Politics and Culture
From the LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2026 – 3rd place – images from Anastasia Sierra:
My images follow the logic of my dreams, where we are trapped in a strange colorful world, playing a never ending game of hide and seek in a labyrinth of love, care and fears, pushing against its walls, with no way to escape but wake up.
[Photos © Anastasia Sierra]
…..serves as an example of ‘decolonial land use.’ She is an anthropologist who examines “the ongoing colonial legacies of the discipline of geology and anti-colonial ways of knowing and relating to the earth in southern Palestine.” This ridiculous PhD of hers was overseen and advised by Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Needless to say, Dr. Assali, SJP, and a whole network at CUNY and Columbia students and faculty are overly and openly pro-Hamas, celebrating the tunnels as the ultimate marvel of Palestinian “resistance.” They do not know the number of children killed digging these tunnels; they don’t seem to care about the intimidation, corruption, theft, killings, and massive abuses that went into the establishment of these tunnels, not to mention the empowerment of a fascist Islamist organization like Hamas through these dungeons.
When I want to speak at CUNY, Columbia, MIT, and countless other schools, University administrators often reject my requests, tell me I’m not “pro-Palestine” enough, or that we have to seriously worry about security, interruptions, and horrific student and faculty behavior that can disrupt any possible event – free speech is suspended, and academic freedoms are constrained. But when pro-Hamas Jihadis and neo-terrorist students and faculty want to host activities and events that are the worst possible expressions of “pro-Palestine” sentiments, endorsements of designated terror orgs, and support for violence, somehow, they end up with the full support of university administrators, and free speech becomes a central consideration to ensure that such events are held without any disruption.
Baroness Cass was a hero for her hugely influential report on the lack of evidence for puberty blockers. Unfortunately her report also proposed that a trial be conducted to settle the question – and she’s rather stuck with it. She’s now talking of children being in the middle of the debate – being “weaponised”. Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph has some sympathy for the poor woman, but really, no:
I can see that Cass is trying to pick her way through to a middle ground, but there really isn’t one here. Children should not be given a drug that we know is harmful, just because they think they want it. Cass knows it will be the parents, not the children, who will be buying these drugs off-script from disreputable sources, and says she is trying to prevent that. How will that work exactly?
All of this has to be seen in the wider context of lucrative “gender medicine”. We are seeing a pulling back in the US on “gender-affirming” surgeries because of a lack of evidence. Forty US hospitals are pausing gender-affirming care. Malpractice suits are coming thick and fast. Fewer people are identifying as trans.
Cass appears to be tiptoeing around the issues, suggesting that the rise in gender-questioning children is caused by social media. So, too, is the false promise that they can become entirely different people.
We, adults, know this. It is our fundamental duty to protect children, and to stop the trials. The compromise can never be one that ends up harming children. This is not “weaponising” children, it is doing the thing no one seems to care about anymore – it is safeguarding them.
Victoria Smith at The Critic on the puberty blocker trial:
The Pathways trial, which seeks to explore “the possible benefits or risks that young people with gender incongruence may experience when taking puberty suppressing hormones”, is not just an inadequate and harmful “solution” to a problem. It is part of the original problem. Benefits and risks can only be understood in relation to what one might have experienced without puberty blockers, yet the very prescription of blockers makes it impossible to imagine a life in which gender stereotypes are not imposed on the body. The trial literature describes puberty as difficult for “young people with gender incongruence […] because their body starts to change in ways that don’t match how they feel inside”. Are breasts, hips, facial hair etc. meant to “match” inner feelings? If someone believes that they should, shouldn’t we be challenging the forces that make them feel that way? We are told that puberty suppressing hormones “may help some young people with gender incongruence explore their gender identity more comfortably without feeling rushed or distressed about their body changing”. At no point is it acknowledged that gender identity, as a concept, alienates people from their bodies to start with.
The whole premise of the trial is based on the reality of this feeling of “gender incongruence” – ie the feeling that you were “born in the wrong body”. But it’s an illusion stoked by social contagion. Gender identity is a nonsense: it not real; it’s not there. We are the sex we ‘re born with – as everyone knew until Queer Theory and the like spread out from academia. So this trial, predicated on a falsehood, is incapable of offering any solutions. All it can do is ruin the lives of the subject children – and the reputations of all those involved.
Another day, another killer struggling with their gender identity:
Two people were killed and three others critically injured in a shooting at a high school boys’ hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Monday afternoon, police said….
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves identified the shooter as Robert Dorgan. Goncalves said the shooter, who was born in 1969, also used the name Roberta and the last name Esposito.
CBS Rhode Island affiliate WPRI-TV reported that court records show the shooter had a history of family-related disputes and legal issues stemming from their gender identity.
Added:
David Toube at the JC:
It is difficult to think of a term which has become more controversial in recent years than “two tier justice”. As social animals, we are fine-tuned to pick up on unfairness. Little is more toxic to trust in institutions than the thought that, through no fault of our own, we are being treated unequally. Yet, within a surprisingly short period, a significant number of Jewish people have come to believe that we cannot expect fairness from the criminal justice system….
A handful of examples illustrate the case. The police have repeatedly failed to arrest, interview or charge individuals who appear to be engaged in open incitement to racial hatred against Jews and overt support of banned terrorist groups. At the same time, we remember that a Jewish legal observer on a demonstration was arrested and questioned about his Magen David necklace. It is not unusual for a pro-Gaza demonstration to end with a handful of arrests of Jewish counter-demonstrators or legal observers, while the demonstration itself is untouched.
The explanation for this disparity is prosaic. In practice, the police see their primary function as the prevention of public disorder. They know that any attempt to arrest a pro-Gaza demonstrator will result in assaults on the police by their comrades. By contrast, Jewish attendees will generally come quietly. When they have gone, the demonstration will be easier to police. Risk management displaces justice.
A clear example of risk management replacing justice was on display in the West Midlands, when the police banned Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from their Aston Villa match – and lied about it – because they were too intimidated to handle the antisemitic violence that was threatened by the local Islamists..
The problem continues at the level of the Crown Prosecution Service. I recently asked the CPS what their prosecution and conviction rates are in relation to antisemitic crime. I was shocked to discover that, although general data on religious hate crimes is collected, it is unable to specify how many of the victims of those offences were Jewish. When an organisation can’t scope a problem, it cannot address it.…
Failure to prosecute is a policy, even when it is not written down. Our community saw resources poured into the policing of public disorder in Stockport, following the massacre by Axel Rudakubana. Swift prosecutions followed and exemplary sentences handed down. A similar approach was taken with Just Stop Oil, whose campaign of sabotage and disruption was brought to the end by a wave of focused arrests and speedy trials.
We are entitled to ask why that approach has not been taken towards the rolling pro-Gaza demonstrations which have plagued this country for over two years. The uncomfortable answer is that there is a lack of political will to do so.
Jewish communities are not asking for special treatment. We have a right to expect equal protection under the law. Instead, we experience failure after failure, followed by apology after apology. It is time for this cycle of timidity to end.
Ever wondered why Wkipedia has become less reliable, and more woke?
Article here:
Over the past decade, students in ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, and performance studies professor María Rodríguez’s courses have edited and even created Wikipedia articles about LGBTQ+ history, with an emphasis on queer and trans people of color. The assignment currently replaces a final paper in three of her classes: “Documenting Marginal Lives,” “Queer of Color Cultural Production,” and “Queer of Color Critique.”
Three elderly Israeli women were expelled last Saturday from the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid after staff objected to them carrying items identifying them as Jewish, including an Israeli flag and a Star of David necklace. The incident was reported Monday by the Spanish news site Okdiario. According to the report, the three tourists were aggressively harassed by other museum visitors and were ultimately removed by a security guard who said that “some visitors were disturbed that they are Jewish.”
The Reina Sofía, considered one of the world’s leading cultural institutions, held an exhibition during the Israel-Hamas war titled “From the River to the Sea” in solidarity with Palestinians and has hosted numerous anti-Israel protests in which antisemitic incidents were reported. Okdiario noted that the museum operates under the authority of Spain’s Culture Ministry.
Further to this – vouchers for children who consent to having their puberty blocked and their lives ruined in the name of medical progress.
From Genspect:
This is very different to treating someone with a physical illness where their health may be improved. There can be no positive health outcome from preventing a perfectly healthy body from going through one of the most important natural developmental processes.
Success for this trial is literally dependant on doing harm to healthy bodies, and they’re going to incentivise it.
We know, from the Tavistock and elsewhere, that some 80% or so of “gender dysphoric” boys, led to believe they’re born in the wrong body, are in fact gay. So we’re running a test to see if homosexuality can be “cured” by medical mutilation. Extraordinary. And the health secretary who’s overseeing this, Wes Streeting, is himself gay….
Mick Hartley 