Mick Hartley

The BBC really has respected the preferred pronouns of a man charged with raping children as young as 3 and 5. This evil man has now committed suxcide which is what the BBC seems determined to do too. 👇 https://t.co/2PB0kjChDU

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) February 26, 2025

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An exposé of the BBC's unhealthy relationship with the Taliban, from David Rose and and Ali Hamedani at UnHerd:

Since the Taliban returned to power, media have been censored and radio stations in particular forced off the air. Yet, curiously, one foreign broadcaster endures: the BBC.

On 1 December 2022, the Taliban issued a decree closing down the two local stations run by the BBC’s rivals: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. According to a Taliban spokesman, they were being silenced for their “non-compliance with journalistic principles and one-sided broadcasts”. Remarkably, though, the militants are happy to indulge their British counterpart, which broadcasts from Afghanistan in Dari and Pashto, while also hosting local variants of the BBC news website.

But while the Corporation clearly enjoys its unusual role, is editorial independence really maintained? For as UnHerd has discovered, BBC funds frequently end up Taliban coffers, channelled via organisations led by extremists at the very heart of government. More worrying still, these relationships seemingly shape the Corporations coverage in Afghanistan.

Read on for the details – including the inevitable censorship, as they drop programmes featuring women, or music, for fear of alienating their Taliban partners.

The conclusion:

Yet perhaps the most telling statement comes from the Taliban itself. “The BBC is a credible source of news for Afghanistan,” says its official government spokesperson. “[The Corporation] collaborates constructively with the Islamic Emirate.” With praise like that, it’s hard to see how the Corporation can truly wave the flag for journalistic impartiality.

Put this alongside the Beeb's continuing pro-Hamas reporting and, well, it's not a good look. And it's our money they're spending.

That Telegraph article.

🔴 BBC removed references to ‘Jews’ and ‘jihad’ in Gaza documentary pic.twitter.com/WHFRgoHOYC

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) February 25, 2025

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It's been happening for years. From the JC, July 2015:

A BBC documentary has substituted the word “Israelis” for "Jews" in its translation of interviews with Palestinians, its maker has admitted.

Lyse Doucet has stood by the decision to translate “yahud” as “Israeli” in subtitles on her hour-long documentary Children of the Gaza War, which airs on BBC Two tonight.

The correct translation for “yahud” from Arabic to English is “Jew”.

So any sense of antisemitism – god forbid – is removed, and we're left with a good old anti-imperialist struggle, which all decent BBC-watching people can understand and sympathise with. Likewise jihad. Wouldn't want any hint that this is an Islamic struggle to remove Jews from dar al-Islam, and that this war, this incessant violence, is all about Islam.

Why does the BBC pander to this nonsense? Why does anyone pander to this nonsense?

An American who wanted to be formally recognised as non-binary in the UK has been told by the Court of Appeal their gender identity does not legally exist in this country.

Ryan Castellucci previously lost a High Court challenge to have their gender recorded as non-binary on a gender recognition certificate – a document which changes someone's legal sex – after moving to the UK in 2019.

They had obtained legal recognition as non-binary in California in 2021, and were issued an American passport in 2022 listing their sex as 'X'.

But X isn't a sex. Male and female are sexes. You can't just make up sexes – and we don't have to agree with Californian bullshit. And we don't have to use "they" and "them" all the time. It's compelled speech, up with which we should not have to put.

At an earlier hearing, the court heard how Castellucci, a cyber security expert who moved to the UK from California, uses the title "Mx" and refers to themselves using they/them pronouns.

While they have undergone surgery and hormone treatment, they told the court they continue to use the name Ryan as it is considered unisex in the US.

Castellucci described the experience of trying to obtain legal documents listing them as non-binary as an "ordeal" and the court heard they worried about possible difficulties related to their gender identity when applying for British citizenship.

They also raised concerns about how their gender identity would be reflected on their death certificate, when their US documents state they are non-binary….

Non-binary is an umbrella term for those those who do not identify as exclusively male or female.

It makes no sense. He is either male or female, whether he likes it or not. How he presents himself on the other hand – with a handlebar moustache, in a frilly frock, dressed as a giant wombat – is entirely up to him. 

Anna Dews, associate solicitor at Leigh Day, the firm which represented Castellucci, said they were considering appealing the ruling.

She said: "Ryan's only registered gender is non-binary. Despite Parliament legislating for the UK to recognise foreign-acquired genders, the courts have so far ruled that non-binary foreign genders do not count.

"Ryan considers that there cannot be true gender equality without recognition of the fact that not all genders are binary."

Again with the meaningless statements. Not all genders are binary? It's confusing gender and sex, and hoping we don't notice. Gender – which use to be a polite term for talking about someone's sex without those nasty crude associations – now refers to people's presentation of themselves around the concepts of masculinity and femininity. It's cultural, not biological. So of course it's not binary. Admittedly it's something approaching binary in a strict Islamic society like Afghanistan – men in turbans and beards, women hidden away in burkas – but we don't do that. We do more or less whatever we feel like – even men with long hair and a lovely girly head tilt.

The revelations keep on coming. From the Telegraph:

The BBC has been accused of “whitewashing” the views of participants in its controversial Gaza documentary after repeatedly mistranslating references to “the Jews” and omitting praise of “jihad”.

The Telegraph can reveal that on at least five occasions the words Yahud or Yahudy – Arabic for “Jew” or “Jews” – were changed to “Israel” or “Israeli forces”, or were removed from the subtitles altogether.

An interviewee praising Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, for “jihad against the Jews” was also mistranslated as saying he was fighting “Israeli forces”.

The BBC is under pressure to reveal whether taxpayers’ money was given to Hamas during the making of Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone….

Orly Goldschmidt, of the Israeli embassy in the UK, accused the corporation of “intentional mistranslation”, which she described as a “sinister and misleading policy of the BBC”.

She said the translation was “not only false and deeply offensive, but it also excuses racism” and “does not allow viewers to see how children, and Palestinians at large, have been taught to hate ‘Jews’ from a very young age”.

She added that omitting the word “jihad” from the translations “downplays the threat of terrorism that Israelis face on a daily basis”, and that the issue of mistranslations went beyond the documentary. “It reflects a very serious and systematic issue, which has taken root at the BBC, with regards to its anti-Israel bias,” she said….

Fresh questions over the documentary come ahead of a planned protest outside the BBC by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism on Tuesday night. The group has said the film is a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and “a betrayal of licence fee payers” and will protest outside Broadcasting House, in central London, from 7pm.

A spokesman for the campaign said: “The BBC has no shame, and Britain has had enough. For over 16 months, we have watched our national broadcaster provide ever more sympathetic coverage to a proscribed terrorist organisation, hiding behind claims of impartiality.

“There is nothing impartial about giving credibility to the claims of terrorists. Providing a platform for terrorists’ propaganda, downplaying their crimes and continuing to refuse to call them terrorists is the BBC putting its thumb on the scale.

“Enough is enough. It is time for the BBC to stop whitewashing terrorism. There must be an independent investigation into its bias in relation to its Middle East coverage.”

Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (via):

As part of a Palestine Studies cluster hire, Hunter College is honored to announce its search for an open rank tenure-line professor in one of the social sciences who would join one or more of the departments of Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science, or Women’s and Gender Studies….

We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches.

Not too diverse, obviously. Strong dislike of Jews is a given.

Applicants must hold a PhD in one of the aforementioned fields or one closely related, provide evidence of a publication record and of excellent teaching and mentorship, particularly of undergraduates. Ideal candidates will also have a record of public engagement and community action.

A photo of you holding up a "Stop the Nazi/Zionist genocide now" placard at a Free Palestine demo would go down very well.

Was yesterday's news from Stonewall, about job losses because of the Global Equality Fund (GEF) cuts by Trump, perhaps just a useful and politically expedient cover for its already plummeting fortunes? Joan Smith at UnHerd:

There’s something about these events that doesn’t add up. According to The Times, Stonewall’s chief executive, Simon Blake, warned last week that up to half of the organisation’s 114 staff might lose their jobs in a “restructuring” exercise, something that has been blamed on Donald Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. Yet American money makes up a relatively small proportion of the organisation’s annual income of almost £7 million.

Stonewall’s financial problems existed long before Trump’s second stint in the White House. Organisations have been leaving its “Diversity Champions” scheme in droves, belatedly realising that the annual fee isn’t good value for money, given that Stonewall’s advice often reflects the law as the organisation would like it to be, rather than it actually is. Private donations and money from wills are falling, and its accounts for 2023-24 showed a deficit of £858,461, up from £574,269.

Local authorities, health trusts and other publicly-funded bodies have discovered that disciplining employees who don’t toe the Stonewall line is likely to land them in expensive — and reputation-damaging — employment tribunals. The organisation has squandered its good name through overreach, piggy-backing the demands of trans activists onto an outstandingly successful campaign for gay rights.

The question that has to be asked is whether Stonewall’s hand-wringing is an attempt to secure access to yet more public funding. Money from UK “Government sources” is one of the few metrics that has increased in recent years, rising from £572,868 to £618,757 last year. That’s almost three times what Stonewall received from the US (£233,583), and several of the donors, including the Scottish and Welsh governments, are as dogmatically attached to gender ideology as ever.

Stonewall has also enjoyed a close relationship with leading members of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet: Health Secretary Wes Streeting was formerly a campaigner for the group, while Women and Equalities Minister Anneliese Dodds seemingly uses its prescriptions as a guide for Labour policy. Trump is a hate figure for many within Starmer’s party, but the Government should not allow him to be a scapegoat for problems Stonewall has brought on itself.

It struggles on then, Stonewall, awaiting that final stake through the heart.

An interesting development. As Sam Meadows reports in the Spectator, Javier Milei is releasing Argentina’s secret Nazi files:

In the Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers, one of the characters says in a moment of frustration: ‘I thought all the Nazis ran away to Argentina.’ This line got a big laugh in cinemas in Buenos Aires. But while the events this joke alludes to now lie far enough in the past for today’s Argentines to chuckle at, the flight of Nazis to its shores remains an extremely uncomfortable period in the history of the South American country.

Many former Nazi officers and party members fled Europe for South America in the years after the war and Argentina became a popular destination. Estimates for how many Nazis settled in the country range from between about 5,000 to as many as 12,000, and their ranks included Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust, and the notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele.

But Argentina has not always been so good at reckoning with its past as a haven for war criminals. While Argentina boosted exports of beef to the US and the UK during the 1940s, it refused to sever ties with Nazi Germany, much to the reported frustration of Washington and the allies. An explosive book published in 2003 by Argentine journalist Uki Goni claimed that the government of Juan Perón – who was president between 1946 and 1955 – authorised the arrival of Nazis into the country. In all, the book claims, the government arranged for around 300 war criminals to enter. After the book’s publication, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote to several Argentine government organisations and the country’s Catholic church to request documents relating to the arrival of the Nazis. These requests were not approved.

Current president Javier Milei, however, appears to have changed tack. Milei met with representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center last week and the Times of Israel reports that the meeting was a success. The Center’s researchers will be given access to files relating to financing of the so-called ‘ratlines’ – systems by which Nazis were able to flee Europe. Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the newspaper that while other Argentine leaders had promised help in the past, Milei was the ‘first to act with lightning speed.’

If these documents are released, they could help reveal much about how the ratlines operated. Key figures in Hitler’s administration were able to flee with the apparent collaboration of members of the Catholic church and foreign governments….

Milei’s decision could be motivated by a number of factors. Milei has been called a ‘great friend’ of Israel and has taken steps to deepen diplomatic ties with the country. Last week he announced two days of national mourning after the bodies of two Israeli-Argentine hostages were returned by Hamas. He has also spoken of his deep respect for the Jewish people, some 200,000 of whom live in Argentina.

He may also have one eye on domestic politics. He has made no secret of his hatred of Peronism and might hope that research of these documents could lead to further scrutiny on the role of the movement’s founder in the flight of Nazi war criminals to Argentina.

It is unclear what, if anything, will be achieved in terms of accountability. After all, most, if not all, of those involved will surely now be dead. The contribution to the historical record on the other hand could be considerable.

Unfortunately the whole Eichmann issue has been clouded by Hannah Arendt's famous conclusion that he was just a dull bureaucrat following orders – "the banality of evil". As we know now, Eichmann was far from being a mere cog in the machine, but was an enthusiastic and highly intelligent Nazi and, as the article here states, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. His defence in the Jerusalem trial – just following orders – fooled Arendt, but didn't fool the Israelis. 

A reminder that Russia didn’t just start a territorial war on Ukraine, but aims to wipe out Ukraine’s right to exist and have its own identity. https://t.co/d5oM5wIbgW

— peter pomerantsev (@peterpomeranzev) February 25, 2025

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Now, terrifyingly, with the full backing of the US.

The latest from David Collier:

As we learn more about more about the BBC documentary on Gaza.

This is an updated thread on who @bbcnews gave £400,000 to for a propaganda documentary that whitewashes Hamas

— David Collier (@mishtal) February 25, 2025

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His conclusion:

The BBC paid £400,000 (of our money) – and then aired the sum of these parts to the British public as if it were the truth. Acting as a raw propaganda outfit for a proscribed terrorist group.

This is beyond disgraceful. We cannot just move on. Heads must roll.