Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • The “genocide” meme

    Yep. Another facile lying slogan.

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  • Breaking the blockade

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  • Guardian trouble

    Whoops.

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    Headline now amended to, EHRC commissioner calls for trans people to accept perceived reduced rights.

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    The staggeringly dishonest presentation of Akua's comments here expresses the very heart of the political problem regarding the objectives the trans rights movement, the attack on women's rights, and the complicity of many parts of the left, including The Guardian, with that attack.

    The Supreme Court judgement *does not reduce the rights of trans people as given in law.*

    What it does is correct the situation *in which the trans rights movement had arrogated itself 'rights' by disseminating a false interpretation of the law which undermined women's rights.*

    It arrogated itself these 'rights,' therefore, by non-democratic means, and attempted to enforce its claims by preventing anyone from discussing what it was doing, and threatening and trying to destroy the livelihood and reputations of people who refused to comply.

    The act of injustice here is one that has been perpetrated *by* the trans rights movement *against* the people whose rights they attempted to non-democratically help themselves to, that is, women and especially lesbians.

    And the main newspaper of the left is still so largely captured by the ideological discourse of the trans rights movement that it is totally failing to accurately inform its readers about what has happened, how this situation arose, who has wronged who, and what the SC judgement actually represents.

    It is still seeking to present the wronged parties as the aggressors, and the people who spent over a decade illegitimately trying to remove their rights as the victims.

  • North Korea “a leading nation in the global anti-imperialist front”

    Selling the sending of North Korean troops to Ukraine, from the Daily NK:

    North Korean authorities have been conducting political lectures for officials promoting the country’s deployment of troops to the Russia-Ukraine war since officially acknowledging the dispatch last month.

    According to a Daily NK source in Kangwon province recently, the propaganda and agitation department of the Workers’ Party issued special political lecture materials about the Russia deployment to provincial party committees on May 21. Kangwon province’s party committee then held a regular Saturday lecture for officials based on these materials.

    The materials said combat units of the Korean People’s Army took part in operations to liberate Russia’s Kursk region, helping to wipe out Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces and protect Russian territory.

    “Our soldiers’ fighting spirit and tactical skills struck fear into the enemy,” the materials said, apparently trying to instill pride in officials about North Korea’s military strength.

    The lecturer emphasized that North Korea leads an alliance of anti-imperialist forces.

    “The lecturer kept using the phrase, ‘North Korea is a leading nation in the global anti-imperialist front,'” the source said. “This was clearly meant to drill into officials that our military has the combat power not only to protect our homeland but to lead the global strategic balance.”

  • Congruent with consumer capitalism

    It's the young, overwhelmingly, who support trans ideology, while us older folk tend to the gender-critical side. So the tide of history is with the gender crowd, and when we gender-criticals have shuffled off, there'll be no stopping them. That's how progress works – right? Well, Susanna Rustin at the Guardian sees it differently:

    I think those who characterise this struggle as being between young progressives and ageing reactionaries are mistaken. While I fully support transgender people’s right to be protected from discrimination, I don’t regard the erosion of sex-based entitlements – including single-sex sports and spaces – in favour of an ethos of “inclusion” as either liberal or leftwing.

    On the contrary, I think valuing inclusion over bodily privacy (in changing rooms) or fairness (in sports) is sexist – since women are more disadvantaged by these changes than men. And while gender identity campaigners claim autonomy and choice as progressive, even socialist, values, I see their emphasis on the individual’s right to self-definition as congruent with consumer capitalism. Multinational corporations, including banks and retailers, embrace Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index and fly Progress Pride flags from their buildings because the shift away from the class politics of redistribution towards the identity politics of personal expression suits them.

    So someone at the Guardian is prepared to stick their hand up and say that it's not really a progressive cause, this gender stuff. Big business wasted no time in jumping aboard, and – in the US at least – there are megabucks to be made by mutilating kids in the name of "gender-affirming care". Not quite the full it's-actually-profoundly-homophobic-and-misogynist gotcha, but it's a start.

    "Congruent with consumer capitalism" -  a very Guardianisty take. But fair enough – especially if you buy into the Pritzker saga, as outlined by Jennifer Bilek in 2022. 

    And an interesting side note: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is widely regarded as being a potential future Democratic presidential candidate.

  • A symbolic, non-violent protest

    Hamit Coskun in the Spectator provides a powerful defence of his actions – Why I burnt the Quran.

    My name is Hamit Coskun and I’ve just been convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence. My ‘crime’? Burning a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. Moments later, I was attacked in full view of the street by a man. I was hospitalised. Then I was arrested.

    Some may say that book-burning is a poor substitute for reasoned debate. I would counter that it was a symbolic, non-violent form of expression intended to draw attention to the ongoing move from the secularism of my country of birth to a regime which embraces hardline Islam.

    As I told Westminster Magistrates’ Court, what I did constituted political protest and the law, as I understood it, was on my side. CPS guidance makes clear that legitimate protest can be offensive and on occasion must be, if it is to be effective. In that spirit, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects not just polite speech but speech that offends, shocks or disturbs. Political expression, above all, is meant to enjoy the strongest protection.

    Alas, the judge ruled otherwise. And the reasoning deployed to convict me raises troubling questions, not only about the scope of public order law but about whether Britain is witnessing the quiet return of blasphemy laws.

    Although the man who assaulted me is being prosecuted separately, the Crown says his action helped to prove my guilt. It argued that because I was attacked, my behaviour must not have been peaceful. Under this logic, ‘disorderly’ no longer depends on conduct, but on how offended or aggressive someone else chooses to be in response.

    The judge's reasoning here provides a clear invitation for those who claim to be offended by a protest to respond with violence. The more violent, the more likely that the person you attacked will be prosecuted and found guilty. And Islamists are – as we know – only too ready to resort to violence.

    It gets worse.

    Neither was this the only inversion of logic the prosecution relied on. It insisted this was not a political protest. Yes, I had told police I was protesting against President Erdogan’s government, which has made Turkey a base for radical Islamists while trying to create a sharia regime. Yes, I had written on social media beforehand that I would burn a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate. Yes, I said in interview that I was criticising a political ideology, not Muslims as a group. But all of this, the Crown claimed, was a ‘convenient shield’, something I had fabricated to conceal my hostility towards Muslims.

    The judge in the case accepted that argument, concluding that my actions were ‘motivated at least in part by hatred of followers of the religion’.

    This lies at the heart of the matter, and is key to the danger of the precedent set. If every protest against Islam is presumed to be a protest against Muslims, if criticism of doctrine is redefined as hatred of believers, then space for lawful criticism of that religion – or any religion – collapses. My case turned on that blurring of categories.

    In other words, the judge accepted the Islamic argument that there is no meaningful distinction between Islam and its followers: when Islam is criticised, it's an expression of a hatred of Muslims. Which is precisely the argument used for the ridiculous concept of "Islamophobia". 

    As has been said often enough. this is introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Islam isn't a race; it's a religion, an ideology. The problem lies in the Muslim belief that Islam is not just something you believe in, but forms an essential part of your being – hence the seriousness of apostasy. For them, then, the term "Islamophobia" is equivalent to racism in that the belief is inseparable from the person. But that's no reason to accept those terms here, where freedom of speech has been fought for over generations, and remains central to our democracy.

    Or did.

    In 2022, I claimed asylum in Britain. Why here? Because I believed it was a country where an atheist refugee could speak without fear. That belief brought me to the gates of the Turkish consulate on 13 February.

    Had I known that challenging the Islamist propaganda which destroyed the country I grew up in could lead to prosecution, I might have thought twice about coming. But I am here now. And I will not remain silent.

    The Free Speech Union funded my defence and stands ready to provide any assistance needed to get this judgment overturned. Because this is no longer just about me. It is about whether Britain still believes that no religion is beyond criticism, especially when it shapes public life and political power. That was the principle I was imprisoned for defending in Turkey and it was the principle I was defending outside the Turkish consulate. I have no intention of abandoning that fight.

  • Reporting the Hamas narrative

    Again from the JC, and again – after that Brendan O'Neill piece – looking at the BBC's continuing dependence on Hamas as their source for all Gaza news. How the BBC (and others) fell yet for another Hamas narrative:

    If members of the BBC’s funding public assumed that the corporation had learned something about jumping to conclusions before the facts surrounding reported incidents become clear following its finger-scorching coverage of the October 2023 Al Ahli hospital explosion, they would be wrong.

    Early on the morning of June 1st the BBC News website published a report headlined “At least 15 killed in Israeli tank fire near Gaza aid centre, say medics”. It was credited to a "local Gaza journalist" and went on to quote a "doctor at the Red Cross field hospital” and “Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal”, while failing to inform readers that Hamas runs that organisation.

    As the day went on, the BBC's report was updated numerous times, with the claim that the civilians were hit by "tank" fire removed, and the number of alleged casualties in its headline fluctuating from fifteen to twenty-six to thirty-one and then down to twenty-one. Its cited source of those figures changed three times from “medics” to “Hamas” and then “the Red Cross”. The fourth version told BBC audiences that, "The Israel Defence Forces said it was ‘currently unaware of injuries caused by IDF fire within the Humanitarian Aid distribution site. The matter is still under review.’”

    "’We have heard that these fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas. They are untrue and fabricated,’” the report quoted GHF as saying.

    A version of that report published at 17:14 UTC on June 1st, headlined :“31 killed in Israeli gunfire near Gaza aid centre, Hamas-run health authorities say”, included parts of a statement put out by the IDF over an hour earlier, which stated that an initial enquiry found that its forces had not fired at Gazans while they were near or within aid points, adding that allegations against the IDF regarding fire toward Gazan residents in the area of the humanitarian aid distribution site in Gaza were "false" and "fabricated".

    But of course the Beeb is always going to go for the Hamas account. It fits with their evil Israel narrative.

    And it wasn't just the BBC.

    While there are still questions over the incident on Sunday, as well as other alleged casualties at Gaza aid distribution centres which were reported over the next two days, the willingness of BBC reporters and editors to promote largely unevidenced claims by Hamas or Hamas-related officials is extremely troubling, and, in fact, isn't exclusive to the BBC.

    For its part, Sky News placed their coverage of the aid distribution incident as one of the top stories on their website’s homepage, with a headline which includes the words "Death traps and bloodbaths”, incendiary language culled from a Hamas press release conspiratorially accusing Israel of luring starving Palestinian children to the aid centres in order to kill them.

    On the other side of the pond, the Washington Post ran the unverified, Hamas-based narrative of an Israeli attack on civilians queuing for aid in Gaza before finally, three days later, and after the original false story had already been widely circulated, admitting that the attack "couldn't be verified".

    The far more influential New York Times also promoted the proscribed terror group's unsubstantiated claims about a “massacre” at the Gaza aid centre. However, unlike the Washington Post, the US “paper of record” has published no such mea culpa. In fact, as our CAMERA colleague showed, their reports not only failed to walk back their initial coverage, but actually concealed and muddled the Israeli denial in a word salad positioning the IDF statements as a potential confirmation of sorts….

    Most remarkably, none of the outlets we mentioned saw fit to report on an IDF video posted on X on Sunday evening appearing to show Palestinian gunmen in Gaza shooting at civilians reportedly going to collect aid, which is illustrative of the fact that reporters in the UK and US ignored or significantly downplayed the possibility that Hamas or other Palestinian gunmen could have been responsible for the shooting of civilians queuing in line for food.

    Given that Hamas had, several days before the Sunday incident, denounced the new US-Israeli-backed aid distribution system as an “agent of the occupation”, warning Palestinian civilians who accept its assistance that they “will pay the price, and we will take the necessary measures", one would have expected Western journalists to give at least equal weight to the possibility that the terror group – and not Israel – was the party responsible for the alleged massacre.

    Western media coverage of the Gaza aid shootings once again shows that far too many journalists adopt the default position of believing the worst about Israel even when unverified claims come from dubious and/or politically motivated sources – including “local journalists” – and serve Hamas’ propaganda agenda.

  • Justifying Boulder

    Losing your moral compass. From the JC:

    Tony Greenstein, a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), has caused outrage with an X post which seems to justify Monday’s “terror” attack in Boulder Colorado.

    Responding to an X post by international human rights lawyer and “proud Zionist” Arsen Ostrovsky, which read: “When they say ‘Globalize the intifada’ …” along with a picture taken in the aftermath of the attack, Greenstein, who is Jewish, wrote: “They were marching in support of genocide and got a taste of what Palestinians experience every day – what's the problem?”

    They were marching to raise awareness of the hostages – to keep their memory alive. But Greenstein knows that…

    MEMRI TV has the video recorded by jihadist Mohamed Sabry Soliman before his Boulder attack. It is, of course, all about Allah.

  • Playing Russian roulette with women’s safety

    The NHS again. From the Times:

    Mental health hospitals responsible for violent criminals have policies which allow biologically male patients to “self identify” as women, an audit has revealed.

    What could possibly go wrong.

    In some cases, hospitals acknowledged that some trans patients may pose a “risk to a particular gender” or be “sexually disinhibited” and “very distressing for other patients on a single-sex ward”.

    But it's no big deal. As long as they're housed according to their declared gender identity. That's what really matters.

    One trust, South West London and St George’s, suggested that it may sometimes be appropriate to put forensic trans patients on a ward in line with their biological sex “while they are acutely unwell” due to being a possible “risk to a particular gender”. The policy document added: “Once they have recovered and have regained capacity it would be essential to reassess the risk … and if safe and appropriate, to arrange a move to a ward in accordance with their correct gender.”

    The trust also gave the example of a trans patient getting undressed in front of members of the opposite sex and revealing their genitals.

    It said: “A patient with bipolar (who happens also to be trans) who is in a manic state and who does not have capacity may be disinhibited and at risk of disrobing in public. Depending on where they are in their transition, it may be more appropriate for them to be admitted to a ward that is in line with their birth gender … while they are acutely unwell and at risk of ‘outing’ themselves.”

    Their "birth gender"? That would be their sex, then – but once you get sucked in to gender-world there's a whole new terminology to be learned.

    Other NHS trusts have similar policies. Central and North Western London said that it “respects an individual’s right to self-identify as male or female”, and that transgender women have the right to access women’s support groups and toilets.

    However, it said that, in some cases, “further consideration may be needed as to how best to manage a trans individual”. It gave the example of how “a sexually disinhibited pre-operative transsexual individual may be very distressing for other patients on a single sex ward”.

    As always, the most important factor is to honour the patient's fantasy about his declared gender. Much lower down comes any consideration of risk to the women in these institutions.

    West London NHS Trust, which runs the high-security Broadmoor Hospital — known for housing serial killers, including the late Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper” — said: “Staff must use names, titles and hospital accommodation that the service user regards as appropriate.”

    "Service user"? In old money, "the patient". 

    A women’s rights campaigner involved in the audit said: “We have found examples of NHS trusts allowing forensic patients who were born male to self-identify as women.

    “Forensic patients are those referred to the NHS from court or prison. They have been deemed a risk to themselves and others. They often have violent offending profiles. It is scary to think that their gender identity would override the safety and dignity of women.

    “NHS Trusts are playing Russian roulette with women’s safety. The Supreme Court ruling clarified that single-sex spaces must be single sex, and it is vital that this is now enforced nationally across all hospitals.”

    Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at Sex Matters, said: “It’s deeply disturbing that the safety and welfare of some of the most vulnerable women in London — those in the care of state mental health services — are being so seriously compromised by NHS trusts.

    “The Supreme Court judgment was crystal-clear that single-sex services must be run on the basis of biological sex. There is no excuse for a dangerous ‘case-by-case’ approach that deems some men safe to be housed in women’s accommodation.

    “These NHS trusts are missing the point: no male patient should ever be allowed in female accommodation under any circumstances. If health care managers cannot understand why this matters so much in mental health services, then they are not fit to run NHS trusts or to have female patients in their care.”

  • Hamas has brought only blood and ruin

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    In a historic declaration, the major families and clans of southern Gaza have openly condemned Hamas, holding it fully responsible for the devastation in the Strip and calling for new Palestinian leadership.

    For the first time, they clearly state that Hamas is a force of destruction and division.

    They no longer recognize it as their representative, demand an immediate end to its rule, and urge the formation of a new, legitimate national leadership.

    Only with Hamas removed can there be hope for a peaceful future, one where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side.