Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • The St Pauls

    Manhattan ca. 1901. "St. Paul's Chapel and St. Paul Building — Vesey Street and Broadway, New York."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

    The St Paul Building, on the left, was completed in 1898 – at the time one of the tallest skyscrapers in New York at 26 stories. It was demolished in 1958.

  • At UCLA

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  • The new segregation

    That X audio of the UCLA phone call had some comments comparing the barring of Jewish students to segregation in the South in the 1950s, when Eisenhower sent the national guard in to protect black children.

    Here's Ari Allyn-Feuer at Fathom making the same comparison, this time on the Columbia situation:

    If Columbia in fact calls in law enforcement to its campus, and they in fact clear out the Palestine encampment on its lawn and restore order to the campus, so that in-person classes can resume and its graduation ceremony can take place, what previous event from US history will this most resemble?

    The national guard clearing segregationist protesters to allow the Little Rock Nine to attend Little Rock Central High School on 23 September 1957.

    I do not mean this metaphorically, I mean that these two events, in 1957 and 2024, will be literally the same type of event: law enforcement removing a mob trying to segregate a school.

    The encampment now operating on and around Columbia’s campus is literally a movement to segregate Columbia by removing Israelis and other Jews.

    Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine, organisers of this camp and protests, state explicitly and in writing that they support an ‘anti-normalisation’ effort that would see ‘Zionists,’ including Jewish Israelis in general, marginalised from every place antizionists are capable of marginalising them, and explicitly Columbia….

    "Zionists" instead of "Jews" isn't fooling anyone.

    Update: the police have now cleared Columbia's Hamilton Hall and made a number of arrests.

  • “These are our people”

    We heard yesterday about Iranian enthusiasm for the US anti-Israel campus protestors. Here's more:

    Tehran University professor Foad Izadi, one of the leading mouthpieces of the Iranian regime, discussed encampments in American college campuses on an April 26, 2024 show on Ofogh TV (Iran). He said that Iranians like what they see on the college campuses, but “it should not end with this.” Izadi continued to say that these students are “our people.” He added that if tensions between America an Iran rise, “these are the people who will have to take to the streets to support of Iran.” Izadi said that Iran could potentially repeat what it did in Lebanon in greater measure, because its “Hizbullah-style” groups in America are “much larger” than in Lebanon. He further said that America is the Great Satan and Iran’s main enemy, but “we have hope.”

  • Azalea colour

    At the Isabella Plantation, Richmond Park:

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  • No Jews on campus

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  • A problem similar to anorexia and self-harm

    Marcus Evans, one of the earliest Tavistock whistle-blowers, talks to Brendan O'Neill at Spiked:

    I see gender dysphoria as being a problem similar to anorexia and self-harm. You wouldn’t affirm a child’s belief that, by starving themselves, they can create a perfect version of themselves. That they can live a life where they have no appetites or desires.

    The kids who are desperate to transition have a very similar psychological makeup to this. They have a desire to control everything, including other people. The major difference between self-harm or anorexia and gender dysphoria, however, is that political interference has stopped us doing our jobs as mental-health practitioners. It has absolutely undermined ordinary clinical thinking and normal medical practice.

    Well, ideological interference rather than poltical interference per se. The politics, unfortunately, followed the ideology. After Cass that's no longer the case.

    Thanks to dodgy science, parents are afraid that not affirming their child’s identity will push them towards suicide. The reality is that children with gender dysphoria are no more likely to kill themselves compared with other mentally ill adolescents. There’s also the threat that kids will cut off contact with their families, encouraged by online groups and an overall culture that tells them their parents are bigots if they fail to unconditionally affirm their children. Parents are made to feel like they’re the problem if they have questions or concerns.

    It also doesn’t help that children who identify as trans are very wary when you ask them questions about their identity and beliefs. They want to bring you into a narrow discussion about gender identity. They have this certainty that gender-affirming care is the solution. That it will get rid of all their confusions and doubts about themselves. They feel very easily assaulted when you challenge that certainty, even in an empathetic way. A good therapist will skillfully try to move through this discomfort and encourage the child to understand that their certainty is not necessarily a helpful, healthy thing. This is already a challenge on an individual, clinical level. But the politicised culture around the trans issue makes everything worse.

    For the longest time, not embracing gender-affirming care had you instantly dismissed as a bigot. This just isn’t true. Those of us who don’t instantly affirm a child’s identity are the ones actually interested in opening up discussion. We’re interested in exploring the variety of rich and complex ways that a person becomes who they are. We are not interested in pushing children into narrow gender stereotypes, which state that boys are always logical and play football, or that girls inevitably want to dance and wear pink. These beliefs, on which gender-affirming care relies on, are deeply regressive. That’s why exposing them to external scrutiny, as the Cass Review did, has been so important.

  • Wooden acting clown

    Daniel Radcliffe speaks out:

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    My take, from 2020:

    My theory about Daniel Radcliffe is that he secretly resents Rowling's influence on his life. He was heading for a decent career as a chartered accountant or estate agent when he was dragged into the Harry Potter world simply by his looks, with that stupid round face and glasses. Ever since then he's had to struggle as an actor when it's quite obvious to everyone that he's no good at it. As a result his life is a succession of public embarrassments. Without Rowling he would have settled down in Pinner by now to a nice quiet suburban life.

  • Studying the Iranian Supreme Leader’s message

    From MEMRI:

    Khorasan Razavi TV (Iran) aired a rally of university students and professors in Mashhad, Iran in support of campus encampments and protests in the West on April 27, 2024. A speaker at the rally said that the Basij organization of university lecturers in the province of Khorasan Razavi supports the “freedom-seeking professors and students” in American and European universities. He said that the student community will demand vengeance for the blood of the innocent children of Gaza. The speaker led the crowd in chants of ‘Death to America!’ ‘Death to Israel!’ and ‘Death to the Jewish oppressors!” He said that liberal democracy and global Zionists are on a path of decline and destruction. The speaker further suggested that Western students study Iranian Supreme Leader’s message and act until the “cancerous growth that is Israel” is annihilated along with “global arrogance and heresy.”

    I can see it happening. Back in the Sixties it was the Thoughts of Chairman Mao. Now, soon, it'll be the Thoughts of Supreme Leader Khamenei.

  • The Starmer fudge

    Keir Starmer was asked this morning if he owed Rosie Duffield an apology. He can't do it.

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    JK Rowling responds:

    Male politicians who chose to pander to activists issuing violent threats against their own female MPs enabled and emboldened the toxic culture Keir Starmer now claims to deplore. When you're part of the cause, you've got some brass neck putting yourself forward as a cure.

    One lousy apology and he'd have bought a lot of women's good will, but evidently the mob must still be appeased.

    Joan Smith at UnHerd:

    Starmer’s refusal to apologise to Duffield is bad enough. It’s part of his mulish reluctance to admit he has said any number of risible things about sex and gender, as though we all have short memories and he can rewrite the past. He wholeheartedly embraced gender ideology after he became leader and now seems to be having second thoughts, which is hardly surprising in light of the casualties it’s already claimed — Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf in Scotland, Leo Varadkar in Ireland.

    A decent man would throw up his hands and admit he was wrong. Instead, Starmer takes refuge in platitudes — but they’re dangerous platitudes. He says he talks to Duffield. She says he doesn’t. He says he wants to have a discussion with her and “anybody else” about sex and gender. So why have I been waiting more than three years for a response to my letter on this very issue, which described attacks on women members of the Labour Party by trans activists? He still hasn’t replied after I spoke to him in person at a dinner in May 2022.

    The question of where our likely next prime minister stands on the conflict between women’s rights and the outrageous demands of trans activists is not going to go away. And Starmer has made the situation a great deal worse by appearing to lie on TV about his dealings with one of his own MPs.