Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • AI takes on Judith Butler

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    As has been noted, this is more comprehensible than actual Judith Butler. 

  • A $1.5 billion Western-funded agency for Hamas propaganda

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    Here's a real Aya from Gaza, and what she's learned at her UNRWA school:

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  • A necessary fiction

    Keir Starmer told the NYT that he likes and respects Trump. "I understand what he’s trying to achieve". Sam Leith in the Spectator sees this as a humiliation for the PM:

    Sir Keir, I expect, cherishes his self-image as a truthful person. And there cannot be a human being alive – not even Donald Trump – who will believe that the PM either likes or respects the US president. As for understanding what he’s trying to achieve, I’m not sure even president Trump knows that from one day to the next….

    The humiliation is the point. It’s a power kick, a ritual of fealty: if you want something from me (a stay of execution on tariffs; a long-shot chance at averting or delaying the total collapse of the European security order) you need to kiss the ring. The same dynamic is at play in his demand that the governor of Maine issue a ‘full-throated’ personal apology for having had the temerity to defy him, backed up with the threat that federal funding will be withheld from the citizens of her state if she doesn’t.

    But the kicker is, surely, that telling this blatant and hilarious lie is what Sir Keir’s job demanded he do. Personal pride would have asked him to grandstand against Trump, but national interest – indeed, the interests of the international community he hopes to preserve intact – asked for flattery. So flattery he supplies. Righteous outrage didn’t get Ukraine’s president Zelensky very far. Sir Keir has seldom seemed more statesmanlike in taking one for the team this way.

    Well yes. What else was he supposed to do? He was speaking as the British PM, not in a personal capacity. It would have been absurd and counter-productive – if perhaps honest – for him to say that, actually, he finds Trump an offensive buffoon. Especially for a man as small-minded and sensitive of his reputation as Trump, and given how powerful America still is, and how much we need to keep onside with Washington.

    Alex Massie in the Times spells it out:

    Sir Keir Starmer has become a strange kind of liar. That is, he is willing to say he believes things nobody can seriously think he really believes. Even more oddly, his lies are sensible ones and we should not wish him to tell the truth or say what he really means. This is an unusual position for any prime minister but it has become a necessary fiction for this one. So much so, in fact, that we should welcome it.

    Let me explain. Speaking to The New York Times, and hence to a largely American audience, the prime minister goes all-in on nonsense. Talking about President Donald J Trump, Starmer says: “On a person-to-person basis, I think we have a good relationship. I like and respect him.” Oh, come on. He then says: “I understand what he’s trying to achieve.” Oh, come off it.

    Nor is the prime minister done there. The untruths continue. “I think we have a really good relationship. I do believe that he absolutely wants peace in Ukraine. That’s what he is driving at. I do believe he is committed to Nato.” Well, I do not believe the prime minister really believes this and I also believe he does not even expect you, the voters of Britain, to believe it either.

    There is no evidence that Donald Trump is committed to Nato and plenty to support the contention that he doesn’t give a bucket of warm spit for the Atlantic alliance. Nor is it in any way obvious that Trump’s vision for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine has anything in common with the analysis shared by Ukraine’s true friends, that the only acceptable peace deal is one led by, and acceptable to, the Ukrainians themselves. Indeed, all the evidence available to us indicates that Trump’s vision for “peace” requires the dismemberment of Ukraine and the carving up of its assets between Russia and, remarkably, the United States itself.

    Starmer’s lies about Trump are so obvious they now have a kind of pantomime quality. We know that the prime minister knows he is not saying what he truly believes. It is a performance and in its way an audacious one….

    The lie is important and risky and dangerous and, in the end, perversely admirable. Flattering Trump is unpleasant but more rewarding than telling the truth. The reality is that Trump is a man of negligible moral value whose administration is a shameful exercise in degrading the US on a daily basis. This truth is self-evident and hardly needs to be amplified by the prime minister.

    For you deal with the president you get, not the one you dream of. Britain is not Athens to America’s Rome — and never was — but if Britain’s place is to be a kind of bridge between Europe and the US it follows that Britain cannot blow up the bridge itself. If you accept the prime minister’s strategic analysis, you have little choice but to accept his tactical untruths too.

    For Starmer is not a newspaper columnist and the King’s ministers are not social media pundits. There is no need for Starmer to say what we know he must truly think about Trump, for doing so cannot advance the national interest. So the fiction is to be swallowed, though it must also be digested without any accompanying illusions….

    The prime minister has played a limited hand as well as can be expected but his success is only relative and depends on voters understanding his motives. It is fine to reject choosing between the US and Europe right up until the moment when the bridge collapses. Push always comes to shove and the British people understand that this American administration cannot be trusted. They are not enemies yet but nor are they the friends they were.

    For the time being though, Starmer’s noble lies still stand. They are in such plain sight, after all, that they can hardly be misunderstood except — the prime minister must hope — in the Oval Office itself. If you must lie, and sometimes you must, it may be best to lie bigly. This is a strange form of leadership but it is leadership nonetheless.

    I very much doubt that Starmer sees any of this as a humiliation. He's a lawyer by training: he's used to this kind of necessary prevarication. 

  • Exporting untraceable drones to the Middle East and Africa

    The latest from Kim Jong-un's rogue regime:

    North Korea is preparing to export drones alongside its recent full-scale drone production efforts, Daily NK has learned.

    “The party’s Munitions Industry Department began inspections for overseas drone exports on March 7,” a senior Daily NK source in North Korea said recently. “The inspections assess the capabilities and quality of drones produced since January, with approved drones scheduled for immediate export.”

    Production facilities in North Korea – defense industry enterprises affiliated with the Unmanned Aerial Technology Complex in North Pyongan province – have been mass-producing reconnaissance, attack, and suicide drones.

    As drones are relatively inexpensive to develop compared to other weapon systems yet highly effective for reconnaissance and strike missions, North Korea believes they will be competitive in the international weapons market.

    “North Korea is looking to export drones as a way to address foreign currency shortages,” the source said. “It’s focusing on leveraging existing personal networks and developing new clients to open markets in the Middle East and Africa.” This indicates North Korea has already begun establishing various drone export channels.

    According to the source, North Korea is eyeing Syria, Iran, and other long-time military cooperation partners as major drone export markets, along with Yemen’s Houthi rebels and armed groups in Africa. The regime has also approached Russia, suggesting significant demand for North Korean drones.

    North Korea is developing various strategies to conceal its role as the manufacturer when exporting these weapons, aiming to avoid detection by the international community.

    “There was an order early this year not to include manufacturing numbers or markings on the drones,” the source said. “This was to avoid leaving evidence that they were made in North Korea.”

    Additionally, the North Korean authorities have planned to disguise weapon shipments by exporting drone components through multiple channels for assembly at their final destinations, rather than shipping fully-assembled drones. According to the source, North Korea has frequently used this method for past arms exports.

    Payment methods are also becoming more covert. North Korea particularly favors cryptocurrency payments, attempting to sell arms using Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero to avoid transaction tracking.

    North Korea further evades international surveillance by using overseas front companies to complicate transaction trails.

    “Munitions Industry Department officials quietly boast that selling drones while circumventing sanctions is their specialty,” the source said. “They’re constantly developing new methods to avoid international detection.”

    This is not good news.

  • Hamas propaganda at the BBC

    David Collier – the journalist who broke the story about that BBC Gaza documentary – has another piece today on the Beeb and its Gaza coverage…This is what terrorist propaganda looks like:

    Just a few weeks after the BBC were forced to take down a documentary because of Hamas family ties to the narrator – the BBC anti-Israel factory has churned out another classic.

    In this latest example, the BBC disgracefully whitewash two terrorist families in order to portray Israel as bloodthirsty child killers. It is a classic antisemitic smear.

    The BBC article in question covered Israel’s renewed attack on Gaza a few days ago. The Hamas propaganda arm works quickly, and following the attacks the news channels became full of claims of hundreds of dead – with an emphasis as always on children…

    The BBC cannot help itself – and taking its cues from news channels that support the ‘resistance’, it jumped swiftly into action. The end product was a piece written by Jon Donnison that relied on two grieving fathers – both with children who were killed in the Israeli strikes.

    Jon Donnison, has a long history of ‘missteps‘ when it comes to reporting on Israel. And this piece is a classic of its type:

      • It is driven by the ignorance and anti-Israel bias of the journalist
      • The article makes important factual errors (which always lean towards demonising Israel)
      • Focuses on grieving parents and dead children (to break everyone’s heart)
      • And then lays the blame for all of the death and destruction on Israel (so people can be sure where to point their anger)

    The truth, as Collier goes on to demonstrate, is that the BBC presented this as a case of two innocent and grieving families torn apart by Israeli army thuggery, when in fact these were two terrorist households precisely targeted by the IDF. 

    The BBC even let one father talk about how the children wanted to grow up to be doctors. The Hamas PR agency could not have scripted it any better. The BBC may just as well be spokespeople for the Gazan terrorists.

    Too many red lines have been crossed. It goes way beyond just the BBC – and it is spreading poison deep into the veins of British society. We need an urgent independent inquiry set up NOW to investigate just how deeply our own media organisations have been turned into propaganda arms of radical Islamic terror groups.

  • NHS pronouns

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  • “He’s super smart”

    The continuing US love affair with Putin:

    Sir Keir Starmer's plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as "a posture and a pose" by Donald Trump's special envoy.

    Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a "simplistic" notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking "we have all got to be like Winston Churchill".

    In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he "liked" the Russian president.

    "I don't regard Putin as a bad guy," he said. "He's super smart."

    Witkoff, who met Putin 10 days ago, said the Russian president had been "gracious" and "straight up" with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year. He also said Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was "clearly touched by it".

    During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was "a false country" and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.

    Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.

    Another of Trump's army of incompetents.

  • At the South Pyongan Province annual spring agricultural tool exhibition

    "Formalism" is the new crime in North Korea. You're told that you have to do something to celebrate the glories of Kim ideology, yet you know that there's nothing to celebrate. There's no there there: no great achievements, no dramatic breakthroughs. It's all the same old shit. So you go through the motions. You have no choice. Give the same tired old tools/slogans a fresh lick of paint, and hope that'll keep the authorities off your back. And then you're accused of formalism. Your heart wasn't in it. You not only have to go through the motions – you have to believe it. You have to show real genuine enthusiasm.

    Recent reports indicate that punishments are being intensified across North Korean society for issues of formalism in implementing Workers’ Party policies.

    According to a source in South Pyongan Province, the annual spring agricultural tool exhibition in North Korea’s farming sector was once again conducted as a mere formality this year, drawing criticism for providing no actual benefit to agricultural production or farm household income.

    This year’s agricultural tool exhibition was reportedly branded as “the worst ever.” The exhibition was not only small in scale, but the agricultural tools on display were uniformly old ones that had been hastily repaired or simply repainted.

    At a time when the leadership is cracking down on corruption, the responsible officials were predictably dismissed from their positions.

    They can count themselves lucky they weren't shot.

    However, among ordinary citizens, there were sympathetic voices saying, “In these difficult times, even maintaining appearances is challenging.”

    In reality, “formalism” has become chronic in North Korea. The authorities impose unrealistic demands, forcing those on the ground to obsess over ceremonies and procedures. Local officials, working with limited resources, have simply been going through the motions of implementing directives.

    Meanwhile, the Workers’ Party continues to pressure local officials to reduce their “formalistic working attitude,” creating a disconnect.

    They have to do things a certain way, implementing party directives, yet they have to do it spontaneously. It's a hard one…but they'll get there in the end. True freedom comes with obeying the party. "Freedom is slavery".

  • Cis-gender menstruating individuals

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  • At St Helier hospital

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    Screenshot 2025-03-23 091710

    Added:

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    Full text:

    The convicted paedophile, ‘Mr X’, is in a high security male prison after multiple convictions for luring boys into sex acts while pretending to be a teenage girl on social media.

    After refusing to refer to Mr X as a ‘she’ while on duty, Jennifer Melle was racially abused and physically threatened.

    Instead of supporting her, however, Epsom and St Helier University Hospital Trust has abandoned Jennifer and treated her like the criminal.

    The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has also said Jennifer is ‘a potential risk’ for not using Mr X’s preferred ‘gender identity.’

    The story is the latest in a series of cases where NHS policy supports trans ideology over biological reality. It also follows the publication of the Sullivan report this week which revealed that the police are allowing criminals to ‘self-identify’ their gender on official records.

    In this case, policy has led, in the name of inclusivity, to the NHS siding with a paedophile convicted of serious offences, while pretending to be the opposite sex, over members of staff with Christian and gender-critical beliefs.

    Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the case Jennifer has now launched against the Trust on the grounds of harassment, discrimination and human rights’ breaches, is believed to be unprecedented.

    In response to her claims, NHS lawyers have said that Christian beliefs Mis holds, that we are born male and female, are ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society.’

    Watch Jennifer discuss what happened and see more on our website: christianconcern.com/ccpressrelease