Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Targeting the IRGC

  • Propriety and ethics

    The Civil Service looks after its own. From the Times:

    The Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team broke into a safe and destroyed the department’s copy of a historic bullying investigation into the new head of the civil service.

    In 2022 Darren Tierney, the then director-general of the government standards watchdog, asked maintenance staff to force open the vault. He later said he had wanted access to a confidential report about Dame Antonia Romeo, who Sir Keir Starmer appointed as cabinet secretary last week. The Cabinet Office said her case had “nothing to do” with the break-in but declined to say why it occurred.

    Shouldn’t that be illegal or something? – breaking into a safe and destroying documents? Or is it a Civil Service tradition?

    Romeo had faced allegations relating to her use of expenses and treatment of staff while posted to New York in 2017. The investigation found she had a “case to answer”, although the decision was overturned.

    Tierney, now the permanent secretary of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), is seen internally as a friend and longstanding supporter of Romeo. He had worked for her at the Department for International Trade (DIT).

    Another Starmer appointment runs straight into problems. His reverse Midas touch in action once again….

  • The counter-hegemonic narrative

    Saying the quiet bit out loud:

    Rockhill frames higher ed as a tactical site for “counter-hegemonic” work, cites his own Critical Theory Workshop, and then makes the end goal unmistakable.

    “We need to go in a socialist direction” to build what he praises elsewhere as a socialist “intellectual apparatus” like the ones in Cuba and China, because that’s where he says you get the “real state power necessary to fully educate the people.”

  • “Spiritually corrupting countless young people”

    Another day, another public struggle session. Yes, it’s South Korean culture once again corrupting the pure socialist youth of North Korea. From the Daily NK:

    Pyongyang city police summoned downtown residents on Feb. 1 to a public struggle session in Sosong district, where authorities publicly convicted a man arrested in November for possessing and distributing South Korean videos, music, and television programs, a Daily NK source in Pyongyang said recently, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

    City police launched an investigation into what authorities described as rapidly growing infiltration of reactionary thought and culture in Pyongyang in October of last year. During the probe, they arrested the man on Nov. 30. He was held and investigated for several months on charges of consuming South Korean TV programs, movies, and music via a NoteTel portable media player and of distributing such content on portable storage devices.

    During the public trial, police said the man cleverly distributed USB drives and SD cards containing music files, assigning numbers to each South Korean singer’s name, and hid his illicit material at a third location to avoid detection.

    Authorities were particularly critical of the man for distributing content primarily to young people, accusing him of “spiritually corrupting countless young people with horrible anti-Republic acts.” City police framed the offense not as a personal failing but as a serious crime against the socialist system, warning that individuals engaged in reactionary behavior continued to emerge despite sustained eradication efforts.

    “The man at the struggle session was just skin and bones, perhaps because he’d undergone months of horrible questioning,” the source said. “He just stood there in handcuffs, his head bowed, throughout the entire session. And as soon as it ended, they put him in a vehicle again.”

    It will not go well for him. It’s like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, with the poor shaven-headed victims paraded in front of the jeering crowd – except in North Korea it’s a permanent all-the-time anti-cultural revolution. The only culture allowed is Kim worship.

    The source added that while several people had previously been caught violating the law on reactionary thought and culture, the resumption of harsh public struggle sessions has cast a pall over the city. “Tension hangs over Pyongyang,” the source said.

  • This scandal

    ….How many are employed and in long term relationships. How many died and why.

    The research team explicitly rejected this way forward saying the information would not help them. I don’t understand this. It’s a rich mine of information that will certainly indicate what areas require further research.

    The only reason I can think that they do not wish to follow up with this cohort is that they know the outcomes of medicalising autistic and vulnerable children are going to be catastrophically bad and this scandal will finally be revealed in its true colours and horror.

  • Iran bravery

  • Puberty blocker concern

  • London 1995-2005

    The latest from Cafe Royal Books, with photographer Joan Piekny:

    [Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Joan Piekny]

    Glum faces.

  • The Afghan dystopia pt. 2

    A husband can face up to 15 days in jail if he seriously injures his wife with a stick, but the wife must prove her injuries in court while fully covered and in the presence of the man who beat her.

    The law also forbids women from seeking refuge with relatives to escape abuse. Those who do can be jailed for three months.

    Meanwhile, new rules target men’s beards.

    The Taliban claim that a beard that’s too short makes men look like women, so short beards are banned, and several barbers have already been arrested.

    Last month, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice mandated that beards must now be longer than a fist.

  • In California

    Podcast here.

    The moment a parent says “no” to their child’s gender transition, they don’t expect that the next knock on the door could be from Child Protective Services….

    In a sane society, one would presume that the disagreement over a child’s stated gender identity would be treated as a family matter, a therapeutic matter, maybe even a painful conflict… but not as something that could end with the state taking your child away.

    Then I started meeting people whose stories suggested otherwise.

    Today’s video is one of those stories.