Mick Hartley

A photo of a truck with the half-naked body of Israeli Shani Louk, abducted and killed by Hamas, features in the “Team Picture Story of the Year”:

Poyipics is the oldest photojournalism competition in the world.  Their Pictures of the Year International award began as a photographic contest in 1944 by Cliff Edom at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri.

This year Poyipics awarded the winner to The Associated Press in the category “Team Picture Story of the Year” for their article “War between Israel and Hamas” in which they do not even mention the name of Shani Louk, nor even not that she was raped and massacred by Hamas terrorists in front of a delirious crowd.

From the Jerusalem Post:

A freelance photojournalist, Ali Mahmud, contributed to the Associated Press (AP) winning first place for the Team Picture Story of the Year last week for taking a photo of Shani Louk's half-naked corpse as Hamas terrorists were driving it away on October 7, alluding to the photographer's knowledge of the attack beforehand.

According to the Pictures of the Year program's website, the category "recognizes the collaborative effort of a photography staff covering a single topic or news story. It is a narrative picture story that consists of images taken as part of a team effort to cover a single issue or news story."

Other photos, mostly attributed to other photographers on behalf of the Associated Press, were snapped of destroyed or damaged buildings in Gaza, injured or dead Palestinians, Israelis mourning at funerals or fleeing from rocket attacks. However, many of these photos allude to photographer's previous knowledge and possible involvement of the massive attack launched on Israeli soil – in order to get the "shot of a lifetime."

The program posted news about the AP's victory, alongside Mahmoud's photo of Louk on Instagram, where they came under immense criticism from users. Louk's name is not mentioned anywhere in the program's Instagram post.

"There is a dead body of a partially unclothed human being, a young woman who was brutally murdered and probably raped. This cannot be real. Please remove this photo," one user wrote, while another said "She has a name. Shani Louk. Her family specifically requested that we remember her laughing and living. Take this down and show some respect. If you want to post our Shani, find a photo she consented to."

Mahmud, who took the photo of Louk, had his name mentioned in an earlier report when parents of Louk and other Nova massacre victims sued AP and Reuters last month for their employment of photojournalists who accompanied the terrorists on their pogrom and contended that AP ignored close connections the photographers had to terrorist organizations, to which they said: "we have not seen any evidence – including in the lawsuit – that the freelance journalists who contributed to our coverage did."

Awards for photos of people celebrating murdered Jews. These are dark times.

Update:

This is how Shani Louk's family asked for her to be remembered. Smiling and alive.

The biggest photojournalism competition in the world decided to trample on the family's wishes in favor of giving a photo of Shani's mutilated body a prestigious award. She wasn't even named in… pic.twitter.com/y4L4R35bdA

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) March 28, 2024

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More on the Moscow terrorist attack – realistic this time – from Kyle Orton at UnHerd:

Much of the media coverage has so far focused on Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an Afghanistan-based IS contingent that was likely involved in the atrocity. But this should not be misunderstood as a separate entity: IS’s “provinces”, such as ISKP, all take their cue from the “centre” in Iraq and Syria.

Nato’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 left Western intelligence constrained in assessing the ISKP threat, but the evidence that IS had turned back to “external” operations, with ISKP a key part of this, stacked up over the last year. A series of ISKP plots were disrupted in Kazakhstan, India, and Europe — including what would have been devastating attacks over Christmas and New Year in Austria and Germany. “Successful” IS attacks hit France and Belgium in October, and then Iran and Turkey in January.

The four visibly-beaten men brought into court in Russia this week as perpetrators were all Tajiks. While information from the Russian judiciary must be handled carefully, most ISKP operatives in the aforementioned cases were Tajiks — a perhaps unsurprising revelation given that IS has been targeting Tajikistan for recruitment.

Tajikistan’s well-established Islamist scene, so close to ISKP’s Afghan base, is an easy recruitment pool and many Tajik jihadists in the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, disillusioned since the 2021 takeover, have been drawn to IS’s “purer” Islam, unconstrained by national boundaries and alliances with “infidel” states such as Russia. Russian-speaking Tajiks with passports were always going to raise fewer red flags, plus the large Tajik migrant labour population in Russia meant that terrorists could blend in easily….

Questions remain over the Russian state’s behaviour before and during the massacre. Despite the US warning Russia publicly on 7 March of “imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts”, Vladimir Putin dismissed these “provocative statements” on 19 March as attempts to “intimidate and destabilise our society”.

Whatever the needs of propaganda, Russia’s security forces could have adhered to these warnings privately, but seemingly did not: it took an hour-and-a-half to react during the concert hall attack — when it took the FSB minutes to arrest mourners laying flowers for murdered dissident Alexei Navalny last month — and security forces then retreated for some time rather than entering the building.

The Kremlin’s attempt to link Ukraine, as predictable as it was absurd, has heightened the sense that Moscow is hiding something. It may simply be incompetence, often a better explanation than conspiracy. While it is true that Putin came to power on the back of the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, it may be a stretch to say he was behind this attack. Nevertheless, if the Kremlin now finds few believe it was not responsible for the slaughter of innocent Russians, in some way at least, it has nobody to blame but itself.

Hamish De Bretton-Gordon in the Telegraph does offer the suggestion that "ISIS acted alone, but were permitted to carry out the attack by the Russian intelligence services as part of a ‘false flag’ operation to boost support for its clampdowns and the war in Ukraine". But he admits that, although such brutal cynicism is entirely possible from Russia, in the end this is unlikely: "History tends to favour cock-up over conspiracy, and we know the FSB can be as staggeringly incompetent as any sweeping bureaucracy, especially one predicated on fear".

It's worth remembering quite how poisonous George Galloway really is. The newly elected MP for Rochdale campaigned on a Gaza Free Palestine ticket, cynically appealing to Rochdale's disaffected Muslim voters – and no doubt to a few hard leftists as well. His party, the Workers Party of Britain, is not only aggressively anti-Israel; it's also strongly pro-Putin. The origins of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they say "are in fact to be found in the aggressive designs of imperialism stretching back many years". You get the picture. 

Now here's Steerpike in the Spectator on the latest poison from Galloway, happily being echoed in official Russian circles:

Step forward George Galloway, the newly-elected MP for Rochdale, who is quoted approvingly at length in Russkaya Gazeta today, giving an ‘expert opinion.’ The quotes appear to be a distilled version of comments which Galloway made on his YouTube channel on Sunday. He suggested to viewers that President Obama could be involved in the Moscow terrorist attack and that the West is ‘lying’ about its involvement. Galloway said:

When the US and the UK and others swiftly tried to re-assure me that it was only ISIS that carried out this mass-murder in Moscow, I knew automatically that they were lying. And now I am working back and here’s what I’m finding. I’m finding, first of all, that no-one, no-one, has explained the unannounced visit of President Barack Obama to meet British political and security officials in 10 Downing Street three days before this terrorist crime was carried out. Working further back, I discover that Victoria Nuland, that harbinger of death, that angel of death, who, if she comes anywhere near you, be sure a civil war is coming in your country. I saw her with my own eyes promise the Russians some nasty surprises in the next few weeks and months. I’m working further back and I discover that the White House spokesman John Kirby announced that American citizens had been warned to stay away from crowded places, including shopping malls and theatres, in the great city of Moscow, the greatest city in Europe, the capital of the largest country on the earth. And I was never that great at mathematics. But I know that one and one makes two. I know that one and two makes three. I know that one and three makes four. And so I have four pieces of evidence in my mind that leads me to believe that the United States, that the Nato allies, and their proxy servant, the state of Ukraine, the remaining state of Ukraine were in fact responsible for this mass murder.

There are no depths to which the man won't sink to get his voice heard.

John Collier, November 1942. "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (vicinity). Champion No. 1 coal cleaning plant of Pittsburgh Coal Company."

[Photo: Shorpy/John Collier, Office of War Information]

The United Nations does it again:

Saudi Arabia has been chosen as the chair of the UN commission that is supposed to promote gender equality and empower women around the world, after an unopposed bid for leadership condemned by human rights groups because of the kingdom’s “abysmal” record on women’s rights.

The Saudi ambassador to the UN, Abdulaziz Alwasil, was elected as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), by “acclamation” on Wednesday, as there were no rival candidates and no dissent at the CSW’s annual meeting in New York.

Alwasil was endorsed by the group of Asia-Pacific states on the commission. When the outgoing chair, the Filipino envoy to the UN, Antonio Manuel Lagdameo, asked the 45 members if they had any objections there was silence in the chamber.

“I hear no objection. It is so decided,” Lagdameo said.

Now if it'd been Israel…

A few weeks back I featured a Tablet article from Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science, arguing that the Gaza Ministry of Health was faking the casualty figures. Now here's an article in Fathom from Tom Simpson, Lewi Stone, and Gregory Rose – Statistically Impossible: A Critical Analysis of Hamas’s Women and Children Casualty Figures. This despite the figures being regularly cited by media world-wide – including of course the BBC:

The Gazan Ministry of Health (MoH) has repeatedly claimed that 70 per cent of Gazan deaths are women and children. We first found the claim in the MoH’s 11 December 2023 report. In 2024, the MoH has repeated this claim in all seven of its reports that we have been able to obtain so far this year (see Figure 2). The 70 per cent figure has also been widely cited in the media, with a recent BBC factcheck even using it to criticise IDF statistics on eliminated Hamas combatants. But how trustworthy is the 70 per cent statistic? It should be kept in mind that the Gazan MoH operates under the auspices of the Hamas government, giving it a vested interest in delegitimising Israel and demonising the IDF.

It turns out this ‘70 per cent’ figure is contradicted by the statistics that the MoH itself provides in its own reports. It is a disinformation tool founded on statistical manipulation rather than realities on the ground. The BBC ‘factcheckers’ and other western media could easily have determined this for themselves, using publicly available information….

But it didn't suit the anti-Israel narrative.

The chief Hamas strategy is to see more dead Palestinians. As I've said before, it's a strange war where the "attackers" do their best to minimise civilian casualties, while the "defenders" want to see as many dead as possible. 

Imagine teaching a child to be disgusted with their perfectly healthy body. To other it, to hate it, to want to change it, and to harm it. That is prima facie child abuse.

And that is what 'gender affirmative care' does. Its mission is to teach children that their current body…

— Read some Piaget please! (@prof_curiosity1) March 27, 2024

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Full text:

Imagine teaching a child to be disgusted with their perfectly healthy body. To other it, to hate it, to want to change it, and to harm it. That is prima facie child abuse.

And that is what 'gender affirmative care' does. Its mission is to teach children that their current body is wrong and is the cause of their feelings of anomie and pain – natural feelings, which all children suffer at some time.

There is nothing kind or compassionate about teaching children self hatred as transgenderism does. Its purpose is to create disgust in the child in their own body. It is the opposite of teaching body acceptance and self care.

Yet, somehow, transgenderism has managed to twist that message to make it appear that 'gender affirmative care' is kind and beneficial to children. That body hatred is normal. That children have a 'gender identity' and can be born in the wrong body. And that drugs and surgery are the ONLY solution to this adult problem that has been smeared onto our children.

This is the scandal of scandals. Not just because so many children are being damaged by transgender ideology, but because ALL institutions set up to PROTECT children from child abuse are captured and complicit in the abuse. They, too, support children harming their own bodies. Our child protection systems have failed a significant systemic test. They are not fit for purpose. And as a social worker, I am ashamed of the 'leaders' in my profession.

Invective against the South Korean leader is a standard feature of North Korean propaganda, but to date I haven't seen too much on the Yoon administration. Till now:

North Korea’s government recently handed out political lecture materials to workers’ organizations that criticize South Korea’s Yoon administration, Daily NK has learned.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Mar. 22 that the lecture materials had been distributed to the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea, the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea, and the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea this month, following a similar set of lecture materials last month.

As a result, the youth league chapter at Chongjin Metal Mining University, in North Hamgyong Province, put on a lecture based on these materials shortly after a criticism session on Saturday, Mar. 16.

“The lecture materials said that people need to get in the habit of referring to South Korea [conventionally called Nam Joseon in North Korea] as ‘the South Korean puppet state’ [Goeroe Hanguk] even in everyday conversation and that the same term should also be used in lectures about class consciousness and political affairs,” the source said.

The same materials also featured strident criticism of Yoon and his administration.

“The world is watching as the democratic forces that organized the candlelit protests several years ago reunite with a fighting spirit that burns brighter each day and work together to impeach Yoon and his cronies and restore a free and democratic state. The Yoon administration and his puppet clique are at the end of their rope right now,” the lecture materials asserted.

“We must remain aware that our enemies could respond to the situation in the South Korean puppet state by lighting the fuse of nuclear war at any time and must always and in all places maintain firm organizational discipline in our organization and loyalty to the leadership of the party. To do so, we must thoroughly uproot any fantasies about the South Korean puppet state in the youth league, which is an external vanguard organization of the Workers’ Party.

“We must stand in unity with patriotic democratic forces in the South Korean puppet state and support the candlelight groups as they exact judgment against the regime of that madman and warmonger Yoon Suk-yeol,” the lecture materials went on to say.

“Our state must push forward with its revolutionary struggle and construction projects with the determination to eventually occupy the territory of the South Korean puppet state and liberate the groaning masses who suffer from discrimination under the jackboots of the puppet regime,” the materials concluded. 

Ah those groaning masses in South Korea – enjoying standards of prosperity and freedom North Koreans can only dream about.

The official from the youth league chapter at the Chongjin Metal Mining University who delivered the lecture went off script while attempting to arouse hostility against South Korea and the Yoon administration.

“When the time is right, we will lay waste to Seoul, the capital of our enemies, through force of arms and erect a civilized country in which life is worth living on the wreckage of that land,” the official said, according to the source. 

However, the response elicited from university students in the youth league was wholly different from the one envisioned by the North Korean authorities.

“After the lecture, young people noted with envy that while North Koreans are dragged away for the slightest slip of the tongue, organizing protests isn’t regarded as anti-state behavior [in South Korea],” the source said.

From the JC:

The Israeli brothers detained for two hours by Border Force officials at Manchester Airport were hailed as heroes after they saved 150 lives battling Hamas terrorists on October 7 in a six-hour gunfight, the JC can reveal. One of their friends was murdered and the other taken hostage….

Visiting the UK to raise money for survivors of the terror attacks, brothers Daniel and Neriyah were held after flying in from Brussels on Sunday night to speak at a post-Purim business lunch in Manchester the following day.

“They were asking us what we came to the UK to do and I started telling them that we went through the October 7 massacre and we’re here to share our story. When they heard that, they just flipped,” said Neriyah.

He said two border control officials started to “interrogate” them, asking if he served in the army and what they did. “He was absolutely trying to fail us, to find something that will mean we cannot go into the country,” he said.

Neriyah added: “I could tell on their faces that they didn't like us.”

Neriyah and Daniel gave the officials the details of the event they had flown in to attend, a luncheon hosted by a local Chabad and organised by the Jewish Business Network of Greater Manchester. 

One of the officials told them: “I don’t like what you came to do here,” Neriyah said.

He added that they were subjected to questioning for nearly two hours as they watched countless other travellers passing through border control in minutes.

A video taken by Daniel showed one of the officials saying to the brothers: “Just let us do the checks we need to do and keep quiet. Look at me. We’re the bosses, not you.”

Neriyah added: “In the end, after this they don’t have anything to blame on us. So they just gave us the passports and the cop says to me, ‘I want to make sure that you’re not going to do here what you do in Gaza’.

“When he said it to me I started freaking out and I didn’t feel safe, you know?”

Neriyah said he had heard reports of antisemitism in the UK but “didn’t know how big it was” until his encounter with border officials on Sunday.

“After what happened I don’t feel safe to come back to this country again,” he said. “This is my first time and my last time here.”…

The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region reported the incident yesterday and requested an “urgent investigation” by the UK Home Office. In a letter to Manchester Airport Group shared on social media, the Chief Executive of the council Marc Levy wrote that “the only reason for their detention and interrogation was because they are Israeli.”

Levy condemned the abuse, writing that the brothers “suffer from PTSD and had come to the UK to speak of their experiences as survivors of terrorism” only to be abused by a Border Official who “was motivated by antisemitic intent.”

A nice illustration of the happy alliance between Islamists and the hard left, as played out on the Free Palestine demos in London and other western cities just about every weekend:

Hizbullah MP Ibrahim Mousawi addressed the World Workers Party International Assembly against Imperialism in Support of the Palestinian Resistance, held in New York City on January 21, 2024. Mousawi said that Hizbullah appreciates the demonstrations and statements of the World Workers Party, is fighting the Israelis and struggling against them, and the participants of the Assembly are completing this mission in another way and style. He said: “We are together one front against Israel, against the United Staes, […] and against all the Western hegemony.” The event was planned to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. Video of Mousawi’s address was uploaded to the YouTube channel of the World Workers Party.