Mick Hartley

War in Europe?

With Russian soldiers marching into Ukraine bearing the flag of Novorussiya - "New Russia" - Anne Applebaum wonders: should we be more worried? 

A few days ago, Alexander Dugin, an extreme nationalist whose views have helped shape those of the Russian president, issued an extraordinary statement. “Ukraine must be cleansed of idiots,” he wrote — and then called for the “genocide” of the “race of bastards.”

But Novorossiya will also be hard to sustain if it has opponents in the West. Possible solutions to that problem are also under discussion. Not long ago, Vladimir Zhirinovsky — the Russian member of parliament and court jester who sometimes says things that those in power cannot — argued on television that Russia should use nuclear weapons to bomb Poland and the Baltic countries — “dwarf states,” he called them — and show the West who really holds power in Europe: “Nothing threatens America, it’s far away. But Eastern European countries will place themselves under the threat of total annihilation,” he declared. Vladimir Putin indulges these comments: Zhirinovsky’s statements are not official policy, the Russian president says, but he always “gets the party going.”

A far more serious person, the dissident Russian analyst Andrei Piontkovsky, has recently published an article arguing, along lines that echo Zhirinovsky’s threats, that Putin really is weighing the possibility of limited nuclear strikes — perhaps against one of the Baltic capitals, perhaps a Polish city — to prove that NATO is a hollow, meaningless entity that won’t dare strike back for fear of a greater catastrophe. Indeed, in military exercises in 2009 and 2013, the Russian army openly “practiced” a nuclear attack on Warsaw.

Is all of this nothing more than the raving of lunatics? Maybe. And maybe Putin is too weak to do any of this, and maybe it’s just scare tactics, and maybe his oligarchs will stop him. But “Mein Kampf” also seemed hysterical to Western and German audiences in 1933. Stalin’s orders to “liquidate” whole classes and social groups within the Soviet Union would have seemed equally insane to us at the time, if we had been able to hear them.

But Stalin kept to his word and carried out the threats, not because he was crazy but because he followed his own logic to its ultimate conclusions with such intense dedication — and because nobody stopped him. Right now, nobody is able to stop Putin, either. So is it hysterical to prepare for total war? Or is it naive not to do so?

All at sea

Coming soon to a beach near you....

[Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images]

"A Chinese woman and her daughter wear face-kinis while swimming in the Yellow Sea in Qingdao, China, on August 22, 2014. The locally designed mask is worn by many local women to protect them from jellyfish stings, algae and the sun's ultraviolet rays."

The Revolutionary Fund

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

[Photo: KCNA/AFP/Getty Images]

Oh dear (Times link, £):

One of North Korea’s top bankers has fled the country with $5 million embezzled from the personal slush fund of the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, according to a South Korean newspaper.

Yun Tae Hyong, president of the Korea Daesong Bank in Pyongyang, defected in Russia, taking with him money from the so-called “revolutionary fund”, according to an unidentified source quoted in South Korea’s JoongAng daily.

The fund, the report says, is at the personal disposal of Mr Kim, and is connected to “Bureau 39”, a shadowy department accused by the US government of raising funds through such illegal activities as manufacturing and disseminating counterfeit currency, opium, heroin and amphetamines.

The newspaper reports that Mr Yun is seeking political asylum, but that the North Korean authorities have asked their Russian counterparts to hunt him down and hand him over.

If the report of his flight turns out to be true, he will be the highest ranking defector from North Korea since Hwang Jang Yop, the regime’s chief ideologue, who fled in 1997.

His insights into the inner financial workings of the isolated government will be seized on by South Korea and the United States as they consider ways of undermining the North without having to fight a devastating war.

More details at One Free Korea.

In further NK news, those cheer leaders won't now be gracing the Asian Games after all:

Dashing expectations of a unique side-attraction at this year’s Asian Games, North Korea said late Thursday that it won’t send a cheerleading squad to the South Korean host city of Incheon.

The North Korean cheerleading squad was a significant draw at past sporting events hosted by South Korea. The contingent that last crossed the Korean border in 2005 included Ri Sol Ju, now the First Lady of North Korea.

But not this time: the vice chairman of North Korea’s Olympic Committee said on state television that Pyongyang would only send athletes, coaches, referees and other support staff and blamed Seoul for the decision not to bring cheerleaders.

North Korea in early July suggested sending the cheerleader group of 350 people, saying it would help ease tension on the peninsula. An inter-Korean negotiation about the terms of their stay collapsed soon after.

Pyongyang cited disagreement over whether Seoul would foot the bill for the North’s athletes and cheerleaders as one point of contention. The North initially proposed sending around 700 people including 350 cheerleaders. In previous sporting events in South Korea, Seoul has underwritten North Korea’s costs. This time around, it said that the international norm of each country paying its way should be followed.

In other words  the North pulled out once they realised that the South Koreans were not prepared to stump up the costs - even though it had been reported that the selection of the girls had already taken place, with a rigorous training programme under way.

Here they are in action, at the Daegu Universiade Games in Daegu, south of Seoul, in August 2003:

[Photo: Associated Press]

A bit uncoordinated perhaps, by the usual exacting standards of a Pyongyang-trained cheering squad, but a glimpse of what we'll be missing.

Curb Brokers

New York circa 1905. "Broad Street curb brokers and the Stock Exchange."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

Some background (and the modern-day view) here:

This is not just a bunch of brokers outside on a nice day. From the early 1800s through 1921, the New York Curb Market traded outside every day, no matter what the weather. Stock trading began in New York in 1792 to handle Revolutionary War debt. The original exchange met under a buttonwood tree on the corner of Wall and William Streets, where local traders signed the Buttonwood Agreement establishing rules and procedures for trading.

Some of those traders soon moved inside and eventually formed the New York Stock Exchange. Others kept trading outside and came to be known as curbstone brokers. They gathered first at the corner of Wall and Hanover Streets, then at William and Beaver Streets, and finally at Broad Street and Exchange Place—which is the scene here.

This was an official stock exchange, although it tended to be a bit wilder than its indoor cousin. The New York Stock Exchange required that a company have at least 100 shares to be traded, and many small, newly created companies did not. So independent brokers traded their stocks outside the registered exchange—literally outside. Curbstone brokers traded in highly speculative stocks in industries such as canals, railroads, and oil. The action in this outdoor stock market helped America’s new industries grow.

Rediscovered

The Roman Vishniac Collection, at the Holocaust Museum:

The photographer Roman Vishniac created some of the most iconic images of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, documenting a world that would soon vanish. He also chronicled the rise of Nazism and the aftermath of World War II. However, the public has never had the opportunity to appreciate the breadth and depth of his work—of Vishniac’s 10,000 negatives, only about 350 have previously been published. The Museum has worked with the International Center of Photography (ICP) to put those images online and invites the public to help us learn more about Vishniac’s photographs.

Here's the Vishniac archive at the ICP. 

Vishniac only narrowly escaped the Nazis, arriving in New York in 1940. Here's a portrait of fellow Jewish immigrant Marc Chagall, in 1941:

Lonesome Train

The Johnny Burnette Trio, from the 1956 film "Rock, Rock, Rock", introduced - somewhat portentously - by Alan Freed: 

The echoey voice, if nothing else, tells you that this is mimed. The guitarist in the clip is Paul Burlison, but the guitarist on the original recording was Grady Martin.

Featured by Bob Dylan on his Theme Time Radio Hour show, on the subject of Trains: 

"Believe it or not, Johnny Burnette's Rock'n'Roll Trio were invited to appear on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour, where they won the competition three times in a row. I want you to listen to this and try to imagine anything this raw winning three weeks in a row on American Idol."

Keeping to the train theme: Train Kept A-Rollin'. But Johnny's big hit, from 1960 after he went solo, was You're Sixteen.

A contemporary of Elvis: also a good looker, and also from Memphis - but he never quite had that Elvis magic. Or perhaps it was the lack of a Colonel Tom Parker pulling the strings that made the difference.

He died fifty years ago, in August 1964, when his unlit fishing boat was struck by a cabin cruiser on Clear Lake, California.

Wet Text

Markfield Park, South Tottenham:

The foundation of their nation

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has been at it again. After the visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the Unit 731 business, not to mention the ongoing saga of the comfort women (still justified by some leading Japanese politicians keen to play the populist card), comes this:

Japanese war criminals, executed for their misdeeds during the Second World War, are “martyrs who staked their souls to become the foundation of their nation”, said Shinzo Abe, the country’s nationalist prime minister.

Mr Abe made the comments, which will further inflame Japan’s increasingly tense relations with its Asian neighbours, in a message read out at a monument to the executed war criminals — known as the Showa Era martyrs, in reference to the reign of the wartime emperor, Hirohito.

The message, given at a memorial service in April, said: “I would like to sincerely express my feelings of remembrance to the spirit of the Showa Era martyrs who staked their souls to become the foundation of their nation so that Japan could achieve the peace and prosperity of today.”

The remarks, which were reported in Wednesday’s Asahi newspaper [here - MH], are the latest in a series of annual messages sent by Mr Abe to the monument on Mt Koya, a mountain in southwest Japan, holy to the Shingon sect of Buddhism.

Last December, Mr Abe outraged China, South Korea and many liberal Japanese, by praying at Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo where the country’s war dead, including executed war criminals, are worshipped as Shinto deities. He has not made a visit so far this year, apparently in the hope of securing a conciliatory summit meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. But the latest revelations are sure to stir up new anger in the countries invaded and occupied by the Japanese imperial army. The Mt Koya monument in Wakayama prefecture contains the names of 1,180 war criminals who were either executed, committed suicide or who died of illness while in detention. They include Japan’s wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo.

Mr Abe has made no secret of his view that Japanese should be proud of their history, and cast doubt on the existence of “comfort women”, forcibly recruited into military brothels.

The Chinese are indeed not best pleased:

China has urged Japan to “make a clean break with militarism” and build trust with its neighbours after it emerged that the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, had honoured more than 1,000 convicted war criminals as “martyrs” who laid the foundations for modern Japan.

Reports of the tribute, made in April in a message Abe sent to an annual ceremony honouring war criminals at a Buddhist temple, only emerged this week and add to the strains on ties between Tokyo and Beijing.

“The Japanese government needs to sincerely reflect on its history of aggression and make a clean break with militarism, that provides an important foundation for Japan to rebuild and develop relations with its Asian neighbours after the war,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

“We urge Japan to abide to its commitment to post-war non-aggression and take practical action to win the trust of its Asian neighbours and the international community.”

Abe’s message is expected to frustrate attempts to arrange a bilateral meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Apec summit in Beijing in November.

Messages from China telling another country to make a clean break with militarism and build trust with its neighbours should normally be dismissed as grotesque hypocrisy, but with the history of Japanese imperialism in China, and horrors such as the Rape of Nanking still within living memory, I think we can make some kind of exception here.

Do not spare a single one

In a Friday sermon at Azuqueca De Henares, near Madrid, Sheik Saleheoldine El Moussaoui expresses himself with exemplary clarity:

Dear brothers, what is being done to the Muslims in Palestine, in Gaza, as well as in the other Muslim countries – we would have been surprised if it were done by anyone other than the Jews.

But that is their nature. The Jews are by nature treacherous and war-mongering. There can be no peace with the Jews. What peace are you talking about?!  [...]

This is their way of life. The Jews and the Zionists have treachery and killing as their way of life. They are a people of enmity and jealousy, the masters of treachery and betrayal. As Allah described them in the Quran: They want to spread corruption in the land.

The Zionists do not feel alive if they don't spread corruption. They spread corruption in the land. They cannot live without corruption, treachery, and betrayal.  [...]

[Allah] described them as killers, so their killing of our brothers in Gaza and in Palestine should come as no surprise. They killed the prophets, the best among mankind. The best people in the eyes of Allah are the prophets and messengers. Yet they killed them, showing no regard for pacts of protection. Allah said [to the Jews]: "Taste the punishment of the burning fire." This is what awaits them: the torments of the burning fire.  [...]

Oh Allah, support Islam and the Muslims everywhere, and humiliate polytheism, heresy, and the infidels everywhere. Oh Allah, destroy the plundering Jews. Oh Allah, the Most Merciful, count them one by one, and do not spare a single one of them.

Any questions?

On the beach

Oil wells in Venice, California, 1952:

[Photo: Library of Congress]