Mick Hartley

Arirang 2019

North Korea's mass display Arirang Games - an exercise in totalitarian mass control - may bring in the tourist money, but they're a human rights disaster.

Children who performed in North Korea's mass games this year [2018] have suffered a host of chronic ailments such as arthritis, bladder infection and neuralgia, and many required hospitalization, Radio Free Asia said Friday.

The North revived the mass calisthenics for the first time in five years to mark its 70th anniversary.

RFA quoted a source as saying the spectacle's 100,000 participants included children as young as five and six who had to rehearse and perform in temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius. They had to bring their own lunch and leave home at 7 a.m. and return at 10 p.m. daily.

There were troubles this year as Kim Jong-un was, supposedly, not happy:

On Monday, Mr Kim criticised the games for their "wrong spirit of creation".

After attending the opening day of the colourful and highly choreographed event, he also spoke of an "irresponsible work attitude", state media reported.

Mr Kim had already called earlier this year for a new approach to propaganda.

Correspondents say North Korea may be preparing for more economic and ideological isolation after talks with the US stalled.

Well, it's what he does. Goes round criticising stuff.

The event is designed to celebrate the country and boost morale, but Mr Kim's criticism is not unusual, analyst Minyoung Lee of NK Pro told the BBC.

"Kim Jong-un publicly criticises departments and poor work performance," she said, adding that his criticisms can range from public spectacles like the mass games to even mundane things like poor tree-planting.

Key to interpreting his criticism is the context of the past months. In March, Mr Kim said the country needed to do its propaganda in a "novel" way.

Since then, state media has increased its coverage of propaganda work and warned against "bourgeoisie ways of life" and "non-socialist phenomena", Ms Lee said.

Now we hear that this year's show may have been cancelled for good:

North Korea has halted its notorious mass games after leader Kim Jong-un severely criticized organizers for their "wrong spirit."

The suspension comes amid rumors that the regime cannot handle the logistics of feeding thousands of performers, many of them schoolchildren, due to international sanctions, according to Radio Free Asia.

Some 60 percent of the performers are schoolchildren from the provinces, and they were reportedly given only 160 g of rice imported from China with a little pickled radish and cabbage to fortify themselves for the grueling synchronized performance.

Many malnourished children came down with cold or gastroenteritis, RFA claimed.

On June 5, Young Pioneer Tours, a Chinese travel agency specializing in North Korea, warned on Twitter that the mass games could be suspended from June 10 because of Kim's dissatisfaction with the opening-day performance.

Which suggests that Kim's criticisms may just have been an excuse to present the cancellation of the games as an ideological choice by the Supreme Commander, rather than as a necessity caused by international sanctions. 

Bad news for Young Pioneer Tours, and indeed for Koryo Tours - "North Korea's amazing and mind-blowing Mass Games are back in 2019! Read on for the latest information and how to book a ticket to see the world's biggest human performance" - but good news for anyone concerned about human rights in North Korea.

1970s Rome

From photographer Stephan Brigidi's new book Rome 1970s: A Decade of Turbulent Change. “I think of the 1970s as a turning point in Italian life.The natural optimism inherent in Italian society was threatened. I could see it in the eyes of the people I passed each day on the streets.” 

Clown #11, Ghetto area, Roma. © Stephan Brigidi

Old Man, Sottopassagio, Roma 1977. © Stephan Brigidi

Woman with large plate, Roma 1978. © Stephan Brigidi

Parcheggiatore, Piazza Cenci, Roma 1975. © Stephan Brigidi

Woman with Broom, Roma 1978. © Stephan Brigidi

Still Life with Bottle, Roma 1978. © Stephan Brigidi

La Famiglia DeBosis, Monteverde, Roma. © Stephan Brigidi

The shame of the Labour moderates

The old tribal politics was on show again at the Peterborough by-election, when all those Labour politicians - Ed Miliband, Tom Watson etc. - came out to support a candidate who enjoys cheering on antisemitic tweets in her spare time. A few MPs did complain, like Luciana Berger and Margaret Hodge, but they are themselves Jewish. As though antisemitism in the Labour party is of concern only to Jews.

 Claire Foges in the Times (£) - Time for Labour moderates to show some guts:

Yet while these MPs are lauded as brave for speaking out against their leader and sharing their displeasure on Twitter, all I see is cowardice. If they are resigned to this racism in their party, why do they stay? Do they see themselves as the moderate resistance within Corbyn’s Labour? When is this resistance going to act decisively? Do they really believe, after years of decay, that they can change things from within?

In the early days of Corbyn’s leadership, perhaps a sit-tight-and-wait strategy was understandable. There was the hope he would self-destruct, or soften his hard-left stances. But four long years on — after countless gaffes and failures and the unforgiveable inability to take the issue of antisemitism seriously, still most moderate Labour MPs sit tight and wait. They may publicly roll their eyes at Corbyn, but they continue to prop him up.

Of course, a handful did take action: Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Ann Coffey, Gavin Shuker and Joan Ryan formed The Independent Group, which became Change UK. When the newborn party split last week there was much gloating at how quickly the firework had sputtered to earth. But at least these Labour splitters had the guts to do something. They put their jobs and reputations on the line to act on the courage of their convictions. They are not staying on their cosy parliamentary perch, posting complaints about the leadership on Twitter while doing nothing substantial to topple it.

As John Woodcock, formerly a Labour MP and now an independent member for Barrow-in-Furness, has challenged former colleagues: “The biggest reason [Change UK] failed is because YOU stayed to prop up an antisemite who is unfit to govern, hoping something will turn up and you’ll get to keep your seat. They had the guts to try to stop this disaster . . . So what are you, Labour MPs, going to do to give the public the credible alternative they desperately need?”  [...]

Simply clinging on to this increasingly rotten party because they are “Labour ’til they die” is not a principled position, it is weak. Those who truly believe this man would be a disaster should set self-interest aside and do something bolder than complain on social media: defect to the Lib Dems; join other independents in parliament; try to revitalise the Co-Operative Party that several Labour MPs are already joint members of. Time for the moderates to show some guts: less carping, more carpe diem.

Corbyn's silence over China

Richard Heller - Corbyn and China: A Long March into Silence and Shame:

Corbyn donned white tie and tails (did he hire them or does he keep a set of his own in some secret attic?) to attend the state banquet for Xi. He gave no support to the scattered protesters, even though they needed him badly to gain media exposure against Xi’s drum-banging cheerleaders. Corbyn had a private meeting with Xi, in which he claimed to have raised human rights issues. One must wonder how much time these received in the half-hour meeting, in which he also begged China to stop sending Britain so much steel and gave fulsome praise to China’s record in fighting fascism in the Second World War and its “huge achievement in helping more than 600 million of its people out of poverty.”

Since then, I have been unable to find a single public criticism from Corbyn of China’s record on any issue. He has been silent on China’s repression of Tibet and on the million or more Uighur people in concentration camps, or the millions of other detainees in China, and the macabre harvesting of body parts from dead prisoners. Although often vocal on climate change he has said nothing about China’s contribution, nor its long record of environmental recklessness and destruction. He has done nothing in public to help any dissidents in China or combat the crackdowns on freedom of thought and expression and free trade unions, and its attempts to stifle critics overseas, including in our country.   [...]

However, since the outset of his leadership Corbyn has appealed to higher ethical principles, and all his conduct must be judged against them. His long march into silence over China demeans him and undermines him. This is highlighted painfully by his public posing against Donald Trump. There are crucial moral differences between Trump and Xi. Trump is genuinely accountable to democratic institutions and to the rule of law: Xi is beyond them. Life for American critics of Donald Trump is much more comfortable – and much longer – than for Chinese critics of Xi. However noxious in words and action, Trump does not compare as an agent of human suffering to Xi, the greatest violator of human rights in the world.

Labour pains

More trouble for Labour, from the Sunday Times (£):

Jeremy Corbyn was plunged into a new scandal over his party’s handling of bullying and harassment last night after it emerged that his most senior aide dismissed an investigation into a close ally accused of inappropriate conduct around young women.

Karie Murphy, the Labour leader’s chief of staff, operated outside formal procedures and said that she would instead “have a word” with Peter Willsman, a veteran activist and friend of Corbyn.

Willsman, 75, was subject to a formal complaint by a young staffer who alleged he asked where she lived, whether she liked clubbing — and sent texts saying he was in his pyjamas. He “refused” to leave her alone. She received no response to her complaint.

Harrassing young women isn't the only problem with Willsman. Just last week...

Pete Willsman, the senior Labour figure whose rant about Jewish "Trump fanatics was exposed by the JC, has been suspended from the party after he was recorded claiming the party's antisemitism crisis is being manufactured by Israel.

Mr Willsman, who was re-elected to Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) despite his previous rant at one of its meetings last year, said the open letter attacking Labour antisemitism, signed by 68 rabbis across the community, was "obviously organised by the Israeli embassy".

What a charmer. 

Meanwhile, staying with the Sunday Times, here's Dominic Lawson on the Labour leadership's nostalgia for the good old days of Stalin:

Jeremy Corbyn was in his element last week. Having boycotted the state banquet for the president of the United States, linked to the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of western Europe by allied troops, the Labour leader instead addressed the rally against the visit of Donald Trump. Actually, it was not so much an address as a prolonged yell: he was, to say the least, animated, as he concluded: “This demonstration shows just how determined all of us are to achieve a better world!”

Well, everyone wants a better world. But not everyone agrees how it would look. Jeremy Corbyn, for example, is a communist. His idea of a better world is much closer to that practised by the People’s Republic of China than anything that exists in the United States. That is why he was much happier to attend the state banquet at Buckingham Palace for the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

And last year, when Andrew Marr put it to him that it was China’s abandonment of pure socialist economics that fuelled its escape from mass poverty, Corbyn responded that the more impressive achievement was Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward. This was the propaganda term for the forced collectivisation of agriculture — which led to the death by starvation or state-directed killing of up to 45m Chinese. All in a good cause, comrades.

Not coincidentally, Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications, Seumas Milne, has long held a place in his heart for the murderous Mao, and for Stalin too (the former Guardian columnist has been an apologist for the Soviet dictator whose paranoid purges killed more of his own countrymen than even the Nazis did)....

Corbyn's father, we learn - who was such an inspiration to the young Jeremy, supposedly fighting the fascists at Cable Street and all - was a reader of the Communist Daily Worker, and was thanked for his donation to the paper in April 1940. 

This was a time when the official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain — which, now called the Morning Star, is Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite daily paper and for which he was for years a regular columnist — needed every bit of support it could get. In the wake of the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939, and the carve-up of Poland between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, the Daily Worker dutifully parroted the line of its main funder and master (Comrade JV Stalin). This meant it was now on Berlin’s side in the conflict. Thus, in February 1940 (two months before Corbyn Sr’s donation), the paper’s editorial declared that Hitler “repeated once again his claim that war was thrust upon him by Britain. Against this historical fact there is no reply.”

And in September 1940 the Daily Worker took the Lord Haw-Haw approach, telling the British people (then undergoing the horror of the Blitz): “It is, of course, obvious, that in any ‘game’ of mutual reprisals between the two capitals, the numerical superiority of the German air force . . . is likely to tell heavily in favour of the Germans.”

The paper also boasted that the Soviets had "brought new life, freedom and prosperity to the formerly oppressed people of Eastern Poland".

So Jeremy really is a chip off the old block. And those of us who claimed that he hadn't had an original thought since the Seventies may have to revise our opinion. He's never had an original thought.

Omaha train

John Vachon - November 1938. "Nebraska Power Co. plant and railroad yard at Omaha."

[Photo: John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration]

Jupiter vortex

From NASA's Juno spacecraft, high above Jupiter:

[NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI/MSSS / Gerald Eichstadt / Sean Doran]

Zionist slave masters MP

Labour "triumphs" in the Peterborough by-election, despite their candidate, Lisa Forbes, having a disturbing taste for antisemitic tweets:

Ms Forbes caused controversy during the campaign when she liked a post on Twitter which said Theresa May had a "Zionist slave masters agenda".

Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said she had been "careless" in her language but had apologised for her mistake and would make a fantastic MP.

But Labour MP Margaret Hodge said she had "raised concerns" about Ms Forbes' comments with the party's leadership, while fellow Labour MP Jess Phillips said Ms Forbes had "endorsed and ignored anti-Semitic things".

So antisemitism, we now know, is no bar to Labour advancement. 

From the JC:

The Jewish Labour Movement has urged Labour to suspend its newest MP over her endorsement of antisemitic statements, after her unexpected by-election victory.

Within hours of Ms Forbes taking Peterborough, JLM issued a statement on Friday calling her a "perfect example" of a Labour activist who advanced within the party despite promoting "racist material" and opposing the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Ms Forbes was revealed to have liked a post on Facebook that said Theresa May had a "Zionist Slave Master's Agenda" and praised a post that said Islamic extremists were the work of Mossad. Ms Forbes has apologised and insisted she found antisemitism "abhorrent".

JLM, which announced it would not campaign for Ms Forbes earlier this week, said she would have to go "far, far further" than her statements of apology and urged the party to suspend her.

A JLM spokesperson called her "a perfect example" of how Labour allow those who "shared racist material and rejected the IHRA definition of antisemitism not only to be a member but [to] advance political and seek public office"....

Labour MPs Dame Louise Ellman and Dame Margaret Hodge formally complained to the party about their new parliamentary colleague.

A Labour source said the complaints were being "processed".

Ah yes. We know what happens when antisemitism complaints are processed in the Labour Party.

Update: in the Times (£):

Labour’s victory in the Peterborough by-election shows that “antisemitism is becoming normal in the party”, one of its own MPs has said.

In the run up to polling day Lisa Forbes, the new MP, was revealed to have “liked” an antisemitic Facebook post that said Theresa May was following a “Zionist slave masters agenda”. She subsequently apologised for “not calling out these posts”.

Jess Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, said that while she was “glad” that the Brexit Party did not win, “the reality is I cannot be gleeful or proud as I’d want to be because of how it shows that antisemitism is becoming normal in the party”. She said: “Lisa ignored and endorsed antisemitic things, I’ll take her explanation and apology at face value and look forward to her proving, as others have, that actions not excuses alone can heal.

“But with every case the party’s values chip away and our ability to stand up against hate erodes.”

Dr John 1941 - 2019

Mac Rebennack, the great New Orleans singer/pianist/gris-gris man, died yesterday:

Guardian obit.

To force inmates to convert to Islam

Well, this is all very depressing. From the Times (£):

Muslim gang leaders are orchestrating violence in top-security jails, including administering beatings to force inmates to convert to Islam, a report has said.

The gangs operated under the guise of religion, with a hierarchy of leaders, recruiters, enforcers, followers and foot soldiers, the report by the Ministry of Justice said. One non-Muslim inmate said: “There is an underlying pressure for people to convert and join the gang.

“Their tactic is to befriend someone when they come in. If they don’t convert, they will then start spreading rumours about them, that the person is a snitch, so that they will be ostracised. Then the beatings follow.”

Gang members told researchers that their strength of numbers on the wings spread fear among other inmates. One Muslim prisoner said: “They know they’re only going to three other jails and they know there will be brothers waiting there to stab them.”

The findings are based on interviews with 83 male prisoners and 73 staff at three of the eight high-security prisons in England, which are not named.

Terrorists often held the most senior roles in the gangs, which enforced rules such as wearing underpants in the shower and a ban on cooking bacon. Prisoners who could speak Arabic or learn passages of the Koran were favoured in the ranks, while beatings were used to force inmates to convert to Islam and join the gangs....

Inmates who tried to quit gangs faced punishment, the most serious of which was for denouncing Islam, it added. One prisoner said: “If I said I didn’t want to be a Muslim, I’d need to watch out in case someone stabbed me.”