Mick Hartley

Khadija Khan at The Freethinker, on the Islamist threat to British education:

The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the UK has undermined the ethos of British schools. As Islamist zealots grow stronger in influence in our society, a number of schools known for their secular, inclusiveness and apolitical approach, such as St Stephen’s Primary School, Parkfield Community School, Batley Grammar School, Kettlethorpe High School, and Barclay Primary School, have been caving into their demands one after the other..

There has been an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to politicise educational institutions, in order to gain clout in social and political sphere. And now these nefarious elements have come out in force to assert their intolerant beliefs under the pretext of religious freedom. They use religious identity and political grievances to subvert the secular democratic system. Unfortunately, innocent school children seem to have become pawns in their hands.

Encouraged by their success in intimidating these schools into capitualting to their demands, with threats of violence on the one hand and accusations of "Islamophobia" on the other, they then they came for the Michaela Community School:

Michaela was founded by headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh in 2014. The school, known for its outstanding academic results, is facing a lawsuit for maintaining its longstanding secular character by banning prayers. It is a sad state of affairs that a school known for its excellence has become the target of unfounded charges of prejudice. Among certain religious zealots, particularly Islamists at present, the attitude seems to be that those who defy their dictates must be punished pour encourager les autres.

The manner in which the Michaela case has been framed, with the accusations of victimisation and discrimination against Muslim pupils, demonstrates that Islamists will stop at nothing to bully people into compliance. They use the language of human rights to assert their supremacist beliefs. They attempt to use English legislation pertaining to religious freedom as leverage to force the schools to comply with their requests.

The Guardian weighed in – on the side of the Islamists, of course. "This ban on Muslims praying in school is a dystopian, sinister vision of Britishness". There's more going on though:

But this was not merely a case of students offering prayer in the school. As reported in The Standard, Birbalsingh said that her decision came against a ‘backdrop of events including violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers’. At one point a brick was even hurled through a teacher’s window. There was also allegedly intimidation of some Muslim pupils by others. The Muslim pupil who sued the school was reportedly suspended for five days in 2023 for threatening to stab another pupil. This suggests that children were being influenced by an extreme Islamist ideology, which cannot but harm the wellbeing of the whole school. Birbalsingh’s intervention was arguably a matter of safeguarding, as well as of fostering inclusion and cohesion among the student body.

Concerningly, the threat posed by religious extremists remains present and has often gone unnoticed. The Commission for Countering Extremism has reportedly revealed that research on radical groups is ‘skewed’ towards the far right. Consequently, Britain has ‘substantial gaps’ in its understanding of Islamist extremism, which has been ‘systemically under-researched’.

While civil servants are being told that concerns about Islamic extremism are exaggerated, with the real threat coming from the far right…..

Another day, another rail company. First Network Rail, now LNER. Service is useless, but they're leading the way on Pride flags and gender inclusivity.

Generations of gay men were taught to be ashamed of desiring male bodies specifically – and now @LNER is pushing its own version of this old homophobia. A 'non-cisgendered gay man'? That's a woman. We know the difference and we are not ashamed to state it. pic.twitter.com/xNVRq977E6

— Jonny Best (@JonnyWorst) February 6, 2024

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Yes, they're Stonewall Diversity Champions. How did you guess?

Set up for ice fishing on the lakes of Canada during the winter months, these structures are necessarily make-shift and temporary: they have to go before the warm weather returns. Photographer Richard Johnson has been documenting them:

As the ice reaches thicknesses over four inches, it becomes safe to walk on, and at more than five inches, it is usually safe for snowmobiles. Then, in droves, residents take to the lakes. Ontario’s 279-square-mile Lake Simcoe, for example, draws more people for its ice fishing than any other lake in North America, attracting upwards of 4,000 huts each year.

The colorful villages of hand-built structures that populate many popular spots during the coldest months caught the eye of Toronto-based architectural photographer Richard Johnson (1957-2021), who captured hundreds of the structures, from the artistic to the ad-hoc, in a series of bold portraits taken between 2007 and 2019.

[Photos © Richard Johnson]

Palestinian political analyst Zaid Alayoubi – the people of Gaza are saying, “True, Israel is killing us, but Hamas is also killing us.”. I ask Ismail Haniyeh: where is the liberation that you promised?

Sacked and disgraced Bristol academic David Miller has won his case, with an emplotyment tribunal ruling that anti-Zionism is a protected characteristic.

Anti-Zionist academic David Miller has claimed victory against the University of Bristol in a landmark employment case which determined that anti-Zionism is a protected characteristic in the workplace.

Miller was sacked by Bristol University in October 2021 after making comments about Israel which some deemed to be antisemitic. The university said his comments did not meet its "standards of behaviour", and Jewish students said Miller made them feel “unsafe and unprotected” on campus.

Since then, Miller has described Israel as “the enemy of world peace” and has called the Jewish Society at Bristol University an “Israel lobby group” that had “manufactured hysteria” about his teaching….

During the tribunal, he claimed that he had experienced discrimination based on his “philosophical belief that Zionism is inherently racist, imperialist, and colonial, a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, alongside a finding of unfair dismissal."

The Bristol Employment Tribunal found that Miller’s anti-Zionist beliefs “qualified as a philosophical belief and as a protected characteristic”, protected under the 2010 Equality Act.

Miller also succeeded in his claims of unfair dismissal, but the disgraced academic had his compensation reduced by half because his sacking was “caused or contributed to by his own actions”, according to the tribunal.

It's not hard to see why the tribunal might reach that decision. In a sense, no doubt, anti-Zionism is a political position that can be defended. The point is: can anti-Zionism ever be separated from antisemitism – and the answer in Miller's case is clearly no.

Miller, who now works for the Iranian state-owned TV channel Press TV, said he felt “vindicated” and was "very proud” that the case “establish[ed] that anti-Zionist views qualify as a protected belief under the UK Equality Act.”

Zillur Rahman from Rahman Lowe Solicitors who represent Miller applauded the ruling saying:  “His courage in fighting against the vicious campaign that was waged against him by Zionists” describing Miller as “trailblazer.”

Rahman went on, "the genocide Israel is committing at present, has woken the world up to the very belief David holds and was manifesting, which is that Zionism is inherently racist and must be opposed.”

Nice. And now people like Miller, and Zillur Rahman here, will feel vindicated by the tribunal's decision to ramp up these kind of comments. We might think it's blatantly antisemitic to rant on about the "genocide" in Gaza, but the Free Palestine anti-Israel crowd will clearly see it as a green light for upping the rhetoric.

A sad day.

The Union of Jewish students said: “UJS is disappointed by the Employment Tribunal's judgment in relation to David Miller. UJS believes this may set a dangerous precedent about what can be lawfully said on campus about Jewish students and the societies at the centre of their social life, which may ultimately make Jewish students less safe.”

Jewish security group the CST said: “We are extremely concerned about what the Employment Tribunal considers is acceptable for a University Professor to say publicly about Jewish students and Jewish Societies who raised legitimate complaints about him.

“He has continued to express his obnoxious opinions on Iranian State TV, which is exactly where he belongs.”

also happened in Libya – and many ended up in Belsen! https://t.co/ZpSBzVXI9Y

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) February 5, 2024

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Kishwer Falkner, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has dared to dissent from the usual gender nonsense. As such, she's a target for the usual vexatious complaints about transphobia.

Last April she wrote to the government to suggest the legislation should be changed to introduce explicit legal protections for biological women in spaces where that distinction really does matter, such as changing rooms and hospital wards. This entirely sensible move was met with vile abuse on social media. Lady Falkner told this newspaper that she had been branded a Nazi and “transphobic scum”.

She was then accused, ironically (who after all is doing the bullying here?), of bullying staff.

One source described the claims as a “hit job”, saying that senior staff were trying to oust Falkner because they disagreed with her stance on trans rights. “The executive was very hostile to the commissioners taking this decision because they had become used to the board just rubber-stamping whatever the staff at the organisation recommended,” they added.

In other words they couldn't stomach the idea of someone not immediately rubber-stamping every demand of the trans activists – notably, of Stonewall.

Now, the fight-back:

A coalition of gender-critical groups have accused Stonewall of “targeting” the female boss of Britain’s equalities watchdog.

Led by women’s rights organisation Sex Matters, which believes biological sex takes precedence over self-identified gender, the 39 groups said Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chairwoman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, was being attacked for taking action to protect women.

They said Stonewall had subjected her to the same sort of “unreasonable, vexatious complaints” used to harass ordinary women at work.

The groups have signed a letter to the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (Ganhri), which has been persuaded by organisations such as Stonewall to carry out a “special review” into the EHRC, claiming it is anti-trans.

In their letter, the groups accused Stonewall of a “pattern of reprisal, harassment and intimidation” against the Commission.

“Kishwer Falkner has been targeted by the same kind of unreasonable, vexatious complaints used to harass and intimidate so many ordinary women at work,” she said.

“Moreover, this has happened precisely because the EHRC acted, within its mandate, to protect such women from being targeted in this way.”

Last year, Baroness Falkner was placed under investigation after 12 current or former staff members at the Equality and Human Rights Commission made dozens of allegations against her.

Details of the complaints were never made public, but her supporters believe they were sparked by the position her watchdog had taken on trans rights. The investigation ended with her keeping her position.

The letter from Sex Matters was also signed by other groups including the Women’s Rights Network, the LGB Alliance, and Lesbian Labour.

It said: “Stonewall is dissatisfied because the EHRC is doing its job, and is demonstrating independence from Stonewall.

“The EHRC’s job is to protect everyone’s rights, including those with ‘gender critical’ beliefs.

“Ganhri has fallen into the trap of responding to unreasonable complaints about gender-critical speech in the same one-sided fashion that has been found to be harassment and discrimination in these recent cases. We urge you to rectify this injustice.”

It added: “It is in fact entirely reasonable to challenge the idea that any men can become women, and what is more, the Equality Act protects our right to do so, and not to be harassed for it.

“Subsequent legal cases have demonstrated that an organisation or regulator conducting disciplinary procedures against someone for their protected views can itself be harassment.”

Stonewall's malign influence reaches everywhere.

BREAKING: The Tel Aviv Administrative Court has granted political asylum in Israel today, to a 29-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank who faces persecution for being gay from his family and society.

“Queers for Palestine” had nothing to do with it. pic.twitter.com/0wvTabYgRc

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) February 4, 2024

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North Korea's obsessive purification drive continues:

As the North Korean government seeks to tighten ideological control over the “next generation” of children and young people this year, it is taking steps to implement the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act in Kaesong, a city geographically close to South Korea.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Friday that the North Korean authorities have sent 30 graduates of teaching colleges outside Kaesong to the city under the pretext of implementing the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act. The sending of the teachers is part of an initiative to change the Kaesong accent, whose intonation is similar to that of South Koreans.

“The Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea has been informed that since everyone in Kaesong, including children and adults, has an accent similar to that of South Korea, even the teachers, most of whom are local people, are finding it difficult to comply with the guidelines of the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act. As a result, the government has assigned 30 female graduates of a teacher training college in Nampo, South Pyongan Province, to Kaesong,” the source said.

Although the similarities between the two accents are due to geography, the North Korean authorities believe that allowing this accent to be passed on to the next generation would violate the spirit of the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act, the source said.

The authorities also plan to send teachers from the Pyongyang area to Kaesong to teach the standard Pyongyang dialect to students in kindergartens and elementary schools in Kaesong.

In short, the North Korean government wants to eliminate South Korean speech patterns in Kaesong by teaching young children the standard Pyongyang dialect.

Not just the content, then – the ban on South Korean culture, on pain of death, in the name of ideological discipline – but speech too, the actual medium of communication. All must be purified, for the party.

Maybe time to remember Christopher Hitchens again:

The North Korean state was founded in 1950/51. That's the year 1984 was published for the first time. You think, could it be that someone handed a Korean translation to Kim il Sung and said, "Do you think we could make this fly?".

North Korea has, astonishingly, survived now for over 70 years while all the time, without deviation and despite constant rumours of thawing out and easing up, continuing to perfect its Orwellian vision. 

Further exciting gender plans from Labour:

A Labour MP has called for the law to be changed so transgender people can have their gender changed posthumously in official records.

In a written question to Parliament last month, Charlotte Nichols, the MP representative for Warrington North, asked if the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004 could be changed “to allow transgender people who are deceased to be legally remembered by the gender they lived by”.

Replying, Stuart Andrew, the equalities minister, said that the Government had no plans to further amend the Act….

Speaking of recent developments, Sir Liam Fox, the MP for North Somerset who formerly worked as a medical doctor, said: “It is patently absurd, factually inaccurate and a statistical distortion. We should not be encouraging the idea that people can simply choose to change their biological status nor should we bend truth to accommodate an ever more extreme and dangerous ideology.”…

Lucy Marsh, a spokesperson for The Family Education Trust, said: “It’s extremely concerning that Labour appears to be pushing towards introducing gender-self-ID through the back door. If coroners are allowed to lie on public record about the sex of deceased children, this will surely be a slippery slope towards self-ID becoming normalised in the NHS. If this is legally allowed, what’s to stop deaths being recorded as ‘non-binary’ or babies being registered as the opposite sex? The Government needs to crack down on this and make sure the NHS is based on reality rather than fantasy.”

So who's going to decide? Watch out for George Eliot – Mary Ann Evans – to be posthumously declared male. A trans pioneer, according to Grace Lavery. Just the tip of the posthumous transing iceberg…