Mick Hartley

Intermission

Off for a few days. Back Monday.

Jackpot Spot 1951

More Las Vegas noir from Don Cox at Shorpy. "Las Vegas 1951 -- Las Vegas Club."

[Photo: Shorpy/Don Cox]

Tough times in North Korea

We heard last month about weeding in North Korea, with the official Rodong Sinmun reporting in typical style how wonderfully well it's all going, as cooperative farms across the country "weed their fields with might and main". The Daily NK, meanwhile, reported on the reality, with a disastrous corn harvest in prospect as "insufficient supplies of basic agricultural supplies such as fertilizer and farm machinery, combined with a lack of proper manpower, have reportedly caused corn fields to be overrun by weeds."

Now here's the latest Daily NK report:

Following North Korea’s acknowledgement to the United Nations that it is suffering food shortages, Daily NK has learned that insufficient agricultural supplies, such as pesticides and fertilizers, have hindered the weeding of rice fields this year. 

“The second round of weeding should have finished by this time of year, but many fields have yet to start their first round,” a source from North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on July 21. “Weeding has been completed only in easily noticed areas of the fields. Other parts of the fields are so overrun by weeds that rice cultivation will likely be negatively impacted.” 

By contrast, North Korean media has stated that the country’s “agricultural processes” are running smoothly, while emphasizing the importance of “increasing grain production.” The Rodong Sinmun, for example, claimed recently that “agricultural processes, including the weeding of paddy fields, are proceeding as planned nationwide.”

However, weeding has progressed as scheduled only in roadside fields that the authorities can scan as they drive by.

That recalls reports from China during Mao's Great Leap Forward, with some 40 million starving to death, when the fields lining the route taken by Party officials were specially prepared with abundant crops to prove that Mao's agricultural reforms were working, while behind, out of sight, all was desolation.

A lack of pesticides and workers is reportedly to blame for the sluggish progress.

North Korea has recognized its chronic shortage of pesticides and fertilizer, but this year’s conditions are exceptionally poor: agricultural supplies – which include pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers – have fallen to 80% of what was available last year. 

Moreover, pulling the weeds by hand is not a solution because many people are reluctant to be mobilized for agricultural work in rural areas.

“[The authorities] have recently given instructions to provide the fields protection against heat waves and typhoons, but nobody is coming to work, which means nothing is happening,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.  

Bracing for the poor harvest, the subject of “preparing food substitutes” was brought up during cadre training sessions and lectures for ordinary people. 

During these meetings, there has been mention of “rice roots,” eaten by North Koreans to stave off starvation during the Arduous March, and even “peat bread,” which is made by mixing unburned coal powder with a little flour.

The source claims the discussion of food substitutes by government officials suggests this year’s grain production will fall short of projections. “Farmers expect the situation to be worse than the previous year,” he added. 

North Korean authorities released a report to the Voluntary National Review (VNR) at the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on July 13 , stating, “[We are] struggling to meet the target of producing seven million tons of grain. In 2018, 4.95 million tons were produced, the lowest in ten years.”

This is the first time North Korea has publicly disclosed its food shortage through a VNR report.

The submission of the report may be an indirect request by the North Korean authorities for food aid from the international community given signs the country faces a poor harvest this year.

The situation isn't helped by a lack of fertilizer:

The Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory — promoted by North Korean authorities as “a creation of self-reliant strength and prosperity” — has been unable to properly produce phosphatic fertilizer since the plant’s completion over a year ago. 

To escape criticism over the plant’s non-existent production, however, the authorities are reportedly employing the “crude strategem” of shipping fertilizer produced at other plants from the Sunchon factory.

In a phone conversation with Daily NK on Wednesday, a source in North Korea said the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory has been unable to produce a finished product, even though the plant was completed over a year and two months ago. “It’s completely unable to produce ammonium phosphate,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And as for superphosphate of lime, it’s simply being packaged with fertilizer produced in other factories.”

Meanwhile the promised distribution of food is not materialising:

North Korean authorities provided people throughout the country with food at lower-than-market prices in early July, but no food distributions have been detected since. 

A source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Tuesday that there has been no talk of food provisions since North Korean authorities sold locals five days’ worth of food at bargain prices earlier this month. “There’s been no relevant orders from the leadership, either,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity....

North Koreans are reportedly wondering whether the authorities will actually provide them with more food, whispering to each other: “The state apparently has no grain, either.”...

“More and more locals are suffering malnutrition, and some people are even starving in certain areas,” said the source. “If the closure of the border and market controls continue under the guise of coronavirus quarantine efforts, even people with excellent survival skills will have a tough time getting through this.”

Israel at the Olympics

On the one hand:

An Algerian judoka has withdrawn from the Tokyo Olympics before his event starts, after the draw set him on course for a possible match-up against an Israeli.

Fethi Nourine told Algerian TV that his political support for the Palestinian cause made it impossible for him to compete against Tohar Butbul.

"We worked a lot to reach the Olympics, and the news came as a shock, a thunder," he told the channel late on Thursday. Nourine said his decision was "final," and he would not "get his hands dirty."

On the other hand:

Iranian born judoka Saeid Mollaei has won a silver medal in the Tokyo 2020 judo tournament as a representative for the Mongolian team.

Mollaei was granted refugee status by Germany in 2019 after fleeing Iran for refusing to forfeit his match against Israeli judoka Sagi Muki.

Noting his close friendship with Muki, Israeli channel Sports 5 quoted him as thanking Israel: "Thank you to Israel for all the good energy – this medal is dedicated to you as well and I hope Israelis is happy with this victory, todah.

He received citizenship in Mongolia shortly afterwards, and was chosen to compete under their flag in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

A deeply homophobic project

I posted on the first part of Allan Stratton three-part series on gender supremacy last month, and wondered in passing if this phenomenon was the first or at least most notable case of the absurdities of post-modernism  - in this case "Queer Theory" - escaping from the confines of the academy and infecting everyday life.

Anyway, now here's part two - Rescuing the Radicalized Discourse on Sex and Gender:

According to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, a priest’s blessing transforms the material substance of communion wafers and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ, even as the wafers and wine retain their outward appearance. Gender supremacists have a comparable doctrine—let’s call it transgenderation—by which the faithful must believe, literally, that “transwomen are women.” (It also demands that transmen are men, though it’s interesting to observe that the male-identified half of the trans community isn’t nearly so strident in its insistence on transgenderation as the female component.) I am not speaking figuratively here: A leading trans scholar at Berkeley, Grace Lavery, has claimed that (in the words of the university’s own headline writers) “truly changing sex is possible.”

As someone who has lived the internal politics of the LGBT community for decades (being of the G persuasion), I’ve noted that many of the gender-supremacist movement’s most doctrinaire high priests are trans women who, notwithstanding their loud and proud self-identification, seem quite happy with their penises and chest hair. Their Internet acolytes typically consist of mostly straight, bi, or queer-identified young people who are eager to sign on to what seems like a progressive movement. The priests aren’t elected, nor do they seem to represent the bulk of transgender individuals (who generally have a more realistic understanding of how biology works). However, the priests have been able to maintain their influence, and protect themselves from criticism, through word games and the threat of quick-trigger transphobia accusations.

But you don’t have to understand Catholic doctrine to know how this game works. The Looking-Glass world of Lewis Carroll is good enough:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Humpty Dumpty’s will to power is instructive here, because the public discussion about trans rights, in most cases, is no longer about being kind and respectful toward trans people—a principle that everyone of goodwill now generally agrees on. Rather, it’s a project aimed at manipulating language as a means toward mastery in areas of policymaking where the rights of transwomen (in particular) conflict with other rights, including those of women who seek to keep their intimate spaces free of male-bodied individuals; and parents who feel that their children are being pressured to use transition as a means to deal with unrelated traumas or psychological conditions. [...]

This lurch into the Looking-Glass world is presented as the height of progressive enlightenment. But it’s the opposite: For over 60 years, I watched the LGBT and women’s movements separate the concepts of sex and gender, so that effeminate boys (“genderqueer” or “gender non-conforming,” in modern parlance) could grow up to be Quentin Crisp, and girls could be Fran Liebowitz, all without judgment and harassment. The more avant-garde approach, on the other hand, erases the real distinction between sex and gender by demanding that the former be subordinate to the latter. But of course, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals experience same-sex attraction on the basis of real biological sex, not the abstraction of gender.

That attraction is foundational to our lives and self-understanding. Yet it is systematically denied by gender supremacists, who are incapable of reconciling their claims about human identity except through the fiction that humans are sexually attracted based on the gender self-identification of potential partners. (To give up this claim would be to admit that a lesbian isn’t going to be attracted to a male body, no matter how many times she is assured that the body in question belongs to someone who identifies as a woman.) The LGB population, in other words, has effectively been gaslit to fit the ideological convenience of a subset of trans activists—a deeply homophobic project.

But the tide is turning, as more and more people - women especially - are fighting back.

When today’s gender priesthood refuses to engage even good-faith LGBT allies, they abdicate the moral high ground and lose all credibility. Unable to persuade, they resort to bullying. Such aggressive tactics have allowed them short-term success in academia, arts, government, and NGO circles, where employees and administrators fear the professional consequences that go with ideological heterodoxy. But this success has come at a price, as there is now a large and growing group of disaffected progressives, LGB and otherwise, who see militant trans activists not as allies, but as political liabilities who have hurt our cause—right down to the language we use to describe our very being.

The Arabs of Eretz Israel

Jake Wallis Simons in the Spectator, on Israeli Arabs:

Which Middle Eastern country offers the best life for Arabs? The answer, as they say, might surprise you. Take any measure you like – democratic representation, women’s rights, lack of corruption, freedom of speech, the protection of sexual minorities – and it is clear that Israel comes out on top.

I remember covering an Isis gun attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul in 2017. An Arab-Israeli woman, 19-year-old Lian Zaher Nasser, was one of 39 people who lost their lives in the atrocity. The attentiveness of the Israeli diplomatic service to her family was striking, and equal to anything I’ve seen elsewhere. Years later, a senior Israeli intelligence source told me of his abiding sense of guilt in failing to prevent the attack.

Considering the fact that the Palestinian territories often feature large red signs warning Israelis not to enter Arab areas for the sake of their lives, the contrast is rather stark.

Last year, the celebrated dancer Ayman Safiah, who was both openly gay and the first Arab-Israeli ballerino, drowned while trying to rescue a friend in northern Israel. His funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. It is hard to imagine this anywhere else in the region.

And while Palestinians have been languishing in a democratic void for over a decade, blocked again and again from casting a vote, Israeli Arabs have made it to the ballot box four times in the last two years. In June, their efforts produced an Arab minister in the cabinet.

Yet the fact remains that much more could be done to allow the greater integration of Israel’s two million Arabs, the majority of whom suffer a far lower quality of life than their Jewish counterparts.

But still far better than the quality of life in Arab states. Not to mention the quality of life for Jews in Arab states, of which there now remain just the tiniest handful.

There are certain areas in which specific policy changes could yield profound results. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, an Arab child receives a smaller education budget than a Jewish one. One Arab woman I met last week was determined to send her son to a Jewish school for that reason.

As the left-wing politician and former IDF deputy chief of staff, Yair Golan, has argued, this discrepancy means that bright, Arab-Israeli school leavers are less likely to win a place at Israeli universities, opting to study on the West Bank or in Jordan instead. Their institutional environment is thus likely to be hostile to Israel, and the opportunity for enhancing their stake in the state is lost.

The fall of Netanyahu, and the coalition that has replaced it, offers a window of opportunity to reverse this. For all his achievements as a peacemaker with the wider Arab world, Netanyahu was often perceived as pandering towards anti-Arab prejudice, particularly during election campaigns (though he recently gave himself the Arabic moniker Abu Yair). His 2018 ‘nation state law’, which enshrined the Jewish character of the state, may not have been discriminatory but it caused many Arabs to feel alienated.

Now that the government comprises a rainbow of parties from right to left – with an Arab presence for the first time – fresh attention can be paid to the matter. There is an urgent need for a wide-ranging package of economic and social stimulus for Arab-Israeli communities.

The recent rioting should be a wake-up call. The malaise has been deepening for many years, but the unrest was a tipping-point. If conflicts with external enemies continue to trigger confrontations with ‘enemies within’, which have been gestating for generations, Israel could end up tearing itself apart.

This is not inconsistent with right-wing Zionism. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Netanyahu’s intellectual forebear, hardly a shrinking violet when it came to Jewish self-determination, could not have been clearer.

‘All of us, all Jews and Zionists of all schools of thought, want the best for the Arabs of Eretz Israel,’ he wrote. ‘We want them to prosper both economically and culturally.

‘We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled.’

The end of US bipartisanship

In the days of the Cold War, US policy was bipartisan: both Democrats and Republicans shared the belief that the Soviets were the enemy, and that this was a struggle between freedom and totalitarianism that had to be won. In fact over a range of foreign policy areas, from the Middle East to Vietnam, that bipartisanship remained largely intact. There was continuity.

Not any more, though. Ayaan Hirsi Ali at UnHerd:

So when did it all go wrong? On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama set a precedent when he declared his intention to reverse the key foreign policy decisions of the George W. Bush Administration, promising “to remove US combat troops [from Iraq] within 16 months, leaving behind a residual force with limited responsibilities”. The effects of this withdrawal are well-documented — the most serious being the rise of Isis.

Eight years later, Donald Trump responded by resolving to do all he could to “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran” — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — which was portrayed by top officials in the Obama Administration as their biggest diplomatic achievement. And four years after that, Joe Biden indicated he would reverse key foreign policy decisions of the Trump Administration, particularly with respect to Iran and Saudi-Arabia. The Biden Administration has also decided to not only pull out of Afghanistan — prioritising haste over competence — but also to resuscitate the Iranian JCPOA deal, despite unrelenting provocations by the Iranian regime.

Indeed, the end of bipartisanship was all but confirmed in May, when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki delivered a scathing verdict on the Trump Administration’s efforts in the Middle East: “Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival,” she said, “we don’t think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the long-standing conflict in the Middle East.”

In reality, last August’s Abraham Peace Accords represented an extraordinary step forward for the Middle East. The UAE and Bahrain recognised Israel’s right to exist, and with it the need for Arabs and Jews to join forces against the existential threat posed by Iran.

For a long time, America’s relationship with Middle Eastern countries centred around the question of oil — and the vast fortunes the West hoped to extract from it. But during this period, US diplomats had to negotiate with men who, after making assurances, would then go home and do nothing. Combined with a frequently oppressive treatment of women, and widespread anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda, the Arab status quo was more threatening to American interests than supportive of them. Later, when confronted with their financing of jihadist groups, these “diplomats” would deny any involvement, no matter how strong the evidence.

Today’s leaders in the Middle East are quite different, whether in the UAE, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. This is especially true when it comes to their key advisers, many of whom have been educated in Britain and America, and seek a future in which a more humanist, pluralistic Islam emerges to challenge the fundamentalists. Financing radical Islamist ideology abroad — to say nothing of jihad — is no longer on the agenda. Instead, the focus is on developing the framework of a modern economy.

But to do this, Middle Eastern governments are fighting a number of opposing power dynamics in their own societies, including jihadists, Wahhabis and traditional tribal interests. All of this takes time. Nevertheless, one can see that real change is happening, particularly in terms of the role of women.

All this and more is now being undone by the Biden administration — and the result will not be that Americans sleep more peacefully in our beds. Rather, if the jihadists regain control of Afghanistan, or if violence escalates in countries such as Iraq and Lebanon, neither Europe nor America will be spared the consequences. Any additional instability in the Middle East will produce an enormous refugee flow, as happened following the rise of Isis and the collapse of Libya following Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow.

It's an optimistic view of the main Sunni players in the Middle East, but there are clearly changes taking place, as demonstrated with the signing of the Abraham Accords - changes that need to be encouraged. Instead, by reverting to the old Obama policy of cosying up to Iran, the Biden administration looks set to be misreading the whole Middle East situation.

After forty long years, the consistency of Cold War containment ultimately brought victory. The subsequent inconsistency of America’s foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, is having the opposite effect. And under Biden, that shows no sign of changing.

Forced labour, violence, torture and hunger

More North Korean news, from South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

Inmates at North Korea's Sungho-ri concentration camp near Pyongyang are suffering forced labor, violence, torture and hunger, according to a U.S. human rights watchdog.

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea last week published a report on the issue.

A survivor of the prison camp identified as "i39" testified that the regime gave each inmate a daily ration of only 100 g of corn meal despite the required minimum amount of 200 g and most were dying of malnutrition.

Often rat droppings were found in the gruel. The survivor said that during his three years of imprisonment, "three people died every day in the women's section." The dead bodies were taken to a crematorium, where "like origami, [guards] try to make corpses fit by breaking the bones."

According to the report, male inmates were forced to work in a nearby limestone quarry, coal mine or cement factory. Female inmates were forced to farm or put the eyelashes on dolls for export to China for 13 hours a day. If they failed to fill the daily quota of 12,000 dolls, they were tortured by being forced to kneel on floors that were hot from the heat of the coalmine and suffered burns in less than five minutes.

Meanwhile, the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded think tank in Seoul, published white paper on North Korean human rights based on interviews with 50 North Korean defectors who arrived here recently. It quotes one defector as testifying that anyone caught watching a South Korean film is punished more harshly than those who are caught using crystal meth.

"The number of homeless North Korean children roaming the streets dwindled after a shelter was built in 2015, but their numbers began to jump again in Nampo and Chongjin in 2019 due to international sanctions," it reports.

That report on the Sungho-ri concentration camp can be found here.

 

Drenched in the culture of capitalist delinquency

The battle against anti-socialist ideas continues apace:

North Korean authorities have recently established “secret disciplinary units” led by Socialist Women’s Union of Korea organizations and members in North Hamgyong Province to stamp out “anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior.”

A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK last Thursday that the provincial branch of the Workers’ Party of Korea ordered the secret establishment of “autonomous internal disciplinary units” composed largely of provincial Socialist Women’s Union of Korea organizations and members. The order stemmed from a Central Committee directive on July 11 to “thoroughly eradicate anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior.”

According to the source, North Koream authorities are frequently emphasizing measures to prevent youth “drenched in the culture of capitalist delinquency” from becoming addicted to the “enemy’s ideology and culture, which focuses on nothing but money.”

In lockstep, North Hamgyong Province’s party committee ordered the secret establishment of “internal disciplinary units” while stating that Socialist Women’s Union of Korea members “should take the lead in uncovering and reporting problematic behavior,” the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

Socialist Women’s Union of Korea organizations in the province have resolved to “perform their role to the fullest in this effort,” according to the source....

Specifically, provincial authorities have tasked Socialist Women’s Union of Korea members involved in the disciplinary units with monitoring which clothes neighborhood youth wear, which hairstyles they imitate, which songs they hum, and which dances they enjoy. Disciplinary unit members are tasked with immediately reporting behaviors that “run afoul of North Korean culture.”

More importantly, the disciplinary units are supposed to pay attention to local mobile phone ringtones and conversations to “uncover acts of espionage.” Amid efforts to eliminate users of Chinese mobile phones, members of these units must “take the lead” and stay alert to identify these users in regions along the Sino-North Korean border, the source said.

“The Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security stressed to members of the secret disciplinary teams that they must remain aware that they are fortresses and bastions protecting the socialist system and fulfill their role as mosquito nets against reactionary thought, calling on them to remember this and work to prevent early the ideological corruption of local residents,” the source explained. 

It's all getting a bit desperate. The more the world around them crumbles, and the closer they get to all-out famine, the more they shout and scream about rooting out any trace of non-conformist thought.

Night traffic

Don Cox, February 1969. "Night Traffic." Kodachrome of Oceanside from a San Diego Freeway overpass:

[Photo: Shorpy/Don Cox]