Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph – BBC trans coverage ‘censored’ by its own reporters:

The BBC’s trans coverage is subject to “effective censorship” by specialist LGBT reporters who refuse to cover gender-critical stories, one of the broadcaster’s own advisers has warned.

BBC staff have expressed concerns that the LGBT desk – which is shared by all the corporation’s news programmes – has been “captured by a small group of people” promoting a pro-trans agenda and “keeping other perspectives off air”.

This has led to “a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories … celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity”, a leaked internal BBC memo concludes.

I think we knew this. In fact it’s been completely bloody obvious for ages that the BBC, with its obsession with drag queens and the like, is in thrall to trans activists. Still – good to have it confirmed.

More from the Times:

The BBC has been “captured by a small group of [staff] promoting the Stonewall view” of the trans debate, according to a leaked document compiled by a former independent adviser.

The claims made include the suppression of stories raising difficult questions about trans issues, with a “constant drip-feed” of more celebratory news features that were said to have been published without adequate balance.…

In the latest allegations, [Michael] Prescott said he had been contacted by a BBC presenter who put him in touch with a reporter and a producer who all had concerns about trans coverage.

They claimed that a centralised LGBT desk of staff “would decline to cover any story raising difficult questions”.

Prescott said: “What I was told chimed with what I saw for myself on BBC online. That stories raising difficult questions about the ‘trans agenda’ were ignored even if they had been widely taken up and discussed across other media outlets.”

More autumn colour on Hampstead Heath:

A surprising Washington Post op-ed (via):

For decades, billions have been poured into Gaza. It has been well documented how these funds have been used to construct tunnels, build rockets and fund other military infrastructure. But the biggest scandal isn’t what’s been built, it’s what’s been taught in Gaza’s schools — in large part funded through Western largesse.

Every generation in Gaza grows up memorizing the language of martyrdom. Schools, summer camps, mosques and media channels work in concert to instill an uncompromising worldview: violence is virtuous, compromise is weakness and the annihilation of Israel is a sacred duty. Hamas’s rockets are the visible expression of decades of indoctrination of the next generation.

Gaza’s children are the victims of this violent ideology. Few parents in London, Paris or Washington would tolerate their child being taught that violence is noble or that neighbors are subhuman. Yet the international community has subsidized precisely that curriculum for Palestinian children — and then has acted shocked when violence perpetuates itself. It’s time for that to end.

An unusual and welcome dose of reality from the mainstream press.

UNRWA has operated for decades with minimal oversight. But each revelation produces the same response from the organization: acknowledgment of concern, promises of reform — and then business as usual once the cameras leave. The massacres of Oct. 7, 2023 were the gruesome cost of inaction. Several UNRWA employees may have participated in the violence. The agency responded by treating it as an isolated personnel issue rather than the logical endpoint of decades of hateful indoctrination.

The author, Todd Pittinsky, suggests that such a destructive mind-set can be overcome, just as Nazi propaganda was overcome while preserving German culture, and postwar Japan replaced militarism with civic education. The problem with such optimism is that, unlike with Germany and Japan, the Gaza/Hamas mindset is part of a religion – perhaps an inextricable part of that religion. Also, the countries surrounding Israel have, by and large, the same mindset and the same religion. And that’s without taking into account the unfortunate reality that large swathes of the West have been actively cheering on Hamas, all the while happily resurrecting the old antisemitism that we thought was confined to the past.

Jerry Coyne draws our attention to an extraordinary paper from a couple of activists in the journal Big Data & Society entitled Trans data epistemologies: Transgender ways of knowing with data.

The abstract.

Amidst proliferating threats to trans rights, transgender activists are using data and data activism to advocate for and to protect trans communities. This transgender-led study asks “How do trans activists use data in their activism?” We interviewed 16 activists engaged in trans community care: from community healthcare to media production to policy making, our participants are making and using data about trans people to serve and support trans communities. Our findings reveal that participants use tactical approaches to data and data science that were consistent with existing data activist literature and contemporary approaches to data refusal. However, what emerged were more than sets of tactics — our participants described ways of knowing with and about data that are grounded in their experiences of (racialized, disabled, aging, queer) transness. Taken together, we consider these ways of knowing to be a trans data epistemology. Drawing on literature from trans theory, data activism, critical data studies, philosophy, and critical social theory we offer a narrative of trans people as creators of knowledge, data-based and otherwise, undergirded by four pillars of a trans data epistemology: categories are provisional and productive, data can be a tool of community care, community well-being is more important than “accurate” data, and data makes us visible to institutions.

As Coyne notes, this clearly shows the “explicit antiscientific aims of some ideologues”. Data doesn’t matter as much as coming to the right ideologically correct conclusions. A Lysenko-inspired scientist under Stalin couldn’t have put it more clearly – though instead of socialist/Marxist dogma we get tearful appeals to community care and the delights of trans-ness. Here, for instance, is the “positionality statement” of the second author, from the University of Washington (the first author works at MIT):

Amelia Lee Doğan: I came to this project after its development as a trans person interested in activism and data. My experience include working part-time for a university LGBTQ+ office for several years and researching other activists communities’ data and technical needs. I had no direct contact with any of the interview participants but their words and work truly made me cry at how other trans people are making this world a little better for us. Especially, as a trans young person of color, it was an honor to get to hear our elders talk about how they have fought and continue to fight and care for us.

Not what you’d normally expect from the author of a scientific paper, perhaps – but this is the new emotionally engaged science, where rationality is replaced by simpering about making the world a better place.

Colin Wright takes it apart at Reality’s Last Stand:

Now, a new peer-reviewed article in Big Data & Society breaks new ground by openly arguing that lying with data is not only acceptable but morally required when it comes to transgender issues.…

A weird one from the Daily NK, on North Korea’s lingering old superstitions – seen as a threat to the glorious socialist future:

“In Anak county, South Hwanghae province, a superstitious rumor has quickly spread through mostly agricultural communities since late September that your family will come to ruin if you don’t move your ancestor’s grave by the end of the year,” a Daily NK source in South Hwanghae province said recently, adding that the rumor continues to spread. “Ultimately, a group to wipe out superstition was organized, and it has been cracking down.”

The Ministry of State Security’s local branch began moving after learning that people scheduled to move their ancestors’ tombs had delayed the move upon hearing the rumor — the source of which remains unknown — and that unrelated people who heard the rumor had begun visiting fortune tellers, believing their hardships were due to bad luck this year.

The Ministry of State Security was already wary that people increasingly believed in superstition rather than the party and state, despite authorities’ indoctrination efforts. So when a superstitious rumor began spreading and causing public unrest, the ministry launched an immediate crackdown.

“The Ministry of State Security designated the latest rumor as anti-socialist behavior, claiming it further inflames public insecurity, and has cracked down on the rumor since mid-October, jointly organizing groups to wipe out superstition with the police,” the source said.

The group has been cracking down hard on people who spread or believe superstitious rumors, considering them “anti-socialist elements.”

The group has also kept a close eye on fortune tellers near marketplaces, shamans and intermediaries involved in relocating tombs. If any of those individuals exhibit problematic behavior, they are arrested immediately.

Having prosecuted a vigorous crackdown since last month, the group takes its mission seriously, calling superstition the “beginning of the counterrevolution.” With the emergence of a new slogan — “Superstition, feng shui and the like are counterrevolutionary” — in several counties in the province, including Anak county, the public is suddenly on edge.

“Nobody knows where or how the rumor started about disaster befalling your family if you don’t move your ancestor’s tomb,” the source said. “However, the Ministry of State Security is harassing even unrelated people as it ramps up crackdowns to wipe out superstition.”

SOAS – the London School of Oriental and African studies – has a well-deserved reputation for antisemitism. And here we go again:

A prominent London university has been accused of breaking free speech rules by hosting a conference where Israeli academics must declare their institutions are built on land taken from Palestinians.

Academic freedom campaign groups have written to Soas University of London raising serious concerns about demands being made by the organisers of a Middle East conference due to be hosted on its campus next June.

The event in question is the annual conference for the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (Brismes), described as “the largest and most prestigious annual UK gathering of scholars and practitioners focusing on the region”

The campaigners’ concerns centre on a mandatory policy published by Brismes last month on “territorial and land acknowledgment”.

It requires conference participants to acknowledge the “traditional owners of the land on which the institution to which they are affiliated is located, and/or, in the case of military occupation, acknowledge the status of the land under international law”.

The policy further demands academics make a public acknowledgment if their papers are underpinned by research “conducted on land that is: traditionally owned by indigenous peoples (in settler colonial contexts) or under foreign military occupation in violation of international law”.

Oh boy. And will the Israeli academics have to wear yellow stars?

Israel is, of course, the Jewish ancestral home. Arabs arrived later, as part of the Islamic imperial spread in the 7th and 8th centuries. Is any acknowledgement of that bit of history required?

These requirements are said to apply to all authors and participants who are “working and studying at an institution located on land appropriated from Indigenous peoples by settler colonial regimes”. Such areas are said to include the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

See here for more on settler colonialism, and why Israel doesn’t fit.

Kenwood this morning:

Jo Grady, head of the University and College Union (UCU) speaks up on that Sheffield Hallam debacle:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the biggest threat to academic freedom in the UK is the marketisation of higher education.

The accusation here could not be more serious: that the university traded important research on human rights violations in China, for access to the Chinese student market.

Jon Pike responds:

One of the biggest threats to academic freedom in the UK is your leadership @DrJoGrady, of @UCU. You don’t defend the academic freedom of academics in the UK unless it suits your politics. You were, and are silent about, or dismissive of the attacks on Profs Stock, Freedman, Phoenix, Todd and Ben-Gad. Your supporters in the union tried to get me dismissed because they didn’t like my views on fairness in sport. Branches of UCU try to close down book launches, and complained of @Docstockk ‘weaponising employment law’ when she defended herself against bullying that your supporters cheered on. And your supporters lined up with the employers when @JoPhoenix1 was contructively dismissed from the OU.

No one should or will take you seriously on academic freedom. And this is not just a political shot at you. It is *dangerous* for academics in the UK not to be able to rely their union to defend them, unless they toe the line. In this respect, you have quite a lot in common with the CCP.

This talk about marketisation might figure in a good faith discussion of academic freedom. But you are not a good faith actor, because you don’t consistently support basic academic freedom rights for those you claim to represent.

James Marriott in the Times on the return of superstition, and the end of the enlightenment:

It is becoming clear we have drastically undervalued the rare and precious achievement of a civilisation founded on rational thought. Ironically, as the Dark Ages return, the Enlightenment philosophers and scientists who campaigned against zealotry and ignorance — and to whom we ultimately owe the entire miracle of scientific modernity — are patronisingly downgraded by revisionist historians. They are altogether too male, too stale and too western for present academic tastes. Voltaire was a misogynist. John Locke was a racist. Ditto David Hume whose name was recently stripped from an Edinburgh University building. The Middle Ages, according to fashionable theories, were not really as unscientific as all that. After all, they had astrolabes.

We are, I suppose, the victims of our own success. Three hundred years of technological civilisation have led many modern westerners into complacency about how rational our species really is. The darker truth is that ignorance and superstition are never far from the surface of human affairs. The ease with which we in the oh-so-sophisticated and politically correct 21st century have slipped back into superstition should give pause to those apt to sneer at the Enlightenment.

Readers hardly need telling that the recent spate of demon attacks are but a colourful symptom of a world losing its reason. Significant portions of the US government are virtually at war with science. The adoption of Maori “ways of knowing” (ie indigenous folklore) by universities in New Zealand is only one bizarre efflorescence of campaigns against “western science”.

We cannot underestimate the magnitude of this anti-rational shift. The expectation that a world filled with demons, anti-vaccine conspiracies and “ways of knowing” will be able to sustain the levels of scientific, medical and technological achievement to which we have become accustomed is deeply naive.

He’s quite right to be concerned. Perhaps a nod to postmodern philosophy would have been in order here, providing as it does a supposedly intellectual backing to the destruction of enlightenment reasoning with its attacks on the notion of the idea of objective truth. The rot comes direct from the academy.

Also not mentioned: gender ideology – surely the clearest indication today of the breakdown of scientific rational thinking, as the whole western world is suddenly seized by this absurd belief that people can change sex, and children can be born in the wrong body. Social contagions are a familiar phenomenon historically – but on this scale, and with this high-level political and academic backing?

The old lie about trans people being central to the Stonewall riots and the whole gay lib movement is resurrected by NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera

In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion.

As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward. pic.twitter.com/RzaQmMMQeG

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 11, 2025

Fred Sargeant, who lived through it, sets him straight.

According to the published reports of award winning Village Voice reporter Arthur Bell, Rae “Sylvia” Rivera pimped homeless gay street youth from a squalid, garbage strewn, utilityless tenement apartment on 2nd Street for 8 months, where the children drugged, drank and got lessons on stealing from Rivera.

You know nothing about LGB history, @ZohranKMamdani, so keep it out of your mouth.

In other related news, Jeremy Corbyn is now backing Mamdani:

Jeremy Corbyn has endorsed Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral election…

The now independent MP for Islington North shared a picture of himself holding an Arsenal shirt which read “North London 4 Zohran”. Mr Mamdani is an Arsenal fan.

“Let’s get Zohran over the finish line for a New York that’s affordable for all!” Mr Corbyn, 76, wrote on Facebook.

Mr Corbyn also joined forces with the Democratic Socialists of America to host a phone banking event for Mr Mamdani on Sunday night.

Th kiss of death?