Mick Hartley

Dutch courage

A school in The Hague that survived Nazi occupation in WWII has retracted its plan to erect a Shoah memorial plaque due to fear of local reaction:

Before the Holocaust, the building of the Paul Kruger School, in the Schilderswijk neighborhood, housed the Joodsch Lyceum, a Jewish high school...

Last week, the De Telegraaf daily reported that the school dropped the plan following objections by local residents who said a Holocaust plaque might not be acceptable to some members of Schilderswijk’s sizable Muslim population, but Brasjen [a school spokesman] said he was not aware of such objections....

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, a Hague-based watchdog on anti-Semitism, wrote in a statement Monday that “it seems that the school feared there would be protests,” but “there is little reason to fear violence against memorial monuments for Jewish children in the area.”

No, of course not.

Anat Harel, a co-organizer of a Holocaust commemoration event May 4 at the school, told De Telegraaf that a poster advertising the event could not be placed outside the building “because of concerns regarding kids hanging around the school.”....

The De Telegraaf report came on the heels of a story in the Trouw daily that said a part of the Schilderswijk neighborhood had turned into a “Sharia area,” where police dare not enter and non-Muslims are regularly harassed — claims that city officials have denied.

See also here (via):

On May 4th, National Memorial Day, the school had programs with many lectures about the war as well as an announcement made that the plaque would not be hung in fear that stones would be thrown through the school’s windows.

During the Nazi occupation, the Paul Kruger high school was a place for Jewish children that had to leave their other schools because of Nazi orders. 

Human, all too human

The ongoing sense that Iranians maintain in many ways an increasingly modern and sophisticated culture, despite the misfortune of being ruled currently by one of the worst and most reactionary regimes in the world, is reinforced by Afshin Shahi's FP piece:

Good data on Iranian sexual habits are, not surprisingly, tough to come by. But a considerable amount can be gleaned from the official statistics compiled by the Islamic Republic. Declining birth rates, for example, signal a wider acceptance of contraceptives and other forms of family planning -- as well as a deterioration of the traditional role of the family. Over the last two decades, the country has experienced the fastest drop in fertility ever recorded in human history. Iran's annual population growth rate, meanwhile, has plunged to 1.2 percent in 2012 from 3.9 percent in 1986 -- this despite the fact that more than half of Iranians are under age 35.

At the same time, the average marriage age for men has gone up from 20 to 28 years old in the last three decades, and Iranian women are now marrying at between 24 and 30 -- five years later than a decade ago. Some 40 percent of adults who are of marriageable age are currently single, according to official statistics. The rate of divorce, meanwhile, has also skyrocketed, tripling from 50,000 registered divorces in the year 2000 to 150,000 in 2010. Currently, there is one divorce for every seven marriages nationwide, but in larger cities the rate gets significantly higher....

Meanwhile, the underground sex industry has taken off in the last two decades. In the early 1990s, prostitution existed in most cities and towns -- particularly in Tehran -- but sex workers were virtually invisible, forced to operate deep underground. Now prostitution is only a wink and a nod away in many towns and cities across the country. Often, sex workers loiter on certain streets, waiting for random clients to pick them up. Ten years ago, Entekhab newspaper claimed that there were close to 85,000 sex workers in Tehran alone....

So what is driving Iran's sexual revolution? There are a number of potential explanations, including economic factors, urbanization, new communication tools, and the emergence of a highly educated female population -- all of which are probably partly responsible for changing attitudes toward sex. At the same time, however, most of these factors are at play in other countries in the region that are not experiencing analogous transitions. (Indeed, a wave of social conservatism is sweeping much of the Middle East, while Iran moves in the opposite direction.) So what is different in Iran? Paradoxically, it is the puritanical state -- rigid, out of touch, and dedicated to combating "vice" and promoting "virtue" -- that seems to be powering Iran's emergent liberal streak....

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that swept Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini into power, the Iranian regime has promoted the idea of collective morality, imposing strict codes of conduct and all but erasing the boundary between private and public spheres. Maintaining the Islamic character of the country has been one of the regime's main sources of legitimacy, and as such, there is virtually no facet of private life that is not regulated by its interpretation of Islamic law. (Indeed, clerics regularly issue fatwas on the acceptability of intimate -- and sometimes extraordinarily unlikely-- sexual scenarios.) But 34 years on, Khomeini's successor has failed to create a utopian society -- a fact that lays bare the moral and ideological bankruptcy of a regime that is already struggling with economic and political crises.

This inconvenient truth is not lost on young people in Iran, where changing sexual habits have become a form of passive resistance. In defying the strictures of the state, Iranians are (consciously or subconsciously) calling its legitimacy into question....

Slowly but surely, Iran's sexual revolution is exhausting the ideological zeal of a state that is wedded to the farcical notion of a utopian society and based on brittle, fundamentalist principles.

A Hard Life

Probably from around 1947 or '48 -  Country goes jazz, with a touch of blues, gorgeous-sounding guitars, plus hipster caps and moustache. Roy Lanham and the Whippoorwills:

 

Roy on lead guitar (though he misses out at the start of the solo at 2:10, when both he and the mandolin set off: it sorts itself out), Doug Dalton mandolin, Gene Monbeck rhythm guitar, Dusty Rhodes bass, and "Sweet Georgia Brown" aka Juanita Vastine, on vocals.

Originally called the Fidgety Four. A name change was probably wise.

You can read about Roy Lanham here. 

The Critic

Photographer Weegee, real name Arthur Fellig, was a relentless documenter of the seamy side of New York in the 1930s and 40s. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly gruesome scenes of crime, injury and death which he found by following the emergency services as they dealt with the violence and tragedies of the city. He was supposed to have acquired his nickname from Ouija, as in Ouija board, because of his uncanny ability to arrive so quickly at crime scenes.

He was also unashamedly a populist, on the side of the little people against the wealthy Manhattanites. In that vein here's one of his most famous pictures..."The Critic":

Opening night at the Metropolitan Opera, taken November 22, 1943, and first published in LIFE, December 6, 1943. 

It became a classic image of New York's class divide.

The other day I came across this photo by Simon Nathan:

"Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh, never seen at an opening without her diamond tiara, talks to Photographer Weegee, 1945."

The same ladies, the same fur coats, very likely the same jewellery, but not the same occasion. It's two years later. They don't seem too happy, the ladies - see the daggers look from the one on the left - though Weegee himself is all smiles. Is the bejewelled Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh remonstrating because she was made to look foolish on their earlier meeting? Very likely - but she had good cause. That 1943 picture was a set-up:

The opening night of the Metropolitan Opera in 1943 was advertised as a Diamond Jubilee to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the company. In a recent interview, Louie Liotta, a photographer who acted as Weegee's assistant, recalled that Weegee has been planning this photograph for a while. Liotta, at Weegee's request, picked up one of the regular women customers at Sammy's on the Bowery at about 6:30 p.m. With a sufficient amount of cheap wine for the woman, they proceeded to the opera house. When they arrived, the limousines owned by the members of high society were just beginning to discharge their passengers. Weegee asked Liotta to hold the now intoxicated woman near the curb as he stood about twenty feet away from the front doors of the opera house. With a signal worked out in advance, Weegee gave the sign to Liotta, who releasd the woman, hoping all the while that she could keep her balance long enough for Weegee to expose several plates. The moment had finally arrived: Mrs. George Washington Kavenaugh and Lady Decies were spotted getting out of a limousine. Both women were generous benefactors to numerous cultural institutions in New York and Philadelphia, and Weegee knew that they were known to every newspaper in New York. Liotta recalled the moment he released the disheveled woman: "It was like an explosion. I thought I went blind from the three or four flash exposures which Weegee made within a very few seconds." For his part, Weegee told the story that he "discovered" the woman viewing the opera patrons after the negative had been developed, never revealing the prank, saying it was as much a surprise to him as anyone.

So, even this early in the history of photojournalism, things aren't always quite what they seem. 

Here's another striking Weegee picture I came across recently which also may not be quite what it seems:

All done with mirrors.

 

Brooklyn view

Lower Manhattan and the financial district, taken from the Hotel Bossert in Brooklyn by Samuel Gottscho, March 1933:

[Photo: Shorpy/Samuel Gottscho]

From Shorpy commenter Peter:

The three tall buildings in the center of this view, from left to right: 20 Exchange Place (flat top); 40 Wall Street, aka the Trump Building (dark spire top); and 70 Pine Street, formerly the Cities Service Building (light spire top). None were more than a couple years old when this picture was taken.

What with the Great Depression and then World War II, there wouldn't be any more significant skyscraper construction for many years, and when construction finally resumed most buildings would have the more contemporary curtain-wall appearance. Masonry construction as seen in these buildings would seldom be used again. Samuel Gottscho really was documenting the end of an era in this picture, though of course he didn't have any way of knowing that.

The Chrysler (1930) and Empire State (1931) buildings, of course, are out of sight off to the right.

Chicago 1948

"Afternoon game at table 2":

Photographed by Wayne Miller, who died last week aged 94.

A Magnum slide show, Chicago's South Side, 1946-1948 (click on "view photo details"):

Wayne Miller's photographs chronicle a black Chicago of fifty years ago: the South Side community that burgeoned as thousands of African Americans, almost exclusively from the South, settled in the city during the Great Migration of the World War II years. The black-and-white images provide a visual history of Chicago at the height of its industrial order when the stockyards, steel mills, and factories were booming, but more importantly, they capture the intimate moments in the daily lives of ordinary people.

 

The Kim Cult

A few examples, from New Focus International...

Textbooks:

A photograph of what was allegedly a North Korean textbook began to appear on internet sites in South Korea. However, a North Korean refugee who saw the photo immediately recognized it as a fake. Indeed, the book turned out to be a South Korean reconstruction of a North Korean textbook, created for security training purposes. How could he tell that the textbook was a fake?

It wasn’t anything so sophisticated as paper type, and it wasn’t even the content. What gave it away was that a line-break separated Kim Jong-il’s name into two halves. In North Korea, the Kims’ names must always be written on one line [and in bold type], something that could not realistically have been  foreseen by the South Korean person who created the copy.

Photography:

Statues belonging to the cult of Kim must be fully visible in photos, and the icons must not have parts cut off by the frame. Even though the photo taken is of the statue of Kim, rather than of Kim himself, it is a legal requirement that his entire body is visible in photographs.

Films:

[W]hen shooting a movie about Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, even North Korea’s elderly actors will have to treat a young man in his 20s with the respect they would show the current ruler. Because as soon as the actor is in costume as Kim, he becomes as sacrosanct as Kim.

According to one well-known story, when famed director Ryu Ho Sun, over 60 years of age, forgot this and yelled at the actor playing Kim Il-sung during filming, he was sent to a re-education camp.

Newspapers:

In North Korea, you are not allowed to use an old newspaper for anything other than reading if a photograph of Kim Jong-il appears in it. You must collect those editions separately and return them; anyone who uses the newspaper as scrap or to repaper something, or rolls it up to use when making a cigarette, etc. is punished.

Portraits:

If you want to become a hero in North Korea, you can grab a portrait of Kim Il-sung rather than your personal belongings in the case of a fire. There have been actual cases in North Korea where this occurred and the North Korea regime hailed the said person as a hero.

In an extreme case, when a stray object thrown during a marital argument disturbed Kim Il-sung’s portrait, the wife reported it to the authorities and the husband was taken away. 

Every cult must have its enemies. Here's a nice colourful poster on the streets of Pyongyang (from this Telegraph gallery):

[Photo: Eric Lafforgue]

The caption: "It's exciting to beat up the American bastards".

Nothing to do with Islam?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

I've seen this before. A Muslim terrorist slays a non-Muslim citizen in the West, and representatives of the Muslim community rush to dissociate themselves and their faith from the horror. After British soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death last week in Woolwich in south London, Julie Siddiqi, representing the Islamic Society of Britain, quickly stepped before the microphones to attest that all good Muslims were "sickened" by the attack, "just like everyone else."

This happens every time. Muslim men wearing suits and ties, or women wearing stylish headscarves, are sent out to reassure the world that these attacks have no place in real Islam, that they are aberrations and corruptions of the true faith....

On both sides of the Atlantic, politicians, academics and the media have shown incredible patience as the drumbeat of Islamist terror attacks continues. When President Obama gave his first statement about the Boston bombings, he didn't mention Islam at all. This week, Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson have repeated the reassuring statements of the Muslim leaders to the effect that Lee Rigby's murder has nothing to do with Islam.

But many ordinary people hear such statements and scratch their heads in bewilderment. A murderer kills a young father while yelling "Allahu akbar" and it's got nothing to do with Islam?

The other point of view

James Bloodworth on Woolwich:

What remains a mystery, however, is why the left still struggles to recognise an enemy when it is staring it fixedly in the face. It's seems an obvious point to make but it is one that many ‘progressives’ this past week have been seemingly incapable of grasping let alone saying out loud: fascists are neither exclusively white nor strictly Western.

One factor here, as I've already argued, is that anti-racism has been such an iconic, defining force on the western left over the past decades that it's still very hard to criticise a cultural practice, like Islam, which is mainly associated with Asian immigrants and the children of Asian immigrants. It goes against every kind of ingrained principle. This isn't helped by the fact that some critics of Islam/Islamism are indeed racist, so it feels as though you're playing into the racists' hands; and also by the use of terms like "Islamophobia" which implies that Muslims aren't simply followers of a particular religion, but are a group, a community, with an unchangeable identity.

There's also another related point which maybe doesn't get the attention it deserves...

We all know enough about the past to be aware of the simplistic moral world of the tribe. It was the way the world used to work. We're right, they're wrong....we're civilised, they're savages....we're good, they're bad. It's been the driving force for wars and conflicts throughout recorded history and before that too. It takes a certain level of sophistication to become aware of this ethnocentrism and to rise above it. It's perhaps one of the great achievements of modern civilisation to make such a moral universalism not just an aspiration but to a considerable degree a reality; to spread our empathy to include not just our own group but to include every person on the planet.

Generally it's the left which claims credit for this. It's certainly the way the left likes to see itself, in contrast to the right. We're on the side of the immigrant, the oppressed, the other. They're on the side of the establishment, the oppressors, the colonialists. They still believe the West is best. We know better.

It's certainly an improvement, in moral terms, to see the other point of view, as opposed to maintaining a blind faith in the rightness of one's own cause. But it can get silly. It can become a way to advertise one's own moral superiority. It can become an end in itself. 

Chomsky's the master of the art of the moral reversal. We're led to believe - the western media make us think - that we're the heroes of history. But no: we're the villains! We fought the Nazis, and think we're wonderful - but we're the new Nazis! It takes people of a rare moral strength and vision to be able to see this, says the man. People like...well, like me...and, perhaps, like you. 

And there we go. The left have that degree of moral superiority over the right because they can see what those old dinosaurs on the right can't see: that our side isn't always right...that the west isn't always the best. It's some kind of internet law (in the spirit of Godwin's Law) that any criticism of a foreign culture, a criticism of something that's happened in a non-western society, will inevitably, at some point, be met with a comment to the effect that, hey, we're no better. In fact, y'know, we're probably worse. So let's take the beams out of our own eyes before we criticise the motes over there. And the person making that comment will do so in the sure belief that they are raising the moral tone: that they are providing the necessary counterbalance to the forces of a simplistic ethics, enabling the conversation to transcend primitive tribal thinking.

Except, sometimes criticism is necessary. Sometimes, however good it is to be reminded of the dangers of tribal thinking, you need to keep your critical faculties with you too.

Puffins

It's hard, once you see it, to stop thinking of puffins as having had those beaks clamped on to their poor little faces as someone's idea of a joke:

[Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images]

Or they glued them on for a party - and now they won't come off. You can see how sad this makes them. Or is that embarrassment? Behind those silly beaks are sensitive birds, struggling to maintain some measure of dignity.

This is on the Farne Islands, off the Northumbrian coast. When we were there I remember the seals more than the puffins. The best place for puffins, I can confirm, is Skomer Island, off the Pembrokeshire coast.