Mick Hartley

A powerful piece from Mike Atherton in the Times – Politicians can’t expect cricket to clear up mess they left in Afghanistan:

When 160 parliamentarians sent a letter recently asking the ECB to condemn the Taliban’s abhorrent treatment of women in Afghanistan — which the governing body have done — and to consider a boycott of the forthcoming match against Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy — which, if the government does not insist on one, is unlikely to happen — there was, predictably, no analysis therein of how the present mess came to pass.

In response, the ECB could have asked the political class to look in the mirror and reflect on the Foreign Affairs committee’s report on the American’s, the UK’s and its allies’ catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, and the abject political failure at that time, which paved the way for the rapid return of the Taliban, and the medieval policies towards women that have ensued.

The report, fittingly called “Missing in action”, is not just a sobering read, but one that should leave any right-minded person seething with anger. It is an analysis in three parts, dealing with the (lack of) planning and preparation; the chaotic withdrawal itself, and proposals for what the UK’s policy towards Afghanistan should be in future.

It is totally damning. It makes clear that, despite being forewarned more than a year in advance of America’s planned withdrawal, the UK government failed to take President Trump’s announcement in February 2020 seriously; made only limited attempts to influence, relied instead on wishful thinking that America would change its mind, and was rudderless, with key personnel on holiday, when the moment came.

Five weeks after the prime minister, in July 2021, announced that there was no military path to victory for the Taliban, they occupied Kabul. Of the three categories eligible for evacuation, there was no plan for those in the third — Afghans who had supported the UK mission, such as judges, journalists and activists, but who were not directly employed by the UK. It was only after Kabul fell, that attention turned to this highly vulnerable group.

And that's not to mention the farcical evacuation of a planeload of pets from Kabul, reportedly at the instigation of Boris Johnson, under pressure – it's widely believed – from wife Carrie.

The government’s future policy towards Afghanistan? The select committee’s recommendations were clear, reckoning that “attempts to isolate the new regime entirely may only worsen the situation for the Afghan people”. Help should be targeted to minimise the scale of the humanitarian disaster, they said, including engagement with Afghan civil society, which remains the current government’s position.

The ECB have, belatedly, condemned the Taliban’s gender apartheid. They have called for the ICC to act in a coordinated way to pressurise the Afghanistan Cricket Board to reinstate women’s cricket and to fund and support the Afghan women’s cricketers, who are in Melbourne at present, to enable them to play as an Afghan refugee team. They have asked the ICC to withhold funding from the Afghanistan Cricket Board and make membership of the ICC conditional….

Since then, though, the ICC has sat on its hands and done nothing to help the cause of Afghan women cricketers. This was a point made forcibly only on Tuesday by one of the refugee cricketers in Melbourne, Firooza Amiri, who had to burn her cricket kit before fleeing the country for a new life in Australia.

She told the BBC that they had not heard from the ICC since arriving in the country. She said they remained proud of the men’s team, but demanded equal recognition for her own. “Cricket can break boundaries, so we want to keep hopes alive — we want to play and educate,” she said. They will play an exhibition match on January 30, their first together since fleeing Afghanistan.

In the absence of a coherent, strategic international approach, cricket’s power is limited over an issue that clearly dwarfs it, and talking to those with knowledge on the ground is tricky, because it is hard to know who has links with the regime or not. To this end, I spoke this week with Najiba Sanjar, an Afghan refugee now in Sweden, whose credentials as a women’s rights activist and independent voice are impeccable.

After working for an NGO in the northeastern region of Afghanistan for 14 years, and then in Kabul, Sanjar fled her homeland with her husband and five sons on September 18, 2021, following the Taliban’s return. Today, she works in an educational centre for the Swedish government, and looks on in despair. A sporting boycott, she thinks, would be symbolic, but would have little practical impact on the Taliban….

Lest we forget, there is no doubt where responsibility lies for what the Foreign Affairs committee’s report called “a tragedy for Afghanistan, marking the biggest reversal in the rights of women and girls in a generation”. Levers over the Taliban disappeared with our departure from the country and it remains a puzzle why some politicians think England’s cricketers can clear up the gigantic mess we left behind.

To be fair: which the Americans left behind, with the UK bumbling along behind. No one comes out of this looking good. 

North Koreans are astonished by the South’s freedom to criticise their president. From the Daily NK:

Recent detailed coverage of South Korean politics in North Korean state media has sparked intense curiosity among North Koreans, particularly regarding South Koreans’ freedom to openly criticize their president.

Multiple sources told Daily NK on Friday that a Jan. 3 Rodong Sinmun newspaper article about South Korea’s political situation has become a widespread topic of private discussion. While public discussion of South Korean politics remains strictly forbidden and punishable in North Korea, people are quietly sharing their thoughts with close family and friends.

The initial reaction has largely been one of disbelief. The Rodong Sinmun newspaper’s coverage of Seoul protests, including “large-scale candlelight vigils and marches demanding ‘Expel Yoon Suk Yeol! Disband the People Power Party!'” has left many North Koreans stunned at the notion of citizens openly calling for their president’s removal.

“We can’t even imagine criticizing the party or Supreme Leader,” a source in Ryanggang province said. “People can’t comprehend how South Koreans can demand their president’s expulsion. It makes them say the South must truly be a different world.”

The detailed reporting has prompted North Koreans to draw comparisons between the political systems on either side of the DMZ. Many question whether the reports of South Koreans using “crude language” to criticize their administration are accurate or deliberately edited.

Another striking revelation for North Koreans has been learning that South Korean society continues to function normally despite political upheaval. “People with relatives who have defected are surprised to hear their family members in the South saying everything’s fine, even amid what’s being described as social paralysis,” the Ryanggang source noted.

“The consensus is that South Korea must be genuinely free,” the source added. “Here, you can vanish without a trace for speaking out. People are surprised to learn it’s not like that in the South.”

While the North Korean authorities likely intended these reports to highlight the superiority of their socialist system, they appear to have instead underscored the stark differences in political freedom between the two countries.

An own goal, as it were. Perhaps there's a bright side to the current political crisis in South Korea after all. 

The Times:

The head of a British charity has glorified a terrorist chief, promoted extremists who celebrated October 7 and personally accepted an award from the Iranian leader known as the “Butcher of Tehran”.

Syeda Umme Farwa runs the British-registered charity Labaik Ya Zahra (LYZ) in London, which says it “helps mankind” by advancing the Muslim faith and women’s rights through workshops, conferences and protests.

Something of a contradiction there, perhaps. Women's rights?

However, a joint investigation by The Times and the campaign group United Against Nuclear Iran can reveal that she has been hailed as a “jihadi lioness” in Iran and has given platforms to alleged extremists with links to terror organisations at her charity’s events.

Farwa, who is from Pakistan and lives in northwest London, was filmed receiving a trophy from Ebrahim Raisi at a ceremony in 2018, in honour of her charity work in the UK.

Raisi, a senior regime figure, was known as the “Butcher of Tehran” for overseeing the mass execution of thousands of people as part of the infamous “death committee” in the 1980s.

At the event, held in the Iranian city of Mashhad, he praised Farwa as a “faithful [Islamic] revolutionary woman”. A year later he was sanctioned by the United States for human rights abuses.

Is anyone the tiniest bit surprised by this?

The Charity Commission warns organisations not to invite speakers to their events who the trustees know are likely to promote extremist ideology to influence or direct the charity’s work….

In January last year Farwa said her charity commemorates the death of Soleimani, the assassinated IRGC general, every year. She told an Iranian state media outlet: “God willing … revenge will be taken for this bloodshed and the reign of the oppressors will come to an end.”

Soleimani was the mastermind behind Iran’s activities across the Middle East and helped to co-ordinate the military operations of terror groups in the region. After his death Hamas said he played a “major role” in supporting their operations.

Farwa appeared to acknowledge that Soleimani had been sanctioned in the UK but admitted that her charity had participated in demonstrations “at the time of the martyrdom of the commander”. She said that the charity produces films and videos to mark “the anniversary of the martyr every year”.

A Turkey-Israel confrontation draws a step nearer. From the Jerusalem Post:

President Tayyip Erdogan warned on Wednesday that Turkey had the power and ability to "crush" all terrorists in Syria, including Islamic State and Kurdish militants, while urging all countries to "take their hands off" Syria.

According to Anadolu, Erdogan also called on Israel to halt its "aggressive actions" towards Syria: "Starting with Israel, the forces attacking Syrian territories must immediately put an end to their aggressive actions. Otherwise, the consequences will have a negative impact on everyone."

In other words, this is now our domain. We, the Turks, are in charge and decide what's best for Syria – and that means, first of all, the destruction of the Kurds.

Since last month's fall of Bashar al-Assad, Turkey has said repeatedly it was time for the Kurdish YPG militia to disband. Ankara considers the group, which spearheads the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as a terrorist organization.

Ankara has said the new Syrian administration must be given an opportunity to address the YPG presence, but also threatened to mount a new cross-border operation against the militia based in northeast Syria if its demands are not met.

Speaking in parliament, Erdogan said the YPG was the biggest problem in Syria now, and added that the group would not be able to escape its inevitable end unless it lays down its arms.

Shalom Lappin at Fathom – The Nazification of the Postmodernist Left:

Since the Hamas terrorist attack of 7 October 2023, Diaspora Jews have found themselves under sustained assault on a variety of fronts, from much of the radical left, and its Islamist allies. People who pose as guardians of equality and anti-racism are leading violent demonstrations praising mass murder attacks against Israelis. They are urging the exclusion of all Jews who do not endorse their views from the mainstream of the social order. How did it come to pass that such a significant portion of the contemporary radical left now resembles fascist and Nazi groups of the past?

It's a long piece, but well worth reading in full.

The radical left transferred its allegiance from secular third world national liberation movements to radical Islamists as a new and potent vehicle for anti-colonialism. This move was facilitated by a significant transformation in the New Left itself. In the past 30 years it has morphed from a movement inspired by a revised version of Marx’s vision of a revolution based on class, and on Western Enlightenment values of reason, freedom, and equality, into a postmodernist ideology defined by the identity politics of ethnicity, gender, and indigenousness. This shift moved the theoretical foundations of the radical left from political economy to critical theory, ethnic and gender studies, and postmodernist doctrines of cultural relativism. Addressing the injustices inflicted on ethnic and gender groups by White European racism and colonialism became its focus. European colonialism is regarded as the source of all racism and injustice, while non-European colonialism, such as the Ottoman Empire, and Soviet domination of central Asia, are disregarded as irrelevant.

Indigenousness is fetishised as the condition of original innocence, despite the fact that it has no clear substance for many of the areas to which it is loudly applied. This is most glaringly obvious in the case of the Middle East and North Africa, which have been subject to continuing invasions, and influxes of populations, over the past four millennia. The notion of a stable cohesive native population in these territories is a historical fiction. The Muslim Arab conquest of the Middle East in the seventh century subordinated Jewish, Byzantine, and Aramaic speaking Christian communities to Arabisation and Islamic rule. It also Islamised Persia. Their conquest of North Africa and Iberia extended forced Arabisation to Egyptian, Greek, Berber, and Visigoth peoples. Turkish speaking people moved from central Asia into Anatolia in the eleventh century. The Ottomans subsequently imposed Turkish rule and settlement on large areas of the Middle East, Armenia, North Africa, Cyprus, and the Balkans, which they incorporated into a large Islamic Empire. The sequence of invasions and population flows in these areas throughout ancient, Medieval, and modern history renders the notion of an indigenous population in these regions largely without content…

Under the guise of promoting diversity and equality, the identity politics of the postmodernist left has overturned the broad coalition-building agenda of classical progressive movements. It has replaced it with the worship of ethnic and gender difference, based on inherited virtue conferred by a history of European colonial dispossession. The purpose of this exercise appears to be not the creation of a social order that provides fully democratic institutions and genuine equality to all its members, but a permanent acknowledgement of original sin and past guilt by the descendants of the colonisers, and those who benefit from the privileges that they enjoy.

But yes, read it all.

The events following 7 October 2023 should have made it abundantly clear that, contrary to official assurances, Jews are no longer equal citizens in the polities that they inhabit in most of the Diaspora. The attitudes of the postmodernist left have penetrated large areas of the public domain. They are now infesting the public school system in many places, making life intolerable for many Jewish children in non-Jewish schools. Boycotts of Jewish artists, writers, and performers have taken hold in large swaths of publishing and cultural life. Discrimination in hiring has now become a visible issue. Many mainstream institutions avoid engaging with clearly identified Jewish figures or agencies for fear of cancellation and violent protest. Calling on the traditional political and civil authorities to protect Jews from attack or exclusion in this sort of environment is seeking to respond to the growing threat with a phantom limb.

In order to develop viable strategies for ensuring survival in the current situation, Jews in the Diaspora will have to come to terms with the fact that they no longer have a natural, assured place in their host countries.

North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine turn out to be not quite the unquestioning super-efficient robotic killers they were supposed to be, while the Russian soldiers now tend to view them as "fundamentally subhuman". It's not a happy picture. From the Daily NK:

North Korea’s leadership is growing increasingly concerned about the psychological state and morale of its soldiers deployed to Russia, Daily NK has learned.

“Since late December, authorities have been alarmed by reports of deployed soldiers showing extreme fear of death, cultural adjustment difficulties, and signs of ideological instability,” a Pyongyang source told Daily NK recently.

The source revealed that December reports from Russia described soldiers as severely anxious and mentally distressed from their battlefield experiences, despite having undergone extensive ideological screening and physical preparation in North Korea.

Military officials on the ground in Russia have reported a stark contrast between the soldiers’ current psychological state and their mindset at initial deployment. Troops are grappling with battlefield trauma, constant fear of death, and uncertainty about their survival.

It turns out that they're human after all.

A particularly troubling issue emerging from these reports involves the soldiers’ interactions with Russian troops. Most North Korean servicemembers, having never been abroad, appear overwhelmed by these encounters with foreigners.

The reports indicate that North Korean soldiers, already conditioned by strict surveillance and control at home, are particularly intimidated by their more confident Russian counterparts. Their struggles with cultural differences and language barriers have led to concerning patterns of idealization of Russian allies.

“Front-line reports indicate that some Russian soldiers view their North Korean counterparts as fundamentally subhuman,” the source said. “The authorities believe this stems from the North Korean soldiers’ visibly defeated demeanor and inability to bridge the communication gap.”

The reports suggest mounting frustration within the Russian military toward North Korean soldiers, potentially jeopardizing military cooperation between the two countries.

Oh dear.

“As casualties increase, the deployed soldiers are battling psychological distress and adaptation difficulties. Officials worry these factors could lead to soldiers betraying the Workers’ Party and state at any moment,” the source explained.

In response to these concerns about ideological wavering and potential desertion, North Korean authorities are considering deploying additional high-ranking officials to supplement those already stationed with the troops.

From the Telegraph:

Lone male travellers should be allowed to sit next to unaccompanied children on passenger planes, a discrimination tribunal has ruled.

The decision comes after a man was asked to swap seats with a woman by the cabin crew of a flight travelling from Oslo to Paris in October 2022.

They told him he could not be seated next to two children travelling alone, with the policy being enforced by Air France to prevent any possibility of predatory behaviour.

But the man, Dominique Sellier, filed a complaint with Norway’s anti-discrimination tribunal, which ruled that the airline’s policy was discriminatory.

Mr Sellier told France’s AFP news agency on Tuesday: “It was not a very nice situation. The passengers around me were looking at me, they were waiting for me to change seats so we could take off.

“Maybe some of it was me projecting, but I interpreted some of the looks like ‘This guy is shady’.”

Oh the poor man. He was made to feel uncomfortable. That can't be right.

His feelings, inevitably, trump any concerns about safety or protecting children.

According to the tribunal’s ruling late last year, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, Air France’s policy stipulates that if a flight is fully booked, a woman should “preferably” be seated next to unaccompanied minors.

In proceedings, a lawyer for Air France argued that the crew was merely following company policy, which was based on the argument that men account for 97.93 per cent of all suspected sex crimes.

Really, what kind of self-absorbed entitled idiot takes a case like this to court? Well yes, a man, obviously.

And he won.

[Excellent comment from ArtyMorty at B&W on this]

I will never not be outraged that this man was put in charge of a women’s mental health ward. https://t.co/DcNbNHY8Xv

— Jill Foster (@JournalistJill) January 14, 2025

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From the Mail article:

An NHS nurse in charge of a women's psychiatric unit has been banned after using racist slurs.

Jaden Rachel Dios Hole called a black colleague the N-word, claimed one worker would receive a sick note from a 'witch doctor' and asked a colleague if he was 'from the plantation'.

The remarks came within a list of offensive comments made by Hole between 2017 and 2020, a disciplinary panel at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) was told.

Hole was co-chair of the Sussex Partnership LGBT Staff Network, which helps to safeguard the rights of gay and transgender staff at the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

On top of this, the nurse also worked as a ward manager at a women's mental health trauma unit in Chichester.

The article is careful not to use pronouns: always "the nurse". The nurse is a man, of course. The Times print edition (not online) uses female pronouns throughout, with not a mention of him being trans. 

A spokesperson from the Sussex trust said: 'When the allegations of racism came to light, we acted immediately to investigate.

'We are committed to providing inclusive and anti-racist healthcare services.'

They were double-quick to sack him for racist comments, but, being committed to providing an "inclusive" healthcare service, they were entirely untroubled that he was a man in charge of a woman's psychiatric unit.

More here, at the Glinner Update.

From July 2016:

A nurse who reported a transphobic hate crime has received an apology from the chief constable of Sussex Police after the force addressed her as "Mr".

Rachel Dios was sent a letter addressed to "Mr Dios" after she reported an incident of verbal abuse by a group of men in Chichester, West Sussex.

She shared the letter on Facebook and Twitter, saying: "I think you need to review your response.

" Chief Constable Giles York replied: "I'm so sorry we got this wrong."

"it's painful to wake up and see it was not a bad dream, and [this body] is my new reality. I just want to end my life but I can't because I have parents that love and always supported me"

Very sad, this guy regrets his surgery and is now suicidal just two months after because… pic.twitter.com/JqFeHwjuLF

— The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦 (@Rob_ThaBuilder) January 14, 2025

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Full text:

Very sad, this guy regrets his surgery and is now suicidal just two months after because activists doctors and therapists inexplicably convinced him that castrating himself was going to cure his mental illnesses.

This guy is in his early 20's and the euphoria placebo didn't even last two months, he realized he had destroyed his life only two months after cutting off his genitals. Can you imagine the feeling of being hit with the full weight of what's been done to you at such a young age? Imagine the horror of the parents who realize what they allowed to happen with their profoundly misguided "support".

Transgenderism destroys so many lives, and yet these treatments are STILL endorsed by most major medical regulatory boards all over the West.

The most telling part is that edit. He realises that he's made the most horrendous mistake getting srs (sex reassignment surgery), but, such is the power of the trans cult, he's been persuaded to row back. He doesn't want to "hurt trans people": he doesn't want to "discourage" people from wrecking their bodies like he did. The trans enforcers have got to him.

pretty much Lindbergh's position in 1939 https://t.co/3hsqs2yDGW

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) January 14, 2025

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