Mick Hartley

Corbyn's real record on Muslim suffering

From Fiyaz Mughal at Haaretz - 'Pro-Palestinian' Jeremy Corbyn Has Never Really Cared About Muslim Suffering.

In Kosovo, for example:

Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic and his paramilitary forces had already carried out the massacre of 8000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims – and had faced no concerted Western challenge.

The Clinton administration and its European allies could see that Milosevic was planning the same genocidal strategy against ethnic Kosovar Muslims, simply for being Muslims and of Turkic heritage. Already heavily discriminated against by the state, they had been purged from their jobs, pushing them into a guerilla-type insurgency led the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serb forces.

The response to the insurgency from Milosevic was the forcible deportation of Kosovar Muslims, which took place from January to June 1999. Over 800,000 Kosovar Muslims were displaced; the aim was clear - to ethnically cleanse the area, much as Milosevic had brutally changed the ethnic landscape of Bosnia through violence and degradation. It was his modus operandi.

Kosovar Muslim men, women and children were murdered in a systematic manner; hundreds of people disappeared, only to be found dumped in shallow graves with gunshot wounds and brutal fresh scars – evidence of torture. All of the indicators demonstrated a genocide in the making and that very prediction was documented at the time by groups such as the well-respected Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The NATO alliance decided to act, to prevent further terrible civilian bloodshed and perhaps also to atone for their passivity during the Bosnian genocide. The March-June 1999 NATO air strikes were a precise and measured attempt to stop Milosevic in his tracks.

Fast-forward five years. In December 2004, Jeremy Corbyn signed up to the parliamentary Early Day Motion 492, which highlighted the "devastating human cost" of the "so-termed humanitarian invasion of Kosovo."

The motion based its claims on an article by reporter John Pilger in the New Statesman which pivoted on a comparison of the "great…lies…deployed by Clinton and Blair in their grooming of public opinion for an illegal, unprovoked attack on a European country" with those that led to the Iraq war.

The piece ended with a dismissal of the then-ongoing trial of Milosevic for war crimes as a "show trial" and "farce" of a man whose only crime was his refusal to "surrender sovereignty" to the demands of global finance organizations. Needless to say, Pilger, together with fellow journalist Seymour Hersh, is also a leading light in the Assad apologist camp.

The motion "congratulated John Pilger on his expose of [a] fraudulent justification for intervening in a genocide that never really existed in Kosovo." ...

Why would Corbyn be such a depressingly obvious backer of this kind of revisionism and apologetics for the genocide of Muslims? As a confirmed anti-imperialist, Corbyn would have objected to NATO intervention and U.S. involvement in particular, despite the threatened murder of Muslims. Throw in the fact that there were close connections between Serbia and Russia.

Corbyn has never answered for his stance on Kosovo, nor has he acknowledged the mass displacement and systemic murders of Kosovar Muslims that took place.

Then there's Iran, where Jeremy happily worked for Press TV, mouthpiece for a regime which crushes any Muslims who dare to question the oppressive theocracy. And Syria of course....and Libya. The list goes on.... 

Cowboy in my heart

Photographer Sandy Carson - originally from Scotland but now a Texas resident - from his new monograph I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart:

[Photos: Sandy Carson]

Levi still demands that you listen

Primo Levi would have been 100 today. At Tablet, David Mikics remembers:

The camp’s worst cruelty was that one’s survival seemed stolen from another. Levi thought he had survived the selection of October 1944 only because the SS officer who decided with a glance who would live and who would go to the gas had confused him with a healthier prisoner named René, who stood next to him in the line.

This moment, deftly touched on in If This Is a Man, stands in for a more crucial loss. Levi’s beloved, Vanda Maestro, had been deported to Auschwitz with him. In the fall of 1944 an Italian friend saw Vanda, “white as chalk,” and heard her say “those awful words, which I can never forget,” “Io non ritornerò,” “I’m not coming home.” In January 1945 Levi found out that Vanda, by then a human skeleton, had been sent to the gas chamber months before. “I knew with extreme clarity that I would suffer later for her death,” he said. “Levi felt he should have died in Vanda’s place,” Thomson writes.

In October of 1945 Levi reached Turin after his long wanderings through Soviet territory, and on his first night home he slept with a piece of bread under his pillow. He rehearsed his memories of Auschwitz, telling his tales to anyone who would listen. Once on a train a fellow passenger, overhearing Levi, asked him to speak louder, so compelling was his story.

Just as he did on that train, Levi in his books persuades you to listen, and not only to the history of the murdered Jews but to the equally unimaginable histories that scar more recent times. Now, 100 years after his birth, Primo Levi still demands that you listen.

Painter of the sprawling city

I see Leon Kossoff died earlier this month. I don't know why the Times took nearly four weeks to publish an obituary, but I suppose these things happen:

The Eeyorish Leon Kossoff was a reluctant champion of his own work. “I don’t feel I’m a natural draughtsman,” he once said with a sigh. “Every day I start I think, ‘Today I might teach myself to draw.’ ” The National Gallery evidently disagreed. He was being interviewed there by Channel 4 News about an exhibition of his life’s work. It was the first TV interview he had given, and not for lack of recognition. His thickly impastoed paintings of London locales beneath heavy skies had struck some critics as too dour, but the National Gallery exhibition in 2007 was evidence of a groundswell of appreciation.

His painting Willesden Junction - Autumn Afternoon sold for £1.4 million last year, so the "groundswell of appreciation" clearly grew.

Painters aren't usually noted for their literary skills, but this is a beautiful quote: 

For Kossoff, art was a way to reflect on the disappearing landscape of his youth, constantly in the process of being overwritten by new buildings. He once said of his work that “the strange, ever-changing light, the endless streets and the shuddering feel of the sprawling city linger in my mind like a faintly glimmering memory of a long-forgotten, perhaps never-experienced childhood, which, if rediscovered and illuminated, would ameliorate the pain of the present”.

Brainless tribalism

Further to that piece by Nimco Ali about the patronising attitude of many on the left towards Black and minority ethnic Britons, here's Trevor Phillips in the Times (£):

It’s forbidden for Labour Party members like me to describe Johnson as anything other than a racist and an Islamophobe, but while he is guilty of many distasteful acts I think I can say with certainty he is neither of those things. In fact, it’s this kind of brainless tribalism that has got us into our current mess.

The left-leaning bias against Johnson is most striking in the reaction to his cabinet appointments. A different prime minister would have been basking in the approval of the right-on brigade for having appointed more people of colour to the cabinet in 24 hours than all his predecessors managed in the past 300 years. But the gracelessness of modern politics is such that the very people who threw parties at the election of Barack Obama now complain about Johnson’s minority ministers. They sneer that the first non-white chancellor, Sajid Javid, is a “coconut” (brown outside, white inside), that the first ethnic minority woman to lead the Home Office is a dumb “snake”, and that the first black chairman of the Conservative Party is an “Uncle Tom”. This, of course, is a measure of their racism, not the prime minister’s.

Washington Alley

May 1939. Washington, D.C. "Alleyway [Zei Alley] between H, I, 14th and 15th streets N.W."

[Photo: Shorpy/photographer unknown]

Returned to society

I've no idea what to make of this, but obviously extreme scepticism must be the first reaction. China Abruptly Announces It’s Totally Released Most of the Estimated 1 Million Muslims Held in Internment Camps:

The Chinese government made the unexpected announcement Tuesday that it had released most of the minority Muslims being held in controversial internment camps across the country’s Xinjiang region. Two regional leaders told the media that as many as 90 percent of the ethnic Muslims being held had left the so-called reeducation camps, been given jobs, and “returned to society.” The government has offered no evidence of the release and has long refused to provide much information about the heavily guarded camps that have sparked international condemnation. Experts estimate the number of minority Muslims interned in Xinjiang tops 1 million.

The abrupt announcement comes as international criticism has ratcheted up over Beijing’s sweeping detentions in the region to stamp out simmering separatist aspirations and assimilate the some 12 million ethnic Uighurs living there. During a press conference Tuesday, government officials toed the line from Beijing insisting that the camps were vocational training centers, going so far as to call the detainees “students.” “Tuesday’s briefing—which was paired with an exhibition profiling Xinjiang as a travel destination and featuring performances by ethnic-minority musicians and dancers in traditional garb—is part of China’s campaign to counter Western-led criticism of its treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Gathering evidence to test their claims of numerous releases from the camps is likely to be difficult,” the New York Times reports. “Foreign journalists are closely monitored and controlled when they visit Xinjiang, and independent investigators and human rights groups do not have free access.” 

The Climbing Cholitas

A group of Aymara indigenous women from Bolivia who climb, photographed by Todd Antony:

In January 2019, they summited the 22,841ft peak of Mt Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside of Asia. And did so eschewing traditional climbing clothing in favour of their traditional, vibrant, billowing dresses, and using their traditional shawls to carry equipment rather than backpacks.

The word 'Cholita' has previously been used as a pejorative term for the indigenous Aymara women of Bolivia. But these women are reclaiming it as a badge of honour.

"In the very recent past, as little as 10 years ago, Bolivia’s indigenous Aymara women were socially ostracised and systematically marginalised," explains Todd. "Known as 'Cholitas', these women, easily identified by their wide skirts, braided hair and bowler hats, suffered racial discrimination and could be refused entry to certain restaurants, using public transport and entering certain public spaces such as the capitals central square, Plaza Murillo."

[Photos © Todd Antony]

If this all sounds a bit far-fetched, note that, according to Wikipedia, Mt Aconcagua is "arguably the highest non-technical mountain in the world, since the northern route does not absolutely require ropes, axes, and pins".

Clouds

At the Waterworks Centre off Lea Bridge Road - where the smart set go to pick their blackberries.

Adam and Steve

I'm not at all sure why this should figure so prominently on BBC news:

Police are investigating suspected homophobic abuse after footage of a woman shouting "shame on you" at people on a Pride march was shared online.

A video posted on Twitter shows a woman wearing a niqab yelling at people, including one person in a rainbow flag.

The Met Police said it was aware of the footage, which was reportedly taken at the Waltham Forest Pride event in Walthamstow on Saturday.

No-one has been arrested and the force said inquiries were continuing.

Video here. Good luck with the identification. The woman's wearing a niqab.

The Met tweeted: "Abusing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is a hate crime.

"If you have been verbally or physically abused, harassed or attacked in any way by someone because you are or they think you are LGBT+ please report these crimes to police or through a third party agency."

In the video the woman can be heard shouting: "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Shame on you, shame on all of you.

"Shame on you, you despicable people. Shame on you, you shameless people."

If she's allowed to wear a niqab, why can't she shout homophobic abuse? It is - or was - a free country. Anyway, what did they expect? - a woman in a niqab would be cheering on the Pride marchers, waving her little multi-coloured flag? 

It is funny though, that hackneyed old Adam and Steve line. Is she a fan of Alan Partridge, by any chance?