Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Our broken asylum system revisited

    Earlier this year we had the case of Abdul Ezedi, the Afghan who was given asylum here despite being a convicted sex offender, on the grounds that he was now a happy Christian convert and would never do anything nasty ever again. He went on to throw corrosive chemical over a woman and child in Clapham – and, after his death, was of course buried as a Muslim. It prompted an angry response from an anonymous Home Office civil servant on "our broken asylum system", and a dysfunctional culture where things like "world hijab day" are celebrated, and staff are too intimidated to speak out.

    And here we go again:

    An Afghan sex offender avoided deportation after lawyers claimed his treatment of women would put him at risk of “mob violence” in his home country.

    The 31-year-old asylum seeker was jailed for 12 weeks for “outraging public decency and exposure” and was placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.

    However, the Afghan was awarded refugee status and avoided deportation after claiming it was a breach of his human rights to deny him asylum in the UK.

    Doctors told the immigration tribunal that the Afghan man, referred to only as DH, continued to act “inappropriately” towards women despite his conviction.

    An immigration tribunal judge agreed with lawyers that his “risky behaviours” would expose him to “ill treatment” and even “mob violence” if he returned to Afghanistan.

    Christopher Hanson, the tribunal judge, therefore ruled that the man should be granted refugee status, allowing him to remain in the UK.

    As we know, in Afghanistan inappropriate behaviour towards women is practically unheard of. They come down very hard on offenders.

    Or, more seriously, it's surely likely that the offender views women as sexual objects because that's the culture he was raised in, and seeing women here uncovered and, by Afghan standards undressed, is too provocative for him to resist. Back in Afghanistan the problem wouldn't arise as any woman who might venture out in public would be covered head to toe in a sack. So, send him back. Problem solved. But such thinking clearly didn't occur to our learned tribunal judge.

  • The anti-imperialism of fools

    From Stalin to Hamas: The Return of the Left that Doesn’t Learn? A lengthy interview with Mitchell Cohen at Fathom…an extract:

    Anti-Zionism is part of a larger intellectual crack-up on the left with distant roots. There is now a kind of meeting point between simplistic post-modernism and simplistic anti-imperialism. This conjuncture can be called ‘the anti-imperialism of fools,’ a phrase that echoes the famous criticism of antisemitism on the left in the late 19th century by socialist August Bebel. When some on the left tried to blame ‘Jewish capitalists’ for Europe’s woes, he called it ‘the antisemitism of fools.’ Formulations of both the antisemitism of fools and anti-imperialism of fools depend on intellectual twisting and turning until somehow, no matter what, blame is ascribed to, respectively, Jews and Zionists. Ominously, that ascription is often there before the twisting and turning.

    Opposition to imperialism and colonialism has always been part of any morally intelligent left-wing programs and should be. Decolonisation after World War II was of world historical importance. In many ways it culminated in Nelson Mandela’s heroic leadership of South Africa’s liberation from apartheid. But three decades later, the party he led is in miserable shape, as is South Africa as a whole, and it faces electoral decline. So, it seeks to make itself the moral leader of the ‘Global South’ and accuses Israel of genocide and apartheid but won’t condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is a species of scapegoating and has attracted great support in parts of the world including from the western left. But those supporters are reminiscent of what a New York literary critic, Harold Rosenberg, once called (referring to New York intellectuals) as a ‘herd of independent minds.’

    Nobody can take a walk in Tel Aviv or Haifa and see apartheid. Using such words is a vulgar, opportunistic misapplication of political terms, corrupting their content. If you believe that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’ then you can also believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 American elections and that Hamas with its Islamist supremacism is a force of liberation even if – well, sorry about that little slip by brave ‘resisters’ – they rape Jewish women.

  • Further indoctrination with anti-American and anti-imperialist class consciousness

    All hands to the ideological pumps. From the Daily NK:

    Ahead of the Day of the Sun (Apr. 15, a holiday celebrating the birthday of Kim Il Sung), North Korea has ordered that the country’s youth be further indoctrinated with an anti-American and anti-imperialist class consciousness, Daily NK has learned.

    “The Central Committee ordered the Socialist Patriotic Youth League at the end of March to hold a series of training sessions for the Day of the Sun, noting that it is more important than ever to inculcate anti-American and anti-imperialist class consciousness in young people in view of the current political situation,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Apr.  5, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    Given the current political tensions, the North Korean authorities seem eager to stir up hostility toward South Korea and the U.S. in order to strengthen loyalty to the regime and prevent ideological laxity among the youth.

    According to the source, the North Korean authorities have outlined the main problems hindering efforts to raise anti-American and anti-imperialist class consciousness among the youth.

    First, young people are only interested in earning money and maintaining their own economic stability when they should be armed with socialist convictions and brimming with loyalty to the party and the state.

    The authorities emphasized the need for the youth league to hold more training sessions on ideology and class consciousness so as not to disappoint the Workers’ Party in its desire for the loyalty of the youth on whom the country’s future depends.

    In particular, these training sessions should mention that Ukraine, which has been dependent on the U.S., is losing its war against Russia, while impressing upon the youth that imperial fantasies have fatal consequences.

    Imperial fantasies do indeed have fatal consequences – though not in the way they think.

    To this end, the North Korean authorities ordered that model class-consciousness training sessions be held in every province and that instructors organize lectures and debates to instill in the youth a strong hostility toward the United States, Japan and South Korea (which North Korea calls a “puppet state”)….

    North Korea’s government has also instructed various levels of the party hierarchy to help organize intensive class-consciousness training sessions that include performances by experts and artists such as orators and singers.

    Yep, that should do the trick.

  • The “both sides” tactic

    Labour's health supremo Wes Streeting made all the right noises yesterday, after the release of the Cass Report. Julie Bindel, though, is still bitter:

    In the aftermath of the Cass Report into the state of Britain’s youth gender care services, I have little interest in condemning people for stupid things they have said in the past — but I am angry about those who only changed their stance once it becomes unavoidably obvious that they were wrong all along. One obvious candidate is Labour shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting — though, admittedly, he did reposition himself in the months before the Cass Report was published.

    In the past, Streeting has resorted to what I call “the Joni Mitchell diversion tactic”, attributing the toxicity of the “debate” to “both sides”. Yet Streeting himself hasn’t always been so even-handed. In 2017, he called for “specialist GPs” to be trained to prescribe “bridging hormones” while patients waited for a referral — a practice starkly at odds with the conclusions of the Cass Report.

    Yesterday, though, Streeting hailed Cass’s review as “a really important” piece of work. “[It] does raise some serious concerns that are pretty scandalous. Actually I think we’ve got to ask ourselves: why is it that we’ve seen medical interventions that have been given on the basis of very weak evidence? How is it that clinicians have been silenced for coming forward?”

    Really, Wes? You don’t understand how these people — including your own colleague, Rosie Duffield — have also been silenced? Of course he does. But then yesterday, disingenuity was the order of the day….

    In 2008, I was officially “no-platformed” by the National Union of Students (NUS), becoming the first individual deemed so offensive and dangerous that I was blacklisted alongside five fascist groups. At the time, Streeting was president of the NUS, and I called him and asked for his help. When he refused, I asked if he would simply denounce the allegation that I was transphobic, even if he couldn’t do anything officially to get me removed from the list. He would not. Six years later, when I was considering whether to take some kind of legal action against the NUS for reputational damage, I contacted him again. He initially agreed to an off-the-record chat, but then stopped replying to my emails about a suitable time to speak. It’s funny how things change.

    If I sound bitter that’s because I am. Thousands of kids have been harmed by this ideology, along with many, many adults. Those of us who have been shunned, lost jobs, friends and reputations as a result of accusations of bigotry and transphobia are, of course, secondary victims. And as for those who have played it safe? Inevitably, they will now stay silent or pretend that the evidence of harm contained in the Cass Report is a shocking revelation. The truth, of course, is that the evidence has been there all along. To those new converts now pretending otherwise: we see you.

    From a Sun interview with Streeting yesterday:

    Speaking to The Sun's politics show Never Mind the Ballots, Mr Streeting admitted the controversial LGBTQ-rights group Stonewall – where he once worked – had got it wrong.

    Asked if he stood by the organisations’ claim that “trans women are women, get over it”, he admitted “no”.

    He added: “To the extent that – and I say this with some self criticism and reflection – if you'd asked me a few years ago, on this topic, I would have said trans men are men, trans women are women. Some people are trans, get over it. Let's move on. This is all blown out of proportion.

    “And now I sort of sit and reflect and think actually, there are lots of complexities.”

    He went on: “I take the criticism on the chin. And at the same time, I also think that there's been some absolutely ugly rhetoric directed towards trans people who are at the wrong end of all of statistics on hate crime, on self harm, suicide, mental health.”

    I didn't know he'd worked for Stonewall. 

    So yes, it's a major U-turn, and credit to him for that, but he's still peddling the same old trans-as-victims myth – a position which has been central to the whole trans activist argument, but for which there's zero evidence. All the violence, all the angry abuse, has been coming from just one side in this debate – and it's not the gender criticals.

  • Athlete of the week

    At New York's Rochester Institute of Technology:

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  • The crime of dancing

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    Full text:

    Surreal; This awesome graduation dance video got these female students into trouble. They now face prosecution for the “crime” of dancing during their graduation ceremony at Al-Zahra University in Bushehr, Iran. The university president threatened legal action against all these students. The individual who filmed this beautiful ceremony has been identified and his friends are concerned not only about her current situation but also her future.

    The Iranian regime is a gender apartheid regime, a reality reinforced time and again by the severe consequences faced by women for simple acts like dancing, highlighting the dire situation they endure under its rule. We’ve witnessed this scenario play out before. Nobody should be condemned, punished, or deprived of education simply for the ‘crime’ of dancing and experiencing happiness. We deserve to have a normal life.

  • The collapse of Israel’s campaign in Gaza

    Jake Wallis Simons in the Spectator – Hamas has all but won:

    The way in which the Jewish state – the regional military superpower, enjoying huge military support from the global superpower – is being forced to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is a cautionary tale for the West. It is often correctly said that Israel is on the frontline of the struggle against jihadism. Well, pay attention: the collapse of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which after the October atrocities was the most justified imaginable, is a harbinger of what may lie ahead.

    Let’s look at the facts on the ground. At the height of the war, there were hundreds of thousands of troops in Gaza. This week, however, almost all Israeli forces were withdrawn, leaving behind only 1,000 combat troops from the Nahal Brigade. They are deployed only along the narrow Netzarim corridor, which bisects Gaza from east to west to prevent Hamas creeping north. The southern portion of the Strip, from Rafah on the Egyptian border to Khan Yunis – where the 98th commando division sacrificed many lives to root out Hamas and pursue a fruitless search for its leader, Yahya Sinwar – has been abandoned to the jihadis. And there remain pockets of Hamas in the north.

    The official Israeli line is that all this is simply a regrouping tactic to prepare for a future invasion of Rafah, which is backed by most Israelis. This is not out of some bloodlust: Israel understands that without taking Rafah, Hamas will simply return and repeat October 7. In the words of a senior Israeli politician, you can’t extinguish 80 per cent of a fire.

    In a desperate attempt to steady his restive coalition and calm the voting public, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have set a date for the Rafah operation, once the troops are ready. But few people believe him. It is now very difficult to see how this can ever take place.

    With Hamas once again taking control of the south, Israel would need to pull hundreds of thousands of reserves away from their families once again and re-conquer that territory before driving down towards Rafah. In fact, now that the troops have left, the jihadis are already returning. […]

    This was never about revenge, nor about provoking a regional confrontation. The aim of the war, which Israel never wanted, was to eliminate a genocidal threat on its border. On October 7, it was given no choice. Yet now the gains are being thrown away. For this so many families gave the lives of their sons?

    The West must take heed. The epicentre of the other side’s strategy is in Tehran. Last week, the Ayatollah Khamenei held a meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, during which he made the starkest of statements. ‘We have, so far, successfully won the media and PR wars, and have managed to change public opinion across the globe,’ he said. ‘We must continue with this.’ You have to hand it to the jihadists: they never keep their strategy a secret. That’s what makes it even more appalling.

    For six months, commentators like me have been constantly warning that Hamas’s strategy is to manipulate public opinion so that Israel’s hands are tied before victory is secured. It does so, we repeated, by excluding numbers of Palestinian combatant dead in its death tolls, which are parroted by journalists and politicians alike. It does so by censoring the footage that comes out of Gaza, allowing the world to see only images of suffering civilians, never suffering terrorists. It does so by relying upon the relationship it has built up over many years with international aid agencies, the United Nations and the global media, all of whom are congenitally biased towards the Palestinians. In the West, we have swallowed this whole.

    The counter-narrative – that Israel is taking all possible measures to protect innocent life, that it has been facing an existential war that can only end with the destruction of Hamas if any peace is to be won, that it is on the frontline of the struggle between the free world and jihadism – has been drowned out. The results can be seen in the hundreds of thousands taking to the streets, in the natural assumption in the minds of the public that Israel is perpetrating a ‘genocide’.

    Preposterously, this can also be seen in Washington. President Biden himself has begun parroting Hamas’s casualty figures and levelling wild accusations against Israel, accusing it of ‘indiscriminate bombing’ and going ‘over the top’. In recent weeks, there have been a number of attacks on Israel from the Democrats, who now expend almost no energy criticising Hamas.

    You could argue that Hamas has played a brilliant game, but could they – could anyone – have foreseen the sheer delight that erupted across the streets of western cities after the October 7th pogrom? And the sheer brazenness of it all: making no secret of the desire to kill as many Jews as possibe; using the death and suffering of its own people as a key tactic. And the west, leaders and media, just go along with it. All the venom is aimed at Israel: none at Hamas.

    As I've said before, it's a strange war where the "attackers" are keen to kill as few as possible, while the "defenders" rejoice in the rising death toll.

    From the point of view of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, this is a dream come true. His strategy – to resist Israel’s assault until the international community tied its hands – is working wonderfully. What motivation has he to release any hostages now? What leverage is left to the Israelis?

    According to reports, Sinwar’s messianic tendencies are now in full flow as he revels in ecstasy underground. This weird trait of his used to be described as ‘pathological or out of touch with reality.’ It now seems anything but.

  • Putin’s Christian jihad

    Putin's derangement gets ever darker:

    President Putin has compared himself to Jesus Christ as he quoted the Bible to explain his divine mission schooling Russia’s youth in “traditional” values.

    The Russian president has frequently portrayed himself as a stalwart defender of the Christian faith against the “Satanic” West.

    But in a revealing insight into how Putin sees his role, the Russian leader spoke in overtly religious terms about the need to shape the worldview of young Russians.

    Appearing via video link to celebrate the opening of children’s centres near Moscow, Putin began quoting from the Bible….

    Putin compared his mission of protecting the Russian youth from the creeping influence of the West to the efforts of Jesus Christ recruiting Peter and Andrew, two fishermen, to spread the word of God….

    Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has said that Russian troops who die in Ukraine are absolved of sin, effectively anointing the war as a holy crusade.

    Last week Richard Dawkins, speaking on LBC, said: "If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not." Most people brought up as cosy Anglicans in the UK would very likely agree, whether church-goers or lapsed. But Christianity can take many forms, and in Russia it's clearly turned very nasty indeed – used to sanctify genocide in Ukraine. You'd be hard pressed now to choose between Islamist jihad and current Russian Orthodoxy on a moral scale. 

  • Labour on board

    And this is very encouraging, from Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting:

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  • Where have the media been?

    Hannah Barnes on Newsnight last night:

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