Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

recent posts

email me

  • The truth will come out

    Svetlana Staneva, the Bulgarian boxer defeated by Lin Yu-ting yesterday, hasn't been cowed into acceptance by the IOC as the other women defeated by male boxers seem to have been. She gave a defiant XX sign after the fight (the BBC innocently reported that she "left the arena making a cross with her fingers", with no clue apparently as to what that might signify), and spoke out afterwards:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In full:

    "Actually, I don't know if you know this, but I am also a coach. Given I count the punches and see what's happening, I knew the result will be 5:0. That's why I told him to take the gloves off. But he told me to continue. I put my trust in him. And I know 100% that he won't throw me into something which I won't be able to handle. This is the coach-fighter connection, being able to trust each other, and I trust him greatly about what happens up there in the ring".

    Asked whether some form of protest, like a boycott of the bout, was considered, Staneva said: "This was the decision made by the IOC. I cannot but comply. But I do not agree with what is happening. In the way that it's happening. I think some of the representatives have a physical advantage over others and that is not fairness in sport. That is my opinion."

    "A boycott? Whatever happened pre-game, was between us. I am sorry, but I will say this – the important thing was to finish this bout. I said the truth will come out, and so it did. Whatever one does, it is very hard to win in this situation."

    Asked whether there is an end to the war over chromosomes in sight, Staneva said: "It will end, there is no way it doesn't. It's the 21 century. It's all way too advanced, they will come up with a different policy. This is the situation at the moment and there is simply nothing one can do. Boycott the games? No point. If you boycott, you will be called a coward. You get in the ring, you will be called insane. You got this far, you fought hard for your place in the games. But this is a contact sport and I repeat – I do not approve of what is going on as both a coach and an athlete. I am an assistant coach of the girls and there is no way I can approve of it."

    Asked whether she sees a point in continuing, as someone who also works with children who sooner or later may face the problems, Svetlana Staneva said "I will consider how to go about it in the best possible way. I cannot give you an answer now. Endless possibilities are open to any individual. It depends whether one wants to put in the time and effort or not. Now I need to rest and cannot answer. I am in too emotional a state right now, I am a woman after all."

    Unlike her opponent.

  • Instigated by the Zionists

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • BMA “blinded by misinformation”

    Sonia Sodha in the Observer – The BMA’s stance on puberty blockers defies the key principle of medicine: first, do no harm:

    There’s no two ways about it: the Cass review pulled back the curtain on how gender-questioning children have been starkly failed by the medical profession. You might think that would prompt reflection. Not at the BMA: it has just announced that its governing council of 69 medics has passed a motion accusing the Cass review of making “unsubstantiated recommendations”, calling for the BMA to “publicly critique” the review and to “lobby… to oppose the implementation of its recommendations”, including halting the use of unevidenced drugs on children outside a trial. The BMA has also, ludicrously, called on the government not to implement the Cass review while it undertakes its own review. It would be one thing if the BMA had a serious critique of the review. It does not. When I asked, it could not tell me which of the Cass recommendations the council believed to be unsubstantiated, saying it would not prejudge its own review. Its press release points to two papers that are not peer reviewed or published in a reputable scientific journal – thus obliged to declare conflicts of interest – as evidence of sufficient concern about the review’s methodology to justify pausing its implementation….

    How on earth did the BMA get itself into a position where its doctors are calling for the NHS to reinstate the prescription of unevidenced medicines to children, prompting the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges and the Association of Clinical Psychologists to put out statements in support of the review? I’ve spoken to several of its members who are absolutely furious at the lack of consultation beyond the council, elected on a turnout of just 7% of the BMA’s 160,000-strong membership, and the way this seems to have been stitched up behind closed doors, despite the consultants’ committee last year passing a motion calling on the BMA to facilitate discussion of the Cass review. One council member has gone on the record to say that she believes the BMA’s position to be out of step with its membership.

    It’s not the first time that the BMA has embarrassed itself by making interventions in critical health policy issues that it doesn’t properly understand; it did the same over Covid vaccines in 2021.

    It seems that the BMA leadership has been sucked into a polarised debate, characterised by a misinformation campaign by activists and academics who don’t like what the Cass review found. That campaign has included an unsuccessful judicial review of the government’s decision to ban the private prescription of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria (the high court last week ruled that the Cass review amounted to “powerful scientific evidence in support of restrictions on the supply of puberty blockers”), and false claims made about young people and suicide that the government’s adviser on suicide prevention described last month as “distressing and dangerous”.

    Yes, the BMA is run by doctors. But it was clinicians who were behind this scandal in the first place. The BMA’s intervention serves as a reminder of how easily some doctors can become blinded by misinformation to the reason, rationality and evidence that are critical to the best interests of patients.

    It shows that the publication of the Cass review isn’t enough. The many doctors who stand by “first, do no harm” must ensure that their colleagues return to the evidence in relation to this group of vulnerable children who deserve so much better from the medical profession.

  • “I am XX. I am a woman”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • North Korea snapshots

    Snapshots from North Korea seems to be a new feature at the Daily NK, aimed at English speakers. Two items from the July 29-August 2 selection:

    Mother reports daughter for watching S. Korean media, shocking N. Korean workers

    Three female workers in their 20s from the Sinyang Export Clothing Factory in South Pyongan Province were recently caught watching South Korean dramas and listening to South Korean music. They were subsequently arrested and subjected to an ideological struggle meeting at the factory. Shockingly, one of the women was reported by her own mother, who provided detailed information about her daughter’s activities. The authorities praised the mother’s actions as exemplary, citing the law against reactionary thought and culture. This incident has caused significant controversy among factory workers, with some expressing disbelief at the mother’s actions and others showing sympathy for her difficult position. Three women are still under investigation and may face severe punishment, including potential long-term labor re-education sentences, due to the strict enforcement of laws against consuming foreign media in North Korea.

    N. Korea orders weekly study of Kim Il Sung’s legacy in July

    North Korea issued a directive mandating weekly studies of Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary achievements throughout July, following the 30th anniversary of his death. According to a source in North Pyongan Province, the order aims to observe the “month of greatest national mourning” solemnly. The study sessions focus on Kim’s political ideology of “people-first” and his leadership in realizing the people’s dreams. The directive emphasizes Kim’s role in establishing the Workers’ Party and his reliance on the masses. It concludes by connecting Kim’s legacy to current leader Kim Jong Un’s policies, urging citizens to support the regime’s continued focus on politics centered on the people. Officials are expected to deepen their understanding of Kim’s ideology and recommit to developing North Korean-style socialism, while the general population is encouraged to elevate their political consciousness and better follow the party’s leadership.

    No culture allowed beyond glorification of the Kim dynasty.

  • XY athletes in women’s sport

    Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Professor of Law at Duke, at Quillette – XY Athletes in Women’s Olympic Boxing: The Paris 2024 Controversy Explained. Needs to be read in full. Here's her conclusion:

    I will close by reiterating the three basic points that I and other experts in girls’ and women’s sport have been making for a long time.

    First, the female category in elite sport has no raison d’être apart from the biological sex differences that lead to sex differences in performance and the gap between the top male and female athletes. The suggestion that we could choose to rationalise the category differently—for instance, on the basis of self-declared gender identity—or that we could make increasingly numerous exceptions in the interests of inclusion (as the IOC seems to have done to allow Khelif and Lin to compete in Paris) has no legs outside of certain progressive enclaves.

    Second, any eligibility standard—like the IOC’s framework—that denies or disregards sex-linked biology is necessarily category-defeating.

    Finally, federations that are committed to the female category and to one-for-one equality for their female athletes must step up and do two things. They must craft evidence-based rules and then stick to them consistently. And they must seriously embrace other opportunities to welcome gender diversity within their sports.

  • Sabaya

    Yaniv Voller at Tablet on the contrast between the universal condemnation of the sexual violence perpetrated against Yazidi women by Islamic State, and the efforts to deny it in the case of Hamas and the October 7 pogrom.

    This week marks a decade since one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century: the Yazidi genocide and the sexual enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and girls by the Islamic State terrorist organization. A direct line connects this onslaught on Yazidi women and the Oct. 7 attack against Israel. In both events, the captors of Yazidi and Israeli women were documented referring to their captives as sabaya, an Arabic term that dates back to medieval times to describe the taking of occupied populations as spoils of war or, in a more contemporary context, slavery, including sexual slavery.

    In one of the blood-chilling Islamic State videos from Iraq in 2014, cheerful commanders discussed the prices of Yazidi female captives, explicitly referring to them as sabaya. Similarly, on Oct. 7, an armed Hamas militant was documented sitting in the occupied Nahal Oz military base, referring, in the same gleeful manner, to captured female Israeli soldiers as sabaya. As the captives were sitting bleeding, beaten, and surrounded by the bodies of their dead colleagues, a Hamas gunman was recorded telling his comrades: “These are the sabaya (which the IDF, when circulating the video, translated as “women who can get pregnant”), these are the Zionists,” before telling one of the captives in English “you are beautiful.”

    Although the use of the term sabaya in both contexts sheds light on the prevalence of sexual violence during conflict, the international attitude toward the term, and toward the use of sexual violence, was entirely different….

    Briefly put, there was no debate about the meaning of sabaya in the Yazidi context. In fact, as recently as December 2023, a report by the U.N. Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) mentioned the term 30 times and included a section titled “Sexual slavery—the sabaya system.”

    This established consensus, however, did not carry over to Hamas and its Jewish victims. Instead, once the Hamas video from Oct. 7 was made public by the Israeli authorities, it triggered a heated linguistic debate and a semantic relitigation of the term sabaya and even its use. It was not only Iran’s and Hamas’ propagandists who fiercely denied the term’s sexual connotation, but also reputable commentators, public intellectuals, and scholars. Heiko Wimmen, project director for Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon at the International Crisis Group, appealed to phonology, pedantically insisting that the Hamas gunman used a different word in Levantine Arabic, with a similar pronunciation but a different sibilant, which simply means “young women.” Meanwhile, Georgetown University professor Jonathan Brown, who characterized the IDF video as an “Islamophobic” mistranslation, denied the sexual connotation of the term, insisting that the word means merely prisoners or captives. Other commentators maintained that associating the term with sexual enslavement meant “regurgitating Israeli propaganda” and constituted “absolutely racist drivel.”…

    Why, despite the clear evidence of the Islamic State’s use of sabaya to justify sexual slavery, have commentators rushed to deny the term’s sexual connotation in the context of the Palestinian terror group and Israel? And more broadly, why, in the case of Jewish victims, have so many been eager to undermine evidence about the use of sexual violence by Palestinians?

    The answer is that the purpose of denying the sexual connotation of the word sabaya is to sanction Oct. 7 as a legitimate military operation under the laws of war, rather than an orgiastic human rights massacre.

    In other words it's all part of the determination on the part of "anti-Zionists" in the west to portray Hamas as a legitimate resistance movement against imperialism, like the Vietcong say, rather than what it is: an Islamist terror group bent on the killing of Jews, the destruction of Israel, and ultimately the triumph of Islam worldwide.

    Whereas al-Qaida and IS are understood to represent wanton cruelty and inhumanity, in pursuit of a utopian ideology, the violence groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad resort to is deemed understandable—for some, even justifiable—since its context is a struggle for national liberation. Without this fictional distinction, Israel’s war against Palestinian terrorism would have to be regarded as legitimate.

    And that can never be admitted.

  • The greatest sports scandal of our lifetime

    And now, from Jennifer Sieland at Reduxx:

    A Hungarian sports official has come out and stated that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is not female. István Kovács, the European Vice President of the World Boxing Organization and former Secretary General of the International Boxing Association, told Hungarian press that he had warned the International Olympic Committee about males participating in women’s boxing as early as 2022, but that nothing was done.

    In a shocking statement made to Magyar Nemzet yesterday, Kovács confirmed the speculation surrounding the Algerian boxer, adding that it had been known as early as 2022 that Khelif was biologically male.

    “The problem was not with the level of Khelif’s testosterone, because that can be adjusted nowadays, but with the result of the gender test, which clearly revealed that the Algerian boxer is biologically male,” Kovács said in an interview with Magyar Nemzet, adding that a total of five boxers had been examined including Khelif by the International Boxing Association, and all of them “were indeed men.”

    Kovács asserted that he personally reported the shocking result immediately to the International Olympics Committee, “but as unbelievable as it is, they have not responded to this to this day.” The retired world champion boxer also commented that he recently spoke with former women’s world champion Mária Kovács, who bitterly remarked that in modern women’s boxing, “there is a 20 percent chance that one of the athletes will suffer a testicular injury.”…

    These developments come as a wildfire of debate and discussion have surrounded the participation of Khelif in the women’s category. As first reported by Reduxx, Khelif is one of two individuals previously disqualified from the 2023 IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships for failing chromosomal testing.

    Speaking to Reduxx, Marshi Smith, the co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, condemned the IOC after reviewing the shocking revelations made by Kovács.

    “The cover-up and championing of male athletes in women’s Olympic sports is the greatest sports scandal of our lifetime,” Smith said. 

    Not just any old sport, where it's unfair because of the male advantage – boxing involves trying to beat the shit out of your opponent, whatever the baloney about the "greatest sport", and the Marquess of Queensberry rules. This is dangerous: potentially lethal.

  • Another day at the boxing Olympics

    Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

    After finding herself easily dismantled in all three rounds, Sitora Turdibekova did not linger for the post-fight handshake. Instead she swept out of the ring in tears, distraught at being so conspicuously outclassed by her opponent in reach, speed and power. If it felt as though we had been here before, we had. Barely 24 hours earlier, in fact. For the Uzbek’s conqueror was Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, a boxer who, just like Algeria’s Imane Khelif, had recorded two sex tests in two years revealing the presence of XY chromosomes.

    While the fight was not as visceral a spectacle as Khelif’s 46-second destruction of Italy’s Angela Carini, the outcome was the same: a beaten woman weeping, a viewing public in uproar, and an Olympics engulfed by rancour and recrimination. This is a scandal assuming dimensions that the International Olympic Committee can no longer control, with each crushing victory by a biologically male fighter over a female confirming the impression that it has abandoned its fundamental duty of care.

    Lin was the unanimous winner on points, with Turdibekova holding her head in anguish as the result was announced. Frankly, it had not been much of a contest, with Lin, the top seed in the women’s featherweight division, maximising the reach advantage to rain down shuddering blows and winning every round by every judge except one. Turdibekova’s distress was the worst possible look for the IOC, the day after a sobbing Carini had claimed she feared for her life during the mismatch with Khelif. Both these women needed the global governing body to act decisively to ensure their safety. And both have been abysmally let down.

  • Conventional standards of femininity

    Sometimes the level of stupidity is….breathtaking, From a Labour MP, no less.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js