Mick Hartley

New from Hoxton Mini Press, photographers worldwide look at the grey and green contrast of plants against concrete. Collated by Olivia Broome:

Architects have long found ways of exploiting the contrast between the natural and the manufactured, but nowhere more keenly than in the meeting of plants and Brutalism. From angular terraces overgrown with vines to cracks that have become arteries for moss, these images tell a story of resilience – and unexpected beauty.

Barbican Conservatory, London. Photo © Taran Wilkhu

Reinforced hillside, Aogashima, Tokyo, Japan. Photo © Yasushi Okano

Artwork and photo by Karsten Födinger in La Vallée, Basse-Normandie, France

Casa de Vidro, São Paulo, Brazil. Photo © Celeste Asfour

Monument to the Revolution, Kozara National Park, Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo © Alexey Bokov

Evangelische Friedenskirche (Peace Church), Monheim-Baumberg, Germany. Photo © Bildarchiv Monheim GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Bucharest, Romania. Photo © Bogdan Anghel

Les Étoiles d’Ivry, Paris, France. Photo © pp1 / Shutterstock

The abandoned Haludovo Palace Hotel, Krk Island, Croatia. Photo © Maciek Leszczelowski

Jerry Coyne has been outspoken on his blog about the Gaza conflict, and his support for Israel. He's currently in Amsterdam, preparing to give a talk on the ideological subversion of biology – a subject on which he's also outspoken. 

Well, not any more. He's been cancelled:

Our discussion was supposed to center on a paper I wrote with Luana Maroja for The Skeptical Inquirer, ‘The ideological subversion of biology“, which dealt with the distortion of six areas of evolutionary biology by well-meaning people whose ideology did not comport with biological reality.  It had nothing to do with war in the Middle East….

Everything was fine until we were informed yesterday on WhatsApp that the discussion was cancelled. The organizers didn’t contact me directly, but sent the cancellation to one of my hosts, so I’ve redacted his/her name in the indented message below, which is otherwise exactly as my host received it. “Dr. Boudry” is Maarten Boudry, a Belgian philosopher with whom I collaborated on a paper about religious belief several years ago.

Here is the official cancellation:

Hi NAME REDACTED,

I’m sorry to inform you that unfortunately we will have to cancel the event on Friday. I’m sorry it’s so last minute, but in light of the information from Dr. Boudry, many of the members in the committee did not feel comfortable giving Dr. Coyne and Dr. Boudry a platform given their stances on the Palestine/Israel conflict. Another fear is how it would reflect on us as a committee and that we might be blackballed at UvA/AUC. We understand the irony of this considering this is the very issue that Dr. Coyne wrote his article about, however the group decided we can’t host this event given the current political climate. Again, I’m very sorry that we have put so much time and effort into organizing this for nothing, I’m disappointed as well.

If you look at the Coyne/Maroja article (link is above), you’ll see it’s all about science, so “the very issue” of our article is not the war in the Middle East, but about the danger of distorting science by infusing it with politics.

Yes indeed…they get the irony, but they still go ahead and deplatform. So brave…

Gary Lineker is at it again. He just can't stay silent about Gaza – though he's managed it about Syria, Ukraine, Darfur. It's the worst thing he's seen in his lifetime. 

Michael Deacon in the Telegraph:

Gary Lineker, the BBC’s chief political commentator, believes it’s unfair that he receives so much criticism for his comments on Israel and Gaza. “The minute you raise your voice against what they’re now doing there,” he complained during an interview with the Left-wing journalist Mehdi Hasan, “you get accused of being a supporter of Hamas.”

Any such accusation is clearly outrageous. I’m quite sure St Gary doesn’t support Hamas, or indeed any other genocidal Islamist terror group.

I do, however, think he suffers from the same problem as an awful lot of Western progressives. Which is that, when it comes to Israel, he has absolutely no idea how biased he sounds.

As a matter of fact, he demonstrated this during the very same interview. Speaking about the war in Gaza, St Gary said: “I can’t think of anything that I’ve seen worse in my lifetime.”

This is a remarkable statement. Not least because St Gary was born all the way back in November 1960. And, during the 63 and a half years since, the world has endured quite a large number of brutal conflicts. Take the Second Congo War (1998-2003), which claimed an estimated 5.4m lives. And the Vietnam War (1955-75), which claimed an estimated 3.5m. And the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-89), which claimed an estimated 2m. To name but a few.

Indeed, far from being the bloodiest conflict since 1960, the war in Gaza isn’t even the bloodiest being fought right now. The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, has so far killed more than 600,000 people. Then there’s the small matter of Russia’s war in Ukraine. And, as mentioned in Saturday’s Way of the World, the ongoing conflict in Sudan. To give just one small glimpse of the horror: a 17-year-old Sudanese boy told Human Rights Watch that he’d witnessed paramilitaries shooting children and then flinging their corpses into a river.

St Gary, however, says he can’t think of anything that he’s seen worse in his lifetime than what Israel is currently doing in Gaza, in its efforts to destroy Hamas. I’ve no doubt that he’s being entirely sincere. I merely wonder how he came to such a conclusion, given that so many other conflicts in his lifetime have been even more horrifying, and killed vastly more people.

Perhaps, during his glorious playing days, St Gary was so relentlessly focused on his football that he never watched the news or opened a newspaper – and therefore simply didn’t hear about these other conflicts. I suppose that’s one possibility.

Even so, it is curious that Western progressives in general always seem so very much louder in their condemnation of Israel than in their condemnation of other warring nations. What exactly is it about Israel that makes them constantly single it out like this?

I fear we may never know.

As for the matter of men muscling in on women's sport – an area where Lineker has some influence and might be expected to comment….that's something he's very happy to stay silent about.

See here for more on Darfur, and the double standards at play when it comes to Arab violence and imperialism.

As North Korea's relations with China improve, the prospects for North Korean defectors in China are getting worse:

Once strained, the relationship between North Korea and China appears to be on the mend again as the two countries mark the “year of North Korea-China friendship” to celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations. This situation is leading to fears among North Korean defectors in China, many of whom worry that North Korea and China may improve cooperation on repatriating defectors as the countries grow closer.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in China told Daily NK recently that defectors in China “feel more frightened and insecure than ever about being repatriated because the closer North Korea and China are, the greater the risk that defectors will be repatriated.”

He said defectors in China have felt troubled since reports emerged that Zhao Leji, the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the third-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, discussed plans to strengthen exchanges and cooperation to develop China-North Korea ties when he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a visit to North Korea on April 11-13.

Defectors in China who were already feeling uneasy after China forcibly repatriated a large number of North Koreans last October now live in extreme fear following the high-ranking Chinese official’s visit to the North, according to the source. 

In fact, anxious North Korean defectors have dramatically grown in number, with word recently going around that “if relations between North Korea and China improve, we’ll all be repatriated.”

North Korean defectors in China say that if Beijing and Pyongyang grow closer, bilateral cooperation on the defector issue will intensify — and if this is the case, they never know when they will be caught and sent back to the North.

According to the source, one defector said if North Korea-China relations improve, “China will present us to the North as a bribe, and we’ll get sent to a place from which we’ll never leave.”

The individual added: “Nowadays, during the day, I’m afraid to even leave my bathroom for fear that somebody is coming to get me, while at night, I suffer nightmares. It doesn’t feel like living.”

Plans to head for South Korea – obviously the defectors' destination of choice – are being abandoned:

After hearing about the recent repatriation of North Korean defectors living in China, an increasing number of defectors there are shelving plans to head to South Korea, Daily NK has learned.

“Reports about recent repatriations have been rapidly spreading here [in China], leaving many defectors anxious and afraid. An increasing number of people are saying they’ve given up any idea of going to South Korea,” a source in China told Daily NK on Monday.

And cases like this, in China's Jilin Province bordering North Korea, don't help:

Jilin Province authorities recently handed down a 10-year sentence to a North Korean defector for human trafficking, Daily NK has learned.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in China said last Thursday that police in the city of Songyuan, working in cooperation with police in the city of Baishan, placed two Chinese men and one female North Korean defector under arrest for human trafficking in February.

The trio were put on trial in late April. The two Chinese men were given three years in prison, while the North Korean woman was given 10 years. All three have already begun serving time in prison. 

During their investigation, police in Songyuan seized a list of dozens of North Korean women who had been illegally trafficked into China. They also determined the identities of Chinese nationals who purchased North Korean women.

Sandra Pertot, a retired clinical psychologist, on the Queer theory underpinnings of gender medicine:

The thing that has played on my mind ever since I became embroiled in the gender wars is, how did we get here? How is it possible that large sections of Western society—including health professionals who should know better—have come to accept ideas such as sex isn’t binary, a person can change sex, it is right to tell children they might have been born in the wrong body, and it is good medicine to give these children powerful drugs to “pause” puberty….

A key factor in females gaining independence from male control and being accepted as equals was the development of effective birth control: the ability to control when and how often a woman had a child gave her the freedom to take control of her life. No longer bound by the needs of a continually growing family, women were able to pursue their own goals in their personal lives, in education, employment, and so on: biological reality in action.

The cynic in me speculates that as female issues of inequality were addressed and largely resolved, at least in the Western world, the academics who service the departments of Gender studies in tertiary institutions were left with nothing controversial to trade on, so they had to come up with a new area related to gender and/or sexuality to justify their existence.

The malleability of gender roles provided the perfect solution….

Correspondingly, gay activist organisations like Stonewall, having achieved their aims and with nothing left to trade on, took up the trans agenda – with Queer theory ideology helpfully supplied by the gender studies academics.

The basic ideas proposed by Queer theory are not new: society does influence our understanding and beliefs about sexualities (straight, gay or bi) and gender roles. The feminist movement of the 1970s-80s was all about challenging the restrictions imposed on females simply because of their biology. Also in that period, gay rights groups peacefully sought to have their sexuality acknowledged and recognised as a normal variation in human sexuality.

But Queer theory takes this to a new level which becomes nonsensical when the aim is to challenge norms just because they are norms. Paradoxically, queering the definitions of sex and gender creates new norms which then, according to trans activists, aren’t allowed to be challenged. For example, lesbians must accept “transbians”, who typically retain male genitals, in their groups. And rules such as using preferred pronouns must be obeyed. Queer theory in practice is the ultimate hypocrisy….

In the wake of the Cass report, it is time for gender-affirming health professionals to consider the real possibility that they have been conned by a sophisticated, well-organised network of trans activists who want to reshape society into their version of normal. It is time for health professionals to reflect on how they came to put their faith in the gender-affirming model as the best form of care for gender-questioning clients.

We've heard from Oxford students about the "Free Palestine" camps there. Now here's Devika Shah at Cambridge:

I am a third-year undergraduate student at Cambridge, and have been following the activities of a small number of my fellow students currently occupying the lawn outside King’s College and the official response of the university. I am writing to say that I am appalled by the response that the university has offered.

Freedom of speech is critical to the wellbeing of any university. There must be space for us to express our views, disagree, and engage in dialogue to enrich our own understanding of the world. Yet what this does not mean is that this university may remain impartial and silent about the right of existence of a sovereign state, and the right of its inhabitants to have exactly the same rights as other sovereign peoples around the world: their own self-determination.

The protesters in front of King’s College are openly calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Their placards that are currently emblazoned around their encampment and calling for a “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”. The protesters know exactly what this means. It means that in their view a Jewish state should not exist. It means that the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea should not be home to the 7.2 million Jews who live there (as well as the two million Israeli Arabs, and the half-a-million Christians and others – groups that consistently respond at a rate of about 70 per cent to independent polls saying they support the Israeli state).

A Palestine “from the river to the sea” means no Israel, no Israelis, and no security for Jews in the Middle East. Where do the protesters propose the Jews and Israelis go if a Palestinian state were to exist from the river to the sea?

Again, I would like to reiterate that freedom of speech must be protected. Regardless of my own opinions on the matter, to call for a ceasefire, or to advocate for the quick removal of Benjamin Netanyahu, or to express the absolutely critical empathy that is deserved by all the inhabitants of Gaza should be encouraged. Yet the university’s statement fails to address the genocidal aims of Hamas. The latter’s 1988 Charter says: “The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews… when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.” This could be an exact description of what happened on Oct 7 2023. When Israeli men and women had to hide in cars, under dead bodies, in bushes, and wherever else they could find so as to not be brutally murdered by militant Islamists.

This is what “Palestine from the river to the sea” means. Because, according to this logic, any means are justified if you are fighting a “colonial” regime, and Hamas are simply “freedom fighters” for the Palestinian cause.

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating? In an Oct 10 statement, publicly available on Instagram, the Cambridge University Palestine Society said the “Israeli regime is entirely responsible” for the “violence” seen on Oct 7. These are the words of actual students from the University of Cambridge. The university’s silence on the slogan “from the river to the sea” used in the occupation of King’s College lawn suggests that those hellbent on the destruction of Jews in the Middle East have a free pass to do so.

Fair and justified criticism of Israeli foreign and internal policy should never be followed by the words “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”, and if we do hear this in Cambridge, it should be denounced while upholding the right to freedom of speech. The rhetoric in general – that Israel and Zionism are Western constructs built exclusively on colonialism – is at best a complete ignorance of Jewish history and at worst thinly-veiled anti-Semitism that the university’s weak response fails to address….

From the NYT:

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

The documents show that Hamas leaders, despite claiming to represent the people of Gaza, would not tolerate even a whiff of dissent. Security officials trailed journalists and people they suspected of immoral behavior. Agents got criticism removed from social media and discussed ways to defame political adversaries. Political protests were viewed as threats to be undermined…

Like the Stasi. A police state, in other words. What a surprise.

The grim reality of the lives of North Korea's nuclear scientists turns out to be very different from the indulged favourites of the regime that we assume. From South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

“North Korean nuclear scientists have no autonomy over their lives, with their life paths set for them in almost every aspect – including research fields, housing, food, and marriage – from the time they are elementary school students. In a society where failure is viewed as disloyalty, they live under dehumanizing conditions, forced to work relentlessly for the “task of the fatherland” until death.”

It is widely believed that North Korea, which is heavily investing in nuclear and missile development, favors its 10,000 nuclear scientists. But the the reality is quite the opposite, according to an analysis by a Korean Peninsula expert based in Washington, D.C.

Robert Collins, who served 31 years in the United States Forces Korea, including as the chief strategist for the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), detailed the struggles of North Korean nuclear experts in his report “Slave to the Bomb” on May 10. His report is based on testimonies from North Korean defectors he interviewed and various classified materials….

According to the 200-page report obtained in advance by The Chosunilbo, a North Korean child’s fate as a so-called “slave to the bomb” is determined at an age as early as ten. North Korea has a system that allows administrative units, whether rural or urban, to select and recruit children who excel in mathematics and science.

“The best students from each region are gathered and trained in math, science, physics, and other subjects,” Collins states in the report. “If they stand out, their entire families are sometimes forced to move so that the students can advance to a higher-level school in the capital city.”…

The report states, “Once a nuclear scientist achieves significant academic success in a particular research field, their professional fate is sealed.” They must live a life dedicated to serving the Kim regime, and from then on, the only variables in their life are which nuclear facility they work for and the quality of their associated housing.

As we heard yesterday, the ACLU now seems to be concerned chiefly with trans rights, and in particular with the rights of trans women (male) criminals to get themselves into women's prisons and rape with impunity – condoms provided. Genevieve Gluck has an X thread on the subject:

The @ACLU hates women and is led by a gay man: a thread.

One of the most powerful lobby groups in the United States pushing "gender identity" policies is the ACLU.

Currently, the organization is leading the legal fight to place violent men, including sadistic killers and… pic.twitter.com/rY84edrEy6

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) May 12, 2024

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

"Currently, the organization is leading the legal fight to place violent men, including sadistic killers and rapists, into women's prisons.

"The executive director since 2001 is Anthony Romero.

"In the past the organization defended NAMBLA, asserted that child pornography is free speech, defended child marriage, took money from pornographers, and argued that sex trafficking is "work.""

• The ACLU mourned the execution of a convicted child rapist who murdered a 14-year-old girl and a single mother of two. Duane Owen, who the ACLU referred to using "she/her" pronouns, said he raped women in order to harvest their hormones and souls.
• In 2019, the ACLU represented an anonymous transgender inmate in a lawsuit that secured gender self-identification in New Jersey prisons. The inmate was would-be terrorist and "adult baby" fetishist Danielle Demers.
• As a result of the @ACLU victory in New Jersey, one of the first trans-identified inmates moved to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women was a Satanist named Perry Cerf who tortured and murdered a prostituted woman before drinking her blood.
• Another man transferred to a woman's prison on behalf of the @ACLU is a sadistic pedophile who tortured his 7-year-old daughter to make child abuse material for his "transgender porn" business, and is classified as a "female" by the state of New Jersey.
• The ACLU launched a legal complaint against the Indiana Department of Corrections on behalf of a transgender inmate they say was denied "gender affirming" surgeries. Jonathan Richardson, also known as Autumn Cordellioné, murdered a baby.
• The @ACLU of Kansas is supporting a violent and "sexually sadistic" transgender inmate demanding to be turned loose in a women's prison. Thomas "Michelle" Lamb, who murdered one woman and raped another, says he "needs to have close contact with females."
• In 2022, the @ACLU filed to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to halt the transfer of male inmates to women’s prisons. In the brief, the ACLU claimed that denying male sex offenders transfer to women’s prisons was “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional.”
• As a direct result of @ACLU lobbying in California, at least one woman has been raped in prison by a 'transgender' inmate, at the Central California Women's Facility. The alleged assailant is a trans-identified male previously championed by activists.
• A violent transgender inmate at Washington's only women's prison was supported by the @ACLU in a claim to receive taxpayer-funded breast implants. Nonnie Lotusflower murdered a 17-year-old girl.
• A violent male inmate convicted of slaughtering his family, claiming they did not support his gender identity, was supported by the @ACLU . Andrew Balcer was quietly moved to a facility that houses women in the Maine prison system.

Matt Ridley, co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, looks at some significant new information from a couple of key figures in the Covid saga that was revealed last week before the US Congress. See the article at Spiked for details (it's complicated). Ridley's conclusion:

The case for the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins becomes ever more overwhelming with every further revelation, admission and concession. We are not quite there yet, however. The Chinese government and its scientists have yet to admit they caused the pandemic. But in exactly the right city, at exactly the right time, they were playing with exactly the right kind of genetic insertion into exactly the right part of exactly the right gene of exactly the right kind of virus, in exactly the right way. And they showed exactly the wrong kind of openness about it afterwards. It would be a heck of a coincidence and awfully bad luck if somehow Covid broke out naturally, right there and at the same time.