Author: Mick Hartley

ll on him very often.” “Why not?” “There are hardly any Jewish murderers.” My preliminary thoughts about nature and nurture, organic versus psychological, were immediately thrown. Were we now saying that certain kinds of mental sickness can be controlled by culture and religion?

Then this:

[A] year or so ago, after long and necessarily delicate inquiries, I was introduced to a woman who was herself schizophrenic but was highly interested in her condition and, all things being well, able to explain it. She gave me a Sony Walkman to wear, then said, “Right. Pretend I’m interviewing you for a job.” We did the role play: she asked simple questions, which I tried to answer while a variety of loud voices jeered vilely in my ears. It was distracting, and ultimately so upsetting that I had to take the headphones off. “Right,” she said. “Let’s review the interview. Who was the prime minister before Tony Blair?” “John Major,” I said. “Yes, but you didn’t know that just now.” “I know. I couldn’t concentrate. The voices put me off.” “Do you also realise you were lip-reading me?” “The voices were too loud for me to hear your questions.” “That is what it is like.”

I asked her if she was hearing voices even as we spoke, and she said, “Yes.” “How many?” “Three, four, but if I start to listen I will find what they are saying more urgent and more real than what you are asking me.” I do not think that until that moment I had understood the intensely physical nature of this auditory phenomenon. Her medication had enabled her to be “mad” and “sane” simultaneously. No one reasonable could doubt the presence of an organic element in this woman’s condition; no one in the world could doubt the grace and courage with which she handled it.

cking the requisite revolutionary purity:

It is significant that members of the CPB and NCP – organisations which still call for a Labour vote in spite of Labour’s intimate involvement in the imperialist bombing of Yugoslavia – did not this year attend the picket. In theory they oppose imperialism, but when it comes to practical action – voting for anti-imperialist parties or picketing the embassy of the Labour government’s ally, US imperialism, that’s a different matter!

The Society for Friendship with Korea also held a meeting at London’s Conway Hall on 8 July to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of the great Marxist-Leninist Korean leader, Comrade Kim Il Sung. This meeting was addressed by Comrades Dermot Hudson, Ella Rule and Hugh Stephens, who all gave interesting and informative presentations on the subject of important contributions of Comrade Kim Il Sung to the Korean and international communist movement. Comrade Dermot’s contribution covered Comrade Kim-il-Sung’s leadership of the Korean liberation struggle and the building of socialism; Comrade Ella’s covered the special contribution made by the Korean revolution under Comrade Kim-Il-Sung’s leadership to the emancipation of women; and Comrade Stephens focused on the Juche idea, which of course originated with Comrade Kim Il Sung. Summaries of these presentations will be produced in the Autumn issue of the Society’s Bulletin.

There is even, you’ll be pleased to hear, a Juche Ideas Study Group, led by one Shaun Pickford, “who made the long journey from Stoke On Trent”, and “read out a speech entitled for “an Independent Peoples England” in which he stressed the need to apply the Juche idea to the UK”.

I find all this in a way harder to understand than the extreme right. With neo-Nazis, you get what it says on the tin by and large. Whether they choose to question the reality of the holocaust or revel in it, they’re openly racist, specifically anti-semitic, and will include a fair share of sociopaths as well as hangers-on just enjoying the thrill of being nasty. With these ultra-leftists, they’re generally people you wouldn’t find much exceptional about, apart from their politics, when it becomes quickly apparent that they’re completely and utterly barking.

While idiots sing the praises of Kim Jong Il in the Juche Study Group, check out what people will do to get out of North Korea in this story from The Marmot’s Hole, about a woman who escaped once, was captured and tortured to the extent that her feet had to be amputated, and escaped again on crutches.

Hurricane Rita is now Category 5. May I be the first to use the phrase “double whammy”, after Katrina? (well, probably not) And there’s still another 69 days to go till the end of the hurricane season which, as the BBC assures us, “runs from 1 June to 30 November”. After that they don’t issue the permits.

It’s one of the favourite lines of creationists and other critics of evolution: “where’s the missing link?” As though there’d be just one species between, say, man and ape, and the failure to find it casts doubt on the whole Darwinian enterprise. Carl Zimmer explains why they miss the point, looking at recent fossil discoveries that shed light on the evolution of whales.

One of the best essayists in the field.

Vaclav Havel and Desmond Tutu have written an introduction to a report on Burma, urging the UN Security Council to debate the future of the military regime as a threat to regional peace:

The former Czech president and former archbishop of Cape Town, prominent in the struggle for freedom in their countries, became interested because of the imprisonment of fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy leader who won elections in 1990. They say they are worried by the combination of dictatorship, civil war, the overflow of refugees, the Aids epidemic and drug production in the Asian state.

“We strongly urge the Security Council to take up the situation of Burma,” they wrote in a foreword. “Preserving peace, security and stability in the region and the world – as well as achieving national reconciliation in Burma – requires nothing less.”

The military dictatorship in Burma could prove a test case for the UN’s new doctrine of intervention to protect human rights agreed at a summit last week, though many dispute whether the situation is grave enough to fall under its remit. […]

According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency, Burma is the world’s second biggest exporter of opiates. It also manufactures amphetamines and has not co-operated with international attempts to combat money laundering.

The junta has powerful allies in China and India, which have blocked US attempts to bring Burma before the UN. But some observers say China is increasingly worried about the trafficking of drugs from Burma.

Human Rights Watch are reporting a massive crackdown in Uzbekistan as trials begin of those accused of instigating the demonstrations in Andijan, when hundreds were shot by government troops. The prosecution is expected to blame “terrorists” with an Islamic agenda.

The government…unleashed a crackdown on civil society, the ferocity of which is unprecedented even in Uzbekistan’s fourteen-year history of repression since it became independent from the Soviet Union. The authorities have aggressively pursued human rights defenders, independent journalists, and political activists who attempted to convey the truth about the events of May 13 and the days that followed. These individuals have been arrested on spurious charges, detained, beaten, threatened, put under surveillance or under de facto house arrest, and have been set upon by mobs and humiliated through Soviet-style public denunciations. As this report went to press, at least eleven activists had been imprisoned, and at least fifteen had been forced to flee the country into exile.

The present report documents the coercive pressure for testimony, which the government is using to rewrite the history of what happened on May 13. Almost immediately after that date, Andijan residents were placed under the close surveillance of their neighborhood committees, or mahallas. Beginning in June, police detained for questioning hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of people with any connection, no matter how remote, to the May 13 events: protesters, their relatives, relatives of those who fled to Kyrgyzstan, people who lived in the vicinity of the main square, and the like.

Those interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that police kept them in custody under false pretenses, usually by fabricating misdemeanor charges against them, and used the time in custody to beat or threaten them into signing the false confessions and statements described above. Once police got what they wanted, and only then, they released the detainees, on condition that they sign statements saying they had no complaints about their treatment.

During the summer months, Uzbek television broadcast a series of scripted public confessions in which people say they were misled into going to the protest, attest that they have repented, beg for forgiveness from President Karimov, and are then shown being handed over to their parents and mahalla committee for rehabilitation.

Well, it didn’t take long for the much-heralded breakthrough with North Korea to start unravelling:

North Korea has said it will not scrap its nuclear programme until it is given a civilian nuclear reactor, undermining an agreement reached 24 hours earlier.

Pyongyang agreed on Monday to dismantle its nuclear programme in return for aid and security guarantees, following six-nation talks.

The BBC’s Charles Scanlon says that the North’s new statement looks like a recipe for continued deadlock.

Both Japan and the US have rejected Pyongyang’s demand for a reactor.

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said the North’s demand was “unacceptable”, Kyodo News agency reported.

Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the US State Department, said: “This was obviously not the agreement they signed, and we will see what the coming weeks bring.” […]

[I]n a statement broadcast on North Korean radio early on Tuesday morning local time, Pyongyang reiterated its “right to peaceful nuclear activities”.

It said the US “should not even dream” it would dismantle its nuclear arsenal until Washington had provided it with a light-water nuclear reactor.

Soon afterwards, Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan told reporters that his nation was not prepared to make the first move.

“They are telling us to give up everything, but there will be no such thing as giving it up first,” he said.

I posted last week on a eurosceptic article from Daniel Hannan in The Brussels Journal, originally from Die Welt. Here’s another, on the German election:

There is an elephant in the room. During the election campaign, the German politicians pretended it wasn’t there. They tiptoed around it, mouthing their slogans about unemployment and tax reform. But its great bulk left little room for any other issue.

The elephant, of course, is the EU. All the main parties agree about it, and it has therefore hardly featured in the campaign. But absence of this subject lends an unreal quality to the whole election. What is the point of voting Red or Black or Green when 80 per cent of your laws come, not from the German Parliament or Government, but from Brussels?

That is not my figure: it comes from the German Federal Justice Ministry. In reply to a question by Johannes Singhammer, MP for the CSU, ministers were forced to concede that, out of 23,167 legislative acts passed since 1998, nearly 19,000 originated in the EU. […]

This centralisation of power might have been justified if Brussels had done a better job than the nation-states, but it hasn’t. Look at its record in the fields of policy over which it has had exclusive control for longest. It has run agriculture since 1960, and given us the most wasteful, expensive, bureaucratic, immoral system of farm support in the world. It has run fisheries since 1972, and almost eliminated the fish stocks in its waters. It has run trade policy since 1956, and has held many African countries in poverty by closing its markets while simultaneously dumping its surpluses on them. Yet, despite the mess the EU has made of the policies it already controls, we carry on giving it new ones.

The funny thing is that, when I ask pro-European friends to tell me the purpose of the EU, they usually reply: “to spread democracy”. In reality, the European project has involved the steady transfer of powers, over 50 years, from elected national parliamentarians to unelected Brussels officials. It is commonplace to observe that the EU’s own structures are undemocratic, in that only the Commission may propose new laws. What is less widely observed is that European integration is also devaluing the democratic process within the Member States. None of the German candidates could honestly promise to revive Germany’s countryside (because of the Common Agricultural Policy) or overhaul labour relations (because of the Social Chapter) or regulate the borders (because of Schengen) or even adopt a radically different economic policy (because of the euro and the Stability Pact).

Whether the Germans voted for Mrs Merkel or Mr Schröder or another candidate, it did not affect any of the big issues. Some democracy.

A breakthrough is being reported in the six-nation talks being held in Beijing:

North Korea has agreed to give up all nuclear activities and rejoin the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, following a diplomatic breakthrough.

In return the US said it had no intention of attacking the North, which was also promised aid and electricity.

The agreement came during a fourth round of six-nation talks in Beijing, aimed at ending a three-year standoff over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

All six parties signed the statement and agreed to meet again in November.

“This is the most important result since the six-party talks started more than two years ago,” said Wu Dawei, China’s vice foreign minister.

It seems to be a case of the usual brinksmanship by North Korea: just as the US were preparing to withdraw, they come up with a concession.

This historic joint statement came as hope was fading that the six-party talks could ever reach a deal.

Correspondents say the US was on the verge of walking out of the talks and heading home – a fact that may have been the clincher which forced North Korea to back down.

In Monday’s statement, the North “promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programmes, and to get back to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as soon as possible”.

This latter detail is crucial, as it will allow United Nations inspectors to return to the North’s nuclear sites.

In return they’re promised energy assistance, as well as “economic co-operation in the fields of energy, trade and investment”. Though quite why any reliance should be placed on North Korean assurances, given their record, isn’t discussed.

Off for a short break. Back Monday.