Mick Hartley

Golden Hour

Korean photographer KangHee Kim, based in New York, creates images of what she calls "surreal escapism". From her new book Golden Hour:

[Photos © KangHee Kim]

Central Park at night

I'm not the only one taking photos of trees, though I draw the line at going out at 4 in the morning.

From a gallery On Loneliness in a City. Michael Massaia, “The Mall, 4 a.m." 2013:

[Image: © Michael Massaia]

Encouraging violence against women

Meanwhile, in Birmingham:

A Muslim school will not allow girls to eat lunch until after boys have finished, an Ofsted chief has told MPs.

Al-Hijrah school in Birmingham is still segregating boys and girls despite a Court of Appeal ruling in 2017 that found it was unlawful, according to Luke Tryl, director of corporate strategy at Ofsted.

Addressing the women and equalities select committee, he said that Ofsted inspectors are trying to hold schools account for discriminating against girls but feel “isolated” when their stance is not backed up by ministers.

“Our inspectors are going out and having to make some quite tricky judgements where there are those potential clashes [between equalities laws and religious freedoms],” Mr Tryl said.

“We perhaps don’t always feel we get the support we need from the rest of Government in pushing that forward.”

He said that Al-Hijrah school was enforcing a “very strict gender segregation” which included “denying the girls to have their lunch until the boys had had theirs”. “And we had some very discriminatory texts for instance, encouraging violence against women,” he said.

Pollarded plane trees

In Stamford Hill:

Guardian Eurovision letter

Well this is depressing, if not unexpected. A Guardian letter from the usual suspects - Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Roger Waters, etc. "fifty figures from the creative industries" - demands that the BBC not screen Eurovision 2019 from Israel. Not because Eurovision is appalling rubbish and an insult to popular music, but because of, you know, apartheid, systematic violation of Palestinian human rights....

Fortunately Adam Levick has already done the necessary work of taking it apart.

Wicked Wick

Hackney Wick in the winter sun:

The Lord Napier previously.

Now surrounded by building sites. Next to go? It's a prime site, right next to Hackney Wick Overground station. But apparently not. From ZCD Architects:

The Lord Napier is recognised as one of Hackney Wick’s most important heritage assets, is locally listed and forms a key part of the Hackney Wick Central Masterplan.  It gains this status due to being the only surviving evidence on the site for the nineteenth century residential development of the area, as well as for its significant communal value.

ZCD have received planning approval for minor alterations and a sensitive refurbishment, so as to enable the Lord Napier to reopen as a modern working public house that can serve the local community.

The harshest of re-education sentences

North Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol was one of the leading figures in recent dealings with the Trump administration. He was appointed head of the North American affairs department at Pyongyang's foreign ministry in 2015, after spending time at the UN in New York.

Well, seems like he's been purged:

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol, an old hand in U.S.-North Korean diplomacy, has been sacked and sent to a reeducation camp. Han's name has been scrapped from a list of the top seven Foreign Ministry officials in the "2019 Who's Who in North Korea" published by the Unification Ministry.

A government source said, "We received information from an agency in the second half of last year that there were significant changes in Han Song-ryol's status and reflected the developments."

Another source said Han and five other director-level officials had been sent for reeducation to the Komdok mine in South Hamgyong Province. "It seems a proposal for U.S.-North Korea talks he submitted to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was criticized for breaching doctrine," the source added.

Those sent away for reeducation perform hard labor in mines, plantations and poultry farms. One defector who used to be a senior official said, "Being sent to the Komdok mine is the harshest of reeducation sentences and means he just escaped being sent to a concentration camp."

The defector added most who serve there return with serious physical impairments.

A government source said, "The sacking of Han Song-ryol is related to his long-term service in the North dealing with the U.S. He was probably labeled a spy due to his years serving as the U.S.' main contact point in the North."

No cushy House of Lords number for old out-of-favour politicians in Pyongyang...

It could be a matter of internal power politics. Or it could be, as suggested, that he was considered tainted by his US association. This at a time when North Koreans are being lectured about the colonisation of South Korea by the Americans:

Lecture materials handed out to Workers’ Party of Korea (WKP) directors last month claim South Korea is facing a loss of national identity due to “colonization” by the US.

“The bourgeois lifestyle spread by the imperialists is killing the national identity of the country and its people,” the lecture materials recently obtained by Daily NK claim. “This lifestyle is like poison, spreading like a plague through society.”

“The imperialists use propaganda tools like newspapers, magazines, radio and television to spread all kinds of reactionary ideology and false beliefs, which paralyze the healthy minds of people,” it continues. “There are many movies, songs, dances and novels that are erotic, crude and grotesque in nature, along with various kinds of cultural artwork that teaches people to do whatever it takes to fulfill one’s desires.”

It doesn't look too propitious for the forthcoming US-North Korea summit. But then, it never did.

Desert Iran

Strange and powerful images by photographer Gohar Dashti, from her series “Iran, Untitled”. It's not difficult to read these as a comment on Iran now, with the people forced to live in an alien world where nothing makes sense, condemned to meaningless rituals in a harsh desert landscape.

That, of course, may be too pat. The accompanying text though, it has to be said, is not notably helpful:

Thus, “Iran, Untitled,” offers a sense of unity of place, which fosters an emerging narrative, but it also implies a place that has lost its locality. Over the course of the pictures, we find only a desert in the middle of nowhere.

The photographer has sprinkled the soil of the land upon the surface of the desert. The horizon on this vast desert slowly flexes up and down, providing air to the people. Dashti has cast such scenes in the midst of this open desert and has fixed her own imagination upon the ground. It is as if her imagination were filled with snapshots of the realities of her country. The snapshots are released in bundles upon the vastness but they don’t recite stories—they whisper...

But yes....wonderfully disquieting and beautiful photographs:

[Photos © Gohar Dashti]

As always, click to enlarge.

London planes in Victoria Park

The park was created in 1845, so the larger trees here will date right back over 150 years. The Heritage Tree Walk leaflet claims that no plane trees have ever been recorded dying of old age, so no one knows how long they can live.

Asia Bibi free to go

The acquittal of Asia Bibi on blasphemy charges in October last year was challenged after widespread protests by mobs of enraged Islamists. In surprising but welcome news, that challenge has now been rejected:

The Supreme Court upheld its decision to overturn Asia Bibi's conviction and death sentence.

She was originally convicted in 2010 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a row with her neighbours, and spent eight years on death row.

She has always maintained her innocence in a case that has polarised Pakistan.

The Supreme Court's quashing of her sentence last October led to violent protests by religious hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws, while more liberal sections of society urged her release.

Hardliners had petitioned to overturn this ruling.

"Based on merit, this petition is dismissed," Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa said in court on Tuesday.

Asia Bibi - also known as Asia Noreen - was unable to leave Pakistan while an appeal request was pending.

"She should now be free to reunite with her family and seek safety in a country of her choice," Amnesty International said in a statement.

Bibi has been kept in a secret location in Islamabad, and should now be free to leave Pakistan. To stay would be unthinkable, given the threats of violence against her from hardliners.

There will now, no doubt, be further riots...