Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Polari Prize capitulation

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    Here we are:

    Polari1

    Polari2

    Polari3

    Always against transphobia, but not too keen on gays. Like everything else in the bright shiny new LGBT world, it's now all about the T.

    Background.

  • Given a citation and reprimanded

    Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx – Trans-Identified Male Held in Women’s Prison Assaults Female Inmate, Officials Issue Reprimand to Victim:

    A male repeat offender who claims to identify as a transgender woman has assaulted a female inmate while detained in a women’s prison in New York. Justin “Justine” Randall-Pizarro is said to have punched the woman in the face before stomping on her head and hands, according to information provided to Reduxx by women’s rights group Roar Women NYC.

    Randall-Pizarro, a repeat offender who has reportedly been arrested 17 times since September 2024, physically assaulted Angela* while they were both incarcerated at the Rose M. Singer Center, a facility intended for women at Rikers Island.

    The female prisoner’s mother reports that he “attacked [her] daughter from behind, punching her in the face, leaving her with a black eye, and stomping on her hands and head.'”

    She told Roar Women NYC that her daughter was not given proper medical attention after the attack, including a hospital visit for a potential broken hand. “Instead, she was given a citation, reprimanded, and moved to a different dorm — as though she were the one at fault.”

    Randall-Pizarro, 18, has a lengthy criminal record that includes multiple charges of of burglary, reckless endangerment, assault, and larceny of transit property. Despite over a dozen arrests in under a year, Randall-Pizarro was repeatedly released without bail….

    NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told The New York Post that Randall-Pizarro is listed in all official paperwork as “female”….

    Where's Donald Trump when you need him?

  • Building on the strengths of Corbynism

    Primarily, it seems, on its robust antisemitism. From the Telegraph:

    Jeremy Corbyn “capitulated” over anti-Semitism as Labour leader, the co-founder of his new political party has claimed.

    Zarah Sultana, who launched a new hard-Left movement with Mr Corbyn last month, said he was wrong to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

    The definition includes holding Jews responsible for Israel’s actions and comparing its policies to those of the Nazis.

    On Sunday night, the Board of Deputies of British Jews accused Ms Sultana of a “grave insult” to the Jewish community and questioned her “wider commitment” to anti-racism.

    Labour initially refused to accept the IHRA wording under Mr Corbyn, whose five-year leadership of the party was repeatedly dogged by complaints of anti-Semitism.

    Following a backlash, it eventually incorporated all of the IHRA’s 11 illustrative examples of anti-Semitism, which meant including a warning not to describe Israel’s existence as a “racist endeavour”….

    In the same interview, Ms Sultana referred to Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state” and said Sir Keir Starmer should have stopped arms sales to the country long ago.

    You can see why Sultana might have a problem.

    Ms Sultana’s remarks came as she also claimed her and Mr Corbyn’s new party was currently too much of a “boys’ club”.

    She is currently the only female MP out of the six independents who will eventually represent the party in the Commons.

    Alongside Mr Corbyn, the others are Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan, Iqbal Mohamed, Shockat Adam, all of whom were elected on a pro-Gaza ticket at the general election last year.

    The hard-left alliance with the Islamists – as seen every weekend in the endless Free Palestine demos – is certainly one of the more disturbing signs of the times, but it's going to be hard to take this mob seriously.

    Added:

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    Except for Jews, obviously.

  • Failing to confront antisemitism

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    Jewish-leeds1

    Jewish-leeds2

  • Palestinians

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  • Knowingly promoting a lie

    David Collier exposes another Gaza lie:

    On 23 July, the tragic image of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq shook the world. Headlines told a story of a boy being forcibly starved in a Gaza famine. My research quickly exposed that story as a lie. Muhammad had cerebral palsy, had been sick since birth, and his siblings were healthy.

    Barely a week later, legacy media played the same trick again – this time with a young girl called Maryam.

    We are told Maryam was evidence of Gaza’s ‘catastrophic hunger crisis’…

    Coverage of Maryam’s tragic case involved deliberate omission. She has siblings – all apparently healthy. In some of the photos, they were present on the same mattress. Editors cropped them out, because their health would expose the lie.

    If this were widespread famine, her siblings and mother would also show signs of starvation. They do not….

    A whistleblower at an NGO inside Gaza, unhappy at the global deception, shared evidence of Maryam’s medical file from Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital….

    The report is clear: Maryam became sick 18 months ago, long before famine was even discussed. She suffers from intestinal malabsorption. Her body cannot properly absorb nutrients. She was given food, therapeutic milk, and medication – but she could not absorb them…. Does this sound like a place of mass starvation and famine? This is a treatment protocol for complicated severe malnutrition. It is specialist medical care, not famine relief. She is not being starved. She is being treated.

    Both these "starvation" stories seem to have been supplied by the same journalist – and mainstream news channels were very keen to report them. Fits with the narrative.

    This is not sloppy journalism. It is not an innocent mistake. It is the same trick, deployed twice in as many weeks, by the same actors. That is proof that legacy media are not being misled – they are knowingly promoting a lie.

  • Obsession with gender ideology

    Over the past week or so we've seen the National Library of Scotland (NLS) accused of a “shameful” capitulation to censorship after it emerged that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht was removed from an exhibition after complaints from staff, while gender-critical authors have been excluded from this month's Edinburgh International Book Fair. Also, Nicola Sturgeon has just published her much derided autobiography. Hadley Freeman – Scotland is sullied by the cult of gender ideology:

    As you may have noticed, Nicola Sturgeon is now promoting her memoir by trying to solve — in real time — that classic philosophical puzzle, “If a tree falls in a forest, and a double rapist identifies as a woman, can I blame JK Rowling?” That particular rapist was Adam Bryson — now known as “Isla Bryson” — who transitioned after being arrested in 2019 for raping two women and, thanks to Sturgeon’s monomaniacal obsession with gender ideology, was briefly remanded to a women’s prison. Sturgeon still can’t bring herself to say that this rapist is a man: “I sometimes still seem as if I’m struggling with how to define Isla Bryson,” Sturgeon conceded. Did I mention that Sturgeon’s memoir is called Frankly?

    It’s unsurprising that Sturgeon and the NLS and EIBF are suppressing words. When you’ve convinced yourself two plus two equals rainbow, you can’t look at the number four. Maybe the weird narcissism of the SNP, and the way it dominates its country’s institutions, encourages a cultish mentality. But the arc of history will always bend towards the extremely obvious truth, and everyone who fights it will look like the mad little witch-hunter they are. Frankly, Scotland, get a grip.

    Scotland certainly stands out compared to England for its commitment to gender ideology, but there's always Australia. And, of course, Canada:

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  • About the principles of open debate and free speech

    A new intervention in the National Library of Scotland farce:

    Scotland’s national librarian is facing mounting pressure to reinstate a gender-critical book which she banned from a major exhibition, after a key donor joined a revolt against the move.

    Alex Graham, who has given around £300,000 to the library, said he had been “shocked and angry” to learn that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht had been excluded from an exhibit that he personally supported with a donation of about £20,000.

    Graham, the creator of the television show Who Do You Think You Are, urged Amina Shah, Scotland’s chief librarian and the chief executive of the National Library of Scotland, to reverse her decision….

    The critically acclaimed book, a collection of essays by more than 30 women about their role in the feminist campaign against Nicola Sturgeon’s gender self-ID law, was set to be included in its Dear Library exhibition, after it was nominated by several members of the public.

    However, The Times revealed on Wednesday that it was pulled after a backlash by the library’s internal LGBT staff network, which claimed it contained “hate speech” and that displaying it would cause “severe harm” to workers.

    They threatened to “notify LGBT+ partners of the library’s endorsement of the book” if management did not cave in….

    In a major intervention, Graham called on the library to admit its mistake and reinstate the book to Dear Library, which Shah had publicly thanked him for his role in funding.

    He said that if it did not, he would have no option but to publicly disassociate himself from the campaign, saying the library had given in to what he claimed was a “censorious, bullying culture” instead of standing up for ideals of free speech….

    “I think this was a fundamental mistake and the correct thing for the library to do would be to put up their hands, admit that and reinstate the book,” Graham said. “Instead, there have been weaselly responses.

    “The library is not saying they have taken it out because it contains hate speech, because it does not. They’ve taken it out because of some ill-conceived notion that someone might be upset by its presence. That’s not a good enough reason for me.”

    Graham added: “This is not about taking one side or the other on the trans debate. It’s about the principles of open debate and free speech, which to the national library should be sacrosanct.

    “It isn’t too late to redeem the situation. But if there is not a change of heart, I feel I will have no choice but to publicly dissociate myself from the exhibition and the campaign that surrounds it.

    “This stupid escapade does not undo the very good work the library does, but it should never have happened.

    “I couldn’t say definitely that I will not donate any more money if they stick to their guns on this, but it has certainly given me pause for thought. That makes me incredibly sad.”

    It's always the same story – management running scared and caving in to the demands of their trans-fixed young staff.

    “This book [The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht] was clearly selected to be included, and frankly the management were then bullied out of that by a staff lobby group.

    “They say they’ve removed this book to protect relationships with stakeholders. But they certainly didn’t consult me and if they had, I would have voiced strong opposition. I am angry and disappointed at the decision to remove the book as well as the implication that as a stakeholder, I am somehow supportive of it, which I am not.”

    Added: Jo Bartosch.

    Once upon a time, the views of public servants such as librarians were both unknown and considered irrelevant. Professionalism meant separating the personal from the job. Now, thanks to social media’s culture of exhibitionism, the distinction between public and private has collapsed. Middle-class jobs in the cultural sector – which generally come with modest pay but high status – have become magnets for zealots whose main professional output seems to be policing the ideological hygiene of bookshelves and flaunting their lanyards.

    The result is an arms race of censorship, in which public servants signal to their peers that they possess the approved views. What the public thinks – the great unwashed who actually fund these institutions – barely registers. If the staff at the National Library did not like the choices the Scottish people made, perhaps they should not have asked them in the first place.

    Stop calling it ‘curation’. Call it what it is: censorship in the service of the cultural elite.

  • Putin’s triumph

    It's hard to credit, but we've just seen Vladimir Putin greeted in Alaska, in America, as a great international statesman, with a red carpet, and handshakes and smiles all round – the man who orchestrated the brutal invasion of a democratic country and is responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. 

    As Putin approached, Trump clapped. The two leaders warmly shook hands and smiled.

    It was a remarkable moment for Putin – a leader shunned by most Western nations since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. His international travel has since been largely limited to nations friendly to the Russian Federation, such as North Korea and Belarus.

    The fact that the Alaska summit happened at all was a victory for Putin. But this welcome would have surpassed the Kremlin's wildest dreams. In a short six months Putin went from being a pariah in the eyes of the West to being welcomed on US soil like a partner and friend.

    To cap it off, in an apparently unscripted moment, Putin decided to accept a lift to the airbase in Trump's armoured limousine instead of driving in his own Moscow-plated presidential state car.

    As the vehicle pulled away, the cameras zoomed in on Putin, sitting in the backseat and laughing.

    Svitlana Morenets in the Spectator:

    Putin left the summit having achieved the goals he came for. He emerged from international isolation and was welcomed as a king rather than as an indicted war criminal. He left with plenty of photos alongside Trump for the Kremlin propaganda wing to talk about and contrast with pictures of Trump lecturing a humiliated Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. Russia also avoided further sanctions despite rejecting a ceasefire, with Trump promising once again that he might think about it in another ‘two or three weeks’.

    As for Trump, he has nothing to show for the meeting except for being laughed at in Russia and at home. Had there been progress, he would already be boasting about it, but he knows too little about the conflict he is trying to fix, and the stick he carried was too short to make Putin care. The summit labelled ‘Pursuing Peace’ failed to achieve even a partial ceasefire. No trilateral meeting with Zelensky has been agreed. The war will grind on, soldiers will keep dying and Russia will continue bombing Ukrainian cities.

    Added:

    Ukrainians who had stayed up late to watch the spectacle were seeing the "legitimisation of a war criminal at the highest level", said Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian writer and political analyst.

  • UEFA and Jews

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    From the article:

    The brother of an Israeli hostage was banned from bringing signs demanding his release into a Uefa match a day after it displayed a “Stop Killing Children – Stop Killing Civilians” banner before the Super Cup.

    The incident occurred before Beitar Jerusalem played Riga in the qualifying round of the Conference League in Romania on Thursday night.

    The signs calling for the release of Rom Braslavski, kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, are said to have displayed messages including: “Bring back Rom”; “I want my brother”; and “The voice of my brother’s blood is calling to me from the tunnels – Bring Rom and the rest of our hostages back home.”

    It is unclear who would have blocked the banners, with the ongoing war in Gaza having forced Beitar to play Thursday’s home leg of their third-qualifying-round tie at Romanian club Petrolul Ploiesti’s Ilie Oana Stadium.

    Braslavski’s brother, Amir, who travelled to the game, nevertheless called on Uefa to intervene over the “hypocrisy” of a decision made a day after the governing body displayed its own sign on the pitch when Tottenham played Paris St-Germain in Udine, Italy.

    He was quoted in Israeli media saying: “We demand that Uefa reverse this shameful decision and allow us to hold his flag and signs until he returns home alive and well.”

    A spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also said: “Rom Braslavski has been held captive by terrorists for nearly two years in conditions deliberately intended to prolong his suffering. To European football, Jewish lives don’t matter.”