Mick Hartley

Every day, it seems, the BBC leads with another Gaza horror story, straight from Hamas. [Well OK, it's not always Hamas: today it's the Red Cross – "Gaza worse than hell on Earth, Red Cross chief tells BBC as aid centres close for day". As long as they're reliably anti-Israel, the Beeb will listen and headline what they say.]

Brendan O'Neill at Spiked:

1 June 2025. Make a note of that date. For there is a good chance it will be recorded as a day of infamy. As a day when the Jews were once again libelled as the slayers of innocents. As a day when the intellectual classes mimicked their benighted forebears of the medieval era and falsely accused the Jewish nation of spilling blood for sport. For many it was just an ordinary Sunday – but for those who will come to write the history of our times, it will stand out as a day of frenzied hearsay in which Jews were once again branded demons and bloodlusters.

Reports of a massacre in Gaza came early that day. It took place in Rafah, we were told, at one of the distribution centres overseen by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-Israel group that’s providing aid to Gaza’s needy. With depthless cruelty, IDF troops opened fire on the half-starved Palestinians queuing for meals. Thirty-one souls were slaughtered in the ‘aid-centre attack’, as the BBC swiftly called it. A venomous fury spread through the internet. No one can deny it now, people cried: Israel is ‘replicating’ Nazi tactics. Just as the Nazis told Jews they were being put on trains for a better life, so the New Nazis promise Palestinians food as ‘a pretext for slaughter’.

There was one problem with these breathless accounts of a wicked massacre: it seems no such thing took place. Last night, the BBC backtracked. It said it has now studied the ‘graphic video’ of the ‘aid-centre massacre’ and has ruled that it is ‘incorrect’. We were told the ‘massacre’ took place early in the morning, yet the ‘direction of the shadows’ in the clip point to an event that took place ‘after 7pm local time’. More devastatingly, the Beeb geolocated the clip and found that it was filmed in a part of Khan Younis that is 4.5km from the nearest aid-distribution centre. A journalist in Gaza confirmed it: the events in the viral clip are ‘unrelated to any aid-distribution site’….

The magnitude of 1 June and its fallout cannot be overstated. Our media classes lapped up the lies of Hamas. They made themselves its Lord Haw-Haws, uncritically repeating a horror story that worked to the benefit of that army of anti-Semites while further isolating the Jewish nation it dreams of destroying. The untruths have piled up this past fortnight. We were told 14,000 Gazan babies would die in 48 hours – not true. We were told Hamas does not hide in hospitals – not true. And we were told the IDF picked off the starving – not true. We are being lied to about Israel on an industrial scale – day in, day out. I have never seen anything like it.

It's been happening since October 7th. Remember the Al-Ahli hospital bombing in late October 2023? Hamas claimed it was an Israeli strike that killed hundreds, and the BBC reported the Hamas story as fact before it turned out that this was a strike on a car park by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket. There's a long history of the BBC's institutional hostility to Israel…

Of course the BBC isn't alone in its hostility to Israel, but it does set the tone – certainly here in the UK, but to an extent worldwide, given its reputation. It's enough for the White House to get involved. And I don't doubt that it's playing a major part in the current explosion of Jew-hatred that we're seeing now.

They're Kim Jong-un's favourite – and, it seems, a rare case of an in-demand North Korean product. 

North Korean cigarettes known as “7.27” — favored by leader Kim Jong Un — are gaining popularity in parts of China’s Liaoning province despite costing four to six times more than regular Chinese cigarettes.

A Daily NK source in China said recently that “7.27 cigarettes from North Korea are selling well here even though they cost several times more than Chinese cigarettes,” adding that “people without economic means find the price burdensome.”…

“People who’ve tried them say they ‘don’t disappoint,’ ‘worth the money’ and ‘no wonder Kim Jong Un smokes these,'” the source said.

The marketing effect of being associated with Kim Jong Un and the cigarettes’ scarcity appear to be the main factors driving the premium pricing.

The name “7.27” refers to July 27, the date of the Korean War armistice agreement. North Korea calls this day “Victory Day in the Fatherland Liberation War” and celebrates it annually. The cigarette packaging includes the war years 1950-1953, showing how North Korea uses tobacco products for regime propaganda.

“North Korean cigarettes have been smuggled over and sold here for a long time,” the source said. “Premium cigarettes like 7.27 used to require special requests to import, but now they’re trickling in through illegal trade.”

The source added that “some Chinese people say everything is free in North Korea and it’s a good place to live, and they have a favorable image of Kim Jong Un,” which may explain “their strong curiosity and desire to buy North Korean cigarettes, especially 7.27.”

In North Korea, the light gray 7.27 cigarettes are also classified as premium and primarily used for bribes. Ordinary citizens cannot obtain these cigarettes even on special occasions like holidays.

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph on the Imane Khelif Olympic debacle:

It is a monumental dereliction, to which the only natural response is anger. The IOC has caused havoc with its ridiculous 2021 framework on “fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination”, stating that “athletes should be allowed to compete in the category that best aligns with the self-determined gender identity”. In 2024, it decided to test this fallacy in boxing, the most lethal Olympic sport. Except boxers do not compete with their feelings, but with their fists. In its desperation to advertise supposedly progressive credentials, it placed women in mortal danger. Could there be a greater betrayal?

Those who cheered this on in Paris, who painted anybody doubting Khelif’s claims to be a woman as a bigot, should take some time to reflect. And that includes many journalists. On Sky Sports News on Friday, an Olympics reporter, reacting to news that World Boxing would compel Khelif to undergo further sex testing to compete in the female category again, said flatly: “There were no tests. There were no test results.” And yet there were. We knew of their existence in Paris nine months ago, and now we have seen them with our own eyes.

In a curious way, there is some comfort in this. When people accuse anybody disagreeing with them on this subject of “hate”, it is a sure sign that they have lost the plot. And those insisting that Khelif’s mental health matters more than the physical well-being of women have emphatically lost any moral argument. Think of it this way: in men’s sport, people devote inordinate amounts of time to railing against the tiniest example of unfairness, to decrying the entire VAR system if Erling Haaland’s toe happens to be offside. How can the same judges make their peace with women being denied the right to safety, the most basic fairness of all? “Non è giusto”, Carini kept saying to her corner in Paris after the Khelif bout, weeping that she had never been punched so hard in her life. “It’s not fair.” Let that plaintive cry stand as a monument to the IOC’s everlasting shame.

See also, Jo Bartosch at Spiked:

The sight of a man battering his way to a women’s Olympic title was stomach-turning enough. Yet the conduct of those who enabled it was, in many ways, worse. Human-rights organisations and sports NGOs didn’t just look the other way – they also actively smeared anyone who asked questions. Amnesty International’s Stephen Cockburn claimed Khelif and Yu-ting were being ‘hounded by hatred’, framing public concern as ‘toxic, sexist and racist’. Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch dismissed sex testing as ‘abusive’ and ‘unscientific’. Meanwhile, with a characteristic lack of irony, GLAAD issued a ‘fact check’ decrying all criticism of Khelif as ‘transphobia and misinformation’. None offered a word of concern for the women in the ring.

The media, of course, played their part. From the BBC to the Associated Press, most outlets dutifully referred to Khelif as ‘she’, presenting him as a victim of conservative backlash or of a sinister Kremlin plot. Predictably, the Guardian went one further, publishing a spectacularly unhinged piece that framed concerns about Khelif punching women as the rantings of tradwives and MAGA trolls.

Perhaps the most glaring hypocrisy came from boxing pundit Steve Bunce. Last year, he said of Khelif on the BBC, ‘Despite what you’ve read in the newspapers, she has always been a she’, while condemning the IBA’s sex testing. Yet this week, he attempted a feint. He claimed he supports reliable sex tests while dismissing criticism of Khelif as a ‘witch hunt’ based on his appearance. It’s fair to say, he was bested on social media.

To be clear, Khelif is not claiming to be trans. He is simply a man with a genetic disorder. Yet last year, a legion of commentators and organisations were sure he was a woman and convinced he had been persecuted. Just as with the debates around trans participation in sport, the people who assume they know best decided women’s right to fair competition doesn’t matter.

The IOC and those complicit commentators and journalists could have listened to the women who took the punches. They could have followed the IBA’s lead. They could have used their eyes. But there was more social currency in defending the indefensible. For some supposedly kind and enlightened people, it seems that a man punching a woman in the face is a sign of progress. Their contempt for women’s sport and safety is shameful.

It's curious that those most determined to ignore the evidence, and cheer on the sight of men beating up women for sport, are those who think of themselves as progressive and kind. Well, that's where we are…

Pasadena, California, ca. 1911. "Colorado Street at Broadway."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

Nothing to see here – just another reporter used by the BBC who turns out to be a rabid antisemite:

Gaza reporter Ahmed Alagha has reportedly been banned from appearing on the BBC’s Arabic service after describing Jews as “devils” and Israelis as “not human beings”.

Alagha, a regular contributor to BBC Arabic’s coverage of the war in Gaza, was barred from the channel after The Telegraph uncovered derogatory and antisemitic comments apparently made by the journalist on social media.

In one post, following Israeli strikes in Gaza, Alagha reportedly wrote that the Israeli occupation "is the embodiment of filth, the unrivalled swamp of wickedness,” adding: “As for the Jews, they are the devils of hypocrites.”

The following day he reportedly said: “The ‘Israelis’ are not human beings to begin with, rather they are not even beasts. Perhaps they belong to a race for which no description can capture the extent of their lust and sadism.”

Alagha, described on air as a Palestinian journalist, has appeared on BBC Arabic reporting from Gaza numerous times since January last year.

And fitted right in.

“BBC Arabic’s editors specifically seem to be trapped inside an echo chamber,” a spokesperson for Camera UK said.

“This precedent would be unimaginable were Alagha to target any other minority group in the UK, let alone a group involved in the same conflict he purports to cover.”

🚨The @NSPCC poses a safeguarding risk🚨

Today, it was announced that thousands of children have sought counselling from the charity for gender identity over the past year.

However, this is anything but explorative, ethical counselling. This is indoctrination.

As I have…

— James Esses (@JamesEsses) June 2, 2025

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As I have documented over the years, this is an organisation that:

-Runs message boards in which children advise each other about sourcing cross-sex hormones and genital surgery.

-Offers advice to vulnerable children on wearing breast binders.

-Tells children that, if they are left infertile after transitioning, they can always get a surrogate to carry a baby for them.

-Is run by a CEO who has said that ‘transwomen’ should be “celebrated”.

-Has a webpage which reads as a roadmap to transitioning.

-Has trans flags flying in its counselling rooms.

-Collaborated with Mermaids.

-Enlists children to make pride flags for marches.

-Sells ideological reading material through its online shop.

-Kicked me out, after 5 years of volunteering as a counsellor, because I refused to denounce biological reality.

Head of Childline, Shaun Friel, the man who booted me out, has said today that it is a “privilege” to work with children “coming out” regarding their “gender identity”.

If our children are not safe contacting the NSPCC, where are they safe?

From NSPCC news:

• In 2024/251, Childline delivered over 2,400 counselling sessions to children and young people with issues or concerns about sexuality and gender identity.
• Two in five of these counselling sessions were about coming out.

Coming out, here, means coming out as gay or as trans. They've completely bought into the idea of the trans child – the child born into the wrong body.

For instance:

One transgender boy, aged 17, told Childline:

"I'm trans and still kinda in the process of figuring my identity out. There's been so much hate for us lately in the news in terms of people taking their lives, kids being attacked, governments putting harmful laws in place. I'm scared as to what this means for my future, and if I'll ever be able to live as myself."

The full panoply of delusions about trans persecution and the struggle to "be able to live as myself ", straight off social media. A responsible children's charity would do their best to discourage this troubled soul from believing that somehow they can change sex and all will be well. Not the NSPCC though.

Suzanne Moore is not impressed with the latest BBC trans drama:

An adult man does not know what it feels like to be a girl. But that didn’t stop transgender writer Paris Lees telling us in his 2021 memoir.

Of course, with What It Feels Like for a Girl, Lees is entitled to choose whatever book title he likes, particularly if he wants to also riff off a Madonna song.

But now that the memoir has been made into a BBC television series of the same name, what it feels like for licence fee payers is another matter. Because, for a very long time, the BBC has run roughshod over the feelings of those not enamoured with the trans cult.

Lees was promoted by the BBC early on, via appearances on Question Time. He also wrote columns for Vice and even Vogue. (Lees uses the pronouns she/her, but, for the purposes of this column, I’m using he/him.)

You can see why he appealed: he’d had extensive facial feminisation surgery, was witty, and was, as was the fashion, “feisty”. I objected to some of the things he said he now enjoyed, as a woman – such as being taken shopping and being cat-called. We exchanged friendly emails at one point, and then I forgot about him.

Until this week, that is – on the eve of his new TV series. Lees is commonly referred to as a “doll”. This is an old slang term for biological men who “pass” as women (dim celebrities wear “Protect the Dolls” t-shirts in support of them). Trans people who don’t “pass” as women are called “bricks”.

It’s not very kind, but there you are. In propelling Lees back into the spotlight, the BBC is pushing the notion of trans identity as fun and “culturally significant”. It’s also subtly sanctioning the darker side of Lees’s history.

On his 14th birthday, Lees went into a public toilet with a man. Even now, Lees describes himself at that time as a rent boy (though acknowledges he was also a victim of abuse). At the age of 18, he was convicted of robbery with violence for an attack on an elderly man and sent to prison. The man was severely beaten. While inside, Lees began to identify as a trans woman.

Yet none of this violent history seems to have bothered the BBC. Instead, it’s tying itself in knots over what pronouns it should use to describe Lees. In the episode guide, it uses they/them to describe him when he was a biological boy (and known by his former first name, Byron). Then Byron becomes she/her when he self-IDs as a woman.

The storyline of What It Feels Like for a Girl is also one of gay conversion, which is in itself questionable when conflated with trans conversion. An adult man can certainly know what it feels like to be a boy who is bullied for being gay and effeminate. But as Maya Forstater, of the campaign group Sex Matters, says: “Presenting the idea of an effeminate boy ‘becoming a girl’ as an edgy coming-of-age story is presenting delusion as self-discovery. This series will promote a regressive, dangerous, impossible and fundamentally homophobic dream to another generation of gay young men.”

"Regressive" and "Fundamentally homophobic". Yes, exactly. And the Beeb has been promoting this line – with vigour – for the best part of a decade now.

The Supreme Court ruling that said biological sex is real should have been a wake-up call to the BBC. Instead, it has left the BBC and many other cultural institutions reeling, because to question gender ideology in the arts world is to be ostracised and often fired. Far from being dissidents, the arts have bent the knee to trans orthodoxy to a sickening degree.

Since the ruling, we have seen programmes like Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour struggle to get on board with reality. They have pandered to men who have transitioned, but are hostile and incredulous when faced with the likes of Helen Joyce, the incredibly articulate gender-critical activist who has been snubbed by our national broadcaster.

We constantly have to read on BBC websites about “women” who have committed rape. Male sports cheats are referred to as women. We have had a decade of this. I cannot call it brainwashing, because anyone with a brain can see it doesn’t wash at all. On every salient point, from puberty blockers to single-sex spaces, the pushback has been real and righteous. The culture has to catch up.

A small additional point about the *complete* corruption of the women's boxing at #Paris24

The boxing was a knockout competition. Angela Carini was knocked out by Khelif in the first round. She didn't get close to the medal bouts, so she can't be awarded a medal. We just…

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) June 3, 2025

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The boxing was a knockout competition. Angela Carini was knocked out by Khelif in the first round. She didn't get close to the medal bouts, so she can't be awarded a medal. We just don't know – and we can never know – what would have happened in the absence of Khelif. Carini might have still been eliminated in the first round, or gone much further.

The *whole* competition and *all* the results were completely corrupted by the presence of Khelif and Lin Yu Ting. Some apologists for men in women's sport say "it's only one athlete" and this is always silly. But knockout competitions demonstrate an extreme version of of this stupidity.

A logical consequence: There can't be a just redistribution of the medals. The whole competition at Paris should be declared null and void. There should be massive financial compensation to all those who competed. There should be a public apology from the IOC to all the women boxers. Who should be named. Perhaps there should be commemorative medals to all of them.

I don't say this in order to stymie any attempts to get a re-awarding of medals. But the situation really is irretrievable, and this adds very significantly to the moral harm that has been inflicted by the IOC.

It's like the Soviet show trials in the Thirties, when disgraced apparatchiks confessed to their ghastly wrong-think crimes against Stalin the great leader, before being led out to be shot. From the Telegraph:

Transgender rights activists have forced a spa to apologise for banning biological men from a steam room session.

Beach Box Spa in Brighton was accused of giving in to the “woke mob” after it said sorry for excluding trans women from the female-only session last Thursday.

Owners had originally opted to exclude transgender women from the session to allow female customers to feel safe while relaxing in their swimwear.

They later performed a U-turn after facing criticism from transgender activists online.

In a message on their website, they said the decision had been “wrong” and “goes against everything we believe in”.

They also said they “believe trans women are women and trans men are men.”

The firm is also now holding a new “queer sauna session” from Thursday and said its staff may require further “LGBTQ+ inclusion training.”

Further indoctrination is required – and, no doubt, more groveling apologies.

One critic said: “I absolutely loved your saunas but your decision to exclude trans women is incredibly disappointing.

“Your business operates in a queer city. I won’t be using a space that excludes my trans siblings. Please do better than this.”

It's astonishing how deeply ingrained in the "progressive" mind now is the Stonewall-inspired conviction that trans people are a poor persecuted minority, and the next liberation crusade. Despite gender-critical victories like the recent Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex, it sometimes feels that we'll need to wait for a whole generation of befuddled idiots to pass on before we can return to sanity.

From the Telegraph:

British courts have been accused of reviving blasphemy laws after a man who set fire to a copy of the Koran was convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence. Hamit Coskun shouted “f— Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism” while holding the religious text above his head during a protest on Feb 13.

Hamit Coskun shouted “f— Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism” while holding the religious text above his head during a protest on Feb 13.

The 50-year-old, who was violently attacked by a passerby during the demonstration in London, went on trial last week, accused of an offence under the Public Order Act.

At Westminster magistrates’ court on Monday, he was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence of using disorderly conduct, which was motivated “in part by hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam”.

Robert Jenrick, shadow justice secretary, said: “This decision is wrong. It revives a blasphemy law that parliament repealed.

“Free speech is under threat. I have no confidence in Two-Tier Keir to defend the rights of the public to criticise all religions.”

Blasphemy laws were abolished in the UK 17 years ago.

In a statement after the verdict, Coskun said the decision was “an assault on free speech” that would deter others from exercising their democratic right to protest.

He added: “As an activist, I will continue to campaign against the threat of Islam.

“Christian blasphemy laws were repealed in this country more than 15 years ago, and it cannot be right to prosecute someone for blaspheming against Islam.

“Would I have been prosecuted if I’d set fire to a copy of the Bible outside Westminster Abbey? I doubt it.”

Yep. Me too. No one would have paid it any attention.

The National Secular Society (NSS), which, alongside the Free Speech Union, paid for Coskun’s legal fees, said the verdict “jeopardises” free expression.

A spokesperson for the FSU said: “This is deeply disappointing. Everyone should be able to exercise their rights to protest peacefully and to freedom of expression, regardless of how offensive or upsetting it may be to some people.

“The Free Speech Union and the National Secular Society intend to appeal this verdict and keep on appealing it until it’s overturned. If that means taking it all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, we will do so.”

“Religious tolerance is an important British value, but it doesn’t require non-believers to respect the blasphemy codes of believers. On the contrary, it requires people of faith to tolerate those who criticise and protest against their religion, just as their values and beliefs are tolerated.”