Mick Hartley

Brendan O'Neill in the Spectator – How was the puberty blocking scandal ever allowed to happen?

NHS whistleblowers have been raising the alarm about puberty blockers for years. Yet their concerns frequently fell on the deafest of ears. In activist circles, it was breezily assumed that these people must be vile bigots, hell-bent on depriving ‘trans kids’ of ‘life-saving treatment’.

Authors like Abigail Shrier and Hannah Barnes, who meticulously documented the ‘experiments’ being carried out on gender-confused children, were demonised and even censored. Some stores refused to stock their books. Shrier was slammed for her ‘murderous bigotry’. Such was the hysterical pitch of this silencing crusade: query puberty blockers and you’re complicit in the deaths of ‘trans kids’.

Opposition to puberty blockers became tantamount to blasphemy in certain circles. The soft tyranny of it all is best summed up in the fate of Graham Linehan. He was brutally cast out from the cultural universe for his gender-critical dissidence while celebs who dutifully mouth slogans like ‘Gender-affirming care saves lives’ – shorter version: give kids drugs – still bask in the limelight….

Think about the madness of this, the horror of it. Vulnerable kids were given experimental drugs whose safety is uncertain and whose side effects might be severe and yet it was those who questioned the use of the drugs who were demonised. It was those who urged caution who were savaged and shamed. It was those who called for a rethink who were treated like lunatic outliers.

People are right to say that the cavalier prescription of puberty blockers to children with autism, young lesbians and other kids who really need love, not drugs, is one of the great medical scandals of our time. And it’s a scandal that was aided and abetted, from start to prayed-for finish, by censorship. By the silencing of dissent. By an unforgiving insistence on conformity….

There is much to feel down about in relation to the puberty blockers scandal. Medical experts succumbing to ideological crusades. Supposedly liberal journalists turning a blind eye to medical experimentation on kids, including huge numbers of girls. Opinion-formers staying silent, perhaps because they value being part of the in-group more than they do the safety of children. After all, what are a few hundred damaged kids in comparison with their own continued presence on the dinner-party circuit?

Yep. Thousands of lives ruined, but "gender-affirming care" is such a lovely feel-good phrase if you don't bother thinking too much about what it really means.

Karl-Marcus Gauss at Fathom – ‘Reactionary Anti-Imperialism’ as the new Totalitarian Temptation, from Foucault to 7 October:

When Iranian protests grew into a mass movement in 1978, the philosopher Michel Foucault decided to fly from Paris to Teheran. He wanted to understand what enabled the insurgents to sweep away the heavily armed regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi and to deprive the American imperialists of one of their most powerful vassals. In previous years, Foucault had published influential studies developing the thesis that the European Enlightenment’s development of bourgeois discipline had its way paved institutionally in prisons, while a true ‘dungeon system’ was tested in clinics, until it had finally subjugated the entire society. The Iranian revolution fascinated him, precisely because it was not a revolution based on a western, eastern, bourgeois or Bolshevik model, but had instead brought something new into the world. He called it ‘political spirituality’ and he meant by this the unity of anti-imperialist struggle and Shiite martyrdom. In short, the atheist, critic of bourgeois states and theoretician of anti-colonialism had discovered Islamism.

Foucault wrote enthusiastic articles about this new form of revolution in the French press and was invited to an audience with Ayatollah Khomeini, who was still living in exile in Paris. He was apparently neither willing nor able to apply to the developing theocracy of Iran the same critical instruments which he had used for his analysis of bourgeois civil society and which had led him to reject it. Even later he didn’t say a word about the fact that the Islamists had hijacked the revolution—had persecuted its opponents with bloody trials and imposed a patriarchal coercive rule on Iranian women, while instituting antisemitism as a state doctrine. He only got really angry when some feminist Iranian women in exile in France called him out about his turning a blind eye to the disenfranchisement of women. Then he told them that they were doing nothing other than fomenting Western prejudices against Islam with their criticism, and that they had not understood what the historical moment demanded: to put their own concerns aside in favour of the unique chance to finally free the earth from the damnation of capitalism and its European legacy….

Even the fact that homosexuality became punishable by death in the mullahs’ state did not cause Michel Foucault (who was permitted to live out his homosexuality freely under the supposedly coercive bourgeois regime of the west) to renounce his enthusiasm for ‘political spirituality.’ Since then, countless people have emulated his steadfast refusal to measure himself ideologically against something as banal as reality. Instead, they follow the changing fashions of pseudo-revolutionary attitudes. Even if sometimes it remains just an attitude, the matter is anything but harmless, as can be seen from the cheers that followed Hamas’s terrorist attack on 7 October 2023….

A few weeks before the Hamas massacre, I was asked what was the easiest way to fuel antisemitism. Today I would have to answer: by massacring as many Jews as possible. Nothing has fuelled hatred of Jews more than the worst attack on Jews since the Shoah, and because the attack was carried out against Jews, the rapists and murderers can only be called ‘resistance fighters’ motivated by a ‘holy Hatred’ against foreign Jewish rule in Palestine. ‘Heilige Hass’ (holy hatred) is, by the way, a motif that literally comes from Julius Streicher’s Nazi magazine Der Stürmer and which has been taken over in anti-colonial discourse. There are forms of ignorance that are entirely culpable. One of these is when Israel haters, who see themselves as left-wing, simply refuse to acknowledge the political foundations of Hamas….

Forty-five years after Foucault abandoned his intellectual and moral standards to support ‘political spirituality,’ the most sensitive youth in the West are forming an alliance with one of the most brutal terrorist representatives of ‘political spirituality.’ There are some new things that the anti-Zionists put forward between Berkeley and Berlin—such as the rigorous rejection of the Enlightenment legacy, which is denounced in self-loathing as a weapon of white supremacy; but the core of their accusation is ancient….

It is not without reason that these days many people sometimes complain that the political debate is no longer about knowledge, but rather only about demonstrating a loyal commitment to one side or the other. However, I must note: antisemitism did not come into the world through Jewish misbehaviour, and it will not disappear from it through Jewish good behaviour. Of course, Hamas cannot achieve its openly declared goal of wiping out Israel [at least not alone]; but on the day of the massacre it had already achieved things that millions and millions wanted. It is therefore necessary to offer protection and security to Jews who are threatened everywhere, through personal courage, social initiatives and government laws. And, especially if you feel politically connected to the left like I do, to support the state of Israel and its right to self-defence.

An extraordinary moment. Fatah's devastating attack on the disaster that Hamas has brought on the Palestinian people. It does not spare Israel blame either but this is damning:
"Those who caused the reoccupation of Gaza by Israel, and caused the catastrophe that the… https://t.co/OmdGZT5rNc

— S Sebag Montefiore (@simonmontefiore) March 16, 2024

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"Those who caused the reoccupation of Gaza by Israel, and caused the catastrophe that the Palestinian people are living, especially in the Gaza Strip, do not have the right to dictate national priorities, confirming that the real detachment from reality and from the Palestinian people is the leadership of the Hamas movement, which has not yet felt the magnitude of the disaster that our people live in the Gaza Strip and the rest of the Palestinian territories."

I don't know what it is about Hull but it did attract the photographers, especially in the Seventies and Eighties when the fishing industry was in decline. I've featured Peter Marshall (twice) and Sean Plunkett here, as well as a few shots from John Bentley in Yorkshire. Now here's Alec Gill, whose photos have been brought together in The Alec Gill Hessle Road Photo Archive 1971-1987.

This book is a celebration and exploration of the photographic study of one road and its community in the port city of Kingston upon Hull. Located in the northeast of England, Hull, as it’s commonly known, sits at the heart of the UK’s historic fishing culture.

Alec Gill took his first photograph of Hull's Hessle Road community in 1971. He drew up a boundary map and stuck to it conscientiously, taking photographs in the same area on his Rolleicord twin-lens reflex camera over a 15-year period.

Over 200 images are presented alongside archival material such as Alec's camera and notebooks, setting the work in its historical context. His depiction of the once vibrant working-class neighbourhood during the decline of its fishing trade and a period of mass housing demolition witnesses the changing landscape over time and is a warm representation of a community that deserves to be more widely recognised. The photographs tap into the ever-hopeful attitude of Hessle Roaders despite the chaotic situation they found themselves in.

[Images © Alec Gill]

That's the man himself in the first shot.

On the second photo:

I saw these women leaving Marr’s fish-processing factory in Hull one Friday lunchtime in December 1977, wearing headscarves and carrying shopping bags, their white overalls underneath their coats, after a morning of filleting and packing fish. I expect many of them were thinking about their Christmas shopping, but who knows? I liked the reflection in the puddles, the row of chimney stacks behind, even though I had to stand in the mud to get the shot. Looking back, I can see how it relates to the whole history of Hessle Road, which was the beating heart of Hull’s fishing industry.

Impressive.

Let me tell you a little bit about @RawaneOsmane

She is a Syrian-Lebanese woman who grew up in Lebanon. She actually used to be a fan of Hezbollah in her teenage years.

But when she moved to Europe and lived amongst Jewish people and got to know what we are really about, she… pic.twitter.com/4MxwJu7abp

— Eitan Chitayat (@EitanChitayat) March 15, 2024

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Full text:

Let me tell you a little bit about @RawaneOsmane

She is a Syrian-Lebanese woman who grew up in Lebanon. She actually used to be a fan of Hezbollah in her teenage years.

But when she moved to Europe and lived amongst Jewish people and got to know what we are really about, she realized that in the Arab World, people are brainwashed.

That the wars we’ve all lived through could have been avoided had the Arabs accepted to share land with the Jewish People who are indigenous to the so-called Middle East.

Before Oct. 7, she was building bridges between Arabs and Israelis by inviting Arabs to join educational programs on the Holocaust.

After October 7, she switched to full-on fighter mode and became vocal on social media. She launched ArabsAsk to counter Hamas’s propaganda and even though she’s at the beginning of this journey, she is still labeled a traitor or a far right activist.

She is neither of those things.

What she is is an independent thinker, brave, outspoken and honest.

Only with people of sound minds like her, who are brave enough to withstand the mob mentality of radical Islamic fundamentalists who don’t even know they’re being brainwashed – or who are fine with it – will we even achieve peace between Arabs and Jews, and will the world defeat Radical Islam.

When I say that I have hope, it is because of people like Rawan.

Back on the tracks with Jack Delano, December 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. Switching and classification freight yards. Engineer and fireman thawing out air compressors on a cold morning at a Chicago and North Western railyard."

[Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

Further to my thoughts on Jonathan Glazer's Oscar aceptance speech – in the Guardian:

László Nemes, the director of acclaimed film Son of Saul, has criticised The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech.

Speaking at the ceremony on Sunday, Glazer said he and his producer, James Wilson, “stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.”

Glazer’s words have met with both applause and opprobrium, including from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who on Monday called them “morally reprehensible”.

The ADL posted on social media: “Israel is not hijacking Judaism or the Holocaust by defending itself against genocidal terrorists. Glazer’s comments at the #Oscars are both factually incorrect & morally reprehensible. They minimise the Shoah & excuse terrorism of the most heinous kind.”

This sentiment was echoed by Nemes, who – like Glazer – won the foreign language Oscar for a film about the Holocaust; in Nemes’ case his 2015 movie Son of Saul, about a Jewish prisoner forced to work in the gas chambers at Auschwitz….

“The Zone of Interest is an important movie, It is not made in a usual way. It questions the grammar of cinema. Its director should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilisation, before or after the Holocaust.Had he embraced the responsibility that comes with a film like that, he would not have resorted to talking points disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, at the end, all Jewish presence from the Earth.

"It is especially troubling in an age where we are reaching pre-Holocaust levels of anti-Jewish hatred – this time, in a trendy, “progressive” way. Today, the only form of discrimination not only tolerated but also encouraged is antisemitism. But maybe it all makes sense, ironically – there is absolutely no Jewish presence on screen in The Zone of Interest.

"Let us all be shocked by the Holocaust, safely in the past, and not see how the world might eventually, one day, finish Hitler’s job – in the name of progress and endless good."

Interestingly, The Zone of Interest's producer Danny Cohen was also critical:

“It’s really important to recognise [these comments have] upset a lot of people and a lot of people feel upset and angry about it” said Cohen on the Unholy podcast. “And I understand that anger frankly.”

Cohen said: “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan on this. My support for Israel is unwavering. The war and the continuation of the war is the responsibility of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation which continues to hold and abuse the hostages, which doesn’t use its tunnels to protect the innocent civilians of Gaza but uses it to hide themselves and allow Palestinians to die. I think the war is tragic and awful and the loss of civilian life is awful, but I blame Hamas for that.”

It's pointed out that now, perhaps, Glinner has been proved right, "and a lot of cowards owe him an apology". Someone objects, pointing out that, as we of course know, trans people are the most vulnerable people in society…

Giving us a chance to celebrate one in particular.

Here’s one of the poor little scraps. A US billionaire pumping money into queer theory to provide cover for his fetish. But it’s true that they have managed to attract some vulnerable people to their cult. pic.twitter.com/qXHoT49mUs

— Mollscroll (@mollscroll) March 15, 2024

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That's Jennifer Pritzker, the first and only trans billionaire.

Jennifer Bilek at Tablet in June 2022:

One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions….

Through investments in the techno-medical complex, where new highly medicalized sex identities are being conjured, Pritzkers and other elite donors are attempting to normalize the idea that human reproductive sex exists on a spectrum. These investments go toward creating new SSI using surgeries and drugs, and by instituting rapid language reforms to prop up these new identities and induce institutions and individuals to normalize them. In 2018, for example, at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at the University of California Los Angeles (where the Pritzkers are major donors and hold various titles), the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology advertised several options for young females who think they can be men to have their reproductive organs removed, a procedure termed “gender-affirming care.”…

Labour MPs were spinning out a Private Members bill on pet welfare in parliament today, name-checking their dogs and cats and ferrets, so that Liz Truss's bill on banning the unscrupulous selling of puberty blockers, and ensuring that sex means biological sex, wouldn't get heard.

Just now Labour MPs prevented debate on a new law to protect children and single sex spaces.
Instead they used parliamentary time to discuss ferret name choices.@Keir_Starmer is terrified of debate on safeguarding & his MPs actively work to ignore the concerns of constituents.

— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) March 15, 2024

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You have to ask yourself – how do these tactics differ from those who were determined to protect the tobacco industry and thought it was absolutely fine to broadcast glamorous cigarette ads that appealed to teenagers? https://t.co/Eu6jy2BHmC

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) March 15, 2024

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Jonathan Myers in Fathom – 7 October and the Miseducation of the Palestinian Child:

Palestinian Media Watch has drawn attention to how the environment of Gaza and West Bank children contains dozens of schools, sports events, and summer camps, bearing the names of terrorists. Streets and recreational areas are named after suicide bombers. On street hoardings and the walls of community centres are posters or graphic images of martyrs; usually terrorists killed by Israeli forces. Dead or alive, all these named individuals are held up as role models. Similar glorification of terrorists and their violence occurs in movies. In 2009, Hamas released Emad Akel, a feature film written by Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and former Interior Minister Fathi Hamad that celebrated the life of a Hamas terrorist killed by the IDF in 1993….

This othering of the Jew is supported through the curricula of Gaza and West Bank schools run by UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) and Hamas. IMPACT-se (Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education) has found basic subjects are perverted for that purpose. In Physics, Newton’s Second Law is demonstrated by asking children to calculate the forces effecting the trajectory of a stone fired from a slingshot at an IDF soldier. Math is taught by asking children to add the number of martyrs of the First Intifada to those of the Second. And maps erase the State of Israel, portraying the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine; where Israel should be is the label ‘Zionist occupation.’ Despite criticism from organisations like IMPACT-se, it’s evidently immensely important for the Palestinian leadership that this distorted education continues. As PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyah has stressed in relation to international agency funding, if money is withheld because of what is in their textbooks, he’d rather take money from electricity and water than change textbooks.

Worth a read in full.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said, ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man.’ Good character, he meant, is laid down through social learning in the early years. Likewise, brutalise a child and any moral compass, any conscience, they might have developed is destroyed. In time, the abused becomes the abuser and the stage is set for 7 October.