Politics and Culture
Bowing to Putin at the BRICS conference – and now…
The UN Secretary General @antonioguterres gets Community Noted … again, over Russia and Ukraine. How utterly embarrassing and self-created by this pathetic man of a so-called leader. pic.twitter.com/seOXVwmkjx
— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) October 27, 2024
Another from the Café Royal Books catalogue, with photographer Mark Campbell:
[Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Mark Campbell]
Ninth image, Arthur Scargill and "Thatcher", to remind us of those grim times. Further down, legendary steeplejack Fred Dibnah. Second from bottom, "Self-portrait, site of the City General Hospital".
A brief history lesson from Jake Wallis Simons at Spiked:
People often forget that Judaism is two millennia older than Islam and 1,500 years older than Christianity. Israel was the cradle of Jewish civilisation. At least a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ, Jerusalem’s most famous Jew, King David, made the city the capital of the Land of Israel. It has been home to greater or lesser numbers of Jews – the very word ‘Jew’ is a shortening of Judea, the ancient kingdom radiating from Jerusalem in the Iron Age – in Jerusalem ever since.
Culturally, Jews have always intertwined their identity with the land of Israel, particularly since they were exiled to Babylon around 598 BC, when their powerful yearning for return took hold. For millennia, Jews in the diaspora have prayed facing towards the Holy City, exclaimed ‘next year in Jerusalem’ at Passover, mourned the destruction of the Temple by breaking a glass at weddings, longed to be buried there, prayed at the remaining walls of the destroyed Temple, and visited on pilgrimage. Many throughout history have taken the step of uprooting their families and returning to their homeland. All these practices continue to this day….
Writing in the Jewish Chronicle in 1896, Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Israel, laid out the concept of Zionism. ‘I am introducing no new idea’, he pointed out. ‘On the contrary, it is a very old one. It is a universal idea – and therein lies its power – old as the people, which never, even in the time of bitterest calamity, ceased to cherish it. This is the restoration of the Jewish State.’ He added: ‘It is remarkable that we Jews should have dreamt this kingly dream all through the long night of our history. Now day is dawning. We need only rub the sleep out of our eyes, stretch our limbs, and convert the dream into a reality.’…
The Holocaust deepened the case for a Jewish state, which would be able to stand its own army and fulfil the pledge of ‘never again’. In the manner of an indigenous people revolting against the British Empire – and sharing a common struggle with other colonised nations groaning under the imperial jackboot – Jewish guerrillas mounted an armed campaign against the British to push them out of Palestine. As had become the norm across the Middle East and Europe, in 1947, the UN agreed to partition the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian one, with borders traced around ethnic-majority areas (the vilayets of Jordan had been parcelled up and placed under Hashemite rule a year before). Under the terms of this two-state solution, Israel would comprise 56 per cent of the land, while the Palestinians would occupy 43 per cent. The populations would be mixed, with half-a-million Arabs on the Israeli side, and 10,000 Jews living in the State of Palestine. Israel’s neighbours reacted with dismay; they had harboured their own lust to annex the territory. On 14 May 1948, eight hours before British rule officially ended, in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on Rothschild Boulevard, David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, got to his feet and proclaimed Israel’s independence. Forty-four years after Herzl’s death, his prediction had come true.
The Jewish side had accepted the UN partition plan. After all, to the north, the Syrians and Lebanese had likewise agreed to be partitioned, despite much grumbling from the Alawites and Druze. But the Palestinians – led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, who had collaborated closely with the Third Reich during the war and relished the idea of exterminating the Jews – rejected any treaty that involved the establishment of a Jewish state. Just hours after Ben-Gurion’s speech, following Husseini’s lead, the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria attacked the fledgling Jewish country. ‘This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre’, announced Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, secretary-general of the Arab League, ‘which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades’. The Mufti called for jihad, crying: ‘Murder the Jews! Murder them all!’ Ironically, as the scholar Joseph Spoerl has pointed out, ‘the plan for ethnic cleansing in Palestine in 1947-8 was an Arab plan, not a Zionist one’.
The cry of "Murder the Jews!" has echoed down ever since across te Islamic Middle East, in Tehran, and in the Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. And now, in chants like "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", it's spread to the West, in the endless demonstrations through our cities, and across university campuses.
Palestinian dispossession has become one of the world’s best-known historic injustices. In that same period, millions of other people were driven across borders in Europe and Asia, amid the same post-colonial turmoil, in more violent circumstances, their homes seized, their relatives killed, their cultures lost and their families fragmented. Yet their stories have been buried by history.
Who laments the plight of the Greek Orthodox Christians, or the Indian Hindus and Sikhs, or the Armenians, or the Irish refugees created after the bloody British partition of 1921, or the 12million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe on Churchill’s instigation after the Second World War? Or the Jews of the Middle East, for that matter?
That’s not to say that Israel’s sins must not be condemned, or that the Palestinian injustice should be forgotten. It’s simply a question of exposing demonisation. And no nation it seems is more singled out and demonised than Israel.
The Mayor of Chicago is fully capable of acknowledging hate crimes—just not the ones against Jews. pic.twitter.com/gqhYYq5R7T
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 30, 2024
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From Jerry Coyne:
A random shoot-out: In Chicago, a West African migrant went to a Jewish neighborhood and shot a Jewish man on his way to a synagogue—while screaming “Allahu Akbar.” He then ran around shooting anyone he could find near the synagogue until police came. It’s all captured on video, even the Allahu Akbar part. But here’s how the Chicago Tribune covered it:
Self-confessed conservative Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times today: yes, he'll vote for Harris, but…
The mail-in ballot has been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks. I keep putting it in the unpaid bill pile, because it evokes the same instant response. Long ago, I made the decision to vote for anyone but Donald Trump in this election, and now I find myself putting it off.
I regard him as unstable, unhinged, a man who violated the most basic norm of democracy — the peaceful transfer of power. And yet, eight years after he lumbered ominously into view, his appeal still lingers. It may even be peaking.
It may seem incomprehensible to many, but it is simply a matter of fact that this absurd man has dominated American politics and culture for nearly a decade, is more favourably viewed than ever, has survived two impeachments, multiple damning lawsuits, two assassination attempts and is now within spitting distance of the most astonishing comeback in American political history.
It is, in part, his demagogic genius. Say what you want, but he has campaigned with relentlessness, drama and gusto. The energy of this nearly 80-year-old may be a function of his mental illness, but it’s still impressive. His campaign has seen him in classic American imagery: glowering in court; having an assassin’s bullet graze his ear and somehow miss him; a peerless photo-op in an apron at a McDonald’s; a vast spectacle in Madison Square Garden; and a series of crystal-clear promises: Deport The Illegals; Cut Your Taxes; End the Wars.
For a clue as to why so many Americans are voting Trump:
Culturally, the Biden administration went full on in imposing a new regime of wokeness. They hired on the basis of race and sex — from the cabinet to every single department; they replaced biological sex with subjective gender, allowing boys to compete with girls in sports and children to undergo irreversible sex reassignment even before they had experienced puberty (even though they have stated such surgery should be reserved for adults). They saw all Latinos as a single, liberal racial bloc (and called them Latinx for trans inclusion!), and gays and trans as a single “queer” entity. And they regarded any opposition to these leftist moves as proof of bigotry. As woke leftists trashed the reputation of higher education in America, and veered into violence and grotesque antisemitism, the Biden administration seemed helpless….
Then Biden decided to run again in 2024 and no one around him stopped him — even as they knew he was incapable of governing for four more years. So the Dems had no real primary, no contest to find a tested younger leader, looked deceptive and corrupt, and crashed and burnt this summer, nominating a mediocre party hack who had the worst vice-presidential approval ratings in history. If the Democrats had tried their hardest to re-elect Trump, it is hard to see how they could have done any better.
Harris started strong, shutting down any internal opposition, putting on an impressive convention, and giving a superb speech and sharp debate. And then she stalled. She had nothing, it seemed, to say. Her inability or refusal to answer simple questions in plain English became cringe-worthy. Before July, almost every Democrat and legacy media institution knew she was a non-starter, a terrible campaigner, and a dreadful manager. Then they willed themselves into disbelieving it. But denial became hard to sustain when you’re looking at Harris’s slow car crash.
For me, the last straw was her CNN town hall. After a day off to prep, she still could not tell us what her first Congressional priority would be, what policies of the last four years she would change, how she would prevent illegal immigration, and why she was now in favour of building the wall she once called “stupid, useless, and a medieval vanity project”.
When asked to name a weakness she had that she might overcome, she went full David Brent: “I mean, I’ve … I’ve made many mistakes. And they range from, you know, if you’ve ever parented a child you know you make lots of mistakes to, in my role as vice-president? I mean, I’ve probably worked very hard at making sure that I am well-versed on issues and I think that is very important. It’s a mistake not to be well-versed on an issue and feel compelled to answer a question.”
The entire event was a disaster: a near parody of why normal people hate the way politicians talk. Every answer seemed to be a form of damage control. And her body language … Well, it is not reassuring to think a person who cannot crisply answer a straight question will have to make split-second life-and-death decisions as president. She seemed like a party functionary — maybe a decent low-level cabinet member. But president? Sorry, but it didn’t and doesn’t add up. Most honest Democrats I know feel the same way.
But yes…she's still preferable to Trump.
Whoever wins, this new world will endure. If Harris pulls out a win, we’ll see a more gradual shift. If Trump wins, the ride could get very bumpy, and he could push America’s fraying social fabric and its constitutional stability to the edge. He is utterly reckless, and now he has no guardrails at all. I’m a conservative, and for me, the risk of destabilising the rule of law, the legitimacy of elections, and the peaceful transfer of power is what will make me hold my nose and vote Harris. Some risks are not worth taking.
If Harris flames out in office, America will survive. If Trump goes down with a fight in his final term, the fragile forces holding the republic together could collapse entirely. He delegitimises everything. And what he hasn’t delegitimised has been winnowed into fact-free chaos on social media. And if it comes to choosing between the resilience of the American republic or his own narrow, temporary self-interest and ego, Trump will not hesitate to sacrifice the republic. That’s who he is. That’s why I and others will never bend the knee.
But I’m also a realist. And it may be way past the time to stop any of that.
Wish us Americans luck this week. We truly are going to need it.
Be prepared to have your pronouns ready – it's the new-look Scouts.
The Scouts have been encouraged to use gender-neutral language and to drop the terms “mum and dad”.
Members have been encouraged to guide children through a card game called “Pronoun Pairs”, which has been devised as a way of teaching them about gender identity.
The game uses the character of “Billy the Butterfly” who is “non-binary” to introduce LGBTQI+ concepts to children.
The game, which has been branded “indoctrination” by critics, coaches youngsters to use gender-neutral pronouns, and a post-game reflection led by older Scouts suggests other ways in which language could be altered.
This suggests “using ‘sibling’ rather than ‘brother or sister’, ‘everyone’ instead of ‘ladies and gentlemen’ or ‘boys and girls’”.
It adds: “You could use ‘parent’, ‘carer’ or ‘grown-up’ rather than ‘mum and dad’.”
Children are encouraged to use pronouns like “ze/zir” and “they/them” instead of gendered pronouns.
Young Scouts are also taught what to do if they “misgender” someone by using the wrong pronouns, with guidance for the game starting: “It’s important to acknowledge your mistake by apologising and correcting yourself.”
A guide to the Pronoun Pairs game, on the Scouts website, advises adults: “By taking part in this activity and learning about pronouns, we can celebrate the inclusion and diversity we’re so proud of. “
The game itself is played by turning over cards which depict Sam the dog, who uses “he/him” pronouns, Leslie the ladybird, who uses “she/her” pronouns, and non-binary Billy, who uses “they/them” pronouns.
When the cards are turned, children must form a sentence about the character in question using their preferred pronouns, with an example given for Billy as “they ate a sandwich”.
Or, perhaps, "they can fuck right off".
Here we are – Pronoun Pairs:
Learn about pronouns, gender neutral language, and what to do if you misgender someone in this quick card matching game.
To show respect for people, we need to use the pronouns that they feel most comfortable with. By respecting someone’s pronouns, we make feel people included and remind people that they’re loved and accepted for who they are. We can also show support to the LGBTQ+ community by being non-judgemental, avoiding assumptions, being accepting of everyone, challenging language misuse, and reporting any homophobic or transphobic bullying to an adult.
Next to the lovely new Pride-friendly Scouts Logo:
Over the summer, I went to the very North of the Isle of Lewis on a field trip to map the geology there with a close friend of mine. The google street view car went past. We had a geological hammer. The following masterpiece, now on google street view, was the result pic.twitter.com/NIBPnxuIl5
— Gideon Futerman (@GFuterman) October 29, 2024
Two buildings housing Jewish charities in North London were vandalized with red paint overnight.
It’s already bad enough when protesters target Jewish businesses; now they’re even attacking charities?
How does that help the Palestinian cause? pic.twitter.com/jQPyslG10G
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) November 2, 2024
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Nothing to do with Palestine, of course: this is straight up antisemitism – with a hint of Kristallnacht for good measure.
Janice Turner, in the Times, on the Darlington nurses and the Unison leader:
On Wednesday Lisa Lockey cancelled her Unison membership. Starting as a teenage trainee nurse, she’d paid her union dues (latterly £11.50 a month) out of her modest salary for 33 years. But a public statement by the Unison president Steve North gave her no choice but to quit.
Lockey, 51, is one of five Darlington nurses in dispute with their NHS trust over its policy of allowing a trans-identified male colleague to use female changing rooms. When the health secretary, Wes Streeting, heard they were suing for sexual harassment and sex discrimination he was “horrified” and offered to meet them. Last week they travelled to London where he heard their concerns, including those of a nurse who has PTSD after being sexually abused as a child.
This meeting incensed North. It was “deeply concerning”, he tweeted, “that Wes Streeting appears to be once again pandering to anti-trans bigotry”. Three quarters of the workers North represents are female, yet here he castigates a Labour minister for listening to women, including some of his own members.
After reporting this debate for seven years, I’d begun to think the case for female spaces was made. (Even Labour gives it lip service now.) But the Darlington nurses reveal how disdain for women’s rights is hard-baked into our public institutions. Whether you are a nurse, supermarket worker, cleaner or policewoman, your employer can deny you privacy, safety and dignity — and your union may not just fail to defend you, but side with your boss.
None of the Darlington nurses had a view on the “trans debate” until last August: they were too busy caring for patients or their own families. Then a male theatre nurse who calls himself Rose began using the female facilities where they change before and after a shift. Rose has not transitioned. He wears men’s clothes and apart from long hair he presents wholly as male, nor, say his colleagues, does he take hormones because he and his girlfriend are trying to conceive. Parading around in boxer shorts, staring at nurses in their bras and asking one woman repeatedly “are you going to get undressed yet?”, Rose made nurses feel so uncomfortable some started changing in the disabled toilet.
But when they complained to management they learnt that the policy of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is that trans staff can self-identity into any changing room they choose. The women were offered a small office in which to change and keep their clothes (initially on the floor) but it has no loos or showers and opens straight on to a corridor so, as Lockey puts it, “if you’re not careful, everyone gets an eyeful”.
This policy is pure Stonewall playbook, part of the trans “toolkit” of measures it has long insisted every institution or company adopts, especially the rule that it is unhappy women who must be banished from their own facilities rather than — as the nurses have requested — a dignified third space being found for a trans person.
When the nurses lodged their complaint, Lockey contacted Unison for advice but received no answer. Other women were members of the Royal College of Nursing which sent a rep to a meeting with HR, but only as an observer. Around 25 nurses attended, some coming in from days off, but their worries were wafted away by an HR official who said she’d gladly change with men as she was “ex-forces”. The nurses, including the sexual abuse survivor, were told to “broaden their outlook”.
Snubbed by their unions, the women formed their own group, the Darlington Nursing Union, both to organise for their pending legal action and to demand private facilities for women in all professions. With such contempt for female members, it’s little wonder the trade union movement is haemorrhaging women, with 83,000 leaving last year alone.
After Steve North’s outburst I called Unison. Will it defend women members compelled by management to undress with trans-identifying males? “The union is not involved in the [Darlington] case,” said a statement, “and it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to comment.” A cowardly swerve. The truth is its policy states “trans people are entitled to use single-sex facilities in accordance with their gender identity”. So why won’t Unison defend it?
An official told me, with some exasperation, that North was “elected by a very small group of activists, whose views don’t reflect those of the wider membership”. No kidding. The Darlington nurses, like most members, loyally paid their subs but rarely attended meetings, let alone drafted motions or stood as conference delegates. It is activists, with the most extreme ideological agenda, who formulate policy. “And the first thing we knew about it,” Lockey says, “is when it smacked us in the face.”
Since trans self-ID became a hot issue, debate within unions has been stifled. Feminists arguing it impinges on women’s rights were vilified and censured. At the Scottish Labour conference in February, the GMB, Unite and Unison all refused to support a motion acknowledging the “principle of women’s sex-based rights”. Even a trans woman, Debbie Hayton, was driven from office in the NASUWT for holding gender-critical views.
The phrase "union dinosaurs" comes to mind. The battling trade unions of old, campaigning against the excesses of a rampant Victorian capitalism, have long since atrophied into stale depositories of a parody "working class" male entitlement.
Just when you think the gender war is over, women have to battle for the most basic right: to undress in their workplace without being watched by a man.
I've already posted about North Korea's deteriorating relations with China as its Russian links grow ever stronger – first with the Chinese expelling North Korean garment factory workers, and then with the North Koreans seizing and firing on Chinese fishing boats. Now the BBC's Laura Bicker reports from a border town in China overlooking their troublesome neighbour:
“China seeks a relationship with a reasonable, high level of control over North Korea,” says Christopher Green, an analyst from the International Crisis Group. “And North Korea’s relationship with Russia threatens to undermine that.”
If Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unable shape the Putin-Kim alliance to suit his interests, China may well remain stuck in the middle as western anger and anxiety grows…
It increasingly appears as though China’s allies are spiralling out of its control. Beijing, the senior partner in the triad, seeks to be the stable leader of a new world order, one that is not led by the US. But that’s difficult to do when one ally has started a war in Europe, and another is accused of aiding the invasion. “China is unhappy with the way things are going,” Mr Green says, “but they are trying to keep their discontent relatively quiet.” It’s certainly a sensitive topic for Beijing, judging by the response to our presence in the border town, where it seems tourists are welcome – but journalists are not. We were in public areas at all times, and yet the team was stopped, repeatedly questioned, followed and our footage deleted….
“Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea hasn’t really had any choice but to maintain good relations with China, which has been its sole benefactor,” Mr Green says.
But now, he adds, Russia “is offering an alternative and the North Koreans are seeking to exploit that”…
“For a very long time, China has had a policy of three nos in Northeast Asia – one of those nos was a no nuclear North Korea. Obviously that has been a failure,” Mr Green says.
Now Beijing fears that the alliance with Russia could destabilise North Korea, he adds: “That could even benefit Vladimir Putin in a way it really would not benefit Xi Jinping.”
Experts say Beijing is just as worried as the West about what military technology Putin might sell to Kim in exchange for troops.
“Satellites, for sure,” Mr [Aidan] Foster-Carter says. “But Putin is bad – not mad. Russia knows just as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving [Kim] more technology for nukes is not a good thing for anybody.”
That seems overly optimistic to me. Putin is desperate – he must be to rely so heavily on North Korea for arms and soldiers – and Kim is in a strong position to demand the latest Russian nuclear technology. Why else send 10,000 of his elite troops to Ukraine? And what does Putin care, anyway? He may not be clinically insane, but with the Ukraine invasion and his increasingly demented pseudo-historical fantasy justifications for the slaughter he's unleashed, he's clearly deranged.
But Kim too might have a decision to make.
Although Russia is paying for shells and troops, Mr Foster-Carter says, it is China that "has actually kept North Korea going all this time, often through gritted teeth. I just wonder at what point Beijing will turn on Pyongyang?”.
Yes – as I said, snubbing China in favour of Putin's Russia could well be a move Kim will come to regret.
Mick Hartley 