Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • No Jews

    Seth Mandel at Commentary on Palestine’s new Constitution:

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s constitution-writing committee has produced a draft of what would theoretically be the basic-law document of the State of Palestine. The document is a major blow to anyone’s hopes of a two-state solution, dwindling as those hopes already were. The “Palestine” “Constitution,” as currently envisioned, seems to be Abbas’s way of burning everything down behind him.

    In Princeton Professor Zaid Al-Ali’s English translation of the document, there is no mention of Jews or Israel. Reporting confirms the same is true of the Arabic original.

    It’s not that other religions are excluded—there are specific mentions of the rights of Christians, for example. But the State of Palestine declares itself judenrein.

    At least Hamas mention Jews in their charter: they must be eliminated. No such problem here.

    The original Hamas charter, it’s worth noting, was straightforward in its “struggle against the Jews.” The Palestinian Authority’s own proposed constitution doesn’t mention Jews at all. This is the problem when dealing with each of the Palestinian national movement’s leaders in its century-old existence: Jews are either excluded entirely or they are mentioned only as the object of a genocidal raison d’etre. To these Palestinian nationalists, Jews either don’t exist or else they must be made to not exist.

    Western leaders like Macron and Starmer persist in their illusion that the Palestinians want a two state solution, with the implication that the Israelis are the stumbling block. As the Palestinians make clear again and again, all they’re willing to consider is a one-state solution, with no Jews. Isn’t it about time the message got through?

  • The NHS Fife saga

    Janice Turner, in the Times, interviews Sandie Peggie:

    When Upton, then 27, joined the hospital in August 2023, just a year after transition, he sought and received permission to use female changing rooms. The nurses, however, were told nothing. “He just kind of popped up,” Peggie says. “It was a bit of a talking point. Everybody had something to say. I think it was probably the older crowd who were more shocked. The younger ones were more scared to speak out. But there was a big proportion of us — male and female nurses — who agreed he shouldn’t be there.” An Asian nurse stopped using the locker rooms; another woman started changing in a nearby cupboard.

    Peggie assumed the issue would be resolved, that Upton would be found a gender-neutral changing space. (In fact, Upton had dismissed this option as “othering”.) After their Christmas encounter she finished her shift, and went home to celebrate with her family. Then on December 29 her charge nurse called to say there was a serious complaint of bullying against her. “I was a bit confounded,” she says. “It was just a discussion, me letting him know that I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t think it was serious.” Davidson called to say she was handling the complaint, but promising support.

    Then in early January, Davidson called again, summoning Peggie to the hospital where she was abruptly suspended. “They said my emails would stop, they took my badge and I had to stay away from my workplace. And at the time, I was just thinking, ‘I have to bring my mother-in-law here tomorrow for tests.’ ” She left the hospital in tears.

    It transpired that on Christmas Day Upton had complained to his boss, Dr Kate Searle, who — breaking all complaints protocols — quickly emailed fellow consultants labelling Peggie’s words a “hate incident”. Upton revealed that on the two occasions Peggie left rather than change in front of him, he had logged this on his phone. Now he made graver claims, that twice when working with Peggie in A&E she had endangered patients. First, she’d walked out of a resuscitation; second, a patient who was triaged had left without being treated. Although Peggie says Upton had not noted or mentioned these incidents at the time….

    As an internal disciplinary hearing was launched, she contacted her Royal College of Nurses rep. When he was reluctant to act, she was put in touch with the campaign group Sex Matters, who recommended Gribbon, a veteran trade union lawyer. “Any experienced union rep should have recognised that Sandie was the real victim here,” she says. “This was an unwritten policy. There were no public sector equality duty obligations, no impact assessment or risk assessment; there was no consultation with the trade union or the women. In any other matter, a union would have been up in arms about that. Instead, they did absolutely nothing.”

    It’s the same old story: useless unions in thrall to gender ideology; hospital officials siding with the man against the women; so many people involved just going with the tide. Plus…well, this is Scotland. Still in thrall to the gender cult.

    “Before this happened to me,” Sandie Peggie says, “I’d never heard of terms like ‘gender critical’. I was just a nurse doing my job. I can’t believe I’ve had to go through all this just because I didn’t want to undress in front of a man.”

  • Oxfam’s Israel obsession

  • The “highly organised” grooming gangs

    Julie Bindel in the Telegraph:

    Right now, it’s a pretty depressing time to be a feminist campaigning to end men’s violence towards women and girls. I first reported on the grooming gang scandals back in 2007, having been alerted to the prevalence of the grooming gangs operating in northern towns and cities in England. Now, these gangs operate across the UK.

    And when I first pitched this story, in 2005, to the editor of a liberal newspaper, I was turned down, because: “We would be seen as racist.”

    That “liberal paper” would be the Guardian.

    Making a three-part podcast series with grooming gang victim Fiona Goddard, I have learnt shocking, jaw-dropping details I was hitherto unaware of, despite having been all over this story for two decades. I thought I knew as much as it was possible to know.

    I was wrong.

    Fiona was repeatedly told by the perpetrators, almost all of whom were related, that she should travel to Mirpur, Pakistan to meet the rest of the family. Luckily, practicality stood in their way, but Fiona knows of many other girls who were trafficked overseas, never to be seen again – not only to Pakistan, but also to Saudi Arabia. Some were forced into “temporary Islamic marriages”….

    In her case, and those of many others like her, the abuse she suffered was racially aggravated. She was called white trash, and told that girls like her were only good for sex – because Asian girls are to marry and keep pure. It is almost beyond belief that the only accusations of racism that arise in this whole horror story are levelled at the victims.

    “Most Muslims don’t drink or sniff coke”, says Fiona, “but these men would fast and then break their fasts with a line of coke, a vodka, then toddle off to the mosque.”

    I had not realised just how highly organised the gangs are. Operating on a strict policy of “omertà”, men are brought in not only from all over the UK, but also from overseas. All of them are close business contacts within the drug trade, with many extended family members involved.

    It operates like a Ponzi scheme, with boys being groomed into the business model through blackmail and threats of violence. They are required to rape the girls, after which they belong to the gangs and end up just like the older perpetrators.

    The podcast interviews with Fiona Goddard can be seen here.

    The brutality of the grooming gangs is appalling enough, yet in a way the true horror here is the complicity of the police and social services in all this.

    And – still – the denial.

  • At Columbia University

    With an AI image. Activist journalism. Never mind the truth, feel the passion.

  • Wet trees

    Queen’s Wood this morning.

  • The case of the non-binary transgender woman who is transrace Japanese

    From Genevieve Gluck:

    Reduxx has learned that a trans-identified male and “radical queer activist” residing in Seattle, Washington, has been publicly advocating for pedophilic relationships with children while also organizing “in-person events for anyone under the queer rainbow.”

    Ally Kotetsu, who describes himself as “a non-binary transgender woman who is transrace Japanese,” is campaigning both online and in public through an effort he calls Beyond the Plus, which advocates for the rights of “beings who are romantically or sexually attracted to beings who are below the age of 18.”

    That would be children, then. Children or teens. Minors.

    Kotetsu’s website describes “minor attraction” as an orientation and refers to individuals with a sexual interest in children as “MAPs” (minor attracted people). According to Beyond the Plus, “MAPs” are some of “the world’s most marginalized beings.”

    The site goes on to describe “age-based attractions” as being innate and similar to heterosexuality or homosexuality.

    They seem like a nice bunch.

    In total, four trans-identified males are listed as staff on the B+ website including Kotetsu, the president: Annette Ordelia, secretary; Aspen Rose, treasurer; and Violet Rose, lead journalist.

    Violet Rose, who uses the pronouns “she / it” online, has made several disturbing posts advocating for the sexual abuse of minors. “If you’re a parent, [and] your child isn’t explicitly asexual, and you haven’t bought them a vibrator yet, I’m judging you,” Rose wrote in 2024.

    Rose also advocates for “pedosadism,” a portmanteau of “pedophilia” and “sadism,” which refers to acting out sadomasochistic sexual practices on children.

  • Single sex means single sex

    Oh dear. Another loss, to add to the list, for Jolyon Maugham’s ridiculous Good Law Project.

  • “Tedious coercive trans activist nonsense”

    Excellent responses to this sad formulaic little speech.

    “It’s like you asked grok to splurge out “tedious coercive trans activist nonsense from 2014. The reality is you support modern gay conversion therapy. 80-90% of the Tavistock cohort were same sex attracted. Not that you care.”

    “No idea what you mean when you say you are a ‘queer’ woman but LGBs are free to organise independently for our own interests thank you very much, our rights are not contingent on supporting the deeply misogynistic, homophobic and childhood-disrupting T.”

    “LGB raised themselves to equality without any help from the TQ+. Then the TQ+ parasitically attached themselves to the gay rights movement; their dehumanizing, regressive ideology is now creating a backlash against gay people.”

    “How dare you demand my rights and protections as a gay man are contingent on supporting sex denying, homophobic and misogynistic fantasists.”

    Plenty more where those came from.

    Added:

  • Removed

    Though how he was invited in the first place remains a mystery.