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AWS re:Invent 2019 which concluded last week marked another milestone for Amazon and the cloud computing ecosystem. Some of the new AWS services announced this year will become the foundation for upcoming products and services.

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Though there have been many surprises, AWS didnt mention or announce some of the services that were expected by the community. My own predictions for AWS re:Invent 2019 were partially accurate.

Based on the wishlist and what was expected, here is a list of hits and misses from this years mega cloud event:

Hits of AWS re:Invent 2019

1) Quantum Computing Delivered through Amazon Braket

After IBM, Microsoft, and Google, it was Amazons turn to jump the quantum computing bandwagon.

Amazon Braket is a managed service for quantum computing that provides a development environment to explore and design quantum algorithms, test them on simulated quantum computers, and run them on different quantum hardware technologies.

This new service from Amazon lets customers use both quantum and classical tasks on a hybrid infrastructure. It is tightly integrated with existing AWS services such as S3 and CloudWatch.

Amazon Braket has the potential to become one of the key pillars of AWS compute services.

2) Leveraging Project Nitro

Project Nitro is a collection of hardware accelerators that offload hypervisor, storage, and network to custom chips freeing up resources on EC2 to deliver the best performance.

Amazon has started to launch additional EC2 instance types based on custom chips powered by the Nitro System. The Inf1 family of EC2 delivers the best of the breed hardware and software combination to accelerate machine learning model inferencing.

Along with Nitro, Amazon is also investing in ARM-based compute resources. Amazon EC2 now offers general purpose (M6g), compute optimized (C6g), and memory optimized (R6g) Amazon instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processor that use 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS.

Going forward, Amazon will launch additional instance types based on Graviton2 processors that will become cheaper alternatives to Intel x64-based instance types.

3) Augmented AI with Human in the Loop

Remember Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)? A crowdsourced service that delegates jobs to real humans. Based on the learnings from applying automation to retail, Amazon encourages keeping the human in the loop.

More recently, Amazon launched SageMaker Ground Truth - the data labeling service powered by humans. Customers can upload raw datasets and have humans draw bounding boxes around specific objects identified in the images. This increases accuracy while training machine learning models.

With Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I), AWS now introduces human-driven validation of machine learning models. The low-confidence predictions from an augmented AI model are sent to real humans for validation. This increases the precision and accuracy of models while performing predictions from an ML model.

Amazon continues to bring humans into the technology-driven automation loop.

4) AI-driven Code Review and Profiling through Amazon CodeGuru

Amazon CodeGuru is a managed service that helps developers proactively improve code quality and application performance through AI-driven recommendations. The service comes with a reviewer and profiler that can detect and identify issues in code. Amazon CodeGuru can review and profile Java code targeting the Java Virtual Machine.

This service was expected to come from a platform and tools vendor. Given the heritage of developer tools, I was expecting this from Microsoft. But Amazon has taken a lead in infusing AI into code review and analysis.

CodeGuru is one of my favorite announcements from AWS re:Invent 2019.

5) Decentralized Cloud Infrastructure - Local Zones and AWS Wavelength

When the competition is caught up in expanding the footprint of data centers through traditional regions and zones, Amazon has taken an unconventional approach of setting up mini data centers in each metro.

The partnership with Verizon and other telecom providers is a great move from AWS.

Both, Local Zones and AWS Wavelength are game-changers from Amazon. They redefine edge computing by providing a continuum of compute services.

Bonus: AWS DeepComposer

Having launched DeepLens in 2017 and DeepRacer in 2018, I was curious to see how AWS mixes and matches its deep learning research with a hardware-based, educational device.

AWS DeepComposer brings the power of Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) to music composition.

Misses of AWS re:Invent 2019

1) Open Source Strategy

Open source was conspicuously missing from the keynotes at re:Invent. With a veteran like Adrian Cockroft leading the open source efforts, I was expecting Amazon to make a significant announcement related to OSS.

Amazon has many internal projects which are good candidates for open source. From machine learning to compute infrastructure, AWS has many on-going research efforts. Open sourcing a tiny subset of these projects could immensely benefit the community.

The only open source project that was talked about was Firecracker which was announced last year. Even for that, Amazon didnt mention handing it over to a governing body to drive broader contribution and participation of the community.

The industry expects Amazon to actively participate in open source initiatives.

2) Container Strategy

Containers are the building blocks of modern infrastructure. They are becoming the de facto standard to build modern, cloud native applications.

With Amazon claiming that 80% of all containerized and Kubernetes applications running in the cloud run on AWS, I expect a streamlined developer experience of deploying containerized workloads on AWS.

The current developer experience of dealing with AWS container services such as ECS, Fargate and EKS leaves a lot to be desired.

The only significant announcement from re:Invent 2019 related to containers was the general availability of the serveless container platform based on EKS for Fargate. Based on my personal experience, I found the service to be complex.

Both Microsoft and Google score high on the innovation of containerized platforms and enhancing the developer experience.

AWS has work to do in simplifying the developer workflow when dealing with containerized workloads.

3) VMware Partnership

Surprisingly, there was no discussion on the roadmap, growth and adoption of VMware Cloud on AWS. While the focus shifted to AWS Outposts, there has been no mention of the upcoming AWS managed services on VMware.

Though AWS Outposts are available on vSphere, the GA announcement had little to no mention of Outposts on VMware.

4) Simplified Developer Experience

AWS now has multiple compute services in the form of EC2 (IaaS), Beanstalk (PaaS), Lambda (FaaS) and Container Services offered through ECS, Fargate and EKS (CaaS).

Amazon recommends using a variety of tools to manage the lifecycle of the infrastructure and applications. Customers use CloudFormation, Kubernetes YAML, Cloud Developer Kit (CDK) and Serverless Application Model (SAM) to deal with each of the workloads running in different compute environments.

The current deployment model and programmability aspects of AWS are becoming increasingly complex. There is a need to simplify the developer and admin experience of AWS.

I was expecting a new programmability model from Amazon that would make it easier for developers to target AWS for running their workloads.

5) Custom AutoML Models for Offline Usage

Though AWS launched SageMaker Autopilot and Rekognition Custom Labels in the AutoML domain, it didnt mention about enhancing AutoML-based language services for newer verticals and domains.

Custom models trained through Amazons AutoML services cannot be exported for offline usage in disconnected scenarios such as industrial automation. None of the services are integrated with AWS Greengrass deployments for offline inferencing.

Both Google and Microsoft offer exporting AutoML models optimized for the edge.

Amazon Comprehend service could be easily expanded to support newer verticals and domains such as legal and finance through AutoML.

Though the above announcements and services didnt make it to this years re:Invent, I am sure they are in the roadmap.

Read more:

The Hits And Misses Of AWS re:Invent 2019 - Forbes

Scott Greer

Carlson hosted Greer to promote his book No Campus for White Men in February 2017. Greer, who at the time of his appearance on Fox was a columnist at The Daily Caller, was outed in July 2018 by The Atlantic as having written for the white supremacist journal Radix under a pseudonym. This wasnt the first time The Daily Caller, a website co-founded by Carlson, has published a white nationalist.

In August 2018, Carlson hosted far-right British activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, after he was released from prison pending trial for contempt of court charges. Robinson is the former leader of the English Defense League, an anti-Muslim extremist group.

Hopkins has appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight 15 times in 2017 and 2018 according to Media Matters internal database. Hopkins is a far-right British commentator, (thought she appears to have left her employer) who has built a media grift around being virulently xenophobic. Her racist comments include calling for a final solution following a terror attack in the U.K., labeling refugees as cockroaches, and calling for London police to profile young Black men. Hopkins has also promoted a conspiracy theory about white genocide in South Africa circulated by white nationalists (she shares this position with Carlson). She has numerous ties to far-right figures, including Robinson, Infowars Alex Jones, white nationalist and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Brittany Pettibone, and white nationalist Lauren Southern.

Carlson hosted apartheid apologist Ernst Roets of AfriForum in May 2018 to fearmonger about the South African governments effort to correct unequal distribution of land ownership that occurred during apartheid. AfriForum is the South African Afrikaners rights group pushing the white nationalist conspiracy theory that a land reform proposal in South Africa is part of a plot for white genocide. Roets was on a tour of America promoting the conspiracy theory with his AfriForum colleague Kallie Kriel, who is also an apartheid apologist. Roets has appeared on white nationalist Stefan Molyneuxs YouTube talk show and gave an interview to The New American, the magazine founded by the conspiratorial far-right group the John Birch Society. When Carlson held a subsequent segment on the conspiracy theory a few months later, President Donald Trump asked the secretary of state to look into the issue.

Carlson has hosted white supremacist Rep. Steve King (R-IA) seven times since 2017. One of these appearances included a cleanup interview after King tweeted that Americans cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies (which echoes the white nationalist great replacement conspiracy theory). During the interview, Carlson defended the congressmans racist comments, saying, Everything you said I think is defensible and probably right. After King expressed explicit support for white nationalists and white supremacy in an interview with The New York Times, Carlson first ignored the interview except to attack the media and then deflected when pressed, saying, Steve King, whatever he said, he didnt call for an ethnostate. Kings racist views have been known for years.

In September 2017, Carlson hosted Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, an alternative social media platform dubbed a haven for white nationalists and a magnet for the alt-right, after it was removed from the Apple and Google app stores for violating hate speech rules. A little over a year later, Torba and Gab were in the news again after one of the sites users posted a message there before murdering 11 Jewish people during a worship service at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania. The site has since almost completely fallen apart.

Carlson has four times hosted Joey Gibson, leader of the Portland, Oregon-based far-right group Patriot Prayer, which has been involved in violent street fights. Gibson is currently facing criminal and civil charges related to a fight that broke out at a bar this past May in which a woman was knocked unconscious. The group is also closely connected to the violent far-right extremist group the Proud Boys. In 2015, Carlson gave an interview to Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes in which Carlson defended statutory rape. He also posed for a picture with members of the group in 2018.

Since 2017, Tucker Carlson has hosted racist conspiracy theorist Roger Stone eight times. Stone has beenan Infowars regular, has close connections to the violent street gang the Proud Boys, and has a long legacy of violent, racist, and sexist comments. Carlson has repeatedly used his show to lobby President Trump to pardon Stone, who in November 2019 was found guilty on charges related to his September 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. Carlson has also appeared in a documentary on Stone's life and wrote an introduction to one of his books.

See more here:
A list of Tucker Carlson guests who have links to white nationalism - Media Matters for America

For the better part of 30 years, Pittsburgh band Anti-Flag have made unapologetically confrontational political punk, cranking out fervent, hook-driven diatribes against facism, racism, animal cruelty, the surveillance state, and other social ills. Theyve also walked the walk, using their band as a platform to support a variety of causes (among them Amnesty International, the ACLU, Greenpeace, and Pittsburghs Center for Victims of Violence and Crime) and playing free shows at protests and demonstrations, including one outside the 2008 Republican convention. Theyve even launched a couple of organizations of their own; one of them, Military Free Zone, opposes military recruiting in schools. And while many punk bands become more complacent with age, Anti-Flag have only grown more resolute in their fight for social justice, and you can feel their rage in their music. In 2018 they released American Reckoning, which compiles acoustic versions of songs from their previous two albums (2015s American Spring and 2017s American Fall) with a few protest-rock covers (including John Lennons Gimme Some Truth) and highlights their lyrical chops with its mix of dark and lighthearted moods. On the upcoming 20/20 Vision (Spinefarm), theyre going straight for the jugular of the Trump administration and all the theocrats, white supremacists, gun lobbyists, and other right-wing thugs in its gravitational pull. The title track is a pop-punk indictment of the way alternative media frameworks developed by punks in the 80s and 90s to challenge power structures have been co-opted by the alt-right at the expense of the left. Album opener Hate Conquers All begins with a sample from a Trump speech before the band dives into a grooving, anthemic ripper that rejects the idea that love alone can beat those who seek to destroy us. Rather than mire listeners in a sense of helplessness, Anti-Flag urge them to be strong and get involved in the fight: as vocalist-guitarist Justin Sane sings in Unbreakable, What doesnt kill us now / Will lead us back from hell. v

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Political punk stalwarts Anti-Flag take Trump to task on their upcoming album - Chicago Reader

History, as written, tends to be executed upon black people rather than by them. Brought to the United States as slaves, freed by Abraham Lincoln, oppressed under Jim Crowin schoolbook constructions, blacks are the supporting players in Americas ultimate redemption arc. An anti-segregation activist such as Rosa Parks is reduced to a humble seamstress who was too tired to give up her seat on the bus.

HBOs Watchmen risks falling into this trap, by placing one of the deadliest atrocities ever perpetrated against black Americans at the center of a comic-book franchise full of brooding white men in masks. The series opens with the true events of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which white rioters burned down the entire black neighborhood of Greenwood and killed as many as three hundred people. The brutal and breathtaking spectacle of this Watchmen episode, conveyed through the eyes of a small boy running for his life from a neighborhood movie theatre, has the familiar beats of black victimhood. A woman is shot from behind and collapses in the middle of the road. Two black bodies are dragged behind a speeding car, clouds of dirt billowing in their wake. Armed Ku Klux Klan members roam the streets. Its an adrenaline shot of vicious racism, at the expense of mostly anonymous victims.

As layers of mystery are peeled back in later episodes, though, Watchmen (whose Season 1 finale airs on Sunday) reveals itself to be a show about black people who have the ability to mold history in ways their ancestors could not. Though grounded in deeply sensitive past events, the series shares its most keen insights in the throes of its superhero conceit. Alan Moores original 1986 graphic novel followed white costumed adventurers who use P.R. campaigns, military contracts, and vast personal fortunes to turn themselves into superheroes in the public imagination. The show, however, upends some foundational Watchmen myths, by reorienting our vantage around three black heroes.

The standout episode of the season, This Extraordinary Being, travels back to the nineteen-thirties to cast the first costumed crusader in the Watchmen universe as a Tulsa Race Massacre survivor. Will Reeves, the young boy who grew up idolizing black gunslingers in Greenwoods movie theatre, becomes one of the few black cops in the N.Y.P.D. After a near-lynching by his fellow officers, he dons a hood, a noose, and the whiteface makeup necessary for the public to ascribe honor to his vigilante antics. If you want to stay a hero, his wife, June, advises as they devise his costume, townsfolk gonna need to think one of their own is under it. By night, he is Hooded Justice, the legendary, anonymous crimefighter who inspired future heroes. By day, his black skin becomes the perfect secret identity. If he has a superpower, its the ability to leverage both the invisibility and hypervisibility that black people often experience.

In the present day, Reevess granddaughter Angela Abar lives a double life as a masked cop and a costumed crusader named Sister Night, flitting between police work and vigilantism as she sees fit. Shes deeply suspicious of Reeves when he becomes the primary suspect in the murder of Tulsas police chief. Later, she comes to understand her grandfathers motivations after taking a psychoactive drug that lets her relive his memories as Hooded Justice. Abar and Reeves share similar childhood traumas and a roiling anger thats often vented by pummelling white supremacists. These violent scenes can feel thrillingly transgressive, a pushback against centuries of depictions of blacks as docile victims of racism. But they also use comic-book caricature to hint at a truth that Hollywood might shy away from depicting in a more realistic setting; read the archives of Tulsas black newspaper from the years before the massacre and youll find plenty of calls for armed resistance to white lynch mobs.

Dr. Manhattan, the radioactive blue super soldier at the center of the original Watchmen comic, ultimately serves as the bridge between Abar and Reeves. Though born a white German-American, Dr. Manhattan spends a decade hiding in Tulsa as Abars black husband, Cal. Like Hooded Justice, he uses blackness as a shield of anonymity in a world transfixed by white heroes. But because he agrees to give up his powers and memories to save his relationship, blackness also robs him of his ability to alter history with the snap of his fingers. The future is uncertain, he admits not long after turning into Cal, and my ability to influence events is limited.

Many of the narratives swirling around the three heroesthe ones that dont involve them directlyturn out to be distortions of Watchmen canon. In the show-within-a-show American Hero Story, Hooded Justice is portrayed as a square-jawed white brawler pulled straight from Action Comics. The fiction that Dr. Manhattan lives on Mars as a blue demigod is perpetuated by a paid hotline service that people can use to send him prayers. The villains that Sister Night is fighting, members of a mysterious white-supremacist group named Seventh Cavalry, draw their inspiration from Rorschach, the original Watchmen antihero, whose racist musings have turned him into a martyr for the alt-right.

Though the new Watchmen expertly subverts expectations set up by the original comics, the show seems less confident inhabiting the world of Tulsa itself. There are vague allusions to a reparations program instituted for massacre victims and a couple of quick exposition dumps about Greenwoods past glory. The city itself only really comes to life, terrifyingly, in the opening scenes. But what Watchmen nails, more than details of Greenwoods history, is the way that history itself is so susceptible to manipulation, distortion, and erasure. In the real world, the massacre was initially national news, landing on the front page of the Times and prompting promises of recompense by embarrassed white Tulsans. But, unlike on the TV show, justice was never served in Greenwood. No white rioters were punished for their actions. Insurance companies and the city government refused to compensate black Tulsans for their lost property. Lawsuits stalled out in the courts. Many Tulsans, both white and black, stopped talking about what happened. A brutal invasion became a victimless crime, then a repressed memory, then a hazy urban legend that few people had even heard about.

But some of the people who rememberedblack people on the outskirts of recorded historynever stopped talking about it. Massacre survivors such as Bill Williams and Mabel Little recounted their memories of the event in memoirs or interviews with journalists. In the nineteen-nineties, two black Oklahoma state legislators, Maxine Horner and Don Ross, spearheaded the creation of the Greenwood Cultural Center, which serves as a community gathering place, memorial to survivors, and archive of firsthand accounts of the attack. More recently, the city of Tulsa has reopened a search for long-rumored mass graves of massacre victims, using oral histories from residents as a guide for where to look.

Black people have always derived power from their ancestral stories, from their ability to speak a truth that immediately complicates or contradicts an American myth. The reason we know what happened in Greenwood at allthe reason that the massacre is tangible enough for Hollywood to re-create in a glitzy prestige cable showis because folks in Tulsa kept talking about their memories, even when the conspiracy of silence was deafening. So its fitting that this new iteration of Watchmen turned out to be a story about a black family shaping and sharing history. After he regains his powers (and his famous blue skin), in the penultimate episode of the season, Dr. Manhattan mediates a conversation across time, between Abar in the present day and Reeves ten years prior. Together, the three of them determine that the sheriff is a closeted Klansman, with the robes in his closet to prove it. Watchmen offers some vital lessons about Tulsas past, even if the full history of the neighborhood still deserves a more thorough onscreen retelling. Where the show shines most is in how it conditions viewers to second-guess any story that is presented to them as a definitive historical account.

Originally posted here:
The Great Achievement of Watchmen Is in Showing How Black Americans Shape History - The New Yorker

Jeremy Corbyn poses outside a polling station in London on December 12, 2019. (Getty Images / Peter Summers)

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The first thing to say about the British election is that the result is a staggering and historic defeat for both Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. Even Neil Kinnocka Labour leader famed in the United States for being plagiarized by Joe Biden and in the United Kingdom for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in 1992didnt lose so badly. The red wall of safe Labour seats in Britains northern industrial heartlandincluding Blyth Valley, which had never elected a Tory before, and Tony Blairs former constituency of Sedgefield, held continuously by Labour since 1935crumbled to dust.Ad Policy Related Article

The second is that Britain will now certainly leave the European Union, probably by the end of January. It is that certainty, more than any other factor, that explains both the fact and the scale of the Conservative triumphand the stunning success of Boris Johnsons transformation from a bumbling oaf without a mandate who couldnt get a single bill through Parliament into a prime minister with a majority no other Tory leader has enjoyed since Margaret Thatcher. Johnson bet the House (of Commons) on this electionand won. Yet, while the scale of Johnsons victory (and Corbyns defeat) is shocking, once the Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson betrayed Labour remainers by lending her support to Johnsons call for an early election, the outcome was neverdespite a steady drumbeat of wishful thinking in the left pressreally in doubt. Swinsons loss of her own seat to the Scottish National Party was one of the few cheering moments on an otherwise bleak night.

While Corbyn fudged and fidgeted over Brexit, promising both to negotiate a new Brexit deal with the EU and then hold another referendum on that dealin which he pledged to remain neutralJohnson and the Conservatives offered clarity and closure. The Tory slogan Get Brexit Done might lack the pop-psychology punch of Brexit svengali Dominic Cummingss previous masterpiece Take Back Control, but as a banner for co-opting and neutralizing Nigel Farages far-right Brexit Party while also rallying the large swath of Brexit fatigue voters who cared less about the means than about putting an end to the countrys seemingly endless torment, it was pretty close to perfect.

The first duty of an opposition leader is to mount an effective opposition, and on Johnsons signature projectdragging Britain out of EuropeCorbyn was never close to effective. Which isnt to say that Labour would have done better as unequivocal remainers. None of the Labour defectors who urged their constituents to follow them to the Liberal Democrats kept their seats. Nor did Labours persistence in trying to fight the election on its chosen ground of defending the National Health Service and opposing austerity break through. Part of that failure was doubtless due to a hostile media environmentthe albatross around the neck of any Labour leader. But so were Tory pledges to increase spending on the NHS by 34 billion, build 40 new NHS hospitals, and fund 50,000 more nurses (partly by reversing a previous Tory governments cuts). MORE FROM D.D. Guttenplan

Its also true that Labours ambitious manifesto commitments to renationalize key public services, tax the wealthy, and finance a Green Industrial Revolution (the British version of the Green New Deal) to ward off climate catastrophe read less like a program for political revolution than an ever-expanding wish list of promises that were never meant to be kept. The Tories, on the other hand, kept it simple.

One consequence is that while Johnson has five years in power if he wants ithis pledge to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act means he can call the next election at a time of his choosinghis political mandate doesnt extend much further than getting Brexit done. For the momentas the election map reveals in stark detailJohnson and the Tories have successfully pilfered much of Labours working-class base, especially in the north of England. But can they keep it?

Part of the answer to that depends on Johnson, who has once again demonstrated how dangerous it can be to underestimate him. A facile liar, serial philanderer, and shameless backstabber, Johnsons personal qualities have never been as important as his firm grasp on political reality. He won two terms as mayor of Londonone of the most racially and ethnically diverse cities in the worlddespite his Balliol College arrogance and penchant for classical allusion. And though Londona redoubt of fervent remainersstayed mostly loyal to Labour this time (with the exception of Kensington and Chelsea, where the Lib Dems siphoned off enough Labour support to hand the Tories a 150-vote majority just two years after the Grenfell Tower disaster)Johnson must know that holding on to his new working-class support will require him to avoid radical-right policies and keep his promises on the NHS.Current Issue

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Which doesnt mean a Tory government isnt going to be a disaster. Brexit will weaken an already faltering British economy, migrants will face an even more hostile reception, and the creeping privatization of Britains public sectoropenly under the Tories, stealthily under New Labourwill continue. But Boris Johnson is not Donald Trumpthough it will be interesting (by which I mean terrifying) to see how far Johnson will go to get that massive trade deal Trump promised this morning.

Meanwhile, Labour faces a terrible reckoning. The partys left, anticipating catastrophe, got started on purges early, driving out Deputy Leader Tom Watson (meaning there is now no one to take the reins when Corbyn resigns) and even removing democratically selected candidates who were deemed insufficiently devoted to the Dear Leader. In Bassetlaw, where my old friend Sally Gimson was forced out by a kangaroo court presided over by my older friend Jon Lansman, the result was a record-breaking swing to the Conservatives, putting a Tory MP in a seat Labour had held for 90 years. But the centrists, who did their best to sabotage Corbyn from within before leading their own hegira to the Lib Dems, will doubtless return once Corbyn is gone.

Its going to be messy, and uglybut absolutely necessary if Labour is going to mount an effective opposition to Johnsons brand of One Nation Toryism (a modern remix of the coalition of industrial workers and rural landowners pioneered by Benjamin Disraeli), let alone ever return to power. The northern white working class may be lost for now, but as Jon Cruddass knife-edge victory in Dagenham shows, a One Nation Labour that addresses white and minority workers on more than purely economic grounds can still wineven for a remain MP running in a Brexit constituency. Indeed Labours Futurethe coroners report Cruddas authored after Labours defeat in 2015wouldnt be a bad starting point for the debate about the partys future that, once it elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, Labour never had.Brexit

Finally, a brief word about Labour and the Jews. As Ive written here before, unlike in the United States, the Jewish vote simply doesnt matter in Britain. There is only one constituencyMargaret Thatchers old seat of Finchley and Golders Greenwhere Jews make up even 20 percent of the electorate. (Mike Freer, the Tory MP who held off a challenge from Jewish Labour challenger Sarah Sackman in 2015, easily defeated Luciana Berger, the former head of Labour Friends of Israel who defected to the Liberal Democrats in 2019.) Despite the oceans of ink spilled over Jeremy Corbyns failure to adequately address anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, the whole issue might have made a difference in three seatsat most. (One of them, sadly, was Hendon, where my son and his friends spent election day trudging through the rain in a doomed attempt to turn out Labour voters.) The chief rabbis ridiculous claim that Corbyn and Labour represented an existential threat to British Jews made the front page of Rupert Murdochs London Times, but most of Britains 250,000 Jews (who make up a smaller portion of the population than Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs) dont go to synagogueand even of those who do, only half belong to the chief rabbis denomination.Related Article

Corbyns longtime support for Palestine was always going to make him a target for supporters of Israel. And while he responded to the crisis with maddening incompetence, and with an insensitivity to Jewish pain in the face of a small number of truly horrifying incidents of anti-Semitism within the party, any attempt to paint Corbyn as a bigot has to get around his repeated denunciations of anti-Semitism (something that cant be said for Hitler and his buddies, or Trumps pals on the alt-right). As I told American friends, so long as the nuts in this country have easy access to guns, it will remain much safer to be a Jew in Britain than in the United States. For me, as I suspect for many Jewish Labour members, Brexit was far more important than Corbyns personal failings. Most elections, after all, come down to a choice of the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, in Britain the greater evil triumphed.

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Oh No, Jeremy Corbyn! - The Nation