Mick Hartley

Freddie Attenborough in the Spectator on ‘Islamophobia’ and the grooming gangs scandal:

At PMQs this week, Kemi Badenoch told MPs that Labour’s adoption of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslim’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’ has inhibited public discussion of rape gangs. She pointed out that, according to this definition, anyone who draws attention to the over-representation of Muslims in the grooming gangs is guilty of Islamophobia. This, she argued, is why some members of the Parliamentary Labour Party have been ‘scared to tell the truth’. She’s right, but the problem runs deeper than that…

At the time, the report was criticised for defining Islamophobia too broadly. For instance, it says ‘claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword’ are an example of ‘classic Islamophobia’. By that definition, Tom Holland’s book on the history of Islam – In the Shadow of the Sword – is Islamophobic. Another example the report gives is accusing Muslim majority countries of exaggerating or inventing claims of genocide perpetrated against Muslims. That would make anyone who disputes Iran’s description of Israel’s military operation in Gaza as ‘genocide’ an Islamophobe – including, ironically, Sir Keir Starmer.

The history books will clearly need to be rewritten to avoid any possible accusation of Islamophobia. And our political discourse must likewise be cleansed of wrong-think. 

These concerns have been brought into sharp focus in the past week because the APPG report gives the example of ‘grooming gangs’ as a ‘subtle form of anti-Muslim racism’. 

In the past, this has led to people who’ve drawn attention to the overrepresentation of Muslim men in grooming gangs being branded Islamophobic, even though we have good evidence of that.

The threat to freedom of speech could hardly be clearer. This is precisely the same mentality that led to the rape gangs cover-up in the first place.

In light of the chilling effect the APPG definition of Islamophobia has had on discussion of the rape gangs, is it time to consign this term to the history books? As Christopher Hitchens said: ‘It is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.’

As has been said often enough, this is introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Islam isn't a race; it's a religion, an ideology. The problem lies in the Muslim belief that Islam is not just something you believe in, but forms an essential part of your being – hence the seriousness of apostasy. For them, then, the term "Islamophobia" is equivalent to racism in that the belief is inseparable from the person. But that's no reason to accept those terms here, where freedom of speech has been fought for over generations, and remains central to our democracy.

This is astonishing.

When I asked my 46th District legislators about the lawsuit from the former female prisoner forced to share a cell with a 6’4” male who sexually assaulted her, their response was … interesting. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/NuaBFUoATi

— Beth Daranciang (@bethsd) January 11, 2025

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Transcript (via):

Question: Hi. Washington State is being sued by a woman who was forced to share a jail cell with a six foot four male who sexually harassed and assaulted her over many days and weeks. And she was told by the prison the Washington State Prison to not report it because she might get retaliated against. She had to suffer that for a long time until he was found on top of her when she was unconscious. His hands on her body and it’s being sued. There are many, there are about a dozen males in the Washington State Prison for women, and women are being traumatized. This is a Geneva Convention violation against women again, against women’s rights. What, what will you do to stop it, especially since you passed a bill that made it harder to find out which males are in the women’s jail? Thank you.

Response: So before getting elected, I worked on an organization called Disability Rights Washington. And at this organization I did some work around this issue of making sure that trans women who are incarcerated had what they needed to be able to navigate safely through our business system. I’m proud of the work that we did there. One of the bills, I’m not sure if it’s what you’re referring to, but one of the bills that I worked on was actually to make sure that things like sensitive images are not released to our public records act. One of the things that we found out in our work with trans women was that you know, those big body scanners you go through at the airport, walk through them to stand up with your arms up. The prisons have similar ones but that are much more high tech, so they don’t have to do invasive cavity searches, but they take pictures of naked bodies and that was subject to our Public Records Act. So we went in and we made that change to protect not just trans women, but to protect all people who were having to go through that to make sure that their naked bodies did not end up in a public records disclosure somewhere. I’m proud of the work that we did there. We need to hold to the work that we did there and we were always gonna stand up for folks who are incarcerated, who are dealing with all sorts of different horrible situations. We can do that. I continue to work on that the community safety committee, and I find it important to state that we’ll always stand with the LGB LGBTQ community.

And they applaud at the end! Hey, she said good things about always standing with the LGBTQ community! And she completely avoided that awkward question – even pretended it was another question entirely ("I’m not sure if it’s what you’re referring to") – without a hint of embarrassment. Now there's a good politician.

I’m sure you’re right on both points. But just to reassure the sceptics and naysayers could you produce a list of British-Pakistani Muslim community leaders and/or prominent spokesmen (I assume they will be all men) who have been robust in condemning the rape gangs? https://t.co/3uil66qSH5

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) January 11, 2025

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Rachel Pepper, author of "The Transgender Child," was asked what to do about "extended family members" who are "skeptical" about your 4-year-old "trans kiddo."

Pepper says to cut them out of your life because they're "not safe people for those children to be around." pic.twitter.com/xaNIKNEviO

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) January 18, 2023

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From the Times:

When Martin Speake, a jazz teacher at one of the country’s leading conservatoires, saw an email from his school asking for staff and student feedback regarding their equality and diversity policy, he was happy to respond.

Speake, 66, an internationally renowned saxophonist, who has been playing jazz for 50 years and teaching at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London for 24 years, said he did not agree that black musicians were discriminated against in the UK’s jazz scene. In fact, he thought they were getting preferential treatment in some circumstances and believed that “critical race theory is divisive and dangerous”.

When he pressed send on his 1,170-word email, which covered a wide range of strongly-held opinions on discrimination and diversity policies, he did not think it would lead to the collapse of his professional life.

Well, you know how this goes…

After students got hold of the contents of the email and posted it online, they staged a five-week boycott of his classes which eventually led to him resigning, as well as losing his playing and recording career. The school released a statement saying they did not agree with Speake’s views and expressed “how in awe we are of [the students’] sense of community and solidarity with each other”.

That's the one that really stands out. Students are students, this is what they do: take big moral stands, boycott, protest. But for the authorities to appease them in this way – not just appease, but encourage…"how in awe we are". It's such moral cowardice.

Colleagues, fellow musicians, record companies and music venues all cut ties with Speake, which has left him “cancelled” from the UK’s jazz scene.

This isn't inflammatory stuff. He's not saying he wouldn't play with black musicians. [If he said he wouldn't play with Jewish musicians he'd probably be applauded.] He just disagrees with the view that black musicians are discriminated against, and thinks it may in fact work the other way. I wouldn't know, but he's the one living this, and it's at least plausible. But it's not the prescribed, required view…

Janice Turner in the Times:

At a trade fair called the Modern Family Show in a luxury London hotel I paid £32 to hear a PowerPoint presentation on how to buy a baby abroad. If you have $150,000 for a full “concierge service”, I was told, you send your embryos to be incubated by a stranger in America. But for a better “price point”, the hot new surrogacy destination, where UK agencies now have shiny clinics, is Mexico.

It is basic economics: GDP per capita in Mexico is $14,000, in the United States $82,000. The two Mexican states that in 2021 liberalised commercial surrogacy are dirt poor and one, Tabasco, has many migrants and indigenous people. In the outer favelas of sprawling Mexico City, millions of mothers struggle to raise their own children. Many will be tempted by the $4,000 to $8,000 offered to carry a westerner’s child — a bargain for the “commissioning parents”, who’d have to pay up to $60,000 to an American woman….

Commercial surrogacy is a dirty business. When I planned to visit Mexico to report on surrogate recruitment, many on the ground warned me of its links to violent human traffickers. Last year, in Argentina, prosecutors reported that “vulnerable women in conditions of economic deprivation” had been recruited on social media by criminal gangs, denied treatment for pregnancy complications and not paid, while the babies born for German couples were in poor health.

All pregnancies imperil the mother and, according to research by Queen’s University, Canada, gestational surrogacy involving heavy hormone treatment and embryo transfer trebles the risk of complications such as sepsis and pre-eclampsia. Surrogates are also offered bonuses to have riskier caesareans, even if medically unnecessary, for the convenience of western couples booking flights for the birth. Then there is the trauma of surrendering, while brimming with birth hormones, the baby you have carried, often within minutes.

Strange that the same liberals who worry about veal calves or if their coffee is ethically sourced see commercial surrogacy as the next progressive frontier. Gay men, who filled the Modern Family event, increasingly demand the “right” to have genetic children but, inconveniently, this still requires a woman who also has rights.

Is surrogacy perhaps the next battle for women, after the gender cult? Here's a hint:

Stonewall’s former chief executive Baroness (Ruth) Hunt has pledged to liberalise surrogacy law and lobbying is being conducted along the same lines as attempts to introduce gender self-ID: in behind-doors meetings with government officials, far from legislative scrutiny or public debate. In Mexico City, British clinic bosses have repeatedly met the British embassy in a bid to expedite UK passports for babies born there.

A political battle looms over a Law Commission report — which mainly consulted the surrogacy industry and would-be parents, while sidelining women’s groups — whose recommendations for legal reform came with an oven-ready white paper. The Tories rejected the lot. But in November, the women’s health minister Baroness Merron met the Law Commission, although she has so far declined meetings with women’s groups. So will Labour proceed?

For feminists, the report’s most worrying proposal is removing careful maternal protections inserted in law by the late Mary Warnock that make a surrogate the legal mother until a parental order is obtained. Reformers want those paying for the pregnancy to be default parents from the start, with the mother having six weeks — when she is probably recovering from the birth — in which to launch a legal bid to keep the baby.

The report also proposes unfettered advertising to recruit surrogates, lowering the minimum age to 21 and removing the important condition to protect a woman’s physical and mental wellbeing that she must already have her own child.

If more British surrogates are recruited, goes its slippery logic, fewer foreign women will be exploited. Working-class women will, as usual, be political collateral. Moreover, the report also wants to make it easier for foreign-born surrogate babies to be imported, by allowing would-be parents to start immigration paperwork pre-birth.

The global market in commercial surrogacy grows every year: from $14 billion in 2022 to $17.9 billion in 2023, to a projected $129 billion by 2032. At its centre lie two competing notions of rights. The liberal argument for surrogacy — as with assisted dying or prostitution — is that a woman can do with her body what she wishes. But surrogacy is freighted with power and privilege: did any wealthy woman ever birth a child for a poorer family? Whether from Mexico’s favelas or Manchester’s council estates, women are not gestational vessels for the rich.

Added on X:

At the Modern Family Show surrogacy expo, mentioned above, I was struck by how the women (vital to the whole process obv) were barely mentioned Except to say they were all health checked & told to stay off recreational drugs etc. ie good breeding stock. Pure Handmaid’s Tale

September 1937, Washington, D.C. "Capital Transit Locomotive 1135 on Pennsylvania Avenue at Post Office Department. Wheel arrangement: PCC."

[Photo: Shorpy/C.W. Witbeck from the Louis A. Marre Rail Transportation Photograph Collection]

Tales from the Vienna kindergarten, with Marielena Meder at Reduxx:

A kindergarten in Austria has expelled two children after their parents expressed concerns about graphic, sexual posters that had been hung in the facility. The posters, depicting nude trans-identified males, were reportedly created to “facilitate discussions in kindergarten settings.”

The incident occurred at a corporate kindergarten and daycare in Vienna open for the children of employees of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. After enrolling their two kids in the kindergarten, a mother and father became aware that the class had decorated a wall in the classroom with a disturbing poster. Speaking to Kronen Zeitung, the father says they first learned about the poster after his 4-year-old son reported seeing “strange pictures” on the walls.

Investigating for himself, the father went down to the kindergarten and noted a poster had been installed featuring illustrations of nude individuals accompanied by the phrase: “Bodies naked and bare, vulva, penis, breasts, butts. You decide for yourself, indeed! Bodies are cool!”

One panel on the poster appears to depict an obese male in the shower with a young boy, while another features a trans-identified male with an exposed penis and breasts. The final panel of the poster shows two nude children taking a shower with an adult.

The parents then filed a complaint with the kindergarten and requested the removal of these illustrations, noting they appeared to be inappropriate for such young children.

As a result of the complaint, the father and his wife were summoned for an initial discussion with the regional management, followed by a meeting with the kindergarten’s CEO, Thomas-Peter Gerold-Siegl. Despite having no pedagogical background, Gerold-Siegl reportedly insisted that children aged 1 through 6 required “sexual education,” something the mother objected to immediately.

Following the discussion, the kindergarten placement for both of the children were terminated, and they have since been blacklisted from any facilities operated by Kinder in Wien (Children in Vienna, or KiWi), which not only oversees the corporate kindergartens of the Austrian broadcaster but also manages 93 additional kindergartens and after-school programs throughout Vienna.

The illustrations are taken from Bodies Are Cool, a book by American trans activist Tyler Davis which features a woman with facial hair and mastectomy scars on the cover. The Amazon reviews are almost universally ecstatic at the sheer wonderful inclusivity-ness of it all. Here's a fawning Tyler Davis interview:

“Bodies are Cool” is a children’s picture book that celebrates all the different kinds of bodies that exist. I came across it last year when I was shopping for Christmas gifts for my five-year-old niece. Immediately, I was drawn to its cover illustration, a colorful array of diverse body types.

I was especially in awe of the transmasculine character with top surgery scars.

“Is that… me?” I thought.

It was the very first time seeing myself visually represented in a children’s book, and the moment was powerful. I ended up leaving that Baltimore bookstore with three copies of “Bodies are Cool” — one for my niece, my nephew, and myself. The book is still proudly on display in my apartment.

As part of Lambda Legal’s celebrations of Trans Awareness Week, I connected with Tyler Feder, the Chicago-based artist and author behind this special children’s book. Together, we discussed her inspiration for the story and the importance of trans visibility and representation. We also talked about “Don’t Say LGBTQ+” laws in the U.S., such as the ones in Florida and Iowa, and how harmful they are to books like “Bodies are Cool” and the nonbinary and transgender community at large….

Or, here, two drag queens sing its praises. 

According to the Reduxx report, the American edition of the book omits the page featuring the nude illustrations displayed in the Austrian kindergarten, but it was exclusively available in the German edition. They're so much more progressive over there in Germany and Austria.

Brutalism may be associated with the west – Europe and America – but it made its way to Japan too. Of course it did: a perfect fit. Photographer Paul Tulett, from his book Brutalist Japan:

Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium, 1964

Kyoto International Conference Center, 1966

Nago City Hall, 1981

Nago Civic Hall And Center, 1985

Mixed-use complex, 1994

Keihan Uji Station, 1995

Kihoku Astronomical Museum, 1995

Okinawa Prefectural And Art Museum, 2007

Matsubara Civic Library, 2019
[Photos © Paul Tulett]

I've done a few posts on Brutalism, such as:

Brutalist Italy
Brutalism worldwide
Finding brutalism
Eastern Block brutalism
Fantasy brutalism
Madrileño brutalism
Brutal delights

Our statement on the behaviour of the UN's 'Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories', Francesca Albanese, and her support for the conspiracy theorist David Miller.

"We call on our Government to openly request Ms Albanese's dismissal; her ongoing association… pic.twitter.com/m4PMSVgm8d

— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) January 6, 2025

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"We call on our Government to openly request Ms Albanese's dismissal; her ongoing association with the UN is a disgrace to the entire organisation."

From the JC:

The Board of Deputies has called on the UK Government to request the dismissal of the UN’s independent expert for Palestinian human rights after she expressed support for disgraced academic David Miller.

In a now-deleted post on X, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese voiced her endorsement of Miller, the former University of Bristol professor, in his ongoing legal battle with the institution….

The former professor has previously accused the Union of Jewish Students of creating a “charade of false antisemitism allegations” and has called for the “end of Zionism”….

Miller has previously claimed that “Jews are not discriminated against” and are “over-represented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power”.

He's also been making a whole stream of antisemitic programmes for the Iranian propaganda station, Press TV. And UN Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has expressed her support, urging her followers to "StandWithMiller”. 

It's a disgrace, but it's not a surprise.