Tony Blair has revealed that he was discouraged from ending a Prime Ministerial broadcast with the phrase “God bless  Britain” – see here.

‘I remember we had this debate on and off but finally one of the civil servants said in a very po-faced way “I just remind you Prime Minister, this is not America” in this very disapproving tone, so I gave up the idea. 

‘I think it is a shame that you can’t since it is obviously part of what you are.

I think it’s a shame too Tony. I think it’s a shame you hid your intense religiosity from the voters; ‘we don’t do God’ your consigliere Alastair Campbell once said – see here. But you did do religion Tony, you just kept it secret. And you waited till you left office to formally to convert to Catholicism.

In ancient Athens it was the primary task of the legislator to help ensure citizens had good character – see here; how far we have come in millennia of political development. In the ancient system it would have been unthinkable for a leader to hold values in secret.

We do have communal, socially developed values in the form of laws and judgments and also in policy and wars. Tony Blair’s government introduced several thousand new criminal offences alone – see here.

When you are making moral decisions on behalf of your country, those you seek to represent have the right to understand your moral worldview.

The ancient greeks would have thought that to deny them that would be fraudulent and reprehensible, but then they lived an awfully long time ago.

The Bristol City Council resolution in June 2010 condemning Israel and urging sanctions, a boycott and disinvestment (see here) needs to be seen in context; the other countries and issues that have earned such an extreme measure of condemnation.

As one councillor put it in that debate:

We cannot run away from this problem, we have a responsibility

And in the words of another

I believe in human rights and international law and when I see those rights being attacked day after day…I think we have an obligation to speak out

Well, they certainly spoke out on Israel;  disgraceful, despicable, outrageous, horrendous, barbarism, murderers, state terrorism, piracy, racism, villains, inhuman, rogue state, horrific, apartheid was what they said – see here for a previous post about that with video of the debate. But as for the context; it just doesn’t look good.

In six years of records of full council meetings and questions available online – see here - dating back to the beginning of 2006, the roll call of other nations, regimes, issues that earned their righteous ire is: Well, there isn’t a roll call. No other country, issue or dispute earned a mention. One country singled out in 6 years. On the face of it, it just doesn’t look good.

Not Darfur, not Tibet, not Libya, not Syria.

Do the councillors have a good reason their vaunted commitment to human rights does not stretch to Somalia, Burma, Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe?

Remember Chechnya? The Kyrgiz pogrom of Uzbecks in 2010? The Turkish treatment of the Kurds? It does not even accommodate Peter Tatchell’s denunciation (click here) of Iran’s treatment of Iranian Arabs:

Palestinian Arabs get the support of progressives and radicals everywhere; Iranian Arabs get no support at all. They swing from nooses in public squares like cattle hanging in an abattoir. Does anyone care?

Bristol’s conscience stops at Israel and that just doesn’t look good.

©AP

Farewell then Sami Khiyami, Syrian Ambassador to the Court of St James, formerly an electronics engineer, latterly a ludicrous apologist for evil. Click here for details of his departure.

He has returned to Syria, permanently it seems; a country he recently described as ‘the nicest and most beautiful state in the Middle East’.

In that interview he went on to blame Israel for disorder in Syria because ‘they could be behind any bad thing in the world’.

In October he was ordered by the UK Government to stop harassing Syrians in the UK – see here.

See him justifying the unjustifiable in a previous post – click here

Time to revisit something from 2010. In June of that year an Israel boycott motion was passed by Bristol City Council (click here for the motion).

I watched  the debate on a webcast and found it monumentally depressing. I edited the webcast (keeping all the speakers who spoke on the topic and all their points).

Here’s that video:

What depressed me was the level of ignorance – depressing for two reasons:

Obviously the level of debate itself I found extraordinary. It is a radical agenda entirely accepted and reproduced – the views in the video represent all the points from all the speakers. There is no balance, no nuance, no understanding of another view, never mind an understanding of the facts.

We hear of ‘Good Jews’ who campaign against Israel from Cllr Kiely, Israel as an illegitimate apartheid regime from almost all of them, that Gaza has ‘no water facilities whatsoever, no electricity, no grass, no education system, no health facilities at all’ from Cllr Choudhry, that Israel is a ‘rogue state’ from Cllr Cook and on and on. And nothing else. No mention of Hamas, it’s aims and governance, no mention of anything at all to counter or balance. No comprehension that there could possibly be any validity in any other point of view. This was a meeting of Palestine Solidarity Campaign in all but name.

But the thing that was much more depressing was that there was no-one to help inform these people and make them less ignorant. The infamous Israel lobby was non-existent. I put myself in the position of someone who has heard a lot of bad things about Israel and is looking for further information on the internet. There is essentially no resource catering for that. There are some sites for ardent Zionists and nothing else.

It’s absurd; it’s OK to dislike Israel, as long as that dislike is informed and for the right reasons. For pro-Israel organisations to dismiss that without engaging with it on a reasoned and reasonable basis is damaging and dangerous. And, more than that, where was the engagement with these elected officials to try and give them some balance? The video was quite widely seen, including by people in some of those organisations (the Jewish Chronicle put it on their website – click here) but nothing was done to try and help these politicians better understand a complicated situation, and that is the most depressing fact of all.

So, Jenny Tonge has been set adrift from the Liberal Democrats, as I predicted – see here for more on Jenny Tonge and the Liberal Democrats.

The story was carried on Radio 4 with an interview with Tonge and  little context or background – listen here to the honey-tongued hatemonger.

It was difficult to work out what they were talking about; who was the person she had shared a platform with, and what was he saying? A fuller story can be found in the Guardian – click here for that.

Having read the post by Richard Millett, who was there – click here – and having seen the video he shot, Tonge’s comments have been misreported in a way that is kind to her.

It was said by the BBC, The Guardian and others that she said Israel would not continue to exist “in its present form”. She did not say that, and very clearly did not say that.

Below is a transcript of what she said, and below that a video of her saying it, to which I’ve added subtitles. 

She says “Israel will not continue in its present performance”. An odd turn of phrase but the meaning is also clear from the whole statement: Israel will not continue.

Tonge herself complained her remarks had been taken out of context – see here. Judge for yourself. A small correction; Tonge mentions a figure of $70 billion per year in US aid to Israel. I’ve looked it up and the figure is actually $2.8 billion – click here. And to give that some context, the figure for Pakistan is $4.4 billion.

What now for Baroness Tonge? In her resignation letter she once again said her leadership

“…seems always to abet the request of the pro-Israel lobby.”

And added

“Israel is acting against international law, the Geneva conventions and human rights. They do this with impunity and if our political parties will not take action then individuals must.”

Tonge’s previous advocacy for the deployment of suicide bombers – see here – gives a chilling dimension to her use of the phrase individual action.

Jenny Tonge cut loose and without any party restraint is likely to go the way of David Icke and David Shayler. She will deliver more hate, based on ever more sinister delusions and deliver it in a warm and grandmotherly way that some people seem to find so winning.

Transcript of Jenny Tonge’s answer to a question at Middlesex University 23 February 2012:

Well, I think the problem with that (unclear) is that I think you used the phrase getting rid of Zionists or the Zionists must go, and that is the difficulty because they do stick, feel so passionately about their position.

But as I said in my opening remarks: Beware Israel. Israel is not going to be there forever in its present performance, because one day the United States of America will get sick of giving $70 billion a year to Israel to support it’s, what I call America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East that is Israel.

One day the US people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA ‘enough is enough’.

Read that book by Walter Mearsheimer called ‘The Israel Lobby”…(audience member – it’s rubbish) …oh of course it’s rubbish, you would say that wouldn’t you. Wouldn’t you just say that.

But it will not go on forever, it will not go on forever. Israel will lose its support and then they will reap what they have sown.

© EPA/Orestis Panagiotou

They are burning German flags in Athens.

Hardly surprising.

Whoever is crunching the numbers in Berlin, Paris and Brussels, whoever is shaping European financial policy has a tin ear to the echoes of the past.

There were cheering crowds when the Germans marched into Greece in WWII – anyone seemed better than their historical enemy, the Italians.

The optimism was misplaced, and Greece paid an awful price. A truly horrendous price.

So when the sensible EU financial bureaucrats suggest a financial overlord is sent to make sure Greece lives up to its commitments, some people wonder whether he would be called Gauleiter. As the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF) impose more and more demands, with an Euro policy steered by Berlin, it is hardly surprising Greeks become resistant.

Mainly because the unworldly European technocrats lack an understanding beyond the confines of their expertise, and cannot foresee the memories conjured by the way they are acting.

And they do not think about what came in Europe a decade before the War; that the people in a country facing economic collapse, who have no hope, easily latch onto the illusions of extremism. They do not understand that history repeats itself, and may do so in another echo, when the Greeks vote in April.

For details of Greece’s wartime experience, see Mark Mazower’s excellent book; Inside Hitler’s Greece

For an interesting article on this topic – click here, from The Telegraph

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

There has been fevered discussion about who was responsible for the killing of an Iranian nuclear engineer this week; click here for a news report, or click here, or click here or here.

I say discussion, but actually everything I have read has assumed that Israel was involved; the only point of discussion is whether America was involved too. That’s lazy journalism; I cannot work out why no-one has mentioned another player in the region – Saudi Arabia.

There are at least three reasons why they should have joined Israel and America in the list of possibles:

Wikileaks

It has been revealed by Wikileaks that Saudi Arabia has repeatedly asked the Americans to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. King Abdullah is reported to have ‘frequently exhorted‘ the United States to attack Iran and ‘to cut the head off the snake‘. Click here for a news report on that.

Bristol Council, in the South West of Britain, seems to have money trouble. It’s been revealed by the BBC that it is planning to raise £50 million in debt to finance a variety of projects – click here for  the BBC website report.

That’s £50 million for the ratepayers of tomorrow, and for years to come, to pay for.

It’s not clear from the BBC report how sensible or necessary the spending is, how it fits in with the Council’s debt reduction plans, how long future generations will be paying it of for or on exactly what terms, exactly what benefit it is expected to bring, how costed (i.e. audited) the proposals are, who selected the schemes, whether it’s a vote-winning plan or a necessity, and whether the debt has been agreed in principle before the council votes on the matter in February.

What is worrying is that this comes hot on the heels of the revelation that Bristol is seeking more controversial ways to raise debt – see here for my post on that, and how much debt those creative accounting schemes are expected to realise.

Someone needs to take a cold hard forensic look at Bristols accounts. And if Bristol could do with a strong spotlight shining on its accounts, how many other authorities in the UK need that too?

North Korea has, in Kim Jong-il, a second departed leader to add to its pantheon; I was in North Korea a few weeks ago and, while it’s difficult to pick out a single strand from the fabric of that experience,  nothing can prepare you for the extent to which Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-sung, dominate the lives of the people.

Constantly brought up in conversation, constantly with them through loudspeakers extolling their virtues in every building and every street, constantly watching through photographs on the wall or statues, integrated into their thoughts through education and work teams.

It is difficult to separate this supposedly socialist cult of personality from religious imagery and mythology. Facts are changed to create legends, supernatural powers attributed, and miracles attested – click here.

According to Barbara Demick – click here – every school has a room devoted to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Certainly every place we were taken to had such a room. It was the first place, and sometimes the only place you were taken to; to hear paeans to the exploits, wisdom and self-sacrifice of the Great Leader (Kim Il-sung)  and Dear Leader (Kim Jong-il), and you must listen, and listen respectfully.

But even that cannot prepare you for the awesome drama, significance and sacredness of the Kumusan Memorial Palace where the Eternal Leader has now been joined by the Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love (click here for a full list of Kim Jong-il’s titles).

Rather than just vanity, it seems likely that Kim Il-sung (the Eternal President) recognised that people had a need for religious elements in their lives and that he could use that need. And use it his family has.

All the pictures below are selected to illustrate the cult of personality, they are split into galleries. If you click on an image it will open in an image viewer in a larger size.

Mansudae Art Studio

If you’re going to be an artist in the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) what better than to depict the sources of national inspiration?

Also appearing in these images is Kim Il-sung’s first wife, Kim Jong-suk; Heroine of the Anti-Japanese Revolution

Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum

Military prowess is perhaps the key attribute of leadership in DPRK. It’s why Kim Jong-un was so rapidly made a general, and why his powerful uncle, who is a party man, was shown in uniform after the death of Kim Jong-il. The defeat of the Japanese, the defeat of America (in the Korean War), and protection from what the people are told is a continuously imminent American invasion, are constant themes.

In the paintings below Kim Il-sung is single-handedly masterminding the Korean War (1950-1953) and giving guidance on the battlefield. The jeep is his.

Three Revolutions Exhibition

An extraordinary complex of museums devoted to this and that. I had been warned, but nothing could prepare for the grinding tedium of a visit here. These photographs are in the Industrial pavillion. In every image a leader is within sight, constantly vigilant.

Kumusan Memorial Palace

The site of Kim Jong-il’s funeral. There are of course plenty of photographs, paintings and statues of the leaders here, but greater than that is the overpowering sense of Kim Il-sung. A truly awesome place. It also seems to be by far the best constructed building in the country.

Mansudae Grand Monument

We were prevented from visiting or getting close to this massive monument due to renovation. Photographs of repairs, buildings undergoing repairs, and photographs of images of the Great or Dear Leader that do not show the leader in his entirety are forbidden.

Golden Lane Bowling Centre

Even the bowling alley shows off the visit by the Eternal Leader. It may look like a shrine, but this is, of course, a communist country.

Grand People’s Study House

Everywhere a North Korean leader goes, he gives guidance. It’s not always easy to narrow down the guidance that has been given. In a celebrated dispensing of guidance Kim Il-sung objected to the uniform height of the desks here. For his next visit they had created adjustable desks.

The classrooms here are described as typical; stuffed with brand new computers. That may seem unlikely. But what is typical is the images of the leaders on every wall.

Kim Il-sung Square

A picture, a flag, a slogan. This building is in Pyongyang’s main ceremonial square, but in those respects it is a typical North Korean building.

Pyongyang Metro

The cult of personality continues underground, including musical accompaniment. Inspirational music or music the leaders were partial to. There is no other music. Newspapers are on display. The leader, and his guidance, on every page.

I have read that the scratches on the windows date from their time before the carriages arrived in Pyongyang, when they ran on the East Berlin underground

Hamhung

Tomhung Hill; an entirely man-made mound created by the people to demonstrate their love for the Leader. We were told the lengths they had gone to after the original concrete base had cracked and they had had to replace it with a 700 ton lump of granite.

One of the people I was with pointed out something obvious to all of us; the new base had a huge crack. They said it had just happened and they were dealing with it. Perhaps it was a portent?

This is the site of one of the miraculous events described in the aftermath of Kim Jong-il’s death;

“a Manchurian crane was seen flying around the statue three times before alighting on a tree. The crane stayed there for quite a long while with its head bowed and flew in the direction of Pyongyang.” Click here for that story.

Inspiration

The people need to be inspired to complete the revolution. These minivans, some of the most modern vehicles in the country, running on fuel rather than wood, broadcast speeches and martial music. They drive around towns at 6am to ensure the workforce is up and raring to go.

DMZ

This photograph comemorates a visit of Kim Jong-il to the DMZ (De-Militiarised Zone), the armistice line of the Korean War. It is in the room where the Armistice was signed.

Wonsan

A sea port – though with little sign of economic activity and we were kept well away from the industrial port area. The first image shows a square; even without a picture of one of the leaders there are slogans (often about them) and the visual symbolism of the regime.

There are then some pictures from an agricultural college (Wonsan Agricultural University) where we saw little beyond the room extolling the virtues of the leadership. The triangles mark the spots where the Dear and Eternal Leaders stood when they came to give guidance.

Then a couple of photographs from a children’s camp (Songdowon International Schoolchildren’s Camp); a statue of Kim Il-sung with some adoring children. There is also a view of it from the inside where the windows were freeing themselves from the building.

Finally the train station in Wonsan from where Kim Il-sung returned to Pyongyang. It has been entirely rebuilt elsewhere in the city, but they have located the actual train, and actual coach (including the actual seat) in which he travelled.

Side of the Road

A selection of images to illustrate the ubiquity of the leaders’ images. On every street, in every village; they are there. The picture of a little hut in the snow refers to the birthplace of Kim Jong-il, supposedly atop a sacred Korean mountain (rather than the reality of a town in the Soviet Union).

all photographs ©

Two Political leaders have died within a few hours and the contrast between them could not be greater: Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il.

While I never quite met Havel, I got close to it and to adapt Cartier Bresson’s phrase about photography; it was a decisive moment.

It was 1989, a decisive year, when an Iron Curtain which until almost the moment it fell seemed impregnable, crumbled. I was a student, a politics student, passionate about the forces shaping my world. There’s a song that sums up that time, that feeling, perfectly:

Right here, right now,

There is no other place I’d rather be,

Right here, Right now,

Watching the world wake up from history.

Jesus Jones, Right Here Right Now - Watch the video here on youtube

Except I wasn’t right anywhere interesting things were happening. I was, so it seemed to me, wasting my time at university in a prosperous and peaceful British provincial city.

I had missed Tiananmen Square, Ceausescu had been despatched and the Berlin Wall had fallen without me. What interest could there be in student politics when the world was in upheaval? And then, towards the end of the year, the people of Czechoslovakia began to rise up, and I wasn’t going to miss it.

I persuaded a classmate, went to London, got visas and we took the first flight we could to Prague. There for several days, we joined a people shaking off decades of misrule. Our youth and foreignness gained us access we did not deserve. Although our attempts to address a crowd of 500,000 people as the representatives of the students of Great Britain were firmly rebuffed…

Still, we joined the press corps and had unfettered access. I remember a woman, petrified, rushing up to me and thrusting into my hand a sheaf of statements and photographs documenting the death and brutality meted out to demonstrators by the police, before merging back into the crowds. I had to tell the world, she said; it was my duty. I didn’t even have a student newspaper to tell.

One evening at the regular press conference of the opposition group Civic Forum at a theatre in Prague, I was determined to get some good photographs. I positioned myself between the stage and the back door and after the press conference Vaclav Havel came past, fast. I put my camera to my eye and took a photograph as he moved inches from me. And as the camera clicked, he looked at me. And I saw the reality, the enormity of what this playwright was doing.

With him was a student. Outside the back door was a family car, a Volkswagen Golf. No minders, no protection, no entourage. And the look he had in his eye said to me that harm was stalking him around every corner, behind every click. It was a question of when a Communist Party leadership that faced losing everything would strike, not if.

It was a sobering moment.

It was a moment that reminds me of the speech Martin Luther King gave the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, in 1968;

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land.

I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Martin Luther King jr. , April 3, 1968. Click here to see a video clip from the speech

Havel seemed to me, in that moment of eye contact, to be someone certain that harm would befall him and despite that, he was doing what he felt he had to do. As it turned out he emerged from the Velvet Revolution unscathed to lead Czechoslovakia, then the Czech Republic.

Henri Cartier Bresson described photography as capturing the “decisive moment”. I caught it, but not as a photograph; I had left the lens cap on the camera, I had seen something important to me, but on paper all I had was a black frame.

Some of the images I did capture on film (with a borrowed camera I didn’t know how to use which I had on the wrong settings…)

At a Civic Forum press conference; Havel is the second smudge from the right, the current President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, is the third smudge from the left…

The front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people

Out of focus and overexposed…Vaclav Havel gives a speech

The staff of the Ambassador Hotel in Wenceslas Square watch from an upper floor window as demonstrators pack the square below

all photographs ©