Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Proud to be a Terf

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  • The BBC trolling women

    Janice Turner in the Times has the last word on the BBC and its "100 women" list:

    Every year the BBC trolls women by sticking a token biological male in its “100 women” list. It just can’t help itself. Somewhere in the BBC charter must be a clause that women can’t have anything. Certainly not Woman’s Hour, on which Bethany Hutchinson, a Darlington NHS nurse campaigning for female-only showers, was recently grilled by Nuala McGovern like a war criminal. Nor a best woman footballer award, given to Barbra Banda, banned from the Africa Cup of Nations for having male levels of testosterone and who refuses to take a sex test.

    But the BBC 100 women 2024 list is a doozy. Among Gisèle Pelicot, a Nobel laureate and brave campaigners against violent suppression in Iran and Afghanistan is a 61-year-old who lived most of their life as a man, fathered two children, took the name Brigitte Baptiste (after the sex symbol Brigitte Bardot) and dresses as a grotesque parody of womanhood, slathered in make-up and wearing low-cut microscopic dresses. But then a “scientist” whose claim to fame is “looking at nature through a queer lens” and deciding Colombia’s national tree has a gender identity would never be fêted if they were a woman.

    Meanwhile Baroness Cass, whose report on child gender medicine has changed global policy, was omitted. The BBC putting Baptiste on its list is like Al Jolson winning a Mobo award.

  • Hosting Qatar

    Nicole Lampert in the JC – Why is our government hosting Qatar while threatening Israeli leaders with arrest?

    There have been so many incidents that have seemed upside down since October 7 that sometimes it is all too much to bear. The celebrations in the street on October 8, the way the BBC keeps parroting Hamas lies, the fact that the murder of Israelis led to record antisemitism in the UK, the Jew hate marching down our streets every weekend while the police watch on. I could go on.

    But few examples have been more stark, in my eyes, than what is happening this week.

    Yesterday I watched our Prime Minister tell a Labour Friends of Israel lunch that his government stands behind the ‘independence’ of the ICC to issue warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. That means – however much they are presently pussyfooting around the issue – our government will attempt to arrest the Israeli politicians should they step foot on UK soil.

    Meanwhile, just a day later, we are literally rolling out the red carpet for the leaders of Qatar, the nation which has for years, housed and funded Hamas….

    There is an irony too that of the many things Israel is accused of doing, Qatar gets away with barely a peep from the sanctimonious crew.

    Just a few years ago, it bought a World Cup, used slave labour to create the arenas and we stood by and let it happen. Controversial Qatari minister Nasser Al-Khelaifi – not only runs top French team Paris Saint Germain but is also chairman of the European Club Association, making him one of the most influential people in European football. Visit Qatar is an official sponsor of the UEFA Euros 2024 and 2028.

    And on greenwashing, how is a country which owes its huge wealth to being one of the largest exporters of liquefied natural gas being hosted by one of the most famous eco-warrior families in the world? Not even Just Stop Oil, the eco-militants who march with the Palestinian cause every weekend seem to be bothered by this visit – where are their protests?

    The country’s influential Al Jazeera news network has 70 bureaus and broadcasts a diet of anti-Western material to 150 countries with an audience of approximately 430 million people. This is a hostile voice – one that America and Israel had the good sense to close down.

    And where to start with their human rights record? Qatar is a country where you can be locked up for criticising the Emir, where hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have next to no rights, where women need the permission of a male guardian on whether she can marry, study or travel, and where gay people are jailed for their sexual orientation.

    There's some irony, I suppose, in the way that Qatar wields its financial clout so brazenly, in the way that Jews were traditionally supposed to. Money talks.

  • “The Western moral left-wing discourse is utterly and totally compromised”

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    "I submit to you that the Western moral left-wing discourse is utterly and totally compromised, and that it cannot actually challenge us, because it’s actually about something else—and we are figures in this narrative.”

  • The final piece in the puzzle of lies

    A smug young Iranian intellectual explains to his captive audience of one – silent, obsequious, hair covered: how they like their women in Iran – that the Holocaust was, in fact, impossible. It would have taken 68 years to kill them one by one in the gas ovens. [Hint: they didn't do it one by one.] All these Holocaust museums – "They throw a bunch of shoes in a room…". 

    From MEMRI TV:

    In a November 25, 2024 appearance on Channel 3 (Iran), Iranian researcher and author Mohammad-Taghi Zahedi described the Holocaust as a “fabrication,” claiming it was the "final piece in the puzzle of lies" designed to enable the Jews and Zionists to claim victimhood. He argued that the extermination of six million Jews would have taken 68 years, suggesting that the process of killing people one by one in gas chambers and transferring their remains to crematories would not have been feasible within the timeframe of the war. Zahedi further stated that there were fewer than six million Jews in Europe before World War II, claiming that the migration of Jews to Israel after the war disproved the notion that six million Jews were killed.

  • “Not only morally reprehensible but also in clear violation of the law”

    I was wondering what response might be forthcoming after the Oxford Union debacle. Today, from the Times:

    Hundreds of academics have written to Lord Hague of Richmond, the newly elected Oxford chancellor, saying that an Oxford Union debate which praised the October 7 attacks on Israel broke the law.

    Professor Sir Vernon Bogdanor, ­Baroness Deech and Professor Peter Hacker are among the signatories of an open letter to Hague, who was elected the new chancellor of Oxford University last week. Hague confirmed to The Times yesterday that he had ­reviewed the open letter and said he “shares the concerns of the signatories”.

    The union, which is independent from the university, debated the motion “This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide”.

    One speaker described the attack on Israel as “heroism” and the letter ­criticises the “inflammatory rhetoric, aggressive behaviour and intimidation” at the event last Thursday.

    Jonathan Sacerdoti, the opposing speaker and the son of a Holocaust survivor­, wrote a piece for The Spectator accusing the union of “disgracing ­itself” by giving voice to “the forces of bigotry, hatred and mob rule”. He said that the audience was an openly hostile “baying mob” that interrupted every pro-Israel speaker with jeers and abuse….

    The signatories said: “We unequivocally condemn the incendiary remarks made by some speakers in support of Hamas and terrorist violence. Such statements are not only morally reprehensible but also in clear violation of the law.”

    It ends by saying: “Let Thursday’s debate be a turning point. Let it serve as a reminder that while disagreement is inevitable in discussions of such gravity, the manner in which we engage is just as important as the ideas we share. Anything less is a betrayal of the university’s values and a disservice to its community.”

    The letter said that the debate was a “failure on all counts” and suggested that it subjected Jewish students to antisemitism and intimidation. It said: “Debate should challenge ideas, not debase and attack entire communities. Free speech is vital but it must be exercised responsibly and within the bounds of the law.”

    Hague said: “I have seen the open ­letter and, from what I have heard of last week’s debate … share the concerns of the signatories. When I take office as chancellor … I will do my utmost to ­encourage a culture of debate that will at times be fierce and strongly felt but should always be respectful and never intimidating.

    Well, good luck with that.

  • Lititz tracks

    Marjory Collins, November 1942. Lititz, Pennsylvania. "Tracks of the Lancaster-Reading Railroad. Two trains come through every day. In the distance is the local chocolate factory."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information]

  • Britain’s problem

    A characteristically vile piece from Owen Jones, fanning the flames of hatred:

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    Full text:

    While the Israel Hamas war has been a radicalising event that is not the fault of Jews or Israelis.

    It is the fault of Islamic extremists, far left extremists like him and the police and our leaders who seem to think it’s easier to let people come out with Jew hatred every week than confront it.

    This is Britain’s problem. The canary in the coalmine is sick: this poison has infected society.

    Added:

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    Full text:

    Imagine this headline: “Jihadist’s crimes in the Middle East make the killing of Muslims in the west all but inevitable.”

    The subtext is wanting to justify harm against Muslims in the west while deflecting responsibility onto Jihadists in a foreign land.

    Now reverse it, and you have Owen Jones justifying terrorist attacks & pogroms in the west and deflecting responsibility onto Israel.

    The most dangerous and woefully ignorant person on earth is one who believes they can rationalize fundamentalism. They believe jihadists need a humanitarian motivation, because they do not understand jihad.

    Ultimately, Jone’s logic can be easily dismissed as a counterfactual fallacy:

    “If we leave terrorists alone, we won’t experience terrorism.” When the reality is that if we leave terrorists alone, we (both in the west and the Middle East) will experience more terrorism.

    Understanding this requires understanding the psychology and philosophy of jihadists. But according to Jones, who has no familiarity, ties, experience, or connection to the Middle East:

    Leave Al Qaeda alone
    Leave ISIS alone
    Leave Hamas alone
    Leave Hezbollah alone
    Leave Houthis alone

    Then we will definitely all be fine.

  • Autumn end

    Hampstead Heath this morning. Leaves almost gone; just the bare trees.

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  • 99 inspiring women and a bloke

    Joan Smith at UnHerd on that BBC’s 100 Women list with only 99 women:

    You’ve probably never heard of Brigitte Baptiste, but the BBC certainly has. As the corporation proved last year, no list of women is complete these days without at least one man, and Baptiste ticks all the right boxes. The self-styled “queer ecologist” is on the corporation’s list of “100 inspiring women”, appearing beside Nadia Murad and Gisèle Pelicot. Both women are survivors of the worst examples of male violence, but the BBC evidently has no qualms about placing them on a par with a trans-identified male.

    No single-sex spaces here: two of the world’s bravest rape survivors have to rub shoulders with a man who denies the most fundamental tenets of biology. First, and most obviously, Baptiste believes that human beings can change sex. Now 61, he was called Luis Guillermo until the age of 35, when he “transitioned” and took the first name Brigitte after Brigitte Bardot. Choosing the name of the Sixties icon speaks volumes, and it should come as no surprise that Baptiste has turned himself into a hyper-sexualised caricature of a woman….

    His views on “green capitalism” — that the free market has a role to play in sustainable development — are contested. But his views on “queer biodiversity” get a free pass in an atmosphere where “queering” anything and everything, from Roman emperors to beetles, is met with uncritical applause. “There’s nothing more queer than nature,” he has said.

    This brand of gobbledegook was evidently music to the ears of the people at the BBC tasked with identifying the year’s most inspirational women. It doesn’t seems to have occurred to them that it’s an insult to survivors of sexual violence to nominate them alongside someone so committed to gender ideology that he once claimed scientists had discovered a “transsexual” palm tree.

    When Nadia Murad was abducted by Islamic State in Iraq, she couldn’t “identify” as a man and escape being repeatedly raped. In France, Gisèle Pelicot’s vile husband invited men to rape his drugged wife, not someone who had decided to identify as a woman. Biological sex is central to the experiences of these heroic women, as it is to every woman who has been raped or sexually assaulted. Theories about an innate “gender identity” ignore such inconvenient facts, brushing them aside in favour of impractically idealistic notions about someone’s “inner feelings”.

    You would think that the BBC, currently embroiled in yet another scandal about alleged bad behaviour by a male presenter, would understand the importance of sex by now. But its annual list of “99 inspiring women and a bloke” suggests otherwise.

    Having regularly included a man in their annual 100 women list, it seems to have settled into a BBC tradition. If they didn't, people might start asking questions….has the Beeb gone transphobic now?