Mick Hartley

Bluebells

The Ashridge Estate, Hertfordshire:

 

Children kill their parents in cold blood for money...

The fightback against that UN Report on Human Rights in North Korea starts here.

Perhaps inspired by the sheer chutzpah of Saudi Arabia criticising Norway, the North Korean KCNA take on South Korea - colonial puppets of the US - and expose the World's Poorest Human Rights Record:

The U.S. regard south Koreans as no more than ducks in water, pheasants in the mountains and rats in fields. GIs consider south Korean women as no more than sexual playthings.

The U.S.-led foreign monopoly capital accounts for 30 percent of the south Korean stock market and big businesses and banks hold more than 50 percent of stocks, swaying over the south Korean economy. They rake in profits running to billions of U.S. dollars from stock dividends only every year.

The U.S. monopoly capital stalks in south Korea, making businesses of south Korea go bankrupt and its people languish in unemployment and poverty.

Onrush of excessive agricultural products from the U.S. threatens the local farmers numbering more than 2.8 million.

The U.S. built military bases in different parts of south Korea and has staged madcap military exercises. This has deprived south Koreans of their cradle of life, devastating farmland, taking their lives and doing harm to human bodies and polluting environment.

Young and middle-aged south Koreans are taken off as cannon fodder of the U.S. in its wars of aggression.

There is no land in the world except for south Korea which is suffering such humiliation as offering funds as upkeep of the foreign occupation forces.

South Koreans have no place where they may complain even though they are deprived of everything by the U.S. and their rights violated by it.

Human rights are more crudely violated due to the puppet forces' medieval, tyrannical and unpopular rule.

Political freedom and democratic rights are mercilessly infringed upon, among other things.

The progressive party that made a legitimate appearance was forced to be disbanded, after being labeled "forces following the north" and a lawmaker from an opposition party was walked away from the "NA" building in broad daylight, on the charge of his alleged involvement in an "attempted rebellion."

In the eight months of the present regime more than 23,790 articles were deleted from internet site for being "articles following the north", and hundreds of internet sites were forced to shut down.

People demanding the right to existence were harshly suppressed.

When workers in the field of railways staged a strike against the de-nationalization of railways at the end of last year, the fascist authorities hurled at least 5,000 police of over 60 companies to put it down the way they conducted an "anti-terrorist operation". They even stormed the building of the south Korean Confederation of Trade Unions without a confiscation and search warrant and walked off more than 130 people.

The puppet forces' unpopular rule deteriorated the living of south Koreans from all walks of life, forcing them to undergo unspeakable sufferings.

The number of the unemployed has reached over 4.5 million and that of underemployed who do part-time jobs for low wages for a day or a few months almost 10 million. People accounting for 11-19 percent suffer from chronic malnutrition. 

The number of those who commit suicides is more than 40 a day, topping the world list.

Over 1.1 million or 20 percent of the aged roam about in the streets, begging for food or rummaging garbage bins, being forsaken by society and their children. 

Children kill their parents in cold blood for money and all other kinds of crimes including murder, rape and robbery are prevalent in south Korea....

You get the idea.

The Potteries

Stoke-on-Trent, 1959 (via):

Shame about the annoying counter. Still, this is a wonderful clip from Kinolibrary. A Lowry painting come to life...

Not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed

For too long those Norwegians have been given a free pass about their disgraceful record on human rights. No more:

Saudi Arabia has criticised Norway's human rights record, accusing the country of failing to protect its Muslim citizens and not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed.

The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal  in Norway. It also expressed concern at “increasing cases of domestic violence, rape crimes and inequality in riches” and noted a continuation of hate crimes against Muslims in the country.

Christian and Jewish groups in Saudi Arabia were unavailable for comment. 

The Scandinavian nation came under scrutiny during the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review, in which 14 States are scheduled to have their human rights records examined.

Russia meanwhile called for Norway to clamp down on expressions of religious intolerance and  and criticised the country’s child welfare system. They also recommended that Norway improve its correctional facilities for those applying for asylum status.

Well, that's the United Nations for you.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende was in Geneva to hear the concerns from 91 other countries. He told Norway's NTB newswire prior to the hearing: “It is a paradox that countries which do not support fundamental human rights have influence on the council, but that is the United Nations,” reported The Local.

Human Rights Watch last report noted that in 2012 Saudi Arabia "stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens."

It continued "Authorities continue to suppress or fail to protect the rights of 9 million Saudi women and girls and 9 million foreign workers. As in past years, thousands of people have received unfair trials or been subject to arbitrary detention. The year has seen trials against half-a-dozen human rights defenders and several others for their peaceful expression or assembly demanding political and human rights reforms."

Horses died there too

It's a rich source, that's for sure. Yet more Egyptian anti-Semitism, courtesy of MEMRI, with former MP Dr. Sallah Abdallah expounding his views on the Holocaust, and the similarities between Zionism and Nazism, on Channel 2 TV:

Sallah Abdallah: The Nazis defined certain groups as inferior to the Germans...

Interviewer: The Aryan race...

Sallah Abdallah: Yes, they considered the German-Aryan race to be superior and to rule the world. The rest should either work as servants or be eradicated from society.

Interviewer: It is the same ideology as the Zionist ideology.

Sallah Abdallah: Yes, it’s a racist ideology. Nazism and racism [sic] are similar. Nazism is based upon the notion of the supreme German race, or the Aryan race, while Zionism is based upon the notion of God’s Chosen People – the race chosen by God. Both of them are racist.  [...]

There is no doubt that there was killing and burning of the prisoners in the Nazi camps.

Interviewer: Of Jews and others...

Sallah Abdallah: Yes.

Interviewer: So it wasn’t just the Jews...

Sallah Abdallah: That’s right. Death was rampant, because diseases, like typhoid fever and typhus, spread through the camps, as a result of the lack of hygiene and the food shortage, leading to the weakening of the immune system.

Interviewer: Animals, such as horses, died there too.

Sallah Abdallah: That’s right. It is also true that there were crematoria there, because they used them to burn the corpses, as there was nowhere to bury them.

But some people have questioned the numbers. Why? First of all, the number of Jews in all of [pre-WWII] Europe was six million, and their number worldwide was 16 million back in 1938. If six million had really died, only 10 million would have remained, but in 1948, the Jews numbered 18 million. How did their numbers grow by eight million within 10 years?  [...]

These people say that the number of Jews in [pre-WWII] Germany did not exceed 600,000. Some of them emigrated, and some remained there. They say that those who were detained and suffered these things are the ones who refused to emigrate. The Jews were divided. Some of them wanted to go to Palestine – the alternative homeland – or to emigrate from Germany, while others insisted that Germany was their homeland, where they grew up, and that they should stick to it.

Zionism reached an agreement with Nazism to frighten the Jews who wanted to remain, so that they would emigrate.  [...]

How did Israel benefit from this? Emigration to Israel increased drastically, and Russia, Britain, and the U.S. participated in pushing the people to emigrate. That way, they got skilled workers – doctors, nurses, engineers, and so on.

That’s one thing. For another, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the tune of over 60 billion dollars.

Interviewer: It was pumped into the Israeli economy.

Sallah Abdallah: France had to pay 50 billion dollars, which were pumped into the Israeli economy, not to mention donations coming from the U.S., Britain, and others.

So Israel’s entire lifeline was based upon this money, which was pumped into...

Interviewer: But I would like you to explain... The official record of the German prisons and detention camps during the Nazi rule indicates that the number of Jews in these camps did not exceed 20,000. Despite this, successive German governments have given in to this type of extortion and have paid all this money. If their own official records give a figure of 20,000 Jews, why have they been paying all this money to this day?

Sallah Abdallah: It is because of a decision to prosecute anyone who denies the Holocaust. If the Germans denied the Holocaust, their government would be prosecuted. And don’t forget that Germany has been under occupation since WWII. To this very day, there are American troops in Germany.

I know - it all gets predictable and tedious after a while. But it's important to keep in mind that, as Samuel Tadros reminds us, this kind of talk is by no means the province of cranks and crackpots. In Egypt this is mainstream thinking.

Mirror Island

Tumuch Lake in northern British Columbia:

[Photo: Shane Kalyn/National Geographic]

 

Passchendaele

Starting today the Atlantic are running a 10-part series, World War 1 in Photos. This picture, from the Introduction, stands out:

[Photo: James Francis Hurley/State Library of New South Wales]

Soldiers of an Australian 4th Division field artillery brigade walk on a duckboard track laid across a muddy, shattered battlefield in Chateau Wood, near Hooge, Belgium, on October 29, 1917. This was during the Battle of Passchendaele, fought by British forces and their allies against Germany for control of territory near Ypres, Belgium.

Russians in Ukraine

Historian Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands, is always worth reading on the subject of Ukraine (previously, and again). Here he is at CiF: 

Violence is a distraction from the simple facts, and propaganda turns distraction into abstraction, people into symbols – and all the more now as Russian intervention in Ukraine grows ever more extensive and threatening. Consider the threat made by the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, that it would "respond" if Russian citizens in Ukraine are harmed. Yet who are these citizens?

There are speakers of Russian in Ukraine, but they are not Russian citizens any more than I, a speaker of English, am a British subject. There are people who identify as Russian – about a seventh of the population – but they are no more Russian citizens than Quebecois are citizens of France. Dual citizenship in Ukraine is not permitted. So the answer to the riddle is: the Russian citizens in Ukraine are the soldiers of the Russian special forces who are already there. To push the logic a little further, one could say that Lavrov has finally admitted that the soldiers without insignia, whom the Ukrainians call "little green men", are Russian soldiers, since he had raised the possibility that they could be harmed.

He goes on to describe how the Jews have been used by Putin's propaganda machine - and how, far from being welcoming of the Russian intervention and the resultant "gangsterism", most Ukrainian Jews are entirely supportive of a fully independent Ukraine.

Such obvious expertise, from a man who clearly knows what he's talking about, sits oddly at CiF - and has left the regular Guardian commentariat sullen and bemused. I'm not about to plough through all the comments, but from what I've read not one has anything positive to say about Snyder's piece. For them Ukraine is a tale of Western aggression getting a much deserved comeuppance at the hands of the hero Putin - and no damned US-apologist Yale professor is going to tell them otherwise. "More Yank propaganda", as one comment has it.

There is no liberal Islam

The current Muslim Reformation, as has been noted often enough (eg here), is turning out to mark not an increased liberalisation and willingness to compromise with the modern world, but - quite the reverse - is seeing Muslim countries in general becoming more intolerant and more hard-line, as the Wahhabi and Salafist influence spreads. Malaysia, for example, used to be cited as an example of a happily pluralist country which happened to have a Muslim majority. Not, maybe, for much longer:

Equality, liberty and human rights are “godless” and “faithless” ideologies created by atheists to destroy Islam, hardline Islamic group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) said today. 

Since Malaysia’s general elections in 2013, the non-governmental organisation has been  growing in popularity, striking a chord with more conservative Malay Muslims who support its push for Malaysia to become an Islamic state.

ISMA’s uncompromising views and bald statements have been criticised mainly by Malaysia’s non Muslim minority and rights groups. Some have likened ISMA to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Speaking at  ISMA’ s convention for Muslim women, its president Abdullah Zaik Abdul Rahman also said civil society groups are proxies of a Zionist-Christian agenda that seeks to confuse Muslims with ideologies which are unIslamic.

“Islam is Islam. Ideologies are not part of Islam and all these ideologies are from the west..liberalism, liberty, equity and human rights are all agenda of the atheist.

“They are a godless and faithless ideology.

“There is no liberal islam or socialist islam. You are either a Muslim or a jahilliah (an ignorant),” he said.

He added that Jewish and Christian groups were bent on making the world in their own mould.

“They are proxies..the enmity is not new. This rivalry has been there since the Prophet Muhammad's days. The conspiracy to destroy Islam has always been there and they used various methods to make you stray away from Allah. This is an agenda to make the world Jewish and Christian,” he said. 

Artist at work

Leonard Street, Shoreditch: