Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

recent posts

email me

  • Another starving child

    And again. Turkey this time:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The JC:

    TRT World, Turkey’s public English-language broadcaster, has used a photo of a starving Yemeni child for an article about hunger in Gaza, despite the image being almost a decade old.

    Writing on X, the network posted a link to a story under the headline "Hungry Palestinians react to UN famine declaration as Gaza crisis deepens".

    …it has emerged that it was taken in 2016 in a hospital in Hodeida, Yemen, during the famine brought about by the long-running civil war there.

    A Reuters article from September of that year, seen by the JC, features exactly the same picture under the headline “Starving children of Yemen”.

    In that piece, it was accompanied by the caption: “A malnourished boy lies on a bed at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Houdieda, Yemen" and was credited to photographer Abduljabbar Zeyad.

    TRT’s post is still online and no public correction has yet been issued.

    It comes after a number of photos of apparently malnourished children in Gaza were published by international media, only for it to be revealed subsequently that the children in question suffered from pre-existing medical conditions.

    Any lies to blacken Israel….

  • How philosophy works

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full interview here.

    Background:

    Nasty open letter from philosophers to Byrne accusing him of gender wrong-think.

    Byrne's response.

    And this February essay is worth revisiting.

  • Egypt’s Gaza border

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    See here – Leaving Egypt out of the Gaza conversation.

  • The BBC defence

    The usual smug BBC response:

    The BBC has defended its use of female pronouns to describe a transgender killer who stabbed their partner to death with a samurai sword.

    Joanna Rowland-Stuart, who was born male and was known as John Stuart, attacked Andrew Rowland-Stuart at their Brighton home in 2024, in what a jury found was an unlawful killing.

    He stabbed and sliced his partner more than 50 times before replacing the sword in its sheath on a stand. Women don't, on the whole, do this kind of stuff. Men do, though.

    In a written response, the broadcaster’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) said: “The BBC recognises the debate around sex and gender identity involves deeply held and sometimes conflicting views. The BBC’s approach, therefore, is to use terminology which is clear and appropriate to the context.”

    By calling a man a woman. Very clear and appropriate to the context.

    The ECU said the language had been appropriate because Rowland-Stuart was referred to as a woman throughout the trial.

    Some complainants said that the BBC’s choice of language was evidence of its “clear deference to gender identity ideology”. However, it said: “Respecting an individual’s chosen gender identity does not mean the BBC is endorsing or supporting any side of the debate around transgender rights.”

    Respecting an individual’s chosen gender identity somehow loses its "be kind" power when you're reporting on a brutal murder. 

  • The numbers don’t support the UN famine claim

    Mark Zlochin at the JC challenges the UN Gaza famine report:

    The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has declared a “famine” in Gaza. The announcement led global headlines, was cited at the UN Security Council, and spread rapidly across media and social networks. Yet on inspection, the evidence underpinning the claim falls apart.

    As Zloclin shows, they "bent thresholds, ignored half the evidence and relied on assumptions, turning a situation of undeniable hardship into a claim of catastrophic collapse that the data simply does not support". 

    For instance:

    The same pattern played out with mortality, the second key pillar of a famine declaration. The IPC analysis quietly admitted that reported deaths were below the famine threshold, but then suggested that many deaths might not have been counted. What they did not spell out is just how enormous the gap really was.

    For Gaza City, the famine line would have meant close to 200 deaths every single day from hunger or related disease. The actual reported figure was about six deaths per day across the entire Strip – nowhere near the threshold. Even if every one of those deaths had been in Gaza City and directly caused by malnutrition, the rate would still have been more than 30 times lower than the famine threshold.

    Of course, in any war zone some deaths may go unreported. But to claim that actual mortality was 30 times higher than the numbers on record is an extraordinary leap. And as the late Carl Sagan famously said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The IPC did not provide such evidence. Instead, it relied on speculation and on a few highly controversial studies that were far from sufficient to support claims of hundreds of unreported starvation-related deaths per day. Yet it was precisely this assumption that underpinned the famine declaration.

    In addition, the report downplayed or ignored positive signs of recovery, such as increased aid deliveries, falling food prices, and expanded humanitarian access. Observers have also noted that at least one of its authors has a record of anti‑Israel bias.

    Taken together, these issues raise serious questions not only about the technical rigour of the analysis, but also about its objectivity and neutrality. In short, the evidence presented by the IPC did not even come close to justifying the use of a famine designation. 

    Also, as I noted earlier, the media's persistent use of children with pre-existing medical issues as evidence does little to boost confidence in the famine narrative.

  • “It’s very sad”

    Man thinks it's sad about JK Rowling. Very sad.

    Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter films, has said he disagrees with JK Rowling’s views on transgender issues and called the situation “very sad”….

    Columbus, 66, the American filmmaker who launched the blockbuster film franchise, has described the situation as “unfortunate”. He told Variety: “I like to sometimes separate the artist from the art, I think that’s important to do.

    “It’s unfortunate, what’s happened. I certainly don’t agree with what she’s talking about. But it’s just sad, it’s very sad.”

    It'd be good to know which of her views he disagrees with. That men shouldn't be in female toilets or changing rooms? That rapists shouldn't be put in women's prisons? That men shouldn't compete in women's sports? Or perhaps he doesn't really have a clue what he's talking about, and is just indulging in a bit of mindless virtue-signaling….

  • Antisemitism at European universities

    From Jewish News:

    A new report on antisemitism at universities across Europe shows a “normalisation of antisemitic narratives at universities across national borders… anchored in almost all countries under the guise of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist or human rights narratives” – with the hesitance of university authorities to confront this identified as a “common feature”.

    The report, titled “A climate of fear and exclusion”: Antisemitism at European universities, was published today, co-written by B’nai B’rith International, the German think tank Democ and the European Union of Jewish Students. It analyses the situation for Jewish students on campuses in nine different countries, including the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. Examples of techniques used by so-called “anti-Israel” groups include “threats and physical violence directed towards individual Jewish students or staff”, with multiple examples provided of Jewish students targeted or physically assaulted, “calls to violence and legitimisation of violence as appropriate protest action”, and “solidarity with Hamas and its violent massacre on October 7, 2023, portrayed as “liberation” or righteous resistance”.

    I can't imagine this comes as a surprise to anyone, but at least someone's made the effort to document the whole sorry business.

    In multiple countries, student groups driving the aggression and protests were linked to Palestinian terrorist organisations – Samidoun, for example, is directly connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – while “a recurring element is the involvement of Communist groups and party branches”. Across all the countries, the report also identified how “the prominent participation of professors in demonstrations, or their vocal support and unequivocal solidarity with the protest movement has further contributed to an environment of tension and exclusion of Jewish students.”

    Well yes.

  • Marching with the ayatollah

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • The starving child

    Here we go again. From the JC:

    An emaciated Palestinian child whose image appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror accompanied by the headline “Stop starving Gaza’s kids”, is suffering from a condition that affects appetite and can lead to weight loss, it has emerged – but no mention is made of this in condition in the newspaper’s coverage.

    The evocative image of Karim Muammar was published in Saturday’s edition of The Daily Mirror, with the full text on the front page reading: “Plea from the Heart: Holocaust survivors call on Israel to end aid catastrophes as famine is declared”. Underneath in block capitals, the newspaper urges: “Stop starving Gaza’s kids”. The image of Karim is captioned: “Please help: Karim Muammer, three, has severe malnutrition in hospital at Khan Yunis, Gaza.”

    The accompanying story, published as an exclusive across three pages, describes how a group of Shoah survivors have “begged Israel to end the horrors of starving Palestinian children” after a UN-backed report deemed Gaza to be in famine."…

    Karim is suffering from a rare genetic condition, Fanconi syndrome, according to a Palestinian woman working as a local journalist, Doaa Albaz. Weight loss is a common symptom of the condition.

    That this keeps happening suggests perhaps that real images of starving children are hard to come by: which in turn suggests that the Gaza famine may not be all that it's cracked up to be. Also, the determination of mainstream media to maintain the famine narrative by using these images serves as a grim reminder of quite how deeply the Israel-hatred has taken root.

  • Terrorism “made up by Israel to marginalise Muslims”

    As Daniel Kodsi and John Maier noted in their weekend Times essay – Academics are to blame for the woke wreckage at universities – "Outside economics, many academics indulge poorly evidenced, anti-capitalist posturing to an incredible degree. Identify yourself as a socialist, or openly sympathise with the objectives of murderously oppressive left-wing regimes, and no one will blink." Some academics also indulge in the crudest antisemitism and no one will blink.

    From the Telegraph:

    A senior lecturer appeared to claim terrorism was “made up” by Israel to marginalise Muslims, The Telegraph can reveal.

    Dr Tarek Younis, an academic at Middlesex University, delivered a guest lecture at University College London (UCL) as part of the “Culture and the Clinic” unit of UCL’s MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences.

    During this lecture, delivered in March, he claimed that “terrorism” was an abstract construct created by Israel, and a made-up word to marginalise Muslims.

    That'll come as a surprise to the victims of 9/11, 7/7…and so on and on and on…

    Dr Younis appeared to praise students who made anti-Israel and anti-Zionist statements during the class and opened with a moment of silence for the “genocide in Gaza”.

    Dr Younis has also made a series of posts on social media, which Jewish campaign groups claim are anti-Semitic.

    On Oct 4 last year, he wrote in part of a post on X: “Israel is undeniably a racist apartheid system.”

    In another post, from June 8 last year, Dr Younis stated that “our work isn’t done until all Zionists are removed from our institutions and are shamed, alongside all racists, into nothingness”. On May 27, in part of a post, he claimed that “our healthcare institutions have a Zionism problem”.

    Dr Younis shared a post from June 9 last year regarding the kidnapping of Israeli hostages by Palestinian terrorist groups, which said: “If you don’t like how occupied people do resistance, don’t do occupation.”

    Earlier this year, Dr Younis wrote a report on the psychological impact of Palestinian dispossession, which was submitted in support of the legal bid to lift the UK’s ban on the terror group Hamas.

    He was due to speak at an Islamophobia panel at the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP), but the session was scrapped after a Jewish student complained.

    So someone, finally, blinked.

    Caroline Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, which highlighted Dr Younis’s social media history, told The Telegraph: “We are particularly concerned about the conduct of Dr Tarek Younis, which we believe amounts to discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism.

    “Over the past year or longer, Dr Younis has published a number of anti-Semitic and highly offensive posts on social media, which include justifying the commission of international crimes and terror attacks against Jews and Israelis, and spreading other racist and discriminatory content.

    “The public display of racism and anti-Semitism shown by Dr Younis on his social media page confirms that he has violated a number of UCL’s policies and should be subject to disciplinary action following a thorough investigation into his conduct.”…

    A UCL spokesman said: “We have a long-established process for external speaker bookings that helps ensure hundreds of these events can take place at UCL each year, in line with our deep commitment to free speech, while also ensuring the safety and security of all those who attend.

    “Whenever we receive a complaint, it is investigated through our normal processes and we will take any action, as is necessary.”

    Translation: go away, we're not interested.

    Middlesex University was approached for comment.

    But couldn't be bothered to reply.