Mick Hartley

Intermission

Taking a 10-day break. Back Monday the 30th.

B-Uranus

Silhouettes, shadows and colours in Burano, an island in the Venetian Lagoon, with photographer Mirko Saviane:

[Photos © Mirko Saviane]

Up on the roof

Ilse Bing - Antennae on rooftop. 1950:

The end of ISIS in Raqqa

From Robin Wright in the New Yorker:

History will record that the Islamic State caliphate—a bizarre pseudo-state founded on illusory goals, created by a global horde of jihadis, and enforced with perverted viciousness—survived for three years, three months and some eighteen days. The fall of Raqqa, the nominal isis capital, was proclaimed on Tuesday by the U.S.-backed militia that spearheaded the offensive, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab militias advised by U.S. Special Forces....

“Only a fool would call this a victory,” Hassan Hassan, a co-author of the best-selling book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” told me. “It’s only the expulsion of isis fighters from a wasteland. It’s not a victory, not only because of the destruction. It’s also not a victory because there’s a shameless lack of a political track to supplement the military track. That’s the Achilles heel of Operation Inherent Resolve. They don’t have a political vision about what will happen after isis.”...

“You need to turn these areas into something better than isis, better than what people have seen over the past three years. That’s on the micro level,” Hassan told me. “On the macro level, regardless of what the U.S. says, there’s no appetite to do something to resolve the Syrian conflict, with Assad—the core problem.”

Unlike Mosul, which returned to Iraqi sovereignty automatically after isis was defeated, Raqqa will be contested. U.S. officials insist that the local population—particularly Sunni Muslims—do not want to be subjected to the rule of the Assad dynasty, which is Alawite. Legally, however, Raqqa is still part of Syria, and Assad is likely to be backed in any claim to the area by his powerful Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese allies.

So the isis caliphate may have faced an ignominious defeat, but the Syrian quagmire is far from over. And that may eventually fuel the flames of new dissent, angry new forms of opposition and, potentially, other manifestations of extremism.

Coming to their rescue was a matter of honor and justice

From Bernard-Henri Lévy - The United States Serves Up Kurdistan to Iran on a Silver Platter:

Not long ago, it was Saddam Hussein operating with gas and deportations. And then on Monday Saddam’s Shiite successors, answering to Tehran, sent tanks, artillery, and Katyusha rockets into the oil fields that are the lifeblood of Kurdistan. Today they are doing the same in the Sinjar mountains, in the southern city of Jalawla, and in the Bashiqa area on the Plain of Nineveh, which the Kurds only just reclaimed from ISIS....

And now, scandal mounts around the fact that Kurdistan’s “friends,” the countries that for two years running relied on it to keep the Islamic State at bay and then to defeat it, the people who swore by the Peshmerga, by its heroes and by its dead, have, as I write these lines, responded with nothing more than deafening silence, appearing willing to abandon to their fate the men and women who fought so valiantly for them....

Whether one is for or against the independence of Kurdistan; whether one favors total independence or limited autonomy; whether one has in mind a clean break from Iraq or one of several federal arrangements preferred by some leaders in Irbil and Sulaimaniyah, one thing is beyond comprehension: that the world should watch while an entire nation is seized peremptorily by the throat, attacked on all fronts, dismembered, devastated, and humiliated.

In the face of this unprecedented act of punishment, the international community should have immediately sounded a solemn warning to Iraq (and to its Iranian masters and their ally of convenience, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan): Cease the aggression. Pull back the militias and the regular forces supporting them to the lines that existed on Oct. 15.

In response to an advance aimed at choking Kurdistan’s second-largest city and at breaking through the Peshmerga’s lines with support from Iraq’s 9th Armored Division, the federal police, and counterterrorism units, the West—notably the United States and France—should have called immediately for a ceasefire and denounced this replay of Danzig in the Middle East.

And, seeing that the Iraqi forces and the militants of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq did not stand down, the international forces that were deployed in the area as part of the battle against the Islamic State should have been positioned to help our oldest and bravest ally in the region. For two years now, the Kurds have stood against the Islamic State almost alone along a thousand-kilometer front line, serving as the West’s rampart against barbarism.

When the Iraqi army fled before the Caliphate’s troops in the summer of 2014, it was the Kurds who held on and retook the territory.

And if they were in Kirkuk on Monday it is, first of all, because they had been a majority there until the Arabization imposed by Saddam Hussein, but also because it is owing to the Kurds—and the Kurds alone—that the city did not become a fiefdom of the Islamists like Mosul and Raqqa.

In other words, coming to their rescue was a matter of honor and justice.

On one side we had the sinister new Gang of Four (Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq), who are bound together by their hatred of democracy and human rights; on the other, we have a small but great people who aspire only to liberty, ours as well as their own, and who harbor no aim to divide neighboring empires. What form of blindness—or what base calculations—could have caused us to hesitate for a second between the two?

Colour skull

"Mr. Smith", by an artist who goes by the moniker "Jim Skull", at the Guildhall Art Gallery's Nature Morte exhibition:

Sculpt at Kew

Some of the sculptures on display in Kew Gardens this autumn:

Looking profiles - Paul Vanstone

Dancing Stones - Lilly Henry

ABC - Andrey Vrabchev

Leopard Stalking - Hamish Mackie

The Dancers - Lilly Henry

Sunrise - David Williams-Ellis

Leaf Spirit - Simon Gudgeon

Mired in the filth of anti-Semitism

Stephen Daisley, in Tablet, provides an overview of the Labour Party's antisemitism problem, and looks at the latest group on the scene, Jewish Voices for Labour (JVL) - The British Labour Party’s ‘Kosher Stamp’ for Anti-Semitism:

JVL describes itself as a campaign for Corbyn-supporting Jews who “do not put Israel at the center of their identity” and says its “main impetus” is to challenge “unjustified allegations of anti-Semitism … used to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.”

When I asked if there was a problem with anti-Semitism within Labour, a JVL spokesperson told me: “No, we don’t accept that. Anti-Semitism exists and must be combated, like all forms of bigotry, wherever they occur. But the idea that there is a special problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party depends on widening the definition of anti-Semitism beyond its meaning of hostility to Jews as Jews, adding references to Israel and then asserting that the pro-Palestinian left is motivated by hatred of Jews.

“JVL says that Jews cannot be assumed to attach their identity to Israel or the ideas of Zionism (though many do). We also say that support for rights for Palestinians, including support for the boycott movement, cannot be assumed to be motivated by hatred of Jews (although in a very few instances, it may be). We say Labour Party members must have the right to discuss all manner of different political philosophies, including Zionism. That doesn’t make them anti-Semitic.”

JVL, its mission statement records, stands “against wrongs and injustice to Palestinians and other oppressed people anywhere” and champions “the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities, such as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.” When pressed, they told me BDS was “a perfectly legitimate political campaign which is seeking equality and justice for Palestinians and Israelis.” They are especially exercised about calls to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, and offer themselves as “a space to explore and debate the many questions (personal, social, cultural, political) that are important to us as progressive Labour Jews.”

Most Jews will recognize this for what it is. The purpose of JVL is not to explore and debate complex questions or to represent the feelings of most Jews within the party; it is to muddy the waters.

Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for The Guardian who has documented Labour anti-Semitism, told me: “Until now, the Jewish Labour Movement was the major Jewish group within the Labour Party and they were often criticizing the leadership, criticizing Corbyn and saying there was a problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. That meant that whenever there were stories about anti-Semitism, there would be someone from the JLM saying there was a problem and someone from Corbyn’s side saying there wasn’t. It was the left against the Jews. That’s how it could be framed.

“This new group has come along and changed things. Now when the JLM raises concerns about anti-Semitism, there’s a Jewish group who will pop up and say, ‘That’s not anti-Semitic,’ ” Freedland added. “They provide a kosher certification, a hechsher, so that when other Jews point out anti-Semitism, the left can say, ‘Look, we have Jews who say none of this is true, there’s no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.’ ”

David Hirsh, a London-based academic and author of the new book Contemporary Left Antisemitism, rejects a sympathetic reading of JVL as useful idiots. Instead, they are “the latest branding of a group of anti-Zionist Jews whose key political project is to portray Jewish concern about anti-Semitism as a disgraceful conspiracy to silence criticism of Israel. They don’t say Jews are mistaken when they detect anti-Semitism or even that they are oversensitive: They say that Jews are lying.”

The most noxious aspect of the anti-Zionist redefinition of Jewishness is the eagerness of anti-Zionist Jews to leap to the defense of the most outrageous statements by the most extreme figures in the Labour Party. Time after time, JVL has acted as Freedland describes: providing kosher cover for the nastiest elements on the far left. When Ken Livingstone pronounced Hitler a supporter of Zionism, Jenny Manson, now chair of JVL, issued a statement insisting his comments were “not offensive, nor anti-Semitic in any way.” In doing so, she referred to her Jewish identity and the fact her mother had fled Ukraine to escape pogroms. Defending Ken Loach over his Holocaust remarks, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi said he was simply “pursuing an argument about the importance of free speech when he was called upon to comment upon an ambiguous sentence mentioning the Holocaust.” He had “stuck to his line of argument” and hadn’t agreed that questioning the veracity of the Holocaust was unacceptable because it was “blindingly obvious.”

In August, senior Labour MP and Corbyn ally Chris Williamson claimed anti-Semitism was being “weaponized” in a “proxy war against the leadership” and described complaints about it as “smears and lies and dirty tricks.” After the Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned Williamson’s intemperate outburst, JVL sided with the MP and, in conspiratorial tones, said he had merely “put his finger on the connection between charges of anti-Semitism and the onslaught that he expects Corbyn to face from his opponents before the next election—a connection that [the Board of Deputies] does not wish to be exposed.”

So what do the anti-Zionist activists in groups like JVL get out of being used as a kosher stamp for anti-Semites—aside from proving their loyalty to the Labour Party leadership? Hirsh suggests a deeper motivation: “They would rather live in a world where anti-Semitism was provoked by Jews—and so, therefore, could notionally be stopped by Jews—than in a world where anti-Semitism was irrational. They prefer to imagine that Jews are in control of their own destiny than that they are simply victims of anti-Semitism.”

Meanwhile, Labour, once a proud party with a strong anti-racist tradition, is mired in the filth of anti-Semitism. It will remain there as long as Jewish Voice for Labour is the only Jewish voice the Labour leadership wants to hear.

Red autumn

In Kew Gardens:

Foolhardy Tongues of Panic-Stricken Old Lunatic

Yes, it's North Korea, with the latest editorial from the official Rodong Sinmun on the subject of - can you guess? - Donald Trump:

Trump, an old lunatic, hurled a stream of abuses at the DPRK, which seemed to be suggestive of an extreme option against it.

He recently bluffed, talking about "calm before a storm" when meeting with military brass hats of the U.S.

Some days later, he made reckless remarks that the past DPRK-U.S. dialogue proved ineffective and that only one thing would prove effective.

Such remarks are nothing but grumbles of the hooligan without an equal in the world, who is trembling with fear of the DPRK's toughest counteroffensive against the U.S.

It is poor calculation to escape the unfavorable circumstances by frightening the DPRK.

Trump's remarks are aimed to prevent the DPRK from taking strategic measures to attain the final goal of rounding off its state nuclear force and drive to anti-DPRK sanctions and pressure those countries concerned about the prevailing situation through escalating the tension to the maximum and, at the same time, tide over the ruling crisis at home and abroad.

Trump is well advised to clearly understand that his rude remarks will not deter somebody but make the U.S. society all the more uneasy and accelerate the doom of the evil empire.

If the U.S. imperialists opt for military provocation against the DPRK, the U.S. mainland will be reduced to ashes by the merciless nuclear retaliatory strike and the south Korean puppet forces, too, will have to pay dearly for toeing the U.S. line.

Sounding desperate? Perhaps the sanctions are starting to bite. The latest from Joshua Stanton:

Domestically, the regime is increasingly coming into conflict with its people as the regime squeezes them to make up for the loss of revenue, but the regime can only squeeze them so much: first, there is hardly anything left to steal from them; and second, as with the Great Confiscation of 2009, the regime knows that it has historically been economic conflicts with the state that have caused North Koreans to resist it. In the last six months, prices of fuel and other commodities have risen. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service believes that North Koreans are already disgruntled over the economic effects of sanctions, and that the regime is “conducting a large-scale campaign” to suppress that disgruntlement. None of these developments is irreversible, but for the first time since 2007, there are clear signs that sanctions are starting to take a toll on Pyongyang’s access to the global economy.