Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Reconstruction projects in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine

    Not just sending arms and soldiers: the next stage for North Korea is to send workers to help rebuild all the towns and cities bombed to rubble by the Russians.

    North Korea began selecting workers and technicians in early March for reconstruction projects in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including the Donbas region. These labor assignments, already agreed upon with Russia, appear designed to earn foreign currency while strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries.

    A source in North Korea told Daily NK recently that the country is reviewing plans to send groups of 1,000–2,000 workers for Ukrainian reconstruction projects. Skilled construction workers and technicians would be deployed first, followed by additional workers as needed….

    In addition to overseeing ideological training for workers bound overseas, the Ministry of State Security is engaged in technical discussions with Russia about managing North Korean workers on assignment. The two countries are coordinating operations to prevent disruptive behavior, including potential defections.

    “We’ve already held deliberations on several issues with the Russians. The number of workers to be deployed, their working conditions, and the method of compensation have already been addressed in negotiations. We’ve been informed that the Russians view these ideas positively,” the source said.

    Since approximately 150 North Korean workers dispatched in January 2024 are already engaged in reconstruction work in the Donbas area—rebuilding roads and buildings, including homes, schools, and businesses—North Korea sees few obstacles to sending more workers overseas.

    While Russia and Ukraine have yet to agree to a ceasefire or peace treaty, and Ukraine could raise objections over territorial rights, North Korea reportedly views this not as an obstacle but as an opportunity. By sending workers preemptively, Pyongyang hopes to secure a claim on reconstruction projects in Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia.

    “Given international optics, North Korea will not officially send workers until a ceasefire has been reached. But unofficially, authorities are already proceeding quickly with health checks, intending to dispatch workers as soon as possible,” the source said.

    Perhaps the North Korean influence will extend to the provision of monumental heroic statues, in the style of those glorifying the Great Leader and Dear Leader prevalent in North Korea. Putin and Kim Jong-un, maybe…or, even better, Putin and Trump. Together, in gold leaf, from the famed Mansudae Arts Studio – provider of monumental statues to dictators across Africa – towering over the sea-front at Mariupol. Trump would be delighted: it might even give him ideas for home. A massive golden Donald to replace the Washington Monument….

  • “Mostly out of the gender wars now”

    After that OfS fine, Kathleen Stock at UnHerd looks back with little regret to her time at Sussex:

    The most egregious bit of the Sussex policy, in my eyes, was a clause which required that “any materials within relevant courses and modules will positively represent trans people and trans lives”. This seemed to me more like an instruction from a client to an advertising agency than a serious pedagogical commitment. Certainly, nothing like it existed for any other protected group, either at the time or since. This clause made it practically impossible to discuss with students what I saw as the severe detriments of defining “woman” in terms of inner feelings of gender identity, not biological sex: cases such as the trans-identified male prisoner Karen White, sexually assaulting female fellow prisoners in 2018, while “her penis was erect and sticking out of her trousers”, as was reported in a court trial shortly afterwards.

    I tried to raise the matter with superiors but to no avail. Once, in a fraught meeting with a member of the senior management team, I was asked with some anxiety if my focus on male sexual assault statistics in relation to single-sex facilities implied I actually wanted to represent trans people negatively. Staggered at the stupidly Manichean terms being offered, I protested it did not, but did not feel believed. Over time, my teaching about sex and gender in feminist philosophy grew increasingly cautious, and most of my criticism of the sudden sanctification of gender identity took place elsewhere.

    Still, in other ways I tried hard to raise the alarm to colleagues about the effects of trans policies on free expression, long before large fines on offending institutions were ever in the offing. I published letters in national newspapers, and gathered anonymous testimonies from colleagues across the country about how, in practice, academic freedom on sex and gender was being chilled. For a while, I was possibly the UK’s leading expert/biggest pub bore on the subject, collating a huge list of the most ludicrous clauses in university trans policies, circulating them to journalists, and writing about them in the press myself.

    There was UCL’s policy, for instance, still online as I write this, which effectively turns lecturers into deferential intellectual lackeys, insisting that “If a trans person informs a staff member that a word or phrasing is inappropriate or offensive, then that staff member should take their word for it, and adjust their phraseology accordingly”. Or how about the University of Leeds’ version, also still up, which amalgamates two of the clauses found in breach at Sussex: “The University will strive to ensure that its curriculum does not rely on or reinforce stereotypical assumptions about trans people and that it contains material that positively represents trans people and trans lives.”

    Academics who supported the introduction of these policies liked to pretend they only outlawed the truly “bad” sort of speech — you know, where bigoted, transphobic things were really being said — and not innocently meant or harmless statements. But how anyone was supposed to know the difference remained unclear; and especially not where Stonewall had taken the HR reins and was decreeing that “transphobia” now included “denying” someone’s gender identity “or refusing to accept it”. I have written or spoken variations upon that last sentence literally hundreds of times in the last five years, and so have lots of other people. I can’t tell you how bored I am of making such remedial points, obvious to anyone not educated into this level of stupidity. Yet many of these dim-witted, claustrophobic policies are still in place in universities across the land, right now.

    As we know, Sussex vice-chancellor Sasha Roseneil – "originally trained as a sociologist, and later as a group analyst and psychotherapist, she has played a leading role in establishing the interdisciplinary fields of Gender Studies and Psychosocial Studies" – is not happy about the OfS fine.

    Aside from her complaints about process, Roseneil also argues that the OFS’s ruling now makes it “virtually impossible for universities to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying, to protect groups subject to harmful propaganda, or to determine that stereotyped assumptions should not be relied upon in the university curriculum”. Leaving aside the daft idea that “stereotyped assumptions” can never be true — just think of the stereotypes about academics, for a start — I also think this complaint isn’t right. All university managers need to do is stop defining concepts such as “abuse”, “harassment”, or indeed “harmful propaganda” absurdly loosely, in order to pander to rapidly expanding notions of student victimhood and the crazed demands of moronic campaigners. This is not cold fusion or Fermat’s Last Theorem.

    Or indeed rocket science, or brain surgery. 

    In any case, while I’ll never back down on saying sex matters more than gender identity, I’m mostly out of the gender wars now. I certainly did my time in the trenches. And I also gladly renounce the title “Professor”; I’m a former professor at most. In truth, no academic title means much to me anymore, such is my disgust for my former profession. Really, I’m a civilian now, with nobody looking over my shoulder. “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight”, is another Sun Tzu aphorism. And I really hope my former employer gets the hint.

    Also, "revenge is a dish best served cold".

  • Affirming his femininity

    Meanwhile, in Germany:

    A trans-identified male in Giessen, Germany, has been sentenced to 10 months probation after repeatedly exposing his genitals in public, soliciting migrant children for sexual abuse, and spraying them with his urine. During the hearing, the public prosecutor assigned to his case argued that the crimes were simply an attempt by the man to “affirm her femininity,” to which the judge agreed.

  • Kathleen Stock vindicated

     On that Sussex University fine, from the Telegraph:

    Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, told The Telegraph: “This decision will send shock waves through university senior leadership teams across the UK.

    “For too long, many vice-chancellors have calculated that it is safer and easier to permit trans activists to dictate policies and hound their opponents, rather than standing up for evidence-based research and academic freedom. Their cowardice has exposed academics who reject the fringe belief that gender identity overrides sex to bullying and unlawful discrimination by ideological, intolerant colleagues.

    “It is gratifying to see Professor Kathleen Stock vindicated after sustained bullying and harassment drove her out of her job at Sussex University.”

    Nigel Jones at the Spectator:

    Could this mark a turning point in the culture wars surrounding the corruption of our institutions of higher learning, pressured by trans activists to put their emotions and feelings above biological truth?…

    However, the message that the times have changed does not yet seem to have got through to the University of Sussex. Vice-chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil said the university would appeal against the fine. She accused the OfS of pursuing a ‘vindictive and unreasonable’ campaign against it and holding to an ‘absolutist definition’ of free speech. The university said that if the ruling was upheld in spite of its appeal, it would leave them ‘powerless to prevent bullying and harassment’.

    It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Sussex authorities that it was precisely their inability to prevent the bullying and harassment of Stock that brought the fine down on them.

    Not so much their inability as their unwillingness. They could have acted against the protestors, but they didn't. 

    Stock was forced out of her position at Sussex – well known even in academia for its leftist sympathies – by naked and hate-filled intimidation. Her crime? Writing a book in which she questioned whether fashionable social attitudes to trans and non-binary issues outweighed the biological reality of male and female sex. Sussex students put posters up around the university campus calling for her to be sacked for her views. Stock even considered employing private security guards to ensure her personal safety while she was on the university premises.

    Disgracefully, the university did little, or nothing, to protect or defend their own staff member from the abuse. Eventually, the threats forced Stock to resign.

    Encouragingly, the Education Secretary has voiced her support for the OfS’s decision. Bridget Phillipson said that academic freedom and free speech were ‘non negotiable’, that the government had taken powers to enforce such principles, and that ‘robust action’ would be taken against all those who did not uphold these standards. It’s about time.

  • Best for my chest

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  • Sussex “failied to uphold free speech and academic freedom”

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    From the Times:

    The University of Sussex has been fined a record £585,000 over allegations that it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom.

    The inquiry conducted by the Office for Students (OfS) was in part prompted by the case of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor, who was accused of transphobia for her views on sex and gender issues.

    Stock was forced out of the university in 2021 after a three-year campaign of bullying and character assassination….

    Stock had been at the centre of a row on gender identification and transgender rights and claimed there was a “toxic” environment at the university. After she was appointed OBE in 2021, several hundred philosopher academics signed a letter of protest accusing her of using her status to “further gender oppression”.

    I wonder how all those brave philosopher academics are feeling now. Using her status to “further gender oppression”, ffs.

    The hounding-out of Kathleen Stock was a disgraceful witch-hunt, which happened with, at the very least, the acquiesence of the Sussex authorities. They deserve to be called out.

    Added: Sussex in 2021.

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  • Street talk

    Saratoga Springs, N.Y., ca. 1904. "Veranda of United States Hotel, Broadway at Division Street."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

  • Mistaking a fetish for a civil rights movement

    Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph – The woke institutions backpedalling on trans ideology owe the public a huge apology:

    It is obvious that certain trans activists, and those who have trans-ed their own children, will never back down from their cult-like beliefs that a mystical “gender identity” is always more important than biological sex. But now that this belief lies in tatters in mainstream thinking, we are now in the era of those who promoted trans ideology, stepping back from it in awkward regret, trying to rewrite their history.

    For years we’ve had to contend with years of woe-fully inaccurate news reporting when it comes to trans-related crimes. In a story about a registered sex offender who was born a man being jailed for recording hundreds of men using the toilet in Aldi, the BBC, Metro and the local press all referred to the perpetrator in their headlines as a woman, or she, alongside a picture of a man. It was enough to make you roll your eyes. Even in court, this person was referred to as “she”.

    A lot has been said about media distrust. But this constant reporting of the crimes of men, but attributed to women, is but one of the issues that the public has finally become alert to. The unfairness of male-born trans competitors in women’s sport is another….

    In truth, this “movement” was always a forced coalition between male fetishists and distressed teenage girls. If gender identity was someone’s true identity suppressed for years, why do we find it mostly in middle-aged men who finally get to wear frilly knickers? Was this absurdity not obvious? We do not suddenly have a generation of middle-aged women declaring themselves to be men. The best we can manage is some attention-seeking actresses having a haircut and declaring themselves “non-binary”.

    To mistake a fetish for a civil rights movement was a gross error. The much-discussed scene in the new White Lotus series, when a character realises that what he desires ultimately is to have sex with himself, but as a woman, makes this clear. The term for this is autogynephilia, and it is all over social media. Half these men don’t even want to be women. They want to be “little girls”.

    Sadly, actual girls who fear becoming adult women in our pornified culture often turn out to be simply gay. The blatant homophobia of the whole trans rights movement is astonishing. The radical position would be to extend our definitions of masculinity and femininity, not push people into these awful pinks and blue boxes. The infantile pink and blue trans flag says it all.

    These beliefs have been deeply embedded into academia, the Civil Service, the NHS, the arts: so many of our institutions have abandoned critical thinking in favour of fashion. Yet most of the public never really have bought into this ideology. Most of us have wanted the gender dysphoric to get the help they need, but want women to retain their own rights, spaces and language.

    There is now a long walk back from this idiocy. The public are not fools. No, female medics should not have to get undressed in front of biological males. No, women should not get punched in the face by those who refuse to take a simple sex test. No, a nurse dealing with a huge paedophile should not be racially abused and reported because she wouldn’t use the “right” pronouns.

    I don’t expect any apologies for losing work and “friendships” for arguing that biology is real. But there are many, many good folks who refuse to be airbrushed out of history. They stood up when it mattered.

    Suzanne Moore herself was an early victim: hounded out of the Guardian for her gender-critical views.

  • No place for gender ideology in the NHS

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    Full text:

    Following the meeting at Portcullis House in Westminster, the leader of the Conservative Party said: “A woman should never be forced to get undressed in the presence of a man. The case of the Darlington Nurses is yet another example of women being demonised and patronised for raising legitimate concerns about single-sex spaces.

    “I fought against gender ideology in government, and I will continue to do so as Leader of the Opposition. There is no place for gender ideology in the NHS. These brave nurses have my full support in their fight to restore common sense to an environment where single sex spaces should be non-negotiable.”

    Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the nurses have taken legal action against County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust on the grounds of sexual harassment and discrimination, after they were forced to undress in front of a male colleague who ‘identifies’ as a woman called 'Rose.'

  • Clean razor blades

    We've come across LGBT Youth Scotland before – pushing an extreme trans agenda in Scottish primary schools, despite its former chief executive leading what was described as Scotland’s biggest paedophile network, while another convicted paedophile helped write a “coming out” guide for the charity aimed at children.

    The latest:

    A controversial LGBT youth charity trained volunteers to advise self-harming children to use “clean razor blades” instead of discouraging them from cutting themselves, a whistleblower has claimed.

    LGBT Youth Scotland was reported to the Scottish charity regulator by someone who wanted to become a volunteer but was then given “shocking and callous” instructions around how to deal with young people who were intentionally injuring themselves.

    It is alleged that managers said if a child was hurting themselves as a “coping mechanism”, then it would be wrong to “take that away from them” and instead they were told “we have to ask them if they are using clean razor blades”.

    The volunteer said that when they challenged the policy in October 2023 they were “dismissed” by managers who “didn’t see the issue” and defended self-harm as children “might not have any other ways of coping”.

    The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) which this month dropped an inquiry into LGBT Youth Scotland, said it had “engaged” with the charity as a result of the complaint around self-harm and that the organisation had “reviewed” its policies.

    The remainder criticised LGBT Youth Scotland, which receives more than £1 million per year in taxpayer funding and is active in hundreds of Scottish schools, for its stance in support of puberty blockers and promotion of gender ideology.

    LGBT Youth Scotland last year issued a statement after the Cass Review describing gender-affirming medical treatments such as puberty blockers as “wonderful” despite safety concerns which led to them being banned.

    The charity regulator said it had now been “satisfied” with actions taken by LGBT Youth Scotland as part of its inquiry, but it refused to state what these were. 

    So that's alright then.