Mick Hartley

Cloudscape 2

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde and his indoor clouds:

[Berndnaut Smilde/Photo by Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk]

Nimbus II, 2012. Hotel MariaKapel, Hoorn, Netherlands.

Cloudscape

Huangshan, China:

[Photo: Xinhua /Landov / Barcroft Media]

Cries of betrayal

A new Paul Berman piece is always worth reading. The Arab Spring, he believes, has now entered Phase Three. Phase One marked the liberal origins, with the overthrow of the old order; Phase Two the seeming triumph of the Islamists. Now, though, the people are fighting back against the Islamists. But has Obama noticed?

The entire development ought to make us wonder about a couple of aspects of American policy. In the years after the Second World War, the United States constructed all kinds of international institutions to cope with the new circumstances, military and otherwise. But here we are nearly a dozen years after 9/11, and the level of military coordination among the anti-terrorist allies is such that, somehow or another, France felt it necessary to venture into Mali alone. Naturally the United States supplied a bit of aid, after a while. The commentaries in the French press make it clear, however, that France is feeling a little blue in its moment of military bravura—proud of its own achievements, but feeling abandoned by the other military powers of the European Union, and genuinely offended by the United States and its tepid support. The White House response to the French invasion, in the estimation of Le Nouvel Observateur, which is normally warm toward President Obama, “bordered on insult.”...

A couple of weeks ago, an articulate human-rights champion in Egypt named Bahieddin Hassan published an open letter to President Obama in al-Ahram Weekly reminding the president of a good aspect of his Cairo speech—the American president’s promise to stand by the peoples of the region. Only, the letter complained that lately the White House, instead of standing with the people, has been issuing statements that tend to shore up the new government in Egypt—just as, in the past, the United States used to shore up the government of Hosni Mubarak. Is the open letter entirely fair to Obama? Those of us who are merely far-away observers have no way to judge. But the letter and its complaint ought to strike us, in any case, as familiar—a mirror reflection of heartrending complaints we have seen from Syrian rebels who, fighting against the Baath on one side, are also hoping to fend off the Islamists on the other, and are desperate for our help, and are not receiving it; all of which mirrors complaints we used to see, back in 2009, from Iranians who would have also have appreciated a few signs of American support in their own protests against Islamist rule.

At least in 2009 the American master-thinkers could have argued that, in Iran, the Islamist government was not about to tumble from power, and there was no point in encouraging the protesters. But in these early weeks of 2013, when no one can pretend any longer that Islamism has some automatic claim on the entire region, the several mutterings and complaints and cries of betrayal from our own friends and fellow-liberals and closest allies ought to be getting under our skin.

Sensations of 1945

Pianist Dorothy Donegan, together with Gene Rogers coming in on the other piano, and a manic Cab Calloway waving his baton around:

From the film "Sensations of 1945", starring dancer Eleanor Powell (see a spectacular dance sequence from the film here) with Dennis O'Keefe, and including the last appearance of WC Fields before his death in 1946.

But that extraordinary Dorothy Donegan....

She was classically trained, as well as being a protégée of Art Tatum, who once called her "the only woman who can make me practice." [She said about Tatum that "He was supposed to be blind...I know he could see women."] 

In 1943, Donegan became the first black artist to perform at Chicago's Orchestra Hall. She later said of her pathbreaking performance:

In the first half I played Rachmaninoff and Grieg and in the second I drug it through the swamp – played jazz. Claudia Cassidy reviewed the concert on the first page of the Chicago Tribune. She said I had a terrific technique and I looked like a Toulouse-Lautrec lithograph.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of her, it may be because "her flamboyant personality, tendency to mix unrelated genres in the same concert, and willingness to do lounge music may have caused her to be undervalued in jazz circles". Critic Ben Ratliff argued in the New York Times that "her flamboyance helped her find work in a field that was largely hostile to women. To a certain extent, it was also her downfall; her concerts were often criticized for having an excess of personality."

She herself was quite clear that it was plain old sexism, along with her insistence on being paid the same rates as male musicians, that limited her career.

She died aged 76 in 1998.

Cafe, Amsterdam

My shot:

[Photo: National Geopgraphic/Marko Savic]

Mmm, Duvel...

 

Lake Bokod

One of the entries to the Environmental Photographer of the Year Competition:

Nuclear Winter: Photographer Zoltán Balogh took this picture on a very cold winter day in 2012 on the shore of Lake Bokod near Oroszlány, Hungary.  He explains:  'This lake is known for the little fisherman houses and the warm temperature of the lake's water. The Oroszlány Power Plant is situated in front of the houses and the lake is never frozen in wintertime. When I took this photo, smoke erupted from the power plant and then it just started to snow'.

Syria on steroids

Well, I'm glad someone's said it. David Aaronovitch in the Times (£) is unrepentant about his support for Saddam's overthrow ten years ago:

Saddam was not a Robert Mugabe or a Korean Kim. He was far worse — a terrible blend of external aggression and internal repression. In 1980 he invaded Iran and 400,000 died. In the Eighties he killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds in a genocidal campaign. Both times he used chemical and biological weapons. In 1990 he invaded Kuwait. In 1991 he put down the Shia uprising with up to 50,000 deaths. His refusal to abide by UN resolutions in the next decade led to sanctions that had a terrible impact on Iraqis.

No invasion, and Saddam, or his murderous sons, Qusay and the psychopathic Uday, would still be there. Or not? “No!” object many anti-war people. “Saddam would have been toppled by the Arab Spring! Or there’d have been a coup!”

And I look at Syria — where Assad, the palest version of Saddam, has presided over a repression and a civil war that has killed 70,000 in two years in a country significantly smaller than Iraq. Right now, the unaided Syrian opposition is compromised by extreme jihadis filling the vacuum we have left.

If Saddam had been left unscathed, can one imagine what he might be doing now as Syria implodes? And if he’d been sprung by the Spring, surely Saddam’s civil war would have been Syria on steroids; the conflagration that could have absorbed the region.

We feel more strongly about Iraq, where we intervened and shared the trauma, than about Syria where we didn’t and haven’t. How we’ll judge our response ten years on from the first demonstration in Damascus I have no idea but a great foreboding.

[I see that even in a review in the New Statesman of the SWP's Richard Seymour's hack job on Hitchens which takes the wretched Seymour to pieces and properly celebrates Hitchens' record as a fine journalist and polemicist, it's still felt necessary to point out that Hitchens "was wrong – unforgivably wrong – about Iraq". Such is the official, unshakeable, view from the Left. 

My favourite, though, in the ten-year anniversary round of discussions on Iraq, is this classic Leftist comment on a piece at Chris Dillow's Stumbling and Mumbling: "Ironic someone would advocate starting an unprovoked war in the name of anti-fascism. Ethiopia 1935, Poland 1939, Iraq 2003 - what's the difference?" Particularly amusing - ironic, even - given that the subject under debate was the refusal of so many on the Left to see how there could ever have been any good reason for wanting to see Saddam overthrown.]

An absolute arsehole jamboree

The other side of London's supposed "dramatic loss of white British residents", as revealed in the Daily Mash:

As figures confirm an exodus of affluent Londoners, experts confirmed that intolerable twats could no longer be avoided in even the most remote places.

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “Thanks to broadband internet and paranoia, anywhere with grass and birds within a 400-mile radius of the metropolis is almost entirely populated by dreadful people with MacBooks who work in ‘branding’.

“The UK has reached a kind of ‘bullshit tipping point’ where if you want to avoid the kind of people you get in London, you have to move to London.”...

Digital media executive Stephen Malley recently moved to the Cotswolds: “I am a massive tool and was worried the move from London might cut me off from similarly loathsome people.

“Turns out this village is an absolute arsehole jamboree. Virtually everyone in it is stinking rich and self-absorbed, it’s basically Queen’s Park with breathable air.

“On Sundays we get in the pub with our little arsehole children and spread our possessions over all available seating.”

Village shop owner Roy Hobbs said: “I always try to treat all outsiders with equal contempt.

“But when people come in here asking for Monocle magazine, I set the dog on them.”

A new-born puppy

Is this a sign of a new assertiveness?

North Korea has been criticised for remarks about the "final destruction" of South Korea made during a UN debate on disarmament.

North Korean diplomat Jon Yong Ryong told the meeting in Geneva that "South Korea's erratic behaviour would only herald its final destruction".

The comments come after North Korea's third nuclear test on 12 February.

There was immediate criticism of the comments from other nations, including South Korea and Britain.

Mr Jon said: "As the saying goes, a new-born puppy knows no fear of a tiger. South Korea's erratic behaviour would only herald its final destruction."

Without specifically referring to the nuclear test, Mr Jon said North Korea had recently taken a "resolute step for self-defence", which he described as "strong counter-actions to a foreign aggressor".

"If the US takes a hostile approach toward the DPRK (North Korea) to the last, rendering the situation complicated, it (North Korea) will be left with no option but to take the second and third stronger steps in succession," he added.

Britain's ambassador at the talks, Joanne Adamson, said such language was "completely inappropriate".

Thank God for the British ambassador! I imagine the North Koreans were suitably chastened.

Opinion is divided as to how concerned South Korea should be:

North Korea’s choice to threaten South Korea with “final destruction” during a UN meeting yesterday has caused consternation among experts in Seoul, with some seeing it as the dawn of a new level of threat against South Korea, while others dismiss it as more of the same from a predictable enemy....

Representing those who believe North Korea is now showing a greater degree of assertiveness in light of its asymmetrical military superiority, Park Young Ho, a senior researcher with the Korea Institute for National Unification, warned, “We have to regard this as North Korea employing an active strategy of using nuclear weapons to turn South Korea into a military hostage.”

“North Korea believes it has overwhelming military power over South Korea, if it excludes the U.S. nuclear umbrella and conventional forces,” he went on, adding, “The nuclear threat to South Korea is greater than the past threat from conventional weaponry. With the success of its ICBMs and the nuclear test, they will now start actively threatening South Korea.”

However, other experts don’t believe that the situation is that grave. Kim Tae Woo, a former chairman of KINU, dismissed it as a weatherworn effort to tame a new South Korean government.

Kim stated, “It is not at all surprising; it is North Korea’s normal way of threatening South Korea. The remarks were made on the UN stage, meaning that it was a warning to the Park administration not to partake of sanctions.”

He added, “North Korean has threatened South Korea a number of times in the past by saying that Seoul will be turned into a sea of fire. This is just a change of wording that does not mean anything special.”

Well, he has a point. And if the South Koreans feel threatened, should the US be equally concerned? After all, they're being threatened too. From the official KCNA, under the somewhat unfortunate headline, DPRK Service Personnel Vow to Give U.S. Imperialists Finishing Stroke:

Upon hearing the news of the successful third underground nuclear test, soldiers of the Korean People's Army at the post on Mt. Taedok renewed their will to mercilessly wipe out those who dare provoke the DPRK. 

Officer Han Jin Hyok said he was very pleased to hear the news, adding:

The DPRK demonstrated once again the grit and pluck of Songun Korea which does what it is determined to do and the iron faith and will of the great Paektusan nation, which never makes an empty talk.

I feel highly proud of being soldiers of the peerlessly brilliant commander....

Non-commissioned officer Ri Il Gwon said:

It is the spirit of the powerful revolutionary army of Mt. Paektu to strike enemies once it is determined to do and emerge a victor in any battle.

We warn the brigandish U.S. imperialists. They should bear in mind that they can never escape a deadly strike, should they infringe upon the sovereignty of the DPRK even a bit.

Soldier Ri Jong Hak said:

Let us blow up such land as the U.S., cesspool of injustice and malignant tumor-like entity on the earth. These are angry voices of the service personnel of the KPA heard from its every post.

The ruins of Aleppo

The result of a Syrian government airstrike on Aleppo:

[Photo: AP]

"This citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows people searching through the debris of destroyed buildings in the aftermath of a strike by Syrian government forces, in the neighbourhood of Jabal Bedro, Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday 19 February, 2013."

Meanwhile, despite still being technically in a state of war with Syria, and being understandably reluctant to get involved in the internal violence, Israel let in seven wounded Syrians for treatment at the weekend - and, according to the Times of Israel, are now planning to erect a field hospital:

The decision to set up the hospital was taken two days after Israeli troops — in an unprecedented move in the two-year Syrian civil war — evacuated seven wounded Syrian refugees to an Israeli hospital after they had approached the border and appealed for help.

According to the plan, reported by Channel 10 on Monday night, the makeshift hospital will be set up close to the border in the central Golan Heights or near the Quneitra border crossing with Syria. The logic behind the move, the report said, was for Israel to be prepared to meet further possible medical pleas from additional Syrian refugees without having to take them for treatment inside Israeli territory.

The IDF reportedly expects that after Saturday’s incident, Syrian refugees will flock to Israel for sanctuary from the bloody civil war that has wracked Syria for two years and claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Is there no end to the Zionist scheming?