Mick Hartley

Manhattan ca. 1901. "Sixth Avenue up from Fourteenth Street, New York."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

The JC on historian Andrew Roberts' Parliamentary Commission report on October 7th:

The report’s author, award-winning historian Lord Roberts – who also serves as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Visiting Professor at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London – said part of his reason for undertaking his research was to “to chronicle the events of October 7 with clarity and meticulous, fact-checking precision, to ensure it is never forgotten” and prevent the denial of Hamas’s atrocities, which he likened to a “more modern version of Holocaust denial”.

“Our report will hopefully permit people to see such denials and justifications for what they really are: a perversion of reason and rejection of human decency. We owe it to the victims and their grieving families to set down the ghastly, unvarnished truth about the sheer barbarism that Hamas and its terrorist allies unleashed”, he wrote.

He continued: “Hamas and its allies, both in the Middle East and equally shamefully in the West, have sought to deny the atrocities, despite the ironic fact that much of the evidence for the massacres derives come from film footage from cameras carried by the terrorists themselves – though of course there is also much more from many other sources, as this report delineates.”…

The report’s findings also reiterate those by the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence, Pramila Patten on allegations of Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and says that on October 7 “members of Palestinian armed groups crossed the Israeli border and committed acts of CRSV. These include acts of rape, gang rape, forced mutilation, sexualised torture, forced nudity, and posting sexualised images of victims on social media without consent.”

Roberts said he wanted to “lay down incontrovertible proof – for now and for the years to come – that nearly 1,200 innocent people were indeed murdered by Hamas and its allies, and very often in scenes of sadistic barbarism not seen in world history since the Rape of Nanjing in 1937.”

The full report can be accessed here. Andrew Roberts writes about the report today in the Spectator.

The circumstances of all the 1,182 deaths that took place on that horrific day are documented in our report, which at times necessarily makes somewhat gruesome reading. But it reminds us of the sheer sadism, rapine and viciousness that was planned and premeditated.

In San Francisco:

“Women need the protection of laws that were written in the 70s. We need them back. We need your help with this. We do not need to be silenced again. I appreciate those of you who are looking me in the eye 'cause it's not easy to say.”@SF_TERF_CENTRAL brings 🔥 to the Commission pic.twitter.com/kaPyoVMQSf

— WomenAreReal (@WomenAreReals) March 17, 2025

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They're obsessed with impurity in North Korea. B.R. Myers pointed this out in his 2010 book The Cleanest Race, and the drive under Kim Jong-un to remove every trace of South Korean culture only confirms the accuracy of Myers' central point: the regime takes its central ideology not from Stalin or Marx, but from Japanese fascism.

North Korea's race-centric ideology was inspired by that of the fascist Japanese who ruled the peninsula from 1910 until the end of World War II. Having been taught by their colonizers to regard themselves as part of a superior Yamato race, the North Koreans in 1945 simply carried on the same mythmaking in a Koreanized form. This can be summarized in a single sentence: The Korean people are too pure-blooded, and so too virtuous, to survive in this evil world without a great parental leader. This paranoid nationalism might sound crude and puerile, but it is only in this ideological context that the country's distinguishing characteristics, which the outside world has long found so baffling, make perfect sense. Up close, North Korea is not Stalinist — it's simply racist.

With South Korea now classified in regime propaganda as foreign, and an enemy state, they too are impure. The latest from the Daily NK:

The North Korean authorities have ordered crackdowns on the distribution of “impure” South Korean media and foreign electronic documents, while pushing party members to increase surveillance of each other. This has caused discomfort among some members.

According to a Daily NK source in South Hwanghae province recently, Haeju’s party committee directed party cells and lower-level organizations in early March to block “impure recordings” and outside electronic documents, making surveillance a priority party activity for the month.

The city’s party committee warned members that people in families, workplaces and villages might not be following party doctrine. It instructed members to “keep a keen eye on such people with party consciousness and eagle-eyed vision, spot problems and report them.”

All party members were assigned the “shared task” of closely monitoring coworkers and neighbors for unusual behavior. They were also required to engage in mutual criticism by selecting targets from among themselves.

The committee threatened “political blame and criticism” for members who performed superficial criticism or evaded their duties. Essentially, they were asked to suspect, watch, and denounce those closest to them.

With these surveillance directives, some party members have expressed frustration at being turned into “party spies.”

“People are very sensitive about mutual criticism nowadays,” the source said. “Shared party tasks traditionally meant dividing economic responsibilities or project work among members. But with the party now telling them to be spies, many members question why they worked so hard to join the party.”

“The honor of being a party member is gradually diminishing, and some even regret joining,” he added. “People are beginning to think that while it’s good to become a party member, it’s even better not to be one.”

Despite harsh crackdowns on accessing outside media following laws like the 2020 “Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act” and 2021 “Youth Education Guarantee Act,” public consumption of foreign content hasn’t decreased.

The impurity keeps creeping in. The battle must be intensified. The people must be protected.

Back to Scotland – the gift that keeps on giving for gender nonsense.

Councillors in Edinburgh are considering whether to remove funding from a service that does not support trans women..

Alex Staniforth, a Scottish Greens councillor, has lodged a motion calling for a review of how the local authority allocates funds to domestic abuse services..

The move is a reaction to an announcement from Edinburgh Women’s Aid (EWA), one of Scotland’s largest domestic abuse charities, that it will not allow trans women or non-binary males to use its 24-hour refuges or group counselling services..

This, of course, after the ongoing disaster of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, where a man claiming to be a woman was appointed as top banana.

Staniforth, a Scottish Greens councillor who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has tabled a motion that will be debated at a meeting of the full council.

Staniforth expressed the concern that if trans women are not welcome to use single-sex services they have no alternative provision. “If there is a blanket ban on trans people accessing the service that is not acceptable,” the councillor said.

“It would be completely inappropriate for [a trans woman] to try to access men’s services. We wouldn’t allow any other minority women to be just cast aside completely like that.”

Ah, I think I see the flaw in his argument: trans women are not "any other minority women", but are, in fact, men. That's the problem, right there.

Asked whether a separate service for trans-indentified people might be a solution, Staniforth said: “Would we want separate refuges and services for people of colour?"

But how would he feel if a service for "people of colour" was invaded by people who blacked up?

BBC Arabic has come under the spotlight again after Kemi Badenoch wrote to BBC Director-General Tim Davie last week demanding “wholesale reform” of the corporation’s Arabic service, saying it provided a “platform for terrorists” and promulgated “appalling antisemitism” and “anti-Israel bias”. David Rose at UnHerd has a closer look:

In the first year of the war that started on 7 October 2023, BBC Arabic was forced to issue 141 separate corrections following Camera complaints. Some related to reports that described the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “the resistance”; others characterised those killed while fighting for them as “martyrs” and inhabitants of Israel (as opposed to the Occupied Palestinian Territories) as “settlers”. The channel has also featured interviewees who praised those who “killed the Jews”, while some BBC Arabic contributors celebrated the Hamas massacre on social media.

In all, the BBC upheld more than 80% of the complaints Camera made about its Arabic output. Yet some of those it dismissed are worrying, especially those which Camera appealed to the Executive Complaints Unit (ECU), the corporation’s highest internal court.

Consider the ruling this week concerning a BBC Arabic report of the Amsterdam riot last November, when Israeli football fans were violently attacked by mobs yelling antisemitic abuse and saying they were on a “Jew hunt”. Five Israelis were hospitalised, and four of those responsible were later jailed. According to BBC Arabic, the attackers were merely “chanting slogans against Israel”. Yet after Camera appealed the BBC’s initial dismissal of its complaint, the ECU rejected it, saying that although BBC Arabic had indeed mentioned only “shouting”, this did not mean “violence did not occur”. Moreover, “the violence in Amsterdam was considered in much more detail elsewhere on the BBC” — which, given that the complaint was about BBC Arabic, could be said to be missing the point.

Other ECU decisions also look questionable. One concerned a BBC Arabic report in November 2023 saying 31 “journalists and media workers” had been killed in the Gaza conflict. It failed to state that 11 of them worked directly for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) propaganda units, and another nine for outlets that hailed the October 7 attacks as “heroic” and “legitimate”. Yet although other BBC services had made all this clear, the ECU decided BBC Arabic’s omission was not misleading….

Meanwhile, it appears that an old ECU decision helps to explain one of the most controversial aspects of How to Survive a Warzone: the repeated translation of the Arabic word yahud as “Israeli”, not Jew — its usual, dictionary meaning. In 2013, it ruled on a complaint made by Camera over the use of the same mistranslation in an item on Radio 4, determining that this did not breach the BBC’s duty to provide “due accuracy”.

This set a precedent, for in 2019 the TV documentary One Day in Gaza included a segment in which a young man said in Arabic that when he listened to “revolutionary songs”, they “excite you, they encourage you to rip a Jew’s head off”. Here too, yahud was translated as “Israeli”, a decision condemned by the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt as “not translation” but “#antisemitism denial”. Labour politician Wes Streeting also pitched in, saying the BBC’s action was “totally unacceptable”. As so often, the BBC stuck to its guns, claiming its usage was “true to the speaker’s intentions”.

In other words, the BBC decided for us that the speaker wasn't being antisemitic, when quite clearly he was. They're distorting the truth.

Camera is left unimpressed. “With every single complaint that reached the ECU having been rejected, this putatively independent body appears to function as a rubber stamp for the whim of BBC Arabic editors,” its spokesman told me. This, he went on, was part of a trend whereby “a small group of BBC officials have marked their own homework.”

It's part of the continuous BBC effort to present the Palestinian cause as entirely about land: a classic case of freedom fighters against colonialism. In fact, if we were allowed to hear what Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza are actually saying, we'd see that it's all about Islam, it's all about Jew-hatred, and it's all about refusing to countenance the existence of a Jewish state.

On the gender front, despite America's best efforts, Scotland happily leads the way:

Girls in care should share a bedroom with boys who ‘self-identify’ as the opposite gender, according to ‘terrifying’ guidance issued by a watchdog.

In the latest development of Scotland’s single-sex scandal, the Care Inspectorate says looked-after transgender children ‘should not be made to use the toilet or bedroom of their sex assigned at birth’.

The edict adds that trans youngsters should be able to ‘share a room with other young people who share their gender identity’.

Astonishingly, it also states there is ‘no law in Scotland’ that protects single-sex spaces.

Scottish Conservative equalities spokesman Tess White said: ‘It’s frankly ludicrous that Scotland’s care watchdog doesn’t recognise there are legal obligations to provide single-sex spaces.’

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, called the guidance ‘a terrifying failure of the state’s duty to protect some of Scotland’s most vulnerable young people’.

She added: ‘This policy is grossly negligent, putting young people who deserve so much better at significant risk.’…

In a move which critics believe displays a chilling lack of understanding of equalities legislation, it goes on to say: ‘The provision of gendered facilities such as toilets is social convention. There is no law in Scotland about this.’

Susan Smith, of campaign group For Women Scotland, said: ‘Various pieces of legislation do mandate single-sex toilet provisions.

‘Care Inspectorate officials must be naive to the point of abject idiocy if they think gender identity will preclude children indulging in dangerous sexual behaviour.

‘Children’s human rights and physical safety matter: unless the Care Inspectorate want another child abuse inquiry on their hands, they will stop deliberately putting children at risk.’

A spokesman for the Care Inspectorate said: ‘It is for care services to decide on the appropriate provision of facilities to meet the individual needs, rights and wishes of those experiencing care.'

Well yes, no doubt. And they're making a horrendous mess of it – bending the knee, as always, to gender ideology ahead of the safety of troubled young girls.

In Illinois – Deerfield middle school administrators force teen girls to change in front of boy in school locker room:

After receiving a complaint from girls in early February that a boy was in their locker room while they were changing for gym class, District 109 “Assistant Superintendent for Student Services” Joanna Ford, “Assistant Principal” Cathy Van Treese and “Director for Student Services” Ginger Logemann reprimanded the girls, then escorted them to the locker room and tried to force them to change in front of the boy.

Parent Nicole Georgas, whose daughter refused and ran out of the locker room, described her daughter’s experiences to the school board Thursday.

“The male student was present in the girls locker room,” Georges said. “Feeling violated, the girls made the choice not change into their PE (physical education) clothes with a biological male present.”

The next day, Georgas said, Ford, Van Treese and Logermann tried to bully them into to changing in front of the boy.

“(The administrators) all came into the girls locker room, making them change into uniform. This went on all week,” Georgas said. “My daughter refused to take part in her privacy being violated. How dare they!”

She said Shepard School Principal Rob Wegley told her daughter that any male student can use any girl’s bathroom or locker room at his school so long as they claim to “identify as female.”

Middle school girls are 11 and up to 15 years old. They're going through puberty. They're having their first periods. They're ultra-sensitive about their bodies and about getting undressed anywhere – let alone being forced to undress in front of boys.

These people…

From my guilty verdict: "The panel understands that the statement that there are only two sexes — male and female — is an oversimplification that does not align with current medical or biological understanding."

— Amy Eileen Hamm (@preta_6) March 14, 2025

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The panel, in other words, understands nothing.

Amy Hamm in Canada's National Post:

I have lost my case with the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM). A three-member panel found me guilty of “unprofessional conduct” for sharing my views on sex and gender ideology, in a manner that they have ruled as, at times, “discriminatory and derogatory” towards transgender identified persons.

The case, funded generously by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms since it began in late 2020, opened with an investigation sparked by public complaints about my involvement in advocating for women’s sex-based rights, and closed with more than 20 days of disciplinary hearings spread out over two years. I have never once had a patient complaint, and the entire case was based solely on my conduct outside of work. Nearly one year to the day after the hearing concluded, I received the guilty verdict on Thursday.

The complaints made against me included an “I love JK Rowling” billboard in Vancouver that I and a friend commissioned, as well as various posts I’ve made online.

My indomitable lawyer, Lisa Bildy, has given sage advice that, in my current situation — facing a “sentencing” hearing for my alleged misconduct, barring an appeal to the B.C. Supreme Court — I must temper my words to avoid harsher punishment.

I can’t do that. I have reached the summit of my tolerance for catering to the demands of gender activists and the institutional forces that they weaponize against women who speak the truth. I have had it.

My ruling was given by a three-person panel consisting of a former nurse, a current nurse, and one public representative, with the assistance of a constitutional lawyer. “(T)he Panel is not concerned with the validity of the Respondent’s beliefs,” they wrote in their ruling.

That is simply untrue — as evidenced by the very statements given in the same ruling.

From my guilty verdict: “The panel understands that the statement that there are only two sexes — male and female — is an oversimplification that does not align with current medical or biological understanding.”

This story hasn't had the coverage it deserves. From the JC:

Three men who kidnapped and brutally assaulted an Israeli Jewish man with both the intention to extort him for money and because of his Jewish heritage, have received over eight years imprisonment.

Appearing in Swansea Crown Court on Friday, the three men, Faiz Shah, 22, from Bradford, Mohammad Comrie, 23, from Leeds, and Elinaj Ogunnubi-Sime, 20, from Croydon, were each given a sentence of eight years and one month for the premeditated assault in August last year.

The victim, Itay Kashti, a London-based music producer and composer, was lured to a remote Airbnb rented by the trio in Carmanthenshire, west Wales on the pretence of working with musicians, only to be “immediately assaulted” upon entering. The court heard how Kashti was kicked, punched and handcuffed to a radiator by the three men, who had used a false identity to gain his trust….

The court heard that in addition to financial motivation for the kidnapping and assault, there was a “clear political and religious motivation.”

“Anyone listening to this case would be horrified by what they heard and by the motivation behind it,” Judge Richards said, adding the defendants “seemed to justify action against the victim in this case based on his background as if he was less worthy of your respect and compassion, and [that is] utterly abhorrent to any right-thinking person.”

Kashti suffered injuries to his face and head, including a swollen eyelid which wouldn’t open for several days, a cut on his scalp, pain in his legs for weeks after, and bruised knees and upper back. The trio threatened to kill Kashti if he tried to escape.

After assaulting him, they handcuffed him to a radiator but, once they were out of the room, he managed to free himself, locate his phone – which had been taken from him – and escape….

In a statement from Kashti read out by the prosecuting lawyer Craig Jones, the court heard how he was in “complete shock and fear and felt as though he was going to end up dead.”

“As an Israeli Jew, this was my own personal October 7,” Kashti said in his victim impact statement, going on to say that October 7 “was flashing through my mind” as he was restrained. Jones said Kashti also said he was thinking about his “Jewish ancestors who suffered in the Holocaust” during the ordeal….

They conspired to keep the motivations for the kidnapping “clean” and only about the money to make it appear as “a non-politically motivated kidnap”.

Simi wrote that if Kashti were to realise “the Islamic angle, the eventual retaliation and effort into retaliation is 10 times worse.”

“We shouldn’t colour this as an Islamic thing. Don’t say Islamic phrases around him, so we’re just in it for the money,” the messages said, as read by Prosecutor Jones.

Intended to act as “inspiration” for the crime, pinned to the top of the Telegram group chat was an Islamic “litany for victory”, which they suggested they recite or listen to every day while “keeping in mind your intention of jihad,” the prosecution said.

Assuring the group, Simi messaged: “All three of us have complete 100 per cent faith in Allah, so we can’t fail.”

Ha!