steel works in the 1980s, by Magnum photographer Hiroji Kubota:

The largest ironworks in North Korea, Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex, Chongjin, North Korea, 1986 © Hiroji Kubota/Magnum Photos

Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex, Chongjin, North Korea, 1982 © Hiroji Kubota/Magnum Photos

The Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex was established by Nippon Steel during the Japanese occupation of Korea, and was subsequently nationalised after the founding of the DPRK.

Morally revolting and politically unviable

Susie Linfield, author of The Lions' Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky, from Alan Johnson's excellent interview with her at Fathom:

When you read the histories of the Palestinian movement, many by Arab and Palestinian writers, you quickly see that they are often very critical of the leadership of the Palestinian movement. (I refer to real historians, not to anti-Zionists propagandists.) One of the things that frankly surprised me in my research was to realise just how catastrophic that leadership has been. A small cadre of PLO militia believed for decades that they were going to destroy Israel by physical force, which was preposterous. They also believed that they could overthrow the Jordanian state, radically change the politics of Lebanon to their liking, and foment worldwide or at least a pan-Arab revolution. And in this unbelievable grandiosity they were encouraged by the international Left. I think that was a terrible thing to do to the Palestinians. It was a complete misunderstanding, morally and politically, of the reality. The Left’s support for the delusions of the Palestinian movement has greatly contributed to the catastrophic situation of the Palestinians today. Hamas is still vowing, against all evidence, that the armed struggle will defeat the evil Zionist entity. And again, we see the abandonment of the reality principle in favour of theoretical schemas. The idea that Israeli was a fragile colonial implant, which could be easily toppled by the ‘anti-imperialist armed struggle’, had a tenacious hold, and in some places still does.

That’s what I meant by a toxic gift: being in uncritical solidarity with programmes that are morally revolting and politically unviable.

Execution sites revealed

In more North Korean news:

A human rights group says it has identified hundreds of sites where witnesses say North Korea carried out public executions and extrajudicial state killings as part of an arbitrary and aggressive use of the death penalty designed to intimidate its citizens.

The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), based in Seoul, said it had pinpointed at least 323 sites after four years of research and interviews with more than 600 North Korean defectors.

“Public executions are to remind people of particular policy positions that the state has,” said the TJWG research director, Sarah A Son. “But the second and more powerful reason is it instils a culture of fear among ordinary people.“

Purged members of the elite have been among those executed in public, such as leader Kim Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013.

But the most common charges levelled against the condemned ranged from “stealing copper and livestock” to, less frequently, “anti-state” activities and illegally crossing into China, the group said.

The survey of 610 North Korean defectors living in South Korea included 19 reports of more than 10 people being executed at the same time.

Crowds, often of hundreds of people, and sometimes 1,000 or more, would gather to watch the executions. The youngest person to witness a public execution was seven, the group said.

Let us not, at this difficult time for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, forget the sentiments of Corbyn supporter Andrew Murray. While a member of the Communist Party he praised the North, expressing his “solidarity” with “People’s Korea”. He's now a leading light in the Labour Party, and close adviser to the leader.