Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Stoning women

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    "If any woman is suspected of having relations with a man before marriage they will be taken to holes in the desert and crowds will throw stones at them until they die."

  • The Hamas videos

    Why did Hamas show those despicable videos of the two Israeli hostages? Echoes of the Holocaust were unmistakable – in particular when a skeletal Evyatar David was shown being forced to dig his own grave. Didn't they realise that this would provoke a storm of horror and revulsion in the Western media? 

    Except it didn't.

    That the Free Palestine supporters would finally see just what they were supporting?

    But they didn't. They looked the other way. They didn't care.

    Brendan O'Neill at Spiked:

    But here’s my question: how do we explain Hamas’s lack of shame over what it inflicted on those two Jews? What lies behind the pride with which it paraded its crimes before the world media? To mimic the Nazis and jail Jews for being Jews before reducing them to raw-boned shadows of their former selves – that’s one thing. But to boast about it, to publish the videos, to show the world the inhuman consequences of your fascistic delirium – that’s another thing entirely. Why is Hamas so content to revel in its aping of the racist hysterias of the past?

    It’s because it feels emboldened. It senses that it enjoys a kind of moral impunity among the opinion-shaping classes of the West. It knows our activist classes and influencers have supped so giddily on the Kool-Aid of Israelophobia that even this, even these dystopic images of Jews half-starved by armed anti-Semites, will not be sufficient to steer them back to moral reason. It knows that this horror, too, will be blamed on Israel. The enslavement of young David and Braslavski to the twisted cause of hurting the Jewish nation is a testament to the evil of Hamas. Hamas’s cockiness in releasing sick images of their suffering is a testament to the moral disarray of us….

    ‘We are the victims of the occupation… therefore nobody should blame us for the things we do’, said one of its leaders, Ghazi Hamad, shortly after the pogrom of 7 October 2023. And, in certain circles, no one does. On campuses, on marches, on the left, in the liberal press, the cry goes out: Israel is the sole author of the Gaza horror. As that army of Ivy League brat radicals at Harvard University said on 7 October itself, Israel is ‘entirely responsible’ for all violence in the Middle East.

    Hamas’s release of those Nazi-like images of two Jews it abducted, starved and then humiliated for the titillation of the world’s anti-Semites was an assertion of the mad power it enjoys over the Gaza narrative. It knows that no matter the depths of depravity it sinks to, still the story will be that Israel is the problem. It knows it can send a 6,000-strong army to invade Israel, rape Israeli women, kill Israeli civilians, kidnap Jews and subject them to fascistic abasements, and still the influential of the West will point the finger at the Jewish State. David and Braslavski’s suffering was arguably intensified by this ethical disorder in the West – certainly Hamas was exploiting that ethical disorder when it released footage of their suffering in the full knowledge that many would just look the other way.

    Worse, Hamas senses that its crimes are not only forgiven but rewarded, too. That it released the clips of David and Braslavski in the days after Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney said they would recognise the State of Palestine was striking – and sickening. Hamas has clearly got the message that persecuting Jews has benefits. That carrying out a pogrom can be fruitful. That killing more Jews in one day than anyone else has since the Nazis has its rewards. Including the reward of nationhood. Starmer’s promise to recognise Palestine proves ‘victory’ is ‘closer than we expected’, gloated Hamas. Ghazi Hamad went further, cheering Starmer’s promise as ‘one of the fruits of 7 October’.

  • Stealing Gaza aid

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    Report here:

    New data published last week by the U.N. agency UNOPS shows that most of its aid entering the war-torn Gaza Strip has been looted inside the Palestinian territory. UNOPS provides management services for the world body's own humanitarian operations.

    Despite this, condemnation of Israel over the hunger crisis in Gaza has been ramping up, prompting an increasing number of Western governments to declare intentions to recognize a Palestinian state as punishment, and leading some media outlets to totally tune out the role both international humanitarian organizations and Hamas, whose October 2023 mass terror attack in Israel started the nearly two-year-old war, have played in this catastrophe….

    Information posted on the website of UNOPS, the U.N. Office for Project Services, shows that around 87%, or 1,753 of the 2,013 aid trucks that entered Gaza since May 19 did not reach their final destinations, with the aid being stolen either "peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors," as first reported by Israel's news agency, TPS-IL.

    The data, which showed that a record 90 trucks carrying some 1,695 tons of aid were looted on May 31 alone, comes as shocking photos of emaciated Palestinian children – some of which were later proven to be children with pre-existing health conditions used as propaganda by Hamas – have gone viral.

  • Islamophobia watch

    Yes, this outrageous case needs as much publicity as possible. Jawad Iqbal in the Times:

    The firing of a teacher for suggesting someone’s prison sentence was harsh should raise alarm bells about free speech, in particular the creeping censorship of lawful political viewpoints.

    Simon Pearson, a teacher at Preston College, had commented on the case of Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor, who is serving a 31-month prison sentence. She pleaded guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred in a social media post following last summer’s Southport riots. The post, which she later deleted, said: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the bastards for all I care … If that makes me racist so be it.”

    Pearson, in a social media post, described Connolly’s comments as “obviously wrong” but added that she “should not have been jailed”. An internal investigation found his comments had the potential to bring the further education college into disrepute and he was sacked.

    It's scarcely credible that this actually happened. The Lucy Connolly case has prompted a whole barrage of comment – mostly agreeing with what Simon Pearson said. Yes what she said was vile, but she quickly deleted it and apologised. Sacking Pearson, though, for expressing a perfectly straightforward and reasonable opinion…how on earth did we get here?

    Pearson was dismissed after a complaint from a Muslim member of the National Education Union (NEU) at the college, who alleged that the post was “Islamophobic” and “racially discriminatory”.

    Ah yes, that's how we got here. "Islamophobic". And a member of the NEU. A vision of the future?

  • Thoroughly rotten capitalist acts

    Breast augmentation in North Korea? Apparently so.

    The Ministry of Social Security recently ordered an emergency crackdown after medical complications from illegal breast augmentation surgeries in Pyongyang began surging.

    “Medical complications from cosmetic surgeries by private practitioners have spiked as demand among women for breast augmentation procedures skyrockets,” a Daily NK source in Pyongyang said recently. “The Ministry of Social Security issued an emergency crackdown order to its Pyongyang branch on the morning of July 13.”

    According to the source, the ministry’s order criticized women for “engaging in all sorts of decadent behavior” under bourgeois influence within the socialist system. While authorities had previously overlooked women getting double eyelid surgery or eyebrow tattoos, the order stated that “thoroughly rotten capitalist acts” like breast enlargements were now becoming commonplace.

    Breast augmentations have grown trendy among women in their 20s and 30s seeking more voluptuous figures, particularly those in Pyongyang’s upscale central neighborhoods like Jung and Potonggang districts, the source said….

    However, since authorities consider breast augmentations non-socialist behavior, women cannot receive them at official medical institutions.

    As a result, surgeons secretly perform illegal procedures in their homes using silicone imported from China. This creates serious problems, as such procedures carry high risks of complications like infections….

    Taking the rising number of illegal breast augmentations and medical complications seriously, the Ministry of Social Security issued its emergency order. Pyongyang police have organized strike teams to conduct intensive crackdowns through the end of September, aiming to “eradicate non-socialist behavior.”

    City police issued detailed crackdown instructions. First, officers will infiltrate places performing illegal medical procedures by posing as women seeking breast augmentations. Second, officers will patrol with neighborhood watch unit heads, stopping women with enlarged breasts and taking them to police stations or hospitals for questioning and physical examinations.

    Police taking any woman they think might have large breasts off the streets and down to the station for a closer inspection. No, I can't see any problems there.

    “Strike teams in civilian clothes are already active in Pyongyang’s central districts, where they’ve begun their crackdown,” the source said. “Women and private doctors could face forced labor or other criminal punishments for engaging in non-socialist behavior.”

  • Palestinism

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    "Today we ask again: is there any military — or any other — solution to a worldview that prefers self‑destruction, in one form or another, so long as Israel suffers more? I do not yet know exactly how we will overcome this current assault — especially when our leadership is, this time, so dismally cowardly and poor. But I am certain Israelis will find a way. Because at its core, this is a struggle between two ideologies: Palestinism, which will not rest until not a single sovereign Jew remains between the river and the sea; and Zionism, which — despite the ferocity of every assault against it — remains committed to nothing more, and nothing less, than the right of the Jewish people to live as a free nation, in at least part of their historic homeland."

  • The BMA and the “omnicause”

    Nicole Lampert in the Telegraph:

    Established in 1832, the BMA’s motto is “to promote the medical and allied sciences, and to maintain the honour and interests of the medical profession”. There have been a few controversies along the way – a flirtation with eugenics in the early 20th century and an early rebellion against the plans for the NHS – but for the past few decades the BMA was decidedly “very small-‘c’ conservative” in the words of Emma Runswick, its deputy chair.

    Thanks to Runswick and some of her friends, that is no longer the case. In recent years, what is known as the “omnicause” of far-Left issues – trans, Palestine, eco protests – have come to dominate the union, which was last week accused of “extortion” for staging a five-day strike aimed at securing a 29 per cent pay rise for resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors.

    I'm not sure how important the eco stuff is now. The Greens certainly seem to have given it up in favour of gender ideology, and the new-look Greta Thunberg is full on Free Palestine. The rebrand of Just Stop Oil to Just Stop Zionism can only be a matter of time.

    The origins of the transformation stretch back to 2020, when a grouping of Corbynite doctors within the union formed the Broad Left coalition. The name stems from a Communist Party strategy to “capture positions within a union” and take it over. Its logo is a stethoscope arranged to look like a hammer and sickle.

    By 2022, the coalition seemed to have increasingly joined hands with a larger group of young activist doctors called DoctorsVote – which is mainly dedicated to winning massive pay rises for resident doctors.

    And in the spring of that year, the two groups combined to seize dozens of seats on the BMA council, the union’s foremost decision-making body. In a vote to determine the makeup of the council for the following four years, Broad Left/DoctorsVote candidates secured 26 of the 69 places up for grabs.

    Since then, their influence has only grown. Indeed, a 2023 Policy Exchange report – “Professionalism is not relevant” – concluded the union had been “taken over by young, self-declared ‘entryists’ in a planned campaign similar to that [orchestrated] in the Labour Party at the time of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership”.

    “It is very sad to see what was basically a well-rounded organisation that covered so many issues of importance to a wide range of doctors being hollowed out by the angry activism around residents’ pay, Gaza and LGBT issues,” says Mark Pickering of the Christian Medical Fellowship, which counts many BMA members in its ranks. “It is very similar to the way Momentum took over the Labour Party from the inside. We saw then how people started using democracy to try to dismantle democracy and that’s what it seems has happened here.

    “You had these two groups come in and they all vote for each other… and that’s shifted what happens at the annual meetings, where BMA policy is formed.”

    As the union has become ever more of a crucible for Left-wing politics, members appalled by the takeover have begun to leave.

    Notably, and unsurprisingly, Jewish doctors. While opposition to the Cass Review was also part of the exciting new BMA look. All part of the omnicause.

    It's not just the BMA. The Royal College of Nursing has turned its back on Sandie Peggie. As I noted the other day, it's interesting, given the obvious class element in the NHS Fife case, that not one single trades union that I'm aware of would support Peggie here. And certainly not the RCN. They're all completely behind the gender cause. Such an obvious case of workers' rights under attack from middle-class management, and they all look the other way.

    Also this: a nurse racially abused by a trans paedophile, and the RCN's only concern is that she "misgendered" him. 

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    "Jennifer was racially abused by the patient and threatened with assault. But it is now Jennifer who has been suspended and is being investigated as a 'risk' to the NHS for not using the patient's preferred gender identity.

    "A paying RCN member for 12 years, Jennifer says that when the incident happened the union dismissed her case as not “meritorious” and told her to complete a “reflection” exercise to avoid future ‘misgendering’. She received no support despite the RCN recognising the abuse she experienced."

  • Owning it

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  • The state of California

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    Full text:

    The boy never once identified as a girl and never had any desire to be a girl. It was all the mother. Jeff won his case in Texas (and helped get the state to block this abuse) so the mother ran to the child-castrating, sanctuary state of California under @CAgovernor @GavinNewsom .

    The boy even told the courts that he doesn't like wearing dresses and doesn't identify as a girl. So the courts went after the father, saying he was "forcing him to be a boy."

    California Judge Juhas removed all of Jeff's parental rights and gave the ex-wife full authority to castrate his son, James. Jeff is not allowed any contact with the son without court supervision.

    You don't hate the TQIAP+ activists and child-abusing courts, doctors, and politicians enough.

    As Annette Bening said, speaking for all those Hollywood mothers, "having a trans kid makes you interesting".

  • A failure of leadership

    No surprise, but still….many Labour MPs are still in thrall to gender ideology:

    Labour MPs have deemed the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a woman as “completely unnecessary” and a “backslide” on rights, months after the judgment.

    Analysis by The Times of responses to constituents from Labour MPs found politicians claimed the ruling was being weaponised by the far right and that “bigots [would] feel empowered by a false belief that the law is now on their side”.

    For instance:

    Andrew Western, a work and pensions minister and the MP for Stretford & Urmston, told one constituent that he believed the case was “completely unnecessary” and he appreciated “the fear and distress that has resulted” from it.

    Josh Newbury, the MP for Cannock Chase, said in a letter it was “clear in my view that trans women are women and that trans men are men”. He said the Supreme Court ruling did not contradict that but that “the misinterpretation of, and fallout from, the ruling has wrongly brought this into question”.

    He said: “I do not believe it is morally right for trans people to be excluded from single-sex spaces designated for their gender.”…

    Emily Darlington, the MP for Milton Keynes Central, suggested the “far right” was exploiting the issue to sow division. She said: “The UK is increasingly at odds with European peer countries on trans rights, and anti-trans rhetoric is gaining influence in public and policy spheres.”

    Or rather: the UK  – "Terf Island" – is ahead of Europe in resisting the trans tide, and insisting on the importance of single-sex spaces for women. Biological real women, that is. 

    Labour Women’s Declaration, a group which backs sex-based rights, said the responses were “both disappointing and deeply concerning” and risked leaving the public confused over the party’s position.

    A spokeswoman said: “Of particular concern are the number of MPs and peers who are openly saying that the rights of trans people are under threat. This not only calls into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court judgment which explicitly states the ruling ‘does not remove protection from trans people’, it actively fuels fear within the very community they claim to support.”

    She said: “We now call upon the government to maintain their resolve and remind outlier Labour MPs, who seek to push their own agenda, of their duty to uphold the law.”

    Maya Forstater, chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, said that leadership was needed so that MPs understood the law.

    She said: “Every government has backbench rebels. But when they make dismissive and factually incorrect statements that run directly counter to the government’s stated position, it’s a failure of leadership to let them stand.”

    We await Sir Keir's firm and resolute rebuke to these wayward MPs.