“Pierce one ear. Now you can teach physics.”#ICYMI read more #TGIF by @NellieBowles here: https://t.co/5BImklU9Ye pic.twitter.com/Ep639mUe40
— The Free Press (@TheFP) April 20, 2024
Mick Hartley
Politics and Culture
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It's salutary to step back and take a cool look at Iran beyond the mullahs: a country with a rich history and vibrant culture trapped by a small coterie of fundamentalist bigots, who are driving the nation to penury and ruin in their ideological/religious obsession with destroying Israel and spreading their gospel of hate. It's not sustainable.
Ali Ansari in the Sunday Times:
Israel’s decision to retaliate after Iran’s attack last weekend will have surprised few in Tehran, but the speed and nature of the response was bolder and more pointed than many had anticipated.
The targeting of Iranian assets in Iraq and Syria was expected. The assault on an airbase in Isfahan, in the heart of Iran itself, was more striking, because it exposed the inability of the Iranians to defend their own airspace and because it may have been initiated by Israeli assets inside Iran.
This will have been a deliberate calculation by the Israelis to feed the paranoia of the political-military establishment in Iran.
The Iranian authorities dismissed Israel’s actions as an irrelevance not worthy of a response. This looks like the political establishment attempting to reassure itself.
Most Iranians — struggling to cope with rampant inflation and a sliding currency — are barely paying attention. The economy remains their single most important preoccupation and its failure is ascribed to regime mismanagement and incompetence….
Most Iranians are keen to avoid adding to their already significant economic difficulties with a fresh conflict in which they have no interest but for which they are likely to bear the cost. The regime’s struggle with Israel and the wider western world reflects an ideological conviction to which many cannot relate, and a vision for the future they do not want. Their demands are simpler: good governance, a sound economy and a secure existence in which Iran is integrated into the world and life can proceed with a degree of stability and normalcy that many of us in the West take for granted….
The Israeli reprisal has blunted much of the Islamic Republic’s messaging.
Tehran’s blustering bravado was intended to prevent any retaliation. It failed, but most in senior positions want to avoid a wider escalation lest it destabilise the republic. Instead, the regime is left to invent its own Orwellian reality in which the Israeli attack is dismissed as an impotent irrelevance that can comfortably be ignored.
Most Iranians are not so easily fooled.
As one noted political commentator protested in disbelief, the crisis of authority afflicting the Islamic Republic, its contempt for the people and its failure of leadership at all levels, is a self-inflicted catastrophe of extraordinary proportions. After 45 years there is only one thing, he concluded, that modern Iran has proven itself to be truly expert in: making enemies.
If the regime in Tehran falls, then Hamas, Hezbollah, the Youthis will surely follow – and the whole panoply of terror organisation plaguing the Middle Eastern landscape. The Iranian people are ready, but sadly the US isn't – having shifted its recent Middle Eastern strategy away from George Bush's "axis of evil" to Obama and Biden's misconceived efforts to accept Iran as a legitimate and responsible player.
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A useful piece by Arty Morty here on the "circle of horror" that keeps trans activists committed to their cause, and deaf to the gender critical arguments or the scientific rationalism of the Cass Report. Trans is a "cultural movement, immune to scientific evidence".
In the eyes of the gender fundamentalists, the priests and priestesses of 2SLGBTQQIA+ are infallible paragons of progressive virtue, and our argument is completely impossible for them to fathom — which is that the movement formerly known as Gay Rights has been co-opted by straight people who couldn’t resist exploiting for their own interests all the goodwill and social capital that gay people had amassed, by hitching their pet neuroses, kinks, and causes (all those extra letters) onto the LGB. Those interlopers have turned the gay rights movement — my people’s movement — into a close semblance of exactly what gay people’s old arch-nemeses the conservative right once falsely accused us of being: socially objectionable, medically dangerous, and targeting vulnerable kids.
He brings up the FGM comparison:
In a way, FGM is another circle of horror — a cultural practice whose victims feel compelled to assist in its perpetuation to others partly in order to make sense of what’s been done to themselves, because the moment it stops continuing to happen, it becomes clear that the custom has no medical justification outside of itself.
….with the benefit of an outside perspective we can see very clearly that there’s no direct medical necessity to remove parts of women & girls’ clitorises and labia, and that whatever supposed benefits this practice confers to such victims — I will never call them “patients” or “subjects” or any other word besides victims, no matter how “medicalized” these atrocities are presented to be — it’s entirely dependent on the cultural/social landscape: the domain of social hierarchies and taboos and superstitions and rituals, and the foul effluvium of woman-hatred that clouds the senses of those within it.
Now, imagine there was a report that analyzed the efficacy of female genital mutilation strictly in terms of short-to-medium term self-reported mental health outcomes without ever addressing the question of why the practice had begun in the first place. Wouldn’t that be outrageous?!
To be clear, I’m not trying to say that the Cass report is outrageous — far from it; I think it’s a powerful and necessary report, which is already proving to be greatly beneficial to the struggle to put the “trans kids” scandal behind us. But it’s a sign of how outrageous our current social climate is, how mired in the bog we are, that we can’t be allowed to step all the way back and point out the true horror of the big picture.
No human female is born with an innate medical condition in which she is doomed to suffer unless otherwise healthy parts of her genitals are sliced off of her body. This should be self-evident.
Likewise, no human of either sex is born with an innate medical condition in which they will suffer from such dire psychological distress they might die of suicide unless their otherwise healthy reproductive organs and breasts are removed, their puberty suppressed, a host of other cosmetic medical treatments are given, and that all of society is compelled to collude together to suppress all evidence of the sex of these poor innocents.
Worth a read.
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Yaser Mohamad Khani, 3rd place Professional Competition, Architecture and Design, in the Sony World Photography Awards 2024:
In recent years, due to population growth and lack of sufficient housing, the towns near Tehran have been crowded and people have to migrate here.
[Images © Yaser Mohamad Khani] -
From the Telegraph – King’s College London bars staff from promotion unless they support pro-trans diversity policy:
A major London university may have broken equality law by barring staff from promotion unless they support its pro-trans diversity policy.
A barrister has found that King’s College is potentially discriminatory against those who believe there are only two sexes and that trans people are not the gender they identify as.
It could also fall foul of new rules to come into force in August to protect free speech in universities.
King’s College told staff they cannot be promoted unless they sign up to the whole of the university’s “equality, diversity and inclusion ambitions”.
The policy states that staff members should provide evidence of what they have done to promote inclusion, such as taking part in activity run by Stonewall, the charity that has recently come under fire for its support of puberty blockers.
Dr John Armstrong, a reader in financial mathematics at the college, approached the gender-critical group Sex Matters to ask whether the rule was lawful. It asked a barrister to look at the case, and she found it was potentially in breach of the Equality Act and the Employment Act.
The legal opinion, by Akua Reindorf, found that King’s College’s “various policies, training materials and guidance relating to the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment are incorrect, as a matter of law, in several substantial respects”.
It found that the college’s policies were very similar to those of Stonewall, which “promote the gender identity belief”.
“I think it is strongly arguable that KCL’s approach to EDI in respect of sex and gender conflicts with and/or actively contradicts the law in certain key respects, and that it is partisan and ideological in nature,” the barrister said….
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, said: “The damning conclusions of this legal opinion mean that King’s College London must urgently review its promotion and hiring policies.
“A university that forces staff and applicants to support positions shaped by lobby groups that misrepresent laws relating to discrimination will be vulnerable to legal challenge in the employment tribunal.
“Several high-profile recent cases, like the successful case taken by criminologist Jo Phoenix against the Open University, show that this can be a very expensive mistake.
“Any university that imposes policies that run counter to academic freedom is failing in its core mission, and likely to be penalised by the Office for Students under new laws coming into force in August.”
She added: “Ideological capture by trans lobby groups has no place in higher education."
Unfortunately it clearly still does. It'll take years to flush all this nonsense out of the system.
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When facts intrude on a cult belief. Hilary Cass interviewed in the Times:
Dr Hilary Cass has criticised the spread of “disinformation” around her report, including from a Labour MP, as she revealed she had been told not to travel on public transport over safety fears.
In an interview with The Times, the paediatrician behind last week’s landmark review on the treatment of transgender children said that young people were being put “at risk” by the spread of false information.
Following publication of her 388-page report, figures including the Labour MP Dawn Butler repeated claims that Cass had not included 100 transgender studies in it.
That would be Dawn "babies are born without biological sex" Butler.
Calling the assertion “completely wrong”, Cass said that it was “unforgivable” for people to undermine her report by spreading “straight disinformation”.
The physician, 66, who has spoken about the toxic debate around the issue, also revealed that she had been sent “vile” abusive emails and been given security advice to help keep her safe.
Of her critics, Cass said: “I have been really frustrated by the criticisms, because it is straight disinformation. It is completely inaccurate.
“It started the day before the report came out when an influencer put up a picture of a list of papers that were apparently rejected for not being randomised control trials.
“That list has absolutely nothing to do with either our report or any of the papers.
“If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgivable. You are putting children at risk by doing that.”…
Cass said: “There are some pretty vile emails coming in at the moment. Most of which my team is protecting me from, so I’m not getting to see them.” Some of them contained “words I wouldn’t put in a newspaper”, she said.
She added: “What dismays me is just how childish the debate can become. If I don’t agree with somebody then I’m called transphobic or a Terf.”
Because it's a cult, and abuse is all they have.
See Benjamin Ryan for more detail on the false claim that the Cass Report discarded 101 out of 103 studies of pediatric gender-transition treatment.
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John Vachon, April 1943. "San Augustine, Texas. Story of a small town. The waiting room in the railroad station."
[Photo:Shorpy/John Vachon for the Office of War Information] -
Yesterday we heard about "LGBT Youth Scotland", a group promoting trans ideology in Scottish primary schools. Here's how it worked for a 12-year-old autistic girl:
Within months of joining the LGBT club, Holly, who her mother says had never shown any hint of being uncomfortable as a girl, announced in a Christmas card to her parents that she had become their “trans son”, signing it with her new male name.
“We thought we were the first ones to know, but it turned out we were last,” Joanne said.
“It turned out she was on to her second male name, and she had been using boys’ names at the school for months. We had been left completely in the dark.
“I even went along with the new name for a while. But as soon as I started to ask questions about what was going on at the school, I was met with a wall of secrecy.”
Joanne says she asked the school and LGBT Youth Scotland to send her the “charter” the school was implementing, as part of its push to win accreditation from LGBT Youth Scotland.
She says both entities sent her the same one-page poster with no details about the actual requirements.
Documents obtained by the Telegraph, released through Freedom of Information laws, show the school was in fact operating a policy stating that parents should not be told if their child had transitioned without their explicit permission.
The setting-up of an LGBT club and the prominent displaying of flags was another condition set out by the charity to receive charter status.
At the time, the school had a bronze award but was working towards silver status….
Joanne believes the school was effectively encouraging pupils to “come out” as trans, to the acclamation of their peers. After finding the material on Holly’s phone, she pulled her child out of the school but discovered that all others in the area had also signed up for the LGBT Youth Scotland scheme.
One, Dunbar Grammar, organised a Happy Fest event in 2020 including two drag acts, with one called Auntie Climax.
It also endorses notions to children that there are genders such as “gender-fluid”, meaning to “identify as different genders at different times”.
“I consider myself a Lefty, I firmly believe in state education,” Joanne said.
“We can’t afford it at all. In many ways, it has screwed up our lives financially and because of all the travelling. But sending her to a private school in England was the only way to get my daughter away from LGBT Youth Scotland.
“She now has no issues whatsoever with her gender. But had she stayed in that school, it was so encouraged and deeply embedded within her friendship group that there is no way she would have turned away from that.
“There’s every possibility that she would have ended up on a medical pathway.
“I’m still very angry about it. My child was vulnerable and I feel they exploited that. They isolated her from her family, told her to keep secrets from us and filled her head with extreme ideas. That is exactly what cults do and I honestly feel that this scheme is a state-funded radicalisation of children.”
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Some reactions to the Israeli hit inside Iran.
Yossi Kupperwasser in the JC:
The presumed Israeli attack on Iran was a message that was delivered very precisely, in the exact strength that was necessary. It clarified to the Iranians that whereas we are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.
Sean Rayment in the Spectator:
Symbolism is important. Israel’s overnight missile attack against Iran was a warning to the ayatollahs residing in Tehran that it can hit any target, wherever and whenever it wants.
The missile is believed to have struck a military airfield near Isfahan, a city in central Iran, which is also the location of a major missile production complex and several nuclear facilities.
The messaging here was simple: in the future nothing will be off the table – including Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The fact that the attack took place on the 85th birthday of Iran’s ailing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should not be overlooked either, given that it was the diplomatic equivalent of a two fingered salute.
Israel was also keen to demonstrate, not just to the US, but also to the UK and every other country calling for restraint, that it, and no one else, will decide how Israel responds to hostile threats.
And some analysis from Jonathan Spyer, again in the Spectator:
Israel appears to have wished to remind the Iranian regime in that it possesses an asset on the ground which the Iranians cannot match or counter: namely a network, clearly involving local partners, which is able to organise successful attacks on Iranian soil. The S-300 batteries, a sophisticated air defence system provided by Russia to Iran, is deployed in the Isfahan area. Israel evidently wanted to demonstrate that while Iran was unable to penetrate Israel’s air defences, it can activate the means to get past those of Iran at will.
The question, however, is whether this modest and not entirely novel display of Israeli capacities should be seen as an adequate response to the 13 April attacks. There is no doubt that its limited nature is, in part, the product of the Israeli government’s awareness of US determination to avoid escalation to open war in the Middle East at the present time. But this is not the heart of the matter.
It is important to remember the series of events that led to the current crisis. On 1 April, Israel signalled a clear intention to change its modus operandi regarding Iran’s campaign against it. The killing of IRGC/Quds Force General Mohammed Reza Zahedi indicated an Israeli decision that the previous accepted rule according to which Israel would focus its responses on Iran’s proxies, rather than their Iranian patron, no longer applied.
This reflected a conviction held widely in Israel’s defence establishment that Iran is the real sovereign in the land area between the Iraq-Iran border and Syria and Lebanon’s borders with Israel. They view the ‘states’ of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as today largely fictions, with Iran either in effective control of the government (Iraq, Lebanon) or possessing freedom of operation (Syria).
From within this large area of control (and elsewhere), Iran is pursuing a strategy intended to lead to the slow bleeding to death of the Jewish state, via the activation of Islamist proxy armies. The killing of Zahedi was an announcement that Israel would now not only strike at the clients, but also directly at the patrons, including the most senior among them, where they think they are most safe….
There is, of course, a much larger question surrounding all this: namely, why are western countries acquiescing to a process whereby Iran appears to be slowly swallowing up the Middle East? With its proxies and clients, Teheran is now in control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It is able to disrupt shipping on a daily basis on a key global maritime trade route (the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden), and it has, via Hamas and Islamic Jihad, largely achieved ownership of the Palestinian cause. But in the round of escalation that began on 1 April with the killing of Zahedi, the final word remains to be said.
The western acquiescence to Iran's Middle Eastern dominance goes back to Obama, and his shift of US foreign policy away from Israel towards some kind of fantasy rapprochement with Iran via the hopelessly flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – meanwhile abandoning Syria to Iran and the Russians.
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Misspoke?? Jesus.
Thanks to all those pointing out I misspoke this evening says Israel is sworn to Iran’s destruction. That is not the case. Feel free to retweet to correct the record. Iranian leaders have called for Israel to be wiped off the map but not vice versa. https://t.co/w7L6PH5ube
— Dominic Waghorn (@DominicWaghorn) April 18, 2024
Mick Hartley 