Mick Hartley

Questions to which the answer is 'yes'. From the Telegraph.

From the Times of Israel:

Defense Minister Israel Katz reveals an intelligence document showing that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif sent a letter to Iran’s IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani in June 2021 seeking support for the terror group’s plans to invade Israel, which was ultimately carried out on October 7, 2023.

“I am presenting a document here for the first time, which was found in the tunnels of senior Hamas officials in Gaza, which proves a direct relationship between Iran and Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, as part of Iran’s support for the Hamas plan to destroy Israel,” Katz says during a visit to the Military Intelligence Directorate’s so-called intelligence collection and technical spoils unit — known by its Hebrew acronym Amshat.

“In the document, they ask of the commander of the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force to transfer $500 million for destroying the State of Israel,” he says.

The document shows that Hamas demanded $20 million per month from Iran over two years, “to achieve these great goals, through which we will change the face of the world.”

“We are confident that by the end of these two years, or during them, God willing, we will uproot this monstrous entity, and we will end this dark period in the history of our nation,” the letter reads.

Saeed Izadi, the head of the Palestinian Division in the IRGC, “accepted the request and replied to them that Iran, despite its difficult economic situation and the plight of the Iranian population, will continue to funnel money to Hamas, because the struggle against Israel and the US is the top priority of the Iranian regime,” Katz says.

The defense minister adds that “the conclusion is clear: Iran is the head of the serpent, and despite all its denials, it is also funding and advancing terror in all areas, from Gaza, through Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [West Bank] and now with the Houthis in Yemen, under the desire to destroy Israel.”

Yes, we knew that. Still…the destruction of another country as a government's top priority is something to think about. And we're still wondering what on earth Obama was thinking of when he decided that the US should cold-shoulder Israel, abandon Syria, and base their Middle-Eastern foreign policy on being nice to Tehran.

Trevor Phillips in the Times this morning on the parlous state of free speech in the UK, comes round to the universities:

And finally, the education secretary appears at last to have found better advice about the wildfire running through our universities and colleges on this issue and decided to allow the Office for Students to do its job of protecting freedom of expression on campuses. As a result, last month the University of Sussex was hit with a fine of £585,000, mainly for its sheer spinelessness. The academic bosses there had allowed student and faculty activists to bully the philosopher Kathleen Stock out of the university because of her refusal to bow to fashionable but entirely bonkers minority views on sex and gender. The fine has triggered a scramble across higher education to quell the rampage of gender ideology and critical race theory. It will take time to expunge the stain of cowardice that has taken hold of much of Britain’s intellectual life.

Yep.

🚨BREAKING🚨

Two men will face each other for a women's championship title at the Ultimate Pool Women's Pro Series Event 2 tonight in Wigan, UK.

Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith, both trans-identified males, beat all female competitors to take the spots in the women's final event. pic.twitter.com/CNrfPuWEB7

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) April 6, 2025

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Added:

BREAKING: Two MEN competed in the finals for the Ultimate Pool Series WOMEN'S Pro event in England.

Literally beyond parody. What a time to be alive pic.twitter.com/l9Yd0wfyP5

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 6, 2025

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The latest on the nurse who faced investigation at St Helier Hospital for misgendering a trans paedophile. Yes, she's now been suspended:

Jennifer Melle, 40, was previously investigated and disciplined by St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, London, after refusing to refer to a child sex offender patient as a woman.

Following widespread coverage of her case in the media, she was suspended this week and accused of breaching the patient’s confidentiality.

After a five-minute meeting with a manager, she was ordered to collect her belongings and escorted out of the hospital in tears.

It's barely possible to even imagine how we got here, or how the St Helier management could be so tone deaf. A dedicated nurse, suspended for calling a man – a child sex offender, no less – a man. But we now have more detail of what actually happened:

Last year, the patient, known only as Patient X, arrived from a men’s prison at Ms Melle’s ward to receive treatment for a urinary problem.

During the evening shift, a colleague told Ms Melle, the senior nurse on staff, that the patient wanted to self-discharge and a doctor was called for guidance.

Ms Melle spoke with the doctor on the phone outside the patient’s room, during which Ms Melle referred to the patient as “mister” and “he”.

She said she was discussing a catheter, for a male person, which needed to be removed, adding: “This was a real-life medical scenario that required accurate terminology to avoid any doubt between medical professionals.”

Overhearing Ms Melle, the patient who was born a man but identified as a woman, took issue with the male pronoun and title.

The nurse replied that she was “sorry I cannot refer to you as ‘her’ or ‘she’, as it’s against my faith and Christian values, but I can call you by your name”.

The patient began to verbally abuse the nurse, saying: “Imagine if I called you n—–? How about I call you n—–? Yes, black n—–.” The patient also lunged at her despite being restrained and threatened to make a complaint, she said.

However, it was Ms Melle who was investigated and disciplined by the hospital in October, with a final warning and a referral to the Nursing and Midwifery Council NMC).

She is now filing a legal claim, supported by Christian Legal Centre, against the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Trust for harassment, discrimination and human rights breaches.

It is understood that she will remain on full pay following her suspension.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said her treatment was “completely crazy”. Mrs Badenoch added: “She has my full support. It’s time the Government pulls its finger out and intervenes to make it clear no one should be punished at work for stating biological reality to paedophiles.”

Well exactly.

The Telegraph:

Joan of Arc was non-binary, secondary school pupils are being taught.

Lesson plans produced for English language students aged between 11 and 14 include the claim about the medieval figure, who is the patron saint of France and fought against the English during the Hundred Years’ War.

In the Who We Are anthology published by Collins, which is made up of “representative and inclusive contemporary texts”, a lesson plan includes a biography that reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”…

Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge, branded the claim “insulting”.

“Joan of Arc fought as a woman and died as a woman,” he told The Telegraph. “To call her something else is insulting to her and indirectly to all women who are brave enough to risk their lives for their beliefs – as if women are incapable of heroism.”

Carolyn Brown, a retired psychologist now working with the Women’s Rights Network, said: “This is yet another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history and erase strong, rebellious female characters from our past.

“It’s insulting to suggest that non-conforming women are not women. Non-binary is a nonsense term – indeed the Supreme Court in the UK recently ruled against including it as an option on passports.

“It’s also another example of the junk science of queer theory being visited on children. It’s unhelpful psychologically to children’s development and is likely to cause confusion and anxiety.”

It is not the first time Joan of Arc has been dubbed non-binary. In 2022, the Globe Theatre put on the play “I, Joan” which gave her the pronouns “they/them” instead of “she/her”.

Ah yes.

In 2022, the Globe’s official X account posted a poem calling gender-critical women ‘bitches’. And at one point during I, Joan, Joan of Arc herself tells the audience that: ‘Women are worried about the wrong things; Twitter and toilets.’

Even more on the nose, the programme for the show contained an article that claimed that the real-life Joan ‘died for the right to crossdress’. It also declared ‘death before detransition’.

More on those Democrats. From Andrew Sullivan – via Jerry Coyne – the story of Biden's decline, and how blind loyalty and stubbornness led to the election debacle and Trump's second term:

By April of last year, the health of the president had clearly declined. As with many older men in their eighties, this didn’t happen in a slow, predictable glide-path down — but in swift, turbulent declines. Suddenly he took a while to get out of his limo, and then would emerge “with a blank look in his face,” according to the new campaign book, Fight, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. By early summer, Biden was suddenly freezing up in public, staring motionless into the air. At a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Obama had to jump in to answer some questions, and then had to guide Biden off the stage by hand. We had already seen Joe wander weirdly off the set of MSNBC and during a Medal of Honor ceremony. His memory lapses mounted….

Do we learn anything new in this book and another one, Uncharted, by Chris Whipple out next week? Not really. We know, in fact, that everything I guessed happened did actually happen. Among the unsurprising confirmations: Obama was so aloof he didn’t even watch the fateful June debate live; he and Pelosi then wanted an open primary and did all they could to get one. (“He goes. She goes” was their mantra.) Hillary Clinton defended Biden — not because she knew his health was fine, but because her health had once been questioned by the press too. Biden’s closest advisers were his wife and, yes, his son Hunter, and they routinely put their clan’s interests well before the country’s. His inner circle — Mike Donilon especially — were so blindly loyal and informationally siloed they couldn’t absorb what was staring them in the face.

The Democrats, even as late as July, could have found a fresh candidate capable of taking on what they said was a vital moment for democracy’s survival. We might have avoided our current abyss…

Why didn’t they? That is a question that will reverberate through history. Wokeness was a factor. The only reason the embarrassingly mid Harris was made veep in the first place was to fill a slot Biden had already marked for a woman, and, in the wake of the Floyd murder, a black woman seemed the only option. Everyone, particularly Pelosi and Obama, knew Harris was a disaster about to happen, and her vice-presidency had the lowest approval ratings in history. Obama told friends directly that he thought she couldn’t win. The night after the epic debate, Pelosi gritted her teeth: “Oh my God. It’s going to be her.” So yes, identity before merit was a principle the Dems clung to even at the expense of marching off an electoral cliff….

But in the end, the story of 2024 is painfully, excruciatingly human. Biden’s prickly pride and long-nurtured insecurity, the insularity of his too-loyal circle, and the entitlement that comes from decades of public life at the top all led to collective tragedy. We are now living in the wake of this man’s fallibility and stubbornness. It’s a story we all know well in our private capacities: the tale of trying to get grandpa to give up his car keys before he drives into a ditch and hurts someone.

Well, welcome to the ditch. And the casualties are mounting.

The disasters were multiple: Biden's refusal to admit his problems, and the misplaced loyalty of his family and circle; the "requirement" for a black woman as veep; and, of course, the "wokeness" factor, and in particular the embrace by all sections of the Dems, and progressive America in general, of gender politics.

The youths just can't resist South Korean TV. From the Daily NK:

North Korea has recently intensified television inspections in the border city of Haeju to ensure locals are keeping their channels locked and avoiding South Korean television shows.

“Two young people in Haeju were recently caught watching South Korean shows on their home television. Since then, monitors have been inspecting more homes throughout various parts of South Hwanghae province,” a source in the province told Daily NK on recently….

The two youths had been watching a show on a new television in late February when, out of curiosity, they experimented with the dial and managed to pick up a South Korean channel. For several days afterward, they secretly watched South Korean shows when other family members were away from home.

The youths had intended to keep their activities secret, but one of them mentioned a South Korean show they had watched during a drinking party with friends. One of these friends reported the matter to the anti-socialist and non-socialist group.

As a result, both people were arrested and are currently being held by police for questioning.

“When you purchase a new television in North Korea, you must lock the set so it won’t display South Korean channels. However, South Korean channels are easily accessible in South Hwanghae province, and anyone can tune in by simply deactivating the lock. These two youths apparently did that out of curiosity,” the source explained.

Since the youths were caught watching South Korean television, Haeju authorities have allocated more resources to checking for foreign media consumption and deactivated channel locks.

“The authorities had been inspecting channel locks since early March when they caught some young people watching South Korean television. Since then, anti-socialist and non-socialist monitors have been visiting multiple neighborhood watch units daily to check channel locks and search for flash drives and SD cards,” the source said.

According to a Daily NK report last month that quoted a source inside the country, state security agents in Ungjin county (South Hwanghae province) and Hyesan (Ryanggang province) have been visiting families to ensure their channel locks are activated.

The Haeju youths arrested for watching South Korean television are expected to receive severe punishment.

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph talks to Stephanie Turner, the woman who "took the knee" rather than face a male fencer:

Turner’s motives in taking her memorable stand should not require forensic scrutiny. The instant she learnt that Redmond Sullivan, who participated in men’s fencing as recently as 2023, would be in her bracket for the Cherry Blossom Open at the University of Maryland, she decided she would kneel as a forfeit if the two were drawn against each other.

When the day came, she was true to her word, detonating global news coverage by telling the referee: “I’m sorry, I cannot do this. I am a woman, this is a man, and this is a women’s tournament. And I will not fence this individual.”

Sullivan’s path from a mediocre male career to eye-catching performances on the female stage has invited parallels with the case of Lia Thomas, the swimmer who was catapulted from obscurity in men’s races to winning a national collegiate title for women. In 2023, Sullivan was 29th in a men’s foil event, only to claim a state title in 2024 in the female category.

“I have been waking up angry every day because of this,” says Turner, highlighting the USFA’s dereliction of duty over women’s safety. Enabling immutable male advantage in any contact sport involving women is dangerous, but doubly so when you add swords to the mix.

“In sabre, there’s a definite risk of concussion, because there are shots to the head,” Turner explains. “In épée, it is a much heavier weapon, so you can get very bruised and bloodied if you are hit particularly hard by a man. In general it creates a psychological factor. If you’re on a strip facing a male opponent who is much larger than you, you go into flight mode, self-defence mode, where you’re not even thinking about technique or the bout. You’re just trying to survive.”

Despite the particular risks in fencing, the USFA’s transgender policy is extraordinarily lax and confused, declaring that “athletes will be permitted to participate in a manner consistent with gender identity or expression, regardless of the gender associated with the sex they were assigned at birth”.

A 12-month course of testosterone suppression is supposed to be mandatory at elite level, but no measurements are specified. “All you have to do is confirm you have lived as a woman for at least a year,” Turner says. “Nobody is checking any hormone levels, puberty blockers, or official documentation about being male or female. Grow your hair out, wear a wig, and you can automatically enter the women’s division.”

The USFA has been in turmoil since Turner’s action, issuing only a vapid statement that it “respected the viewpoints on all sides”. This is patently absurd when you consider how it has publicly sided with Sullivan, while throwing a woman out of a tournament simply for defending her sex-based rights. “The people there shut down all discussion of this topic,” she says. “They just direct you to the policy and insist they’re in the right. But the policy isn’t pro-women or pro-girls in any way.”

It is understood that two USFA directors, Damien Lehfeldt and Molly Hill, have repeatedly acquiesced to pressure from the trans lobby. In 2023, Lehfeldt even went as far as drafting a manifesto – later deleted – for trans inclusion in fencing, despite conceding that women could be put at a physical disadvantage. “Giving athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is more powerful than medals and competitive glory,” he wrote.

Turner initially resolved to avoid events where she might confront a transgender opponent, before realising that only direct intervention would work. She even asked a friend to record a video of the moment she knelt, for maximum impact. “I’ve found that just sending an email doesn’t create any movement on this issue. It only gets deleted. I wanted to cause a fuss. With a black card, an investigation is forced to happen. I wanted to show all the women at that tournament that they didn’t have to fence if they didn’t want to.”

Many women in fencing are terrified of speaking out, for fear of jeopardising the scholarships to Ivy League universities to which the sport is traditionally linked. Turner, though, appears content to be the outlier. “I have a ‘buck stops here’ type of mentality. I’m done with this. I want my case to be the one that changes things, because I don’t want more women to feel they have to come out for a long battle. At my club, there are girls who are not even five-foot tall. In women’s fencing, they might have an opportunity. But when you start inundating their sport with men, they will have zero chance.”

Previously a registered Democrat, Turner was persuaded to vote Republican at the last presidential election, out of pure exasperation at the unfairness she has endured. “Sometimes, it feels like my Democrat friends are lying directly to my face,” she says. “I get angry, because of the personal effect this has on my life. I took up fencing because I needed something competitive in my life, where I could make friends, find a lifelong source of exercise. I found so much love chasing the next tournament, the next result. It’s addictive. But it becomes dreadful when the cards are stacked against you.”

These pathetic sports administrators, with their empty "inclusive" platitudes…what a disgrace. And yes, the Democrats…

Added: the smug face of USA Fencing…

Men like USA Fencing Chair Damien Lehfeldt don't care about women athletes, because even their own daughters can be sacrificed to the Trans Gods:
"One day, my daughter may compete against a transgender woman. She might win. She might lose. I hope (…) that she doesn’t care about… pic.twitter.com/tCup62041I

— La Plunking Otter (@PlunkingOtter) April 4, 2025

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Mobile, Alabama, 1906. "A typical cotton cart."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]