Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • “Our national weakness gives them strength”

    Another day, another arson attack on a synagogue.

    Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator:

    Jewish Britons are increasingly sick of hearing from our politicians that there is ‘no place for anti-Semitism’ in our country, because the attacks carry on happening anyway. There clearly is a place in our society, or many places, for Jew-hatred to grow and thrive. And those places, both literal and ideological, are often under-policed, overlooked and skirted around for fear of seeming ‘racist’ or ‘intolerant’.

    Existing legal tools already allow for us to tackle some of the ideological breeding grounds for these bad and poisonous ideas, including the exclusion of foreign nationals who promote hatred or violence. But it seems they just aren’t used evenly or sensibly. Kanye West was rightly barred form entering the country after his numerous pro-Hitler anti-Semitic episodes, each one designed to appeal to a large audience. The Dutch political activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek was also recently barred from entry to the UK, less justifiably so. Yet many Islamic hate preachers still seem free to enter our country and preach the kind of material which encourages anti-Jewish, anti-women and anti-Western ideology, sometimes leading to real-world violence and terrorism. 

    Similarly, the government itself has done little to counter the regular expressions of hatred directed either towards Jews or even towards our traditional British way of life, whether they have been part of regular street protests, moments of violence and destruction aimed at buildings or objects, or deliberate acts of public worship and dominance. So-called ‘far right’ protestors have been pushed through the justice system swiftly and imprisoned in record time, but those who vandalised legal defence sector factories, struck the police physically, or preached hatred inside mosques as religious leaders have all somehow escaped the same heavy hand of justice. When violence stems from religious belief or dogma, it can’t simply be given a free pass.

    We can hardly be surprised when some people feel emboldened enough to carry out violence towards synagogues or churches. Our national weakness gives them strength.

  • Cheating camels

    Organizers used advanced X-ray and ultrasound technology to uncover the enhancements, which included Botox injections and lip fillers intended to artificially improve the animals’ facial features and overall appearance for the judges.

    The disqualifications have sent a clear message: the festival remains firmly committed to preserving the natural beauty and traditional heritage of desert camels, rather than celebrating surgical artifice….

    Seems to be a thing.

  • Trans BBC

    A thread…

    Added:

  • War with Hezbollah, not Lebanon

    Jake Wallis Symons at Spiked – Israel is not at war with Lebanon:

    The joint statement released by Israel and Lebanon on Thursday could not have been clearer. ‘Israel and Lebanon affirm that the two countries are not at war and commit to engaging in good-faith direct negotiations’, it said.

    Wait, what? Israel and Lebanon were not at war? What about the endless hours of media coverage showing us the devastation of Lebanon’s southern villages? What about all the Gaza comparisons? What about all the outrage?

    Well, their joint statement held further clues. ‘Both countries recognise the significant challenges faced by the Lebanese state from non-state armed groups’, it said. ‘Those groups’ activities must be curtailed.’

    To anybody who knows anything about the region, so much was already obvious. Israel’s campaign in Lebanon is targeted at Hezbollah, not the population at large. Even if every single Shia in the country was supportive of the terror group – which is far from the case – that would mean that two-thirds of Lebanese people opposed it.

    With good reason: Hezbollah was founded by the Iranian regime, is fanatically committed to Israel’s destruction and has even adopted the Sieg Heil as its salute. Meanwhile, it has infiltrated Lebanese politics and society like a parasite, turning the country into a zombie state designed for the death of its neighbour.

    Israel’s enemy is Hezbollah, not Lebanon. And most Lebanese would welcome the chance of peace with their Israeli neighbours. The big question is: does the Lebanese government have the power and determination to see off the Hezbollah parasite that’s been destroying the country from within for decades?

  • Iran war aims

    Douglas Murray in the Spectator compares the current war with Iran not to the 2003 Iraq intervention, but to Israel’s 1981 bombing of the French-supplied nuclear reactor in Iraq. The point being, the ultimate aim is to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power.

    I mention this bit of history because there is a lot of chatter at the moment about America getting bogged down in Iran in the same way it got bogged down in Iraq after 2003. It is hard to overstate the extent to which parts of America are pushing this narrative, cynical as they remain about all foreign military interventions after Afghanistan and Iraq. There was a period where this sentiment dominated only on the American left. In Barack Obama’s time the Democrats were so worried about getting into a ‘boots on the ground’ situation – to use the avoidable cliché – in Syria and elsewhere that they decided most of their problems could be solved by simply sending drones to kill their enemies.

    Well, so terrified were the Dems under Obama of getting drawn in to the Syrian conflict that they, in effect, handed it over to Russia, while cosying up to Iran with the JCPOA deal. As a result the Syrian catastrophe saw milliions dead and millions more leaving the country, while Putin could practice for Ukraine by bombing hapless Syrian civilians.

    Nevertheless there is chaff being thrown in the air from all sides. Yes at the start Trump suggested to the Iranian people that they rise up and overthrow the regime of the mullahs if they could. But the killing of tens of thousands of people by the religious militias in January has obviously had an effect. ‘Ha ha,’ say Trump’s critics. ‘You see – you tried regime change and failed. Now you will have to – once again – “put boots on the ground”.’ But the President is committed to doing no such thing.

    Doubtless he would have liked to have seen the regime receive more opposition internally. But the hope that the Islamic Revolutionary government falls is the maximalist policy. The minimalist one is simply to ensure that for the foreseeable future Iran does not have any capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

    I’m slightly surprised by some of the obfuscation and pretence of befuddlement that many national and international observers seem to be displaying in the face of this objective. ‘He hasn’t made it clear,’ they say again and again. But he has. The aim of Trump’s war in Iran is indeed to replay the Iraq intervention. But it is the intervention of 1981, not 2003.

    Meanwhile, in the Times, Ben Judah’s review of In The Coming Storm by Yale historian Odd Arne Westad has this:

    It is unnerving to realise that there is no geopolitical logic to the Iran war more important than Trump’s own manic enthusiasm: his excitement and interest in the war Binyamin Netanyahu was offering after the addling rush of abducting Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela.

    No geopolitical logic? A theocratic state that’s held a disatrous stranglehold over the Middle East for decades, financing terror groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria – the Shia crescent – while brutally suppressing its own population, and with the openly declared number one foreign policy goal of destroying Israel. I’d say, whatever you think of Trump’s conduct of the war, that there’s a very significant geopoltical logic. But then Judah spent a year in the Foreign Office as special adviser to David Lammy, so….

  • Not making decisions

    We’ve just had Kensington Gardens closed off after what seems to have been an Iranian-inspired drone attack on the Israeli Embassy, but still the government won’t ban the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. From the JC:

    Israel has for the first time officially called upon the British government to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, the JC can reveal.

    The unprecedented intervention ends years of Jerusalem publicly treating the status of the Islamic Republic group as a domestic matter for the UK.

    British politicians from almost all major parties have urged the government to bring in a ban that an Israeli embassy official said was “long overdue” and fall in line with the US and the EU.

    On Tuesday Jewish leaders met Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and “reiterated the need for the government to move with urgency to proscribe the IRGC”.

    The calls come amid warnings from security experts about the militia’s activities on British soil and the fear of an Iran-sponsored terror attack, along with concern over the danger posed by Iran to UK interests abroad.

    This week one expert warned there was a “significant threat” to Jews and Iranian dissidents in the UK from the IRGC.

    But still the government is dithering. Making decisions – about anything – is not something they feel comfortable with.

  • Countering ideology-driven civil service policy

    Janice Turner on the ghastly Bridget Phillipson:

    There are two theories why the women and equalities minister has failed to lay before parliament the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) statutory guidance to service providers from NHS trusts to shops and gyms. The first is that Phillipson still aspires to be Labour leader — yes, seriously, despite losing to Lucy Powell for deputy — and thinks if she holds off until after the May elections she’ll be reshuffled, meaning this chalice of ricin will be passed to someone else. Thus she avoids being yelled at by her trans-activist backbenchers and being branded the single-sex toilet bigot for ever more.

    The flaw with this theory is that Phillipson is already despised by the trans lobby. Known as a “soft Terf” — trans-exclusionary radical feminist — she keeps repeating how running a domestic violence refuge for three years made her understand women’s safety concerns, and recently told companies not to wait for the EHRC guidance before applying the law. But her endless dog-ate-my-homework excuses for sitting on a document she has had since September have now lost her the gender-critical lobby, too. Quite an accomplishment, but not the best base for a leadership bid.

    The second theory is that Phillipson is weak, incompetent and incapable of wrangling civil servants who put gender ideology before rule of law. Like a woke version of Yes Minister, they bamboozle her with bureaucracy, saying the guidance needs impact or cost assessments or that she can’t lay this statutory instrument during local election “purdah”. (Baroness Falkner, the former EHRC head and a procedural whiz, says this is nonsense.)

    As Turner goes on to say, both theories could, of course, be true. And probably are.

    But yes, it’s the civil servants who seem to be the main problem here. After years of Stonewall schooling, the place is now peopled by those who rose to the top by going along with all this trans training – and they’re not about to give up.

    Ideology-driven civil service policy is counter to the law and public opinion. It has real-life consequences. Even after five Darlington nurses and Sandie Peggie won at tribunal the right to undress in privacy, 94 per cent of NHS trusts have failed to update their policies. A male murderer, Aurin Makepeace, was remanded to Styal women’s prison. Now in another, Downview, he is so dangerous he must be segregated, yet female officers are obliged to search him. Tory rules kept violent, genitally intact men from being housed among vulnerable women but civil servants have found loopholes.

    Not only must the EHRC guidance be laid before parliament, the new cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo should order a root-and-branch review of the gender ideology that permeates government. Although reputedly attached to diversity policy, she is also a fearless fixer, a wily operator who knows when the wind has changed — which it has. The Supreme Court should be the end of institutional capture, not the start of a forever war.

  • Treated like apostates from a cult

    The tale of Michael Kerr, in the Times – ‘I’m a walking example of what’s wrong about trans ideology’:

    A man who reversed his gender treatment claims an NHS gender clinic told him to “basically keep going” even though he had doubts about his treatment.

    Michael Kerr, 33, is telling his story as he prepares to launch the UK’s only active support service for those “detransitioning”.

    He says Sandyford NHS Gender Clinic in Glasgow told him that his doubts were “normal” and that “once I started to see changes I would start to feel better”.

    After seven years living as Caitlin, Kerr removed himself from the NHS waiting list for surgery to remove his male genitalia and stopped taking his medication.

    He now says that he felt “indoctrinated into an ideology” when people around him in Glasgow’s gay scene suggested he could be trans.

    Him and how many thousands of others?

    He believed the decision to adopt a female identity would be the solution to his problems, but now says his transition was a means of dealing with his trauma from being raped.

    Kerr believes his desire for a trans identity grew out of “social contagion” and a deeply traumatic experience. At the age of 18, he loved fashion and make-up and was spending a lot of time on the gay scene in his native Glasgow. He was 5ft 11in tall and weighed 8½ stone.

    One night, while out on his own, he was raped in the toilets of a club. “Afterwards, my body felt like it was no longer mine,” he said. “It was taken. Something was missing from me. It’s that feeling of violation.”…

    Kerr said he saw being trans as the solution to his internalised self-loathing. He waited two years for an appointment with the Sandyford NHS Gender Clinic in Glasgow. After two 30-minute sessions, Kerr says he was told he did not need counselling and could go straight onto a course of hormones.

    While taking the drugs, Kerr put on five stone and developed small breasts. He didn’t like what was happening to his body, but doctors at the Sandyford clinic told him not to worry. “Let the drugs do their job,” they said.…

    Last June, when Kerr told his gender doctor at the Sandyford clinic that he wanted to stop the hormones, he said she was “shocked”. He also said he felt she was unable to offer him a treatment pathway or even advice, joking that it was a “good job you didn’t get the bottom surgery [vaginoplasty], then.”

    Kerr wants to highlight that there are no agreed medical protocols for supporting detransitioners in the UK. Many adult gender clinics, including those run by the NHS, operate a so-called “affirming” model of care.

    In 2024, a landmark report on gender treatment by Baroness Cass acknowledged there was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes” for people on hormones. She also recommended the NHS “should ensure there is provision for people considering detransition”, but nothing has yet been put in place.

    Appalled at the lack of care for detransitioners, on Saturday Kerr will launch Detransition Pathway UK, a support network for those going through a similar ordeal. It is the only “peer-to-peer, community-led” support network for detransitioners in the UK.

    People like Kerr are not popular within the trans movement and are often treated like apostates from a cult. “I’ve had people tell me to go and get a rope and kill myself,” Kerr said. “I’ve had death threats sent over TikTok because I speak out about it. I’ve had people threatening to find my family.”

    “Treated like apostates from a cult” because that’s exactly what gender ideology is: a social contagion that morphed into a cult, and fooled a whole society. Not least the wretched doctors who were implicated in all this “gender-affirming care” mutilation.

  • Teachers as incompetent ideological saboteurs

    Reasons to study hard for those exams: failure could see you doing hard labour.

    North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) launched a sweeping inspection of senior middle schools in 2026 after a new elective subject system introduced at the start of the academic year produced mass failures in specialization track exams.

    A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK on Friday that “a significant number of students fell below the required standard during specialization track exams conducted after the new semester began” at senior middle schools, the equivalent of high schools. The source added that the provincial party committee’s education department responded by issuing a stark warning: students who fail to meet the required level will be forcibly assigned to coal mines or construction sites.

    Seems a bit harsh. Could there be other factors at play?

    Many parents suspect the party is using the “underperforming student” label as a pretext to conscript young people into labor-starved industries such as mining and construction.

    Some well-connected parents have reportedly gone so far as to exhaust their family savings in an attempt to bribe officials and prevent their children from being demoted and sent to harsh work sites. However, the source said the party is pressing the matter so forcefully that bribery is not working, leaving parents anxious and uncertain about what to do.

    Teachers are also caught in the fallout. The source said instructors are being held collectively responsible for their students’ poor results, leaving them “trembling with fear.” At one No. 1 Middle School in North Hamgyong province, a homeroom teacher who had vouched for a student’s ability was branded an “incompetent ideological saboteur” and removed from the classroom after the student performed poorly on the exam. That case is now being cited as a representative example of collective punishment, and fear is spreading among teaching staff across the province.

  • Not antisemitism but “revenge”

    Yet another Green candidate. By the looks of it they’re not the exceptions: they’re the norm. Andrew Gilligan again in the Spectator:

    A terror attack on a synagogue was “not anti-semitism” but was “revenge” for Israel “murdering people,” according to a video promoted by a Green Party council candidate.

    Sabine Mairey, a Green candidate for Clapham Town ward in Lambeth, south London, posted the video, by David Spevak, an American Jewish anti-Zionist, on her Facebook page last month. It’s still there at the time of writing.

    Mairey was used by the Lambeth Green Party to launch its election manifesto this week, and is quoted in the party’s press release. The video on her Facebook page is posted with the caption “Ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-semitism. It’s revenge.” She cannot claim that she posted it without knowing what it says.

    The new home for Jew-haters.

    See this Habibi thread for more on Sabine Mairey.