Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

recent posts

email me

  • Call off puberty blocker trial

    The Telegraph:

    An “unethical” NHS puberty blocker trial has been threatened with legal action by campaigners.

    Lawyers acting for Keira Bell, a former patient of the Tavistock Clinic, which was shut down amid controversy over its gender identity treatment for children, say the planned trial is “unethical and unlawful”.

    Ms Bell, a biological woman who was given puberty blockers and had surgery to become a trans man, regretted the decision and has now “de-transitioned”.

    The drugs are indefinitely banned in the UK after Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, extended a temporary ban imposed by the previous government.

    But under current plans, children and teenagers with gender dysphoria or confusion will still be able to access them as part of an upcoming NHS clinical trial.

    In her independent review into children’s transgender services, Dr Hilary Cass said there was “remarkably weak” evidence to support the use of the drugs and they “may permanently disrupt the brain maturation of adolescents, potentially rewiring neural circuits that cannot be reversed”.

    Dr Cass, now Baroness Cass, recommended they only be prescribed as part of a clinical trial to gather more evidence about their safety and effectiveness.

    Well yes, but that was surely an unfortunate sop by Cass to the gender activists, who she knew would be outraged by her report – and who she knew were very powerful and highly vocal.

    Mr Esses, the founder of Just Therapy, whose clients include gender dysphoria patients, said: “Vulnerable children should never be used as guinea pigs.

    “The potentially unlimited numbers of children participating in a proposed clinical trial of puberty blockers would be treated worse than guinea pigs.

    “Why? Because our Government is already fully aware of the significant, irreversible, physical and emotional harm that comes from puberty blockers.

    “Study after study, culminating in the Cass Review, has demonstrated this. The very review now being misappropriated to justify these trials.”…

    Stephanie Davies-Aria, the founder and director of TransgenderTrend, an organisation calling for evidence-based health care, said: “Puberty is an essential growth stage for a child to go through to reach adulthood. The sex hormones released at puberty are vital for healthy male or female development.

    “It is unethical to experiment on children’s bodies in order to find out how serious and long-lasting those harms will be. A child cannot weigh the risks of an interrupted puberty which may impact their fertility, sexual function and brain and bone development. It is unclear what the purpose of the treatment is or what such a trial would achieve.”

    Puberty blockers are powerful drugs – effectively chemical castration. It's outrageous to propose using these drugs on troubled children as part of a clinical trail. All children need to go through puberty. 

  • Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin

    Good lord. John Bolton. And very well said.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full thread:

    It is unconscionable to allow Russia to assault Ukraine’s sovereignty, recruit enemies like North Korea to aid in their fight, and then sell out the Ukrainians by conceding the loss of their territory and NATO security guarantees or membership. By making these and others concessions before negotiations even started, Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin on Ukraine. 1/3

    I warned many times that Trump will favor Russia in negotiations between Zelensky and Putin. Russia's military performance has been miserable, but Trump is vindicating Putin's decision to invade. The harm to US security interests will extend well beyond Central Europe, as our adversaries in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific can plainly see. 2/3

    It is incumbent on U.S. leaders to stand unequivocally with Ukraine and whatever NATO allies stick with Kyiv. It is not in our national interest to let the Kremlin's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine prevail. Shame on the Trump administration. 3/3

  • Atefeh Sahaaleh

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full text:

    She took off her hijab in court and threw her shoes at the judge after realizing she was losing the case, and because of that, the judge insisted on placing the noose around her neck himself.

    “Virgin female prisoners should be raped before execution so that they do not go to heaven.”

    ~ Ayatollah Khomeini

    I posted about this last May:

    Atefeh was convicted for crimes against chastity after being raped repeatedly by Ali Darabi, an 51-year-old ex-revolutionary guard turned taxi driver. Darabi was a married man with children at the time.

    Atefeh had been raped by Darabi over a period of 3 years without her family being aware. While in prison, she was further allegedly tortured and raped by prison guards. She told her grandmother that she could only walk on all fours because of the pain. The judge in her case was Haji Rezai. When Atefah realized that she was losing her case, she removed her hijab, an act seen as a severe contempt of the court, and argued that Ali Darabi should be punished, not her. She even removed her shoes and threw them at the judge. Rezai later sentenced her to death.

    According to the BBC, the documents presented to the Supreme Court of Appeal described her as 22 years old, but her birth certificate and death certificate stated that she was 16.

    But it's always worth being reminded of Iran's horrendous history of crimes against women. 

  • The “crime” of identifying as a girl

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • The AGG-hopper

    Another one from Reduxx. A trans woman in Germany is making a nice living for himself by applying for jobs he's not qualified for and has no intention of taking up, then suing over discrimination.

    A trans-identified male in Dortmund, Germany, is facing scrutiny after winning over €250,000 over the course of 240 separate discrimination lawsuits. Many have accused the man, who has been unemployed for 12 years, of using Germany’s strict protections for those who self-identify as transgender to enrich himself.

    Apart from three internships and one short-term job, the trans-identified man has been unemployed since 2012 and receives public welfare. While Germany has strict privacy laws that have resulted in the man’s identity being censored, Reduxx can reveal his name as Alina Steffen.

    In a recent interview with Westphalen Blatt, Steffen claimed to have applied for over 1,577 jobs over the last eight years, but reported he has struggled to find a position. But critics have accused Steffen of running something akin to a racket, labelling him an “AGG-hopper.” The German slang term refers to individuals who do not apply for a job with the intention of actually taking it up, but rather to receive compensation for alleged violations of anti-discrimination laws.

    Steffen has been known to apply for jobs he does not actually qualify for throughout the North Rhine-Westphalia region. For example, in one instance he applied for a job which was a one-hour drive from his home despite the fact he does not have a driver’s license and cannot drive.

    But the moment Steffen receives a rejection from a job he applies for, he files a lawsuit citing a violation of the German Equal Treatment Act (AGG). Steffen has also filed lawsuits for jobs he never applied for, but found to be “discriminatory” in advance by focusing on minor errors in the job advertisements.

    For example, in one case, an advertisement omitted to specify that people of “diverse” genders can apply, and only stated that “male and female” applicants were welcome. Steffen sued over this omission and won.

    Despite being on welfare, the hefty compensation awarded to Steffen by labor courts in various districts is not offset against his welfare benefits and is tax-free. As a result, Steffen is collecting welfare and raking in hundreds of thousands of Euros in court awards.

    Nice (non) work if you can get it.

    In addition to his lengthy history of court battles, Steffen is a self-published author who sells ebooks for less than one euro on neobooks.com. Among his publications are books on job hunting, including one titled “The Professional Application.” The book describes itself as offering expert advice on finding a job. Another book written by Steffen is called “Tips for the Perfect Job Interview.”

  • Beaten to death with a baseball bat

    Norwegians eating their fermented herring on toast, or whatever it is they have for breakfast, will have been surprised to read in their morning paper of the case of a woman beating a man to death with a baseball bat. "Hey, that's unusual", they will have muttered to themselves (in Norwegian). But it's not quite so simple:

    On the evening of November 27, 2023, a 22 year-old female who went by the name Oliver Ravn Rønning was beaten to death with a baseball bat at her apartment in Porsgrunn, which she had just moved into days before with her partner after having met via an LGBT dating app that summer. Rønning is a female who identifies as a man, while her partner, who Reduxx will refer to as Jonas, is a 19 year-old male who identifies as a woman.

    The killer, with a history of violence, has had his sentence reduced on appeal on the grounds that he may have been acting in self-defense. And, you know, him being female and trans and all.

    The murder has received significant attention and media coverage in Norway. However, the language used to describe the case has perplexed some readers. Many news reports have altered language used to refer to both the victim and suspect, or have described the case as one in which a woman violently beat her husband to death, obfuscating the sexes of those involved completely.

  • Cancelled in Finland

    Izabella Tabarovsky is a writer with a special interest in Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism. I've featured her a few times here. Her latest, at Tablet, recounts her depressing recent experience in Finland, where she was cancelled by two universities. Academics everywhere, it seems, harbour the same mix of progressive anti-Zionism and cowardice.

    The smear campaign against me began on Instagram on Wednesday, Jan. 22—one week before my scheduled appearance at a conference titled “Dialogue on Antisemitism: A Path Towards Understanding and Action.” Organized by the Antisemitism Undermining Democracy Project at the Polin Institute of Åbo Akademi University, the conference was meant to launch a conversation that, the organizers felt, had long been overdue in Finland. It was the first major international conference dedicated to contemporary antisemitism in the country. Leading the effort was Mercédesz Czimbalmos, a scholar with a an extensive body of research on antisemitism and Jewish life in Finland.

    The campaign branded me a “genocide denier” who legitimizes a “settler-colonial apartheid state” and is an all-around dangerous extremist guilty of the ultimate transgression—equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It also seized on a mistake by a conference team member, who had erroneously added “Ph.D.” next to my name on the conference site. The error was quickly fixed, but not before my detractors took notice and claimed I misrepresented my academic credentials. Angry calls and emails to university administrations followed. By Friday it was over.

    The excuses from the institutions were classic evasions. From Peter Nynäs at Åbo Akademi:

    “The decision was based on an overall assessment where no single argument in itself was decisive for this,” he wrote. “Rather, as Dean, I felt that there were several difficult questions and that there was obvious uncertainty and lack of clarity around these. Furthermore, these posed risks to both individuals and other stakeholders that could not be clearly assessed or adequately addressed prior to the event.” …

    There were additional bad optics here. In this story, men in authority, who were not subject-matter experts, overruled their female subordinates—women who had organized the conference, were experts in their field and knew exactly who they were inviting and why. These men also thought it appropriate to censor a female speaker whose expertise had earned her an international reputation. The fact that three out of the four women affected were Jewish, and all were of Eastern European background, only worsened the optics.

    The article's worth reading also for shedding light on the unique situation of Finland – of the West, yet so close to the USSR. Compromises were made, not least on the promotion of the Soviet position that equated Zionism with Nazism. As Tabarovsky notes, "One of my Finnish contacts may have been right when she told me that Finland has yet to fully come to terms with that past."

  • Protesting about Jews

    From the Jerusalem Post:

    The Hollywood premiere of Captain America: Brave New World on Tuesday was picketed by several dozen pro-Palestine protesters upset over the inclusion in the film of an Israeli superhero, Ruth Bat-Seraph, aka Sabra, played by Shira Haas, Variety reported.

    Sabra, in the original Marvel comics version, first appeared in the early 1980s as a Mossad agent, but Brave New World producer Nate Moore added in February that Sabra is “not Mossad” in the film and although she’s a first-generation Israeli, she now “works within the US government.”

    That softening of the character didn’t deter the protesters, who held signs reading “Sabra has got to go” and “Disney supports genocide” while shouting out “Free, free, free Palestine” and “Disney, Disney, you can’t hide.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    "Yet, dozens of “Free Palestine” protesters gathered to oppose the presence of an Israeli actress and Israeli character in the new Captain America film.

    "You can protest a war, you can protest a government’s actions, but you can’t protest our existence.

    "Shira Haas exists. Israelis exist. And we’re not going anywhere."

  • Killing Israeli patients

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It sounds like they're saying they have killed Israeli patients. And by "Israeli" they presumably mean Jews:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Update: it's made the Times:

    Australia’s prime minister has condemned a video showing two uniformed Sydney nurses vowing to kill or refuse treatment to Israeli patients as “driven by hate”.

    Anthony Albanese consulted police on Wednesday after the video was shared online, leading to the immediate suspension of one male and one female nurse from a large hospital in western Sydney.

    In the video both staff were interviewed. The female nurse, Sarah Abu Lebdeh, claimed that she “won’t treat” Israeli patients and would “kill them”. A male colleague, Ahmad “Rashad” Nadir — who falsely identified himself as a doctor — said he had “literally sent” Jewish patients to “Jahannam”, hell in Arabic.

    Abu Lebdeh and Nadir were “stood down” on Wednesday from Bankstown hospital after the video, apparently recorded during a night shift on a ward, was shared by thousands of viewers.

    And Quillette:

    Australian Healthcare’s Darkest Hour – The NSW nurses have not just threatened individual patients—they have desecrated what it means to be Australian.

  • Breaking the spell

    Naomi Cunningham, Sandie Peggie's lawyer at the NHS Fife tribunal, gets to the heart of it:

    Ms Cunningham said: “What Sandie Peggie has done by withdrawing from changing room when you were there is opted out of immersive role play. That’s why you were angry with her.”

    She added: “I want to suggest that the reason it’s not acceptable to you for one colleague to opt out, is the danger that one voice telling the truth will break its spell. It’s like the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes. That one voice saying you’re a man will break the spell.”

    See also Milli Hill's substack piece – "A doctor talking utter nonsense about biology might seem funny, but in fact, it's a deadly serious sign of a much wider problem".