Mick Hartley

Careless Love

The old jazz/blues standard - supposedly written by Buddy Bolden back in the 1900s - here performed by Mae Mercer, with Sonny Boy Williamson:

From the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival tour of Europe, with Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon, and Hubert Sumlin.

A striking-looking woman, Mae Mercer - somewhere between Bessie Smith and Grace Jones - with quite a career:

Ms. Mercer already was singing in Paris in 1960 when she met Maurice Girodias, the French publisher of banned books such as "Lolita" and "The Ginger Man," who hired her to sing at - and later to run - the Blues Bar, one of four clubs he owned in a building next door to his editorial offices.

Ms. Mercer performed at the club for eight years, Brown said, with Memphis Slim on piano and Sonny Criss on alto saxophone. She also toured Europe during the summers with the Keith Smith Climax Jazz Band.

In the 1970s, after returning to the United States, Ms. Mercer had roles in the Don Siegel-directed Clint Eastwood movies "The Beguiled" and "Dirty Harry."

She also appeared in the movie "Pretty Baby," the TV movie "A Woman Called Moses" and made guest appearances on TV shows such as "Kung Fu," "Mannix," "ER" and "The Shield."

She also was a producer of the 1972 documentary film "Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary."

She died in 2008.

Overwhelming evidence that antisemitic behaviour is rife within the party

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in its investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party, has received testimony from 70 party officials, as part of the Jewish Labour Movement's submission. And it's not looking good. From the Times (£):

Seventy serving and former Labour officials have turned whistleblower and given sworn statements to the official investigation into the party’s antisemitism crisis, The Times has learnt.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has been inundated with testimonies from Labour Party staff, officials on the national executive and elected representatives since it announced in May that it was investigating the party.

In addition it has been sent more than 100 testimonies from party members, many Jewish, about antisemitism that they say they have suffered or witnessed at party events.

The evidence has been drawn together in the Jewish Labour Movement’s 47-page, 28,000 word submission to the inquiry, which The Times has seen.

Despite Labour’s insistence that Jeremy Corbyn and his team have not interfered in antisemitism complaints, one whistleblower claims that they were ordered to deliver cases to the leader’s office on USB sticks.

The staff member alleges that last summer they were ordered to upload complaints being investigated at the party’s headquarters and take them to Mr Corbyn’s Commons office for his staff to “review, draw up reports and make recommendations regarding further action”.

The whistleblower says that they were told to lie to anyone who asked what they were doing with the USB sticks. The whistleblower also alleges that they were told to discuss the sticks only on their personal email rather than official Labour Party accounts.

The Times has seen emails sent between the personal accounts of Labour officials discussing USB sticks. A Labour source said the party “occasionally seconds staff to do administrative work when there are capacity issues” but that seconded staff “would of course not make any decisions”.

The leaked submission, which was submitted to the inquiry last month, reveals that the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), a formal affiliate of Labour, is asking the EHRC to declare the party institutionally racist. It quotes the MacPherson report’s definition of institutional racism after the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.”

It says: “There can be little doubt that the party is now suffering from this corrosive disease,” and adds: “JLM hopes the commission will recognise the overwhelming evidence that antisemitic behaviour is rife within the party, and that the party is itself responsible for committing, permitting and encouraging antisemitic acts.

“The party’s structures, processes and employees have all contributed to an environment that is profoundly hostile to Jewish members and an organisation that is institutionally antisemitic.”

The organisation pins much of the blame for the situation on Mr Corbyn. “Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader he has made the party a welcoming refuge for antisemites,” the submission says. “He has done that in a number of ways, including by publicly supporting antisemites and antisemitic tropes. The Labour Party is cast in his image.”

More than one of the whistleblowers alleges that when Labour is asked how many complaints are in the backlog, the party excludes cases that are still sitting in its inbox or awaiting review.

One whistleblower claims that as of October there were at least 136 cases concerning antisemitism that were still outstanding, because officials had not prepared the paperwork required for a hearing of the national constitutional committee, Labour’s highest disciplinary body, to take place.

Born into slavery

John Vachon -  September 1940. "St. Mary's County, Maryland. Negro Farm Security Administration clients and their homes -- Mr. and Mrs. Dyson [John and Louise], aged rehabilitation borrowers. Mr. Dyson was born into slavery over eighty years ago."

[Photo: Shorpy/John Vachon]

A banjaxed state of affairs

The view from Canada. Terry Glavin on the unsavoury choices awaiting us here in the UK at the forthcoming general election:

None of the above, then.

That seems to be the underlying sentiment animating most of the United Kingdom’s 46 million voters as next Thursday’s national election approaches. There’s a lot of volatility in the electorate, churned up mostly by Britain’s on-again, off-again Brexit mayhem. Voters are shifting allegiances at an unprecedented pace. Cross-party strategic alliances are confounding pollsters, and tactical voting is all the rage.

There are 650 MPs to elect in a race dominated as usual by the Labour Party and the Conservatives, and the wretched state of leadership in both parties is either the cause of Britain’s national malaise and world-weary befuddlement, or merely its effect. Either way, the banjaxed state of affairs is unprecedented in recent British history.  [...]

Johnson, the former gonzo journalist, “colourful” London mayor and Etonian self-parody, ended up prime minister in July only after a particularly nasty turn in the Conservative Party’s internecine warfare over Brexit strategy forced the resignation of Theresa May, who ended up prime minister only because her Conservative predecessor David Cameron resigned in 2016 after his big idea for a referendum on the EU ended up with the opposite result of his own intentions.

You might think that with this cavalcade of error and malfeasance in their immediate past, with this rap sheet of Conservative incompetence, failure and constitutional crisis so directly responsible for the United Kingdom’s ongoing turmoil, and with more than 14 million Britons living in poverty, this would be Labour’s heyday. But it isn’t.

n Theresa May’s 2017 snap election, with the longtime eccentric backbencher Corbyn suddenly in the wheelhouse, Labour managed to draw only a miserable 30.4 per cent of the popular vote. Just this past summer, an Ipsos-MORI poll showed Corbyn to be the U.K.’s least popular Opposition leader – a dissatisfaction rating of 75 per cent – since Tory Margaret Thatcher’s time in Opposition, in 1978. And Thatcher managed a disapproval rating of only 51 per cent.

But what should be most disturbing to democratic socialists with any sense of decency is the way the Corbynite ascendancy in the Labour Party has caused such deep disaffection among Britain’s Jews. Even the Jewish Labour Movement, for the first time in its 100-year history, is withholding support for Labour going into a national election. The JLM says it will support only “exceptional” Labour candidates, and there aren’t many of those.

Corbyn was a marginal backbencher when a well-organized rush of Labour delegates and a change to voting rules landed him the leader’s job after David Miliband [Ed actually - MH] resigned following the 2015 election. But it’s not like he came out of nowhere. He came to the Office of the Leader of the Opposition straight from his job as chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, a dodgy amalgam of Hezbollah enthusiasts, Communist Party retreads, Trotskyist sectarians, white-poppy wearers and tyrant-fanciers, not least the notorious celebrity backstreet demagogue George Galloway.

Ever since Corbyn took over, the Labour Party has been dogged by allegations of antisemitism – some of which may well by motivated by partisan bias – but also by unambiguous eruptions of unreconstructed antisemitism of the type than cannot be so easily disguised by a mask of “anti-Zionism.” Corbyn has won plaudits from a variety of racist bottom feeders, notably Nick Griffin, formerly of the neo-fascist British National Party, and David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan....

Still waters

At Walthamstow Wetlands:

 

Lenin and Corbyn

The post-war Labour leadership of Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin was instrumental in the founding of NATO - seeing, quite rightly, the threat to Western European democracy from Soviet Communism. A cross-party consensus has existed ever since, supporting an American-led NATO as a vital force for the protection of Western Europe from totalitarian threats.

But not for Jeremy Corbyn. Daniel Finkelstein in the Times today (£) - How Lenin inspired Jeremy Corbyn’s world view: 

The Attlee choice before the Second World War became Labour’s choice after it. Nato was one of the results. Labour believed the alliance with the United States protected Britain’s security and the liberty of western Europe. And it provided resistance to the ambitions of the Soviet Union and a beacon to countries subjugated by Stalin.

Not everyone, however, sees Attlee’s choice in the same way.

For one Labour dissident, the creation of Nato involved “the military re-occupation of Europe”. Accompanying this was “an attempt to create an empire of the mind. The hard power of their [American] weaponry, the malign influence of the CIA, and its creation of pliant and friendly governments actively suppressed and subjugated peoples in the poorest countries of the world”.

Yes, “the influence of the Soviet Union around the world was huge” but it was “tempered by an inadequate industrial base”. And in any case, “the Soviet influence was always different, and its allies often acted quite independently”.

This striking view, which might not be widely shared in, say, Poland, was expressed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2011. It’s also remarkably consistent. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Mr Corbyn told a Morning Star conference that his big concern about the fall of communism was that there would no longer be anyone to protect countries such as Cuba. His political adviser Andrew Murray has been even more forthright. In 1995 he described the fall of communism as “the counter-revolutions . . . which swept away most of the working-class states”. He called the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall a “historic setback for human progress”. Only a few months ago he used the term “cataclysmic” to describe it.

In other words, while every Labour leader since Attlee — even Michael Foot — has agreed with the choice he and Bevin made, the present Labour leader and his team dissent.

What is the intellectual origin of the foreign policy views of Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle? It is Lenin’s theory of imperialism.

In the early 20th century, building on the work of liberals such as John Hobson, Lenin argued that capitalism was being sustained only by the profits from colonial exploitation. These excess profits allowed domestic workers to be paid enough to prevent them from rising up against their capitalist employers. Imperialism was made possible by the power of capitalists to make the state provide military and political protection for their foreign investments.

From this two things follow. All foreign policy by capitalist countries is about creating empires, conquering property and exploiting resources. Kosovo as much as Iraq, Sierra Leone as much as Afghanistan, troops in West Germany as much as in Vietnam. Hence Mr Corbyn’s jaundiced view of Nato and any institutions connected with it, such as the European Union.

So Mr Corbyn argues, as he did in 2011, that “since World War Two, the big imperial force has been the United States on behalf of global capitalism and the biggest, mostly US-based corporations. The propaganda for this has presented itself as a voice for ‘freedom’ and carefully and consciously conflated it with market economics.”

The second thing that follows is that the troops on the front line of the movement to overthrow capitalism are national resistance movements. These are the heroes of socialist advance, even if sometimes they aren’t purely socialist.

So Mr Corbyn has given encouragement and support to the Iranian government, the Irish republicans, Hamas and Hezbollah, and Fidel Castro. He saw Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela as lights to the world, developing a new economic model worth emulating....

The Labour leader ignores or dismisses the idea that any of these groups or countries, such as Iran, might be imperialist powers because all that matters is that they resist western capitalist imperialism. So their imperialism, like that of the Soviet Union, is, he put it, “different”. Where resistance movements have turned to violence or fundamentalism Mr Corbyn says he disapproves but that the root cause is not their behaviour but ours....

There will be some who read this and will think I’m being unfair because I mentioned Lenin and Hezbollah and there is an election coming. But this article is unfair only if it’s an inaccurate description of Mr Corbyn’s views, and given that it is based on things he and his close advisers have written and said, it can’t be. If Mr Corbyn becomes prime minister he and his advisers will control foreign policy. Given that he departs so far from the postwar consensus and the traditional Labour position, it’s as well to understand what he thinks.

Too hostile an environment

Further adventures in trans activism (via):

An Edinburgh University event discussing how gender issues are taught in Scotland's schools has been cancelled amid claims that the safety of women speakers and attendees was at risk.

The research seminar on schools and gender diversity, organised by the university's Institute for Education, Teaching and Leadership, was due to be held next week, but despite plans for increased security staff, the event has been postponed.

Academics, teachers and student teachers, education policy makers, politicians and parents had been invited to attend the seminar which would discuss "complex, sensitive and often controversial issues" around "gender diversity and supporting gender-nonconforming and transgender-identifying pupils in schools".

Organisers had arranged the event in light of the Scottish Government's plan to produce new schools guidance on supporting transgender pupils, after it announced that previous advice, written by charity LGBT Youth, was to be replaced as it risked "potentially excluding other girls from female-only spaces".

"Other girls" here presumably means, um, girls. That is, biological girls. The Scottish Government has, one assumes, been alerted to the fact that the advice supplied by LGBT Youth was not, broadly, acceptable to women who would like female-only spaces to remain female-only spaces.

Which is not acceptable, and cannot even be debated.

The event was set to discuss what the new guidance should look like and how "curricula, pedagogies, pastoral care and safeguarding practices" should be developed to ensure all children and young people can "interrogate gender norms whilst ensuring that gender-nonconforming and transgender-identifying pupils are safe, supported and included in schools"....

However, the event was branded "transphobic" by the university's Staff Pride Network which wrote to management in an attempt to have it stopped. In a blog members of the Network said the seminar would have a "harmful impact" on the "trans and non-binary community at the University."

One of the Network's members, Dr Katie Nicoll Baines, also urged EventBrite, the online ticketing site, to take the seminar from its website, claiming on Twitter that it was "actively platforming speakers with a history of transphobic hate speech" and encouraged people to register for the event, to prevent genuine attendees from being able to get tickets.

Yesterday, a source at the University said the organisers had originally tried to invite LGBT and transgender organisations to take part "to look at what research is telling us and find a way forward", but they had refused to "share a platform" with the other speakers.

"Then there was an attempt to sabotage the event through the ticketing system, and the university management were asked to get involved but they did not do so. The organisers were told that there was going to be too hostile an environment to hold the event and while there would be nine security guards they couldn't guarantee the safety of speakers or attendees - most of whom would likely be women - which is pretty terrifying.

"It has made many women academics feel unsafe on campus and that they are on their own."

Cries of transphobia - "speakers with a history of transphobic hate speech", with no evidence supplied, or asked for - and all debate is shut down. It's getting only too familiar.

Update: more here.

As remote as a recording angel

Angelo Rizzutto was a street photographer in the tradition of Vivian Maier. He was a recluse, and, as with Maier, no one saw his work until after his death. From a 2005 New York Times article:

From May 1952 to June 1966, a troubled recluse named Angelo Rizzuto stalked Manhattan with a camera. He saw a city of solitary beings isolated amid the architectural grandeur, cold streets prowled by disillusioned women, exhausted men and vulnerable children. He ended every roll with a portrait of himself, alone in a spare room, sullenly staring or bizarrely grimacing into the camera, a loner among loners.

No one saw these images while Mr. Rizzuto lived. When he was dying of cancer in 1967, he asked that his photographs -- some 60,000 of them -- be sent to the Library of Congress, along with $50,000 from his estate to finance a book of his work. The library printed a cheap, staple-bound booklet, then used the bulk of Mr. Rizzuto's money to acquire the work of more famous photographers like Diane Arbus.

It would be another 40 years before Mr. Rizzuto got the book he deserved: Michael Lesy's "Angel's World," published this month by W. W. Norton & Company.  [...]

Over the years, Mr. Lesy tracked down Mr. Rizzuto's surviving relatives and neighbors, piecing together his strange, sad story. Mr. Rizzuto was born in Deadwood, S.D., in 1906 and grew up in Omaha. His father, a Sicilian immigrant who founded a successful construction business, saw to Mr. Rizzuto's education, including a brief stint at Harvard Law School. When the father died, his sons fought viciously over his estate, a protracted battle that pushed Mr. Rizzuto to a suicide attempt and left him convinced that his brothers were in league with an international conspiracy of Communists and Jews. After drifting around the country and working odd jobs, he settled in Manhattan, a bitter, paranoid outsider, and began observing the city's multitudes through the camera lens, "as remote as a recording angel," Mr. Lesy writes in the book's introduction, "bearing witness to a world of pain and geometry."

The top image is from Shorpy. The rest are from the NYT.

New York City. 1958. "People gathered at lunch counter."

A street in Lower Manhattan, 1955

Self-portrait, Oct 1960.

"Angel's World" is out of print, but is still available.

The equivalent of cultural genocide

An interview in Der Spiegel with German anthropologist Adrian Zenz, now based in Washington, on China's Oppression of the Uighurs:

DER SPIEGEL: What is the Chinese government trying to achieve with its camp system?

Zenz: It's not just about the camp system. Beijing has the long-term plan of suppressing an entire society. The people in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, particularly the ethnic Uighurs and Kazakhs, are being subjugated by a system of social control that, beyond the forced education and forced labor in the camps, has a deep impact on people's lives down to the village, and even household, level. Even after a person is released from a camp, it is nothing but a release into a condition of helplessness inside an open-air prison. Everyone who has spent time in a camp knows that their families won't be free for generations to come, that once they become parents, they won't be able to speak freely with their children because they will be forced to share everything with their teachers. It is a perfidious, all-encompassing concept of social control that is the equivalent of cultural genocide. 

[...]

DER SPIEGEL: Why didn't China's strategy work in Xinjiang?

Zenz: Because Beijing's approach to governing Xinjiang has been overly heavy-handed without differentiating felt needs. Already under Mao Zedong, major mistakes were made, and draconian policies were applied; entire villages were forced to eat pork. Chinese-style communism, indeed communism in general, commonly relies on a system of reeducation through propaganda. And if that doesn't work, then it turns to harsher measures, such as reeducation camps. The communist regime actually has no other tools at its disposable to reach its goals than reeducation.

DER SPIEGEL: The developments in Xinjiang, in other words, are a consequence of communist ideology?

Zenz: Correct. The importance of ideology has long been underappreciated, which is why many are now surprised by the actions taken by the current regime. I'm not surprised and consider the measures to be ideologically consistent. Ideology may not be the most fundamental force driving human action. That would be fear and self-preservation, and the Chinese Communist Party, at its core, is driven by a fear of losing power. But ideology helps us understand the path that the CCP takes toward self-preservation: namely reeducation, oppression, atheism and forced labor.

DER SPIEGEL: You have described China's policies in Xinjiang as a kind of "Cultural Revolution 2.0." What is the basis for comparing what is currently happening with the Cultural Revolution, Mao's 1960s campaign?

Zenz: It represents the same attempt at imposing an ideology with violence. Due to the technological tools available, it is being instituted in a much more systematic and refined way, but the methods are comparable. People are being arrested on the flimsiest of suspicions and huge groups of people are being criminalized collectively -- not just individuals, but entire sections of the population.

Worth reading in full.

Wearing trousers

This is where we are now, in the world of education:

Bolton School Girls’ Division is considering bringing in trousers for the first time. “There are some young women that feel more comfortable in trousers and it might be because they want to identify as male either now or in the future,” Ms Hincks added.

Well of course. Ms Hincks - head of Bolton School Girls’ Division - has got the message. Playing with boys' toys, showing an interest in cars, and now feeling more comfortable in trousers...off to the clinic with them! Start with the testosterone, then maybe a spot of surgical intervention. "But I just liked having warm legs!" Too late now.

It's from an article on single sex schools, and the challenge from trans activists:

Single-sex private schools across the UK are considering changing policies to admit transgender pupils, putting them on a collision course with parents opposed to the move, The Independent can reveal. 

Headteachers at fee-paying schools say they are open to admitting children based on gender, rather than sex, to avert the possibility of legal challenges.

And elite single-sex schools across the country have begun introducing gender-neutral uniforms and gender-neutral pronouns to make students who are transitioning feel more welcome.  

It comes after charities that support trans children warned refusing to admit them to same-sex schools is discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010.

However, campaigners warn changes to admissions policy could trigger lawsuits from parents who have chosen single-sex education. 

Yes, it's those pesky parents, who aren't up to date with the latest in progressive thinking.

Tanya Carter, of the campaign group the Safe Schools Alliance, said parents who chose a single-sex school could look to take legal action over “safeguarding concerns”.

She said: “We have had parents raising concerns about their daughters at single-sex schools and they now believe that they’ve started to admit male pupils.

“Some parents have found that they’ve been changes in the admission policies but it’s not something they’ve been advertising.”...

But Mermaids, a charity supporting transgender young people, is urging single-sex schools to implement trans-inclusive admission policies as they say “trans girls are girls and trans boys are boys”.

We've come across Mermaids before...

Frost leaves

On the Heath this morning:

US troops in South Korea

This is relevant to the discussion here about American troops in South Korea, and Trump's belief that Seoul should pay more:

The U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services in a report last week said that South Korea is making significant contributions to the cost of maintaining U.S. troops here and its spending of about 2.5 percent of GDP on defense is the highest among U.S. allies. It added Seoul's contributions should be taken into proper consideration in the next rounds of bilateral cost-sharing negotiations.

The committee opposed putting the threat of withdrawing any considerable number of U.S. troops on the negotiation table. It expressed support for diplomatic efforts to achieve complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the North.

Legislation prevents the executive from cutting its troop presence in South Korea below the current level of 28,500 without congressional approval.

But the Donald Trump administration remains adamant that Seoul should pay more. In a reply to a written question from South Korean reporters last week, a State Department spokesperson said the cost of maintaining overseas U.S. troop presence is not a burden that U.S. taxpayers should shoulder alone but must be shared fairly by allies and partners that benefit from it.

The cost-sharing talks resume Tuesday, and Washington is currently demanding an exorbitant five-fold increase in South Korea's already generous contribution.

South Korea is of course a relatively wealthy country. But the whole issue is coloured by the fact that President Moon is by no means a gung-ho supporter of friendly relations with America. His goal, above all, is to improve relations with the North.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Harry Harris has asked ruling and opposition lawmakers what they think of the rumor that President Moon Jae-in is surrounded only by pro-North Korean aides. Harris raised the question when he talked with an opposition lawmaker who is critical of Moon's North Korea policy, during a meeting with 10 lawmakers in September, sources said.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson declined to comment citing an off-the-record agreement the participants reached before the meeting.

So Moon may not find the threat of US troop withdrawal as worrying as he should - with North Korea threatening, and China and Russia very much interested parties. He may use Trump's demands for a greater contribution (leaving aside whether that's reasonable or not) as a reason to cool off on the Seoul-Washington connection. 

All part of the perfect storm that could be heading South Korea's way this winter.

Far north

Downstairs at The Photographers Gallery, When Winter Reigns, from Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti. "His small-scale, meticulously hand-printed and toned silver gelatin prints offer quiet, poetic impressions of distant places, which are both melancholic and humorous."

Images from Here Far Away - now out of print.

[Photos © Pentti Sammallahti]

A bloodless coup

Noted investigative journalist Tom Bower has done his research on the Labour leader. His book Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power, published in February, was widely praised. Even the Guardian called it "The most compelling in-depth study so far". Nor can he be accused of being a Blairite. His Broken Vows: Tony Blair The Tragedy of Power wasn't - as is clear enough from the title - exactly complimentary.

So it's worth paying attention to his piece today in the Sunday Times (£) - In No 10, the coup complete, Jeremy Corbyn’s mask will fall:

Poor opinion polls and a car crash TV interview have not depressed Jeremy Corbyn. On the contrary, after 50 years campaigning for a socialist state, he is astonished by his own success. Through an obstinate unwillingness to compromise, he and a small group of life-long comrades are still going for broke — to fulfil shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s ambition of an “irreversible shift of wealth and power” to transform Britain into a Marxist society.

After a lifetime of agitation, countless demonstrations and conspiracies forged in innumerable meetings, Corbyn and his cabal believe that in two weeks they might be in Downing Street — an ambition that just four years ago was beyond their wildest dreams.

Desperate remainers, eager for a hung parliament to deliver a second referendum, fail to grasp how their reliance on Corbyn as a temporary prime minister could rebound upon them. Corbyn and McDonnell will conjure any pretext to enter Downing Street, offering unlimited promises to secure the support of the Lib Dems and Scots nationalists.

Once inside, any institutional shackles would disappear. Within hours, unrestrained by parliament or law, Corbyn and McDonnell would strip away their mask and use executive powers to neutralise opposition from unsympathetic civil servants, judges, quangocrats and military officers. Both by dismissal of foes and the appointment of their supporters to key positions, they would execute a bloodless coup.  [...]

No authority can restrict Corbyn’s powers as prime minister to purge Whitehall. With the backing of the Unite leader, Len McCluskey, any establishment attempt to “sabotage” the government would be crushed by strikes and follow a blueprint outlined by Lenin — an inspiration to Corbyn’s comrades for 50 years.

Corbyn never imagined his destination would be Downing Street when, as a 20-year old volunteer teacher in Jamaica in 1969, he was persuaded that white imperialists financed by Jews had enslaved the world’s workers. Britain, he became convinced, was a bastion of racism, inequality and exploitation.

Impaired by his own lacklustre ambitions and limited education — he had scraped through two A-levels and failed a third — he dreamt of a socialist paradise to empower losers like himself.

On his return to Britain he joined the Labour Party and in 1972 attended a Young Socialists’ weekend camp in Skegness organised by Trotskyists. In that unfashionable seaside town, Corbyn learnt of Lenin’s advice to his British followers: “Support the Labour Party as the rope supports the hanged man.” His ambition was to infiltrate Labour, get elected as an MP, take power and destroy capitalism. “Jeremy was a Trotskyist,” recalled Jane Chapman, his first wife. “No doubt about it.”

Corbyn’s battlefield in the 1970s was Haringey, north London, where he upset residents by encouraging squatters and allowing gypsies to live in local parks.

For most Britons, it was a wretched decade. But for Corbyn it was a magnificent roller-coaster. Endless strikes, 25% inflation, harsh devaluation and crippling interest rates almost tipped capitalism into an existential crisis. Employed by the National Union of Public Employees, he repeatedly organised strikes of council workers against local authorities.  [...]

Over the past months, Corbyn and McDonnell have conjured an image of benign visionaries, the grandfather and the bank manager, to defuse fears of a Labour government.

The reality is that even if they fail on December 12, Corbyn and his successors will resume their struggle the next day in the conviction that eventually the red flag will flutter over Downing Street. And once inside, no power will ever remove them.

God knows I'm no Corbyn supporter, but even I can't quite recognise the Machiavellian schemer that Bower presents here. More of a bumbler and a dolt than a proto-Lenin, I'd say, our Jeremy. McDonnell and Seumas Milne and the rest - OK, that's a different story. 

Still, worth considering as election day draws near. It may come across like a Mail editorial, but it is Tom Bower.

Trouble ahead for Seoul

Trump has made it quite clear that he's not happy with all those American troops in South Korea. The implication is clear enough: either the South Koreans pay more, or the troops come home. $5 billion from Seoul next year is the figure quoted, which is more than five times the $924 million that they agreed to shoulder this year. 

Here's the case for ending the presence of US troops on the Korean peninsula:

The Cold War is over. South Korea has raced far ahead of the North. Pyongyang cannot expect military support from China or Russia. The United States government is essentially bankrupt. Why shouldn’t South Korea pay more for its defense—or even defend itself?  [...]

The South’s reluctance to give up its good deal should surprise no one. However, South Koreans are not entitled to a cheap ride at American expense. The principle is simple: serious, mature, developed nations should defend themselves. Unique circumstances might warrant U.S. support for other countries—like the ROK in the aftermath of the Korean War. But when those circumstances pass away, so should American defense subsidies....

Acting like a shield behind which the South could recover after the Korean War was a good policy. However, that era passed long ago and policy should change. South Korea could do far more. 

The South Koreans have bent a little to the will of Washington. In August, Seoul announced it would withdraw from the intelligence-sharing General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Tokyo. That came during a trade row that broke out in the summer, a disagreement rooted in South Korea’s historical grievances over forced labor - specifically, the issue of "comfort women" - during the Japanese colonial period from 1910 to 1940. Last week they changed their mind, to sighs of relief all around.

Still, there are reasons for concern.

Victor Cha makes a strong case for a "perfect storm" brewing for South Korea this winter, threatening the US-South Korea alliance. He identifies three components:

The first is a nuclear deal with North Korea, that is almost certain before Christmas now that John Bolton, the most influential voice in the Hanoi summit's uneventful outcome, is now out of the White House. This deal will probably not be a good one in that its scope will be delimited mostly to Yongbyon; it will not be verifiable; and the U.S. will give too much in lifting sanctions. But both President Moon Jae-in and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump, who have both staked so much of their credibility on a deal with Kim, will not just accept a suboptimal deal, but will declare with it an end to hostilities on the Korean Peninsula in the form of a peace declaration. 

The second component of the storm will be the cost-sharing negotiations between the U.S. and South Korea. With less than four weeks remaining before the current agreement expires, the U.S. request for $5 billion from the South Korean government is politically impossible for Moon. There is a slim chance that the two sides will again opt for a one-year extension of the current arrangement, but Trump is likely to overrule this and will hold firm on the $5 billion mark. This will mean SMA [Special Measures Agreement] negotiations between the two allies will fail by the end of December with the American casting the Koreans as "ungrateful" and the Koreans casting the American as "greedy."

The third element is Trump's disdain for U.S. troops in Korea. According to CSIS' unique dataset, scraped from 30 years of public statements by Trump about troops in Korea, the U.S. president has believed that American troops in Korea are expensive, unnecessary, and a detriment to U.S. interests because allies free-ride off U.S. largesse while also cheating the ally on trade. Since 1990 there are over 114 statements to this effect and they are remarkably consistent.

The perfect storm in the winter of 2019-2020 therefore is a peace deal with North Korea and a failed SMA negotiation that causes Trump to act on his beliefs. Specifically, his anger over Seoul's refusal to pay no more than a fraction of the $5 billion demand, coupled with an end of war declaration, will cause Trump to act on his 30-year long instinct to draw down or fully withdraw forces from Korea. As ludicrous as this scenario may sound to experts, Trump would boast that the deal with North Korea is the "best deal ever" with his good friend Kim; that he has ended the Korean war; and that he can now "bring the boys home" because there is peace in Korea and the "ungrateful" South Koreans don't want to pay for U.S. troops. Moreover, he will tell his political base during the campaign that this move is saving money wasted on foreigners and therefore he is putting "America first."

It could happen. With China showing increasing signs of friendship towards the North - the latest news has more North Korean workers heading for China, in defiance of UN sanctions - and Russia always waiting to step in when America leaves the ring, as we've seen in the Middle East, things could turn nasty for the South Koreans very quickly.

Would Trump sell out Seoul, and claim a wonderful deal with his great friend Kim? Absolutely he would, if he wanted some quick favourable headlines for a change.