Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Non-socialist hairstyles

    From the Daily NK:

    North Korea’s youth league chapter in Chongjin, North Hamgyong province, recently held a struggle session targeting young people with unauthorized hairstyles, Daily NK has learned.

    “The state permits ten hairstyles for men and 18 for women. After some youth began adopting non-socialist hairstyles in violation of these rules, the Chongjin chapter of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League conducted an ideological struggle session late last month to criticize the offenders,” a source in the province told Daily NK recently.

    Following orders from youth league headquarters to crack down on unauthorized hairstyles, the Chongjin chapter deployed monitoring teams to patrol main streets and university areas. Monitors targeted young people with permed hair or cuts longer or shorter than state regulations allow.

    While those with influential parents typically received warnings, the crackdown affected many young people, particularly university students, the source said.

    The Chongjin youth league responded by convening a closed-door ideological struggle session with committee chairs from all city organizations and universities. The meeting focused on strengthening rule compliance, collective control, and ideological guidance, while harshly criticizing liberal tendencies among youth.

    Offenders faced public criticism during the meeting and were accused of having loose morals. Two students who showed defiance when caught were notified of their expulsion from university.

    The expulsions sparked frustration among young people. “Do they really deserve such harsh punishment for a hairstyle when they didn’t say anything politically questionable? It’s suffocating how the government tries to control every detail of our lives,” one person reportedly said.

    Many youth argued that expelling students for minor hairstyle variations—not even involving hair dye—would only increase resentment toward the regime.

    “Many young people and their parents are saying these crackdowns are driving their disillusionment with society and desire to defect. They believe they could have a better life if they could only escape without being caught,” the source said.

    I do believe they could.

  • Turkey and the Kurds

    Matt Broomfield at UnHerd – Will Erdoğan crush the Syrian Kurds?

    Syria’s two million Kurds have every reason to loathe Bashar al-Assad. His Baathist regime long repressed their identity, and there are many Kurdish activists among the countless people emerging, dazed and stumbling, from the dictatorship’s dungeons. But even as Kurds danced and toppled statues, the shadow of further violence cast a pall across the celebrations, especially now their bête noire Turkey is emerging as the dominant foreign power in a new Syria.

    With Russian forces withdrawing in disarray, Washington wrong-footed, and Tehran neutered by Israel, Erdoğan appears the main winner from the extraordinary developments in Syria. Turkey’s own objectives in Syria are clear enough: liquidating the Kurdish presence on its border by establishing a 20-mile deep corridor of Turkish influence. In fact, it was reportedly Assad’s refusal to capitulate to this proposed violation of Syrian sovereignty which led Ankara to give an implicit green light to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s military operation. Aleppo, the first city to fall to HTS’s blitzkrieg advance, was a former jewel in the Ottoman Empire’s crown. After its capture, the Turkish flag flew from the Aleppo citadel once more….

    Beyond the Baath Party’s Arabist sentiments encouraging a dismissive view of Kurds, Assad likely felt able to ignore his country’s Kurds for other reasons. When compared with the Kurdish homelands in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, the arid badlands of Syrian Kurdistan were long dismissed as poor and undynamic. Yet the Kurds, bolstered by returning militants, battle-hardened during a dogged guerrilla war against Turkey, proved the only local force capable of defeating Islamic State. Along the way, they saved the Yazidis from genocide, and forged unexpected tactical partnerships with both Americans and local Arabs. As they drove Isis out of its former strongholds, including its erstwhile capital Raqqa, the Kurds helped forge a fragile multi-ethnic alliance alongside Arab Muslims, Yazidis, Christians, and other minorities. Known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), this alliance has since faced existential threats. That includes a deadly Islamic State insurgency; sporadic battles against Assad; and successive military occupations launched by Turkey — with Ankara bitterly opposed to the project in Kurdish-led autonomy on its southern border.

    The situation now looks grim, with the Turks clearly determined to capitalise on their new-found leverage over the border in Syria.

    At the time of writing, Turkey’s proxy militias are advancing on Kobanî, the Syrian Kurdish city where the Kurds first turned the tide against Isis in 2014, launching their partnership with the US and UK. But 10 years on, with bands of Turkish-armed Islamists once again appearing over the horizon and swearing vengeance on the Kurds, their nominal Western allies are nowhere to be seen.

    Surprisingly, Broomfield doesn't mention Israel, the Kurds long-time – and only – ally in the region. The Israeli foreign minister has said that attacks on Kurds “must stop”. Where the US and UK seem unlikely to offer much of anything, the Israelis have shown they're made of sterner stuff. They have to be made of sterner stuff. Their determination to finish off Hamas and severely weaken Hezbollah – despite the bleatings of their Western allies that they should just stop, lie back, and take it – seems for the moment to be paying off spectactularly. But….are they prepared to take on Erdogan?

  • Captagon stash

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    Full text:

    Approximately 80% of this drug is manufactured in Syria and exported across the Middle East, serving as a major revenue source for the Assad regime, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

    Captagon is widely used by ISIS terrorists, and many Hamas fighters were found in possession of it and reportedly used it during the October 7th attacks.

    The Nazis relied on a similar drug during the Holocaust to fuel their atrocities.

    Often called the “cocaine for the poor,” this stimulant enables terrorists to commit horrific acts with a disturbing sense of calm and indifference while remaining highly alert for long periods.

    The Jerusalem Post, soon after Oct 7th, reported that many of the Hamas attackers were found to be under the influence of Captagon, with pills recovered from the pockets of those killed.

  • On cousin marriages.

    A couple of weeks back we had Labour MP Tahir Ali calling for a law to "prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of Abrahamic religions". Now it's cousin marriages – in defence of – from MP Iqbal Mohamed:

    An independent MP elected on a pro-Gaza stance has spoken against a proposed bill to ban first-cousin marriage in the UK.

    Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Dewsbury and Batley MP Iqbal Mohamed told the Commons that while he accepted that there were “health risks with first cousin marriage”, he didn’t think it was right to “empower the state to ban adults from marrying each other not least because I don't think it would be effective or enforceable”.

    He added: “The reason the practice is so common is that ordinary people see family inter-marriage overall as something that is very positive, something that helps build family bonds and helps put families on a more secure financial foothold.”…

    The bill was proposed by former Conservative Party chair Richard Holden, who told MPs that first-cousin marriage was particularly prominent among Irish traveller and British Pakistani communities.

    “Cousin marriage has no place in Britain. The medical evidence is overwhelming. It significantly increases the risk of birth defects,” the MP for Newark said.

    He added: “The moral case is clear. We see hundreds of exploitative marriages that ruin lives. Frankly, it should have been stamped out a long time ago.”

    “The consequences of extreme intergenerational cousin marriage within the Hapsburg monarchy of Spain eventually led to the demise of the house itself and the war of Spanish Succession”, the MP for Basildon and Billericay said, adding: “Today the health risks are explicable in granular scientific detail” and spoke of the increased risk of the children of first cousins in getting severe illnesses.

    Earlier in the day, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick had urged the government to back Holden’s bill and called the practice “medieval”.

    My post from a couple of months back:

    Pakistan is the country with the highest rate of consanguineous marriages, and the practice has come over here with immigration. A 2005 report, commissioned by MP Ann Cryer, revealed that the Pakistani community accounted for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide. From that same period Dr Peter Corry, Consultant Paediatrician at Bradford Royal Infirmary, said his hospital saw so many recessive genetic illnesses that it had became a centre of excellence for the treatment of some of them. They'd identified about 140 different autosomal recessive disorders among local children: he estimated that a typical district would see 20 to 30.

    It's not just the overwhelming medical evidence. The practice has been banned across Scandinavia chiefly because of the coercion:

    The Swedish minister of justice, Gunnar Strömmer, correctly argues that a ban could help combat marriages entered into under pressure or coercion. Cousin marriages are frequently arranged or forced. In some cases, refusing to go through with the marriage can result in violence or even so-called honour killings. By banning cousin marriages, the Swedish government aims to break the cycle of coercion and control rooted in these practices.

  • In Sydney

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    "The attack took place in Woollahra, a suburb with a large Jewish population just outside Sydney."

  • Reporting and not reporting on Syria

    The Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES) is under assault from Turkish-backed extremists – but no one's interested.

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    More:

    Manbij was the site of a long tough battle against ISIS by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Yet, now it has been handed over to Ankara-backed extremists who have a long track record of massacring people, kidnapping and extrajudicial murders, especially targeting women and minorities.

    Ankara is attacking areas around Kobani, another site of a major battle against ISIS. Basically Ankara is seeking to move thuggish extremist groups that are similar to ISIS into areas ISIS used to control, in order to ethnically cleanse them. Ankara already did this in Afrin and then forced the IDFs from Afrin to flee again.

    However, all these invasions and attacks and displacement don't even seem to get one headline.

    Added: headline now in the Telegraph – Turkish-backed fighters attack Kurds in Syria.

    Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed on Tuesday never to allow Syria to be divided again, which could be seen as a threat towards the Kurdish-led autonomous Rojava region in the north east of the country.

    Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, on Tuesday said that attacks on Kurds “must stop”.

    “There must be a commitment and actions by the international community to protect the Kurds, who fought bravely against ISIS,” he added.

  • In the toilets with the Gender Liberation Movement

    Republican politician Nancy Mace has been resolute in her determination to ensure that women’s toilet facilities on Capitol Hill are restricted to women only. Naturally, being where we are with trans appeasement, there's been much opposition – including, last week, a typically masculine-style demonstration from the Gender Liberation Movement, who stormed the women’s bathrooms.

    Jo Bartosch at Spiked:

    In a somewhat masculine territorial takeover, the activists filmed themselves dancing around the sinks and leaning out of cubicles, while others stood behind banners reading ‘Congress, stop pissing on our rights’ and ‘Flush bathroom bigotry’. The stunt was apparently planned to make the point that men ought to be allowed to use the women’s toilets if they feel like it. It seems, however, that Capitol police did not look favourably on the lavatory invaders and promptly arrested them.

    At the heart of this toilet tantrum is a bill introduced by newly elected South Carolina representative Nancy Mace to ensure that women’s toilet facilities on Capitol Hill are restricted to women only. Representative Sarah McBride, a man who identifies as a woman, grudgingly accepted this rule. Predictably this sparked the ire of fellow trans activists, some of whom now regard McBride as a traitor. Chants at Thursday’s Capitol Hill protests included ‘Democrats, grow a spine, trans lives are on the line’, perhaps signalling that they consider the Republicans a lost cause.

    But while the mewling trans activists might claim to be shattering gender stereotypes, it’s Mace who truly defies expectations. A Republican and a feminist, this bravely ebullient woman is authentic in a way her detractors can only dream of being. After telling a reporter that she had experienced rape and domestic abuse, Mace explained:

    ‘I have PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of a man, and I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces… so I’m absolutely, 100 per cent going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, [or] in our changing rooms.’

    Yet oddly, despite sharing her own traumatic experiences, Mace has not received so much as a sympathetic head-tilt from the #BeKind brigade. When confronted with a genuinely strong woman, a politician who refuses to be cowed, trans activists piss their frilly pants. Unused to being told ‘no’, they are left making spurious claims about why their lives are at risk if their identities aren’t validated.

    One of the Gender Liberation Movement bathroom protesters, Hope Giselle-Godsey, told Gaye magazine, ‘It always starts with things that people feel are insignificant, like public restrooms, but it never stops there’. Indeed. Over the past decade trans activists have claimed they ‘just want to pee’ in the ladies’ lavatories. Yet, it hasn’t stopped there. Across the US rapists are now routinely imprisoned with women, girls are losing out on sporting scholarships and children are being sterilised, all thanks to trans activists.

    Reducing the threat from trans ideology to a battle about bathrooms is a sneaky tactic that trivialises women’s fears about safety and loss of dignity. The sly insinuation that women who don’t want to share their space are hysterical and petty is straight from the ‘How to be a misogynist’ handbook. This is why Mace’s approach has been so refreshing. She has refused to be shamed and hasn’t stopped at the bathrooms in her Washington workplace – she is now fighting for men to be removed from women’s prisons.

  • A grave risk to Syrian Christians

    A letter in the Tmes this morning, from Dr Martin Parsons, Chief executive of the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution:

    Sir, The seizure of much of Syria by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) presents a grave risk to Syrian Christians. HTS, like many jihadist groups, has learnt to say one thing to western audiences and another to its supporters. Its origins lie in al-Qaeda, while as the al-Nusra Front it was implicated in the 2013 disappearance of two Syrian bishops, which marked the beginning of large-scale abductions and murder of Syrian Christians.

    A careful reading of HTS’s statements on minorities reveals that they are consistent with imposing dhimmi status, similar to that which Islamic State forced on Christians in the Syrian city of Qaryatayn in 2015. This is a non-citizen status whereby non-Muslims are allowed to live under sharia subject to keeping a strict set of rules, including payment of jizya (a tax historically levied on non-Muslim subjects of Islamic states). Any perceived breach renders the dhimmi an outlaw who any Muslim may kill with impunity.

  • A disaster for Barack Obama

    A reminder from Azeem Ibrahim of Obama's inglorious part in the Assad story:

    Over 600,000 people have died in the war, millions have been displaced, and thousands perished trying to escape. The war also resulted in the birth of Isis, in a severe blow to global security. While responsibility for these tragedies lie squarely at the feet of Assad’s regime, they also reflect the failure of Western powers – chiefly former president Barack Obama – to act when it mattered most.

    In 2013, Assad’s forces used sarin gas in Ghouta, killing more than 1,000 civilians. Obama had declared that use of chemical weapons constituted a “red line”, promising severe consequences if crossed. Yet when the moment came, the response was a hollow diplomatic deal brokered by Russia. This agreement led to unreliable inspections of Assad’s chemical stockpiles, allowing the regime to continue its campaign of terror. The inaction shattered US credibility, emboldened Assad, and invited intervention by Russia and Iran.

    Russia’s military entered the Syrian civil war in 2015, targeting civilian areas – especially hospitals – with relentless air strikes, while Iran mobilised militias, including Hezbollah, to massacre opposition forces on the ground. These interventions, fuelled by the West’s perceived weakness, prolonged Assad’s survival. But as 2024 comes to an end, Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, and Iran’s militias have been degraded by Israeli actions. The Assad regime’s rapid collapse underscores what was always evident: it was fundamentally weak and could have been toppled a decade earlier.

    At that time, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) – a multi-ethnic opposition umbrella group – was ready to govern. Comprising defectors from the Syrian Arab Army and civil society leaders, it envisioned a pluralistic Syria. Assad’s forces were flailing, facing tough opposition in Aleppo, the Damascus suburbs, and Kurdish-majority areas. Isis had not yet risen, and Russia’s intervention was still years away. The SNC, bolstered by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), stood as a viable alternative to Assad’s rule.

    Targeted strikes on Assad’s chemical and aerial capabilities in 2013 could have changed the war’s trajectory. These actions, along with enforcing a no-fly zone, arming vetted FSA groups, and transferring Syria’s United Nations seat to the SNC, were achievable and could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But Obama’s hesitance allowed Assad to regroup, destroy opposition strongholds with chemical weapons, and set a precedent for atrocities that would define the war.

    The failure to act in 2013 also delayed US involvement until the full emergence of Isis in 2014, by which point the situation had deteriorated beyond recognition. Programmes like the American Train and Equip initiative came too late to counter Assad directly, focusing instead on combating Isis. Meanwhile, Assad and his allies entrenched their control through sieges, gas attacks, and forced evacuations – a strategy documented extensively by organisations like the Global Public Policy Institute.

    Assad’s desperation in 2013 was evident in his resort to chemical weapons, an act of both cruelty and weakness. Yet Obama’s failure to respond decisively emboldened the regime, providing space for Russia and Iran to assert dominance. By the time strikes on Assad’s chemical arsenal occurred in 2017 and 2018, they were too late to prevent the immense human and geopolitical toll of the war.

    Now, as Syria’s rebels take control, the regime’s hollow foundation is laid bare. Russia and Iran, once its lifelines, are preoccupied elsewhere. But this outcome could have been achieved years earlier, sparing countless lives and preserving much more of the fabric of Syrian society.

    The collapse of Assad’s regime is a stark reminder of the consequences of inaction. The Obama administration’s failure to enforce its red line in 2013 not only prolonged the war but also undermined US credibility. Syria’s tragedy is a testament to what happens when moral courage and strategic foresight are absent from international leadership.

    And now, while it's still early days and the fall of Bashar Assad's barbaric regime is of course very welcome and a body blow to Iran, we seem to be looking at a new Sunni jihadist regime in Syria, with all that that entails…

  • The reinforcement of gender stereotypes

    Connie Shaw was suspended from her show on Leeds student radio for her gender critical views. Well of course she was. Here she is in the Telegraph:

    My suspension from the student radio station did not exactly come as a shock. Someone had made a complaint about my “conduct”, I was told. An investigation had been launched. Why? Because outside of my work on the station, I had expressed gender-critical beliefs. My conduct online had apparently brought Leeds Student Radio (LSR) into disrepute.

    I am a feminist, I believe in gay rights and I am not transphobic (though the word has become so broad and ill-defined, it is now applied to anyone who deviates from an agreed viewpoint, or even dares to raise questions or concerns). I believe in free speech and open debate – the sort one would hope to find at a university. My experience in recent weeks has proven how sorely this is lacking.

    Originally an "inclusive" feminist, as all nice progressive feminists are supposed to be, she then started thinking for herself. Oh dear.

    “It’s strange,” I told a friend. “As feminists, we’re trying to move away from gender stereotypes. So why are we now reaffirming them, rather than teaching children that whatever body they have, they can do what they want?”

    Yep. That's it, in a nutshell.

    It occurred to me then that the concept of switching genders relied on the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. It was this that planted a seed of doubt in my mind….

    In September I launched my own podcast, but decided to keep it separate from LSR, where I was head of daytime radio, as I knew it would not go down well there.

    For my podcast, a personal side-project, I interviewed a prominent “detransitioner” called Charlie Bentley-Astor. I also interviewed Graham Linehan, the Irish comedy writer who has been widely criticised for his gender-critical beliefs. A post I wrote about my own gender-critical views was published on Linehan’s Substack on October 29.

    The storm broke the following day when I was informed by Leeds University Union (LUU) I had been suspended from LSR. A complaint had been made about my conduct and was being investigated. I wasn’t given much detail at that stage, only that the complaint related to my social media, Substack and media productions….

    I’ve received a mixed response from my peers. A guy I was close to told me his friends had advised him he should stop associating with me (despite him privately sharing my views). Others have confided to me that they secretly agree with me but would never tell anyone else. Messages I’ve received from students at other universities indicate the same culture of fear has spread across many academic institutions. I’ve had support from some academics at Leeds, who share some of my concerns.

    But there aren’t many other 20-year-old women saying what I am saying: that people can identify as whatever they like, but that policy should be on the basis of sex rather than gender; that men shouldn’t be able to enter female-only spaces just by saying they identify as female; that children who are most likely gay should not be encouraged to believe they have instead been born into the wrong body, and given puberty blockers.

    It particularly upsets me because I fear gender identity risks erasing what it means to be gay or lesbian. I am labelled transphobic and this erasure, in my opinion, is inherently homophobic….

    An LUU spokesman has said that “inclusivity is one of our core values, helping to ensure that everyone can enjoy their university experience, free from discrimination”. They say they can’t comment further, due to the ongoing appeal.

    In the meantime, I want to use what’s happened to me to highlight the lack of freedom of speech at universities. I hope to encourage students to have more open discussions and not to react with disgust at the idea someone might disagree with you.

    I want to break down the echo chambers I was once trapped in myself. In the future, I hope that when student bodies say they believe in free speech they really mean it.

    A brave voice in a sea of timid frightened conformists.