Author: Mick Hartley

ed, despite evidence to the contrary (why would a civilian project need to enrich uranium? Why the illicit facilities at Natanz and Arak?).

Given the number of times Iran has been caught lying since it started pursuing the bomb in the nineties, and given its long history of profound duplicity, manipulation and belligerence, the JCPOA seemed dangerously naïve.

Perhaps more egregiously, the deal was so focused on the nuclear threat that it failed to adequately address Iran’s mischief-making across the region – and ended up fuelling it.

The theocracy had only come to the negotiating table in the first place because of sustained economic punishment. But under the JCPOA, sanctions on petrochemicals, gold and other precious metals were lifted, and £3 billion in frozen oil revenue was released….

There are fears that if Biden makes good on his promise to reopen Obama's deal, the flood of fresh cash could give Iranian adventurism another unwelcome boost.

The president-elect has only vaguely addressed this point. ‘We will continue to push back against Iran's destabilising activities, which threaten our friends and partners in the region,’ he wrote in September.

‘We will continue to use targeted sanctions against Iran's human rights abuses, its support for terrorism and ballistic missile programme.’

In other words, he proposes closing the chequebook with one hand while handing over billions of nuclear dollars with the other.

The sense of softness is heightened by the fact that Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for Secretary of State, argued against designating the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organisation in 2017.

Iran has suffered since Trump came to power. Sanctions, and the coronavirus, have hit it badly. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, have been having a hard time since that Beirut port explosion. The anti-Iranian grouping of Israel with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States is much stronger now, especially with the Abraham Accords normalising relations between Israel and Bahrain and the UAE.

A final Trump card from the outgoing president, then?

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the area.

The big change in the area is the bright fruition brought about by the passionate loving care and dedication made by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un for our workers, the eldest son of the country, and valuable achievements produced by the fighting spirit and stamina of the People's Army clearing the worries of our Party and pain of our people with loyal and patriotic devotion.

Well, you can't argue with that.

The working people who became the owners of the new fairyland village thanked Kim Jong Un in tears for his love deeper than the ocean.

They vowed to glorify the 80-day campaign with increased extraction of minerals and greet the Eighth Congress of the WPK with pride, cherishing in their minds the benevolence of the mother Party that provided them with places for happy living.

The Ed Sullivan Show, March 1965, with Duke Ellington – and Ella scatting like there's no tomorrow:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0&w=550&h=309]

With the Duke throwing in a touch of Satin Doll round the 1.11 mark…

At Walthamstow Wetlands:

June 30, 1950. "Cleveland Municipal Stadium during Cleveland-Detroit night baseball game."

[Photo: Shorpy/Carl McDow. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection]

Looking a bit frayed round the edges. Yesterday morning in Queen Mary's Rose Garden, Regent's Park:

d the brutal depiction of every American GI. But Krivine is also Jewish and has described Un Village Français as “a good Jewish story.” But good in what way?

Clearly it cannot be in France, where the survivors see no future. For two of them, the answer is Palestine. “A land without a people for a people without a land,” one of them says, unknowingly quoting a 19th-century Christian Zionist. “I just want to live in a place without fighting.” All of this is meant ironically, though, as we see in the final season in which the now-married pair—the woman is played by Krivine’s wife, Axelle Maricq—is driving a Haganah ambulance. Ambushed by Arabs shouting “Deir Yassin! Deir Yassin!” the husband explains that this was a Palestinian village in which “our people killed two hundred innocent men, women, and children”—curiously echoing the Palestinian narrative of that event, which is strongly disputed by most Israeli historians. His wife cries, “We’re no better than those who oppressed us in France!”

Voilà. So, this, after 72 episodes, is what Un Village Français is ultimately about. Yes, we were horrible to the Jews, but look—they’re no better toward the Arabs than we were toward them. French guilt for the Holocaust can be conveniently cleansed by the invocation of supposedly equivalent Israeli wrongdoing—which must be monstrously magnified and exaggerated in order to make the equation work. Interviewed by The Nation, Frédéric Krivine compared French indifference to the plight of Jews during WWII to the Israeli public’s lack of response to the IDF’s killing of Gazans. Far from indicting France for its Holocaust crimes, Krivine has in fact forgiven it. That message was conveyed to the 3.4 million French viewers who, on average, watched every hour of Un Village Français and to the many millions more in the 40 countries that rebroadcast it. They received first-class drama and acting, a courageous reexamination of French history—and a not-too-subliminal message about Israel being the ultimate guilty party, whose Nazi-like actions perversely cleanse the French of their own crimes in a bath of invented equivalence….

The IHRA definition of antisemitism, of course, includes "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis".

l it. (Was this helping trans people? Was it coming from them? Mostly I think not.) I made the mistake of losing my temper and insulted my antagonists back. I would not be lectured on feminism or womanhood.

There was a new word. TERF. It posed as an acronym — trans exclusionary radical feminist — but it was used as a slur. On this row went. The label “transphobe” may as well have been tattooed on my forehead. My own history and activism was irrelevant: my years with Act Up, campaigning around Section 28, my lifelong commitment to campaigning for abortion. Nada!

I watched woman after woman denounced as a TERF. Attempted suicides of young trans people were the fault of women like me. The murder of trans people by men was somehow refracted onto feminists. Masculinity is never the problem, you see. Masculinity sets the rules. Women are always the other, the outsiders….

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St Mary © Tom Blachford

Edo Bulldog © Tom Blachford

Capsule Dreams II © Tom Blachford

I have no idea what that seemingly floating cab – 5th down – is all about, or why it's called Bruce and Milla, unless it's a reference to Luc Bresson's futuristic The Fifth Element, starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich.