Mick Hartley

No, sport does not have to balance inclusivity with fairness. It has to restrict inclusion, in order to be fair.

No, single-sex spaces do not have to balance inclusivity with safety and dignity. They have to restrict inclusion, in order to provide safety and dignity.

— Sam Morgan (@CrunchAlias) January 28, 2026

It’s not difficult. It’s not complicated.

Men who are not allowed to use women's private spaces or play on women's sports teams are not being "excluded from public life." They are simply not being allowed to appropriate women's rights.

— Prof. Gary Francione (@garylfrancione) January 29, 2026

Walthamstow this morning.

The Times – Ofsted finds school that uninvited Jewish MP is ‘inclusive’.

The education watchdog has found no evidence of political bias at a Bristol school that cancelled a visit from a Jewish MP after staff and activists threatened to protest.

Ofsted inspectors found that Bristol Brunel Academy had “a deep understanding of fundamental British values”.

If we include antisemitism as a fundamental British value. Which, increasingly, it appears to be.

The academy was visited by inspectors after Ofsted became “concerned” there was potentially “insufficient observance of the Department for Education’s ‘political impartiality in schools’ guidance.”….

After their two-day inspection, in which they spoke with more than 130 pupils and about 75 staff, the Ofsted team said “leaders and trustees demonstrate a profound commitment to providing an inclusive learning environment that promotes tolerance and respect for the diversity of modern Britain”.

“Leaders at this school ensure political impartiality in the curriculum and teaching,” the inspectors said. “If leaders’ high expectations are not met by staff or pupils, quick action is taken. Visitors to the school are welcomed. Leaders check thoroughly all visiting speakers, in line with Government guidance.”…

The report said staff, including those from minority groups, spoke of the “harmonious and religiously tolerant atmosphere in the school”.

“No member of staff inspectors spoke with were aware of a proposed staff-led protest against the MP’s visit,” they said. “Inspectors heard that staff were proud of the inclusive nature of the school towards pupils, and there was often deep hurt expressed at the way their school was being portrayed.”

Nothing to see here. Lovely people. A Jewish MP banned from visiting? Really, these Jews. Always complaining.

The report said school clubs “including the LGBT group, the neurodivergent group and the school council” helped to foster “a sense of belonging and give pupils opportunities to have their voice heard”.

That’s what really matters – the LGBT group, the neurodivergent group….

In a statement, Bristol Brunel Academy said Ofsted’s report showed it was a “school with fundamental British values at its heart and a deep commitment to inclusivity”.

Apart from Jews, obviously.

The technical term here, I believe, is “whitewash”.

I posted last week on the Kurdish woman featured on MEMRI TV, campaigning against the Arab betrayal of the Kurds as Syrian forces close in on Kabani. It’s not just an Arab betrayal though, as Roger Boyes shows in the Times. It’s an American betrayal too.

The Kurdish-majority town of Kobani in northern Syria, a hop, skip and a jump from the Turkish border, should be celebrating this week the 11th anniversary of the American-assisted liberation from Isis. Then, Kobani’s Kurds were saved by an airlift of weapons dropped from US planes: the beginning of a partnership with the US in which the Syrian Democratic Forces were armed and trained to help defeat Islamic State.

Now the Syrian army — this time incorporating many former jihadists — is moving ever closer to Kobani through the surrounding countryside. The town of 50,000 is filling up with Kurdish villagers chased from their farmsteads. If the Syrian army takes the town it won’t be pretty. And don’t expect a US airlift this time. At their peak, the Kurds could claim control of over one third of Syrian territory. Only a tiny sliver of that remains.

The Kurds are on their own because Trump has accepted Erdogan’s realpolitik as his own.

Erdogan has persuaded Trump to accept an ex-jihadist as the president of Syria, and to abandon the Kurdish cause, thus betraying an ally that was willing to die fighting the Islamic State terror group.

Erdogan’s intelligence service, the MIT, began to scout out if there was such a thing as a “moderate” jihadist grouping that would broadly follow Turkish directions, sideline the Kurds, hold Syria together and, with coaching, find a path to semi-respectability. It was a long shot but Erdogan was in a pickle: Turkey faced a huge migrant wave as the whole region beat a path towards Europe. Various US presidents were not picking up the phone. A civil war was raging on the southern border, a war moreover that could suck in players like Russia, which saw itself as Assad’s ally.

In the end, Turkey put its bets on a group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), with links to al-Qaeda but a historic rival to Isis. And they found and shaped and eventually tailored the HTS leader who could be plausibly presented as a uniting force. Given his CV — al-Qaeda, Isis, Nusra Front, a stint in the Camp Bucca detention complex networking with other jihadists — it was a gamble. But the moving spirit was not new to the game: the shrewd head of the MIT, Hakan Fidan (now Turkey’s foreign minister and the country’s representative on Trump’s Board of Peace) knew his way around the formation, rebranding and cross-financing of the jihadist groups.

Washed and scrubbed up, the HTS chieftain Ahmed al-Sharaa was not a difficult sell to Trump’s special envoy Tom Barrack nor to the president himself. Sharaa’s sole condition: he needed full American backing for the principle of a united Syrian state. That meant no Kurdish autonomy, full state control over the oil industry, constraints on the Druze and the Alawites. No fragmentation. Erdogan and Trump have given the thumbs-up.

And the thumbs down to the Kurds. And the Druze and the Alawites.

From Rawadari, an Afghan human rights organisation – Taliban’s New Law Legalises Slavery In Afghanistan, Makes Mullahs Immune.

At the centre of the controversy is Article 9, which divides Afghan society into four categories: religious scholars (ulama or mullah), the elite (ashraf), the middle class, and the lower class. Under this system, punishment for the same crime is no longer determined primarily by the nature or gravity of the offence but by the social status of the accused.

According to the code, if an Islamic religious scholar commits a crime, the response is limited to advice. If the offender belongs to the elite, the consequence is a summons to court and advice. For those in the so-called middle class, the same offence results in imprisonment. But for individuals from the “lower class”, the punishment escalates to both imprisonment and corporal punishment.…

Beyond social hierarchy, the new Criminal Procedure Code also strips away many of the most basic safeguards of due process. The document does not recognise the right to a defence lawyer, the right to remain silent or the right to compensation for wrongful punishment. It relies heavily on “confession” and “testimony” as the main means of proving guilt, while removing the requirement for independent investigation and failing to set clear minimum and maximum penalties for crimes.

Rights groups warned that this legal framework dramatically increases the risk of torture and forced confessions, particularly in a system where judges and law enforcement operate without oversight or accountability.

The code also significantly expands the use of corporal punishment, including flogging, and introduces vaguely defined offences such as “dancing” or being present in “gatherings of corruption”, giving judges sweeping discretion to detain and punish people for ordinary cultural or social activities.

For many observers, however, the formalisation of class-based justice is the clearest signal yet that the Taliban is not merely imposing harsh laws, but reconstructing the entire legal system around privilege, loyalty and religious status. “By placing clerics and religious elites above the law, the Taliban has effectively announced that some people are untouchable, while others are permanently disposable,” Rawadari said….

As Afghanistan becomes increasingly isolated and its internal repression deepens, critics say the new criminal code sends a stark message – under Taliban rule, justice is no longer blind, it is stratified, selective and firmly aligned with power.

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— Adam Louis-Klein (@adam_louis52328) January 27, 2026

The state of the US academy, pt. 373:

Just three days after Hamas’ deadly rampage that killed at least 1,219 people and the kidnapping of 251 hostages, DeCristo wrote that “one group of ppl we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation … they have houses w addresses, kids in school … they can fear their bosses but they should fear us more.”

Her words were accompanied by emojis of a knife, a hatchet and three drops of blood.  Continue reading

That post left Jewish students, faculty and families scared, isolated and angry – yet the university’s response, after a nearly two-year investigation, amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist.

That’s Jemma DeCristo, an assistant professor in the American studies department at UC Davis, threatening violence against Jews. Of course she was allowed to keep her job: this is a university in California.

Is she grateful? Not really. From the acknowledgements to her latest book:

Still, it pays the bills.

Added: he’s trans.

Jemma Decristo is an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California-Davis. Decristo is a biological male who claims to be a transgender woman. His Twitter account is only accessible to confirmed followers and the university’s biographies and webpages for him were removed or disabled in October 2023.

Who’d have guessed? (h/t Alan).

Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator, on Holocaust remembrance 81 years after the liberation of Auschwitz:

How many Jews do you think there are in the world? Out of 8.1 billion people alive today, we are just 0.194 per cent of the world’s population. There are only around 15.7 million of us.

The worldwide Jewish population has not yet fully recovered to its pre-Holocaust numbers. From 16.6 million before the war, only 11 million remained after. It was a genocide.…

In the 81 years since then, we have still not reached the population levels of 1939. We have not recovered from our last major slaughter, and once again we are asking a question no people should have to ask repeatedly: where in the world is safe for us to live peaceful, ethical, cultural and spiritual lives?

Some 7.3 million of the world’s Jews live in Israel. That is 46.5 per cent of us. Outside Israel, only 0.104 per cent of the world’s population is Jewish. Statistically, we barely register. Yet anti-Semitic offences account for 21 per cent of all recorded religious hate crimes in England and Wales. We do not deserve this. As a religion, an ethnicity, a people, our contribution to society is net positive.

So why? What’s the threat, to justify this hatred?

Around 20 per cent of all Nobel laureates have been Jewish. In the United States, where Jews make up roughly 2 per cent of the population, we account for about 40 per cent of Nobel Prizes awarded in science and health. Jewish innovators have developed key medical breakthroughs, including the polio vaccine through Jonas Salk, crucial contributions to the discovery of DNA structure through Rosalind Franklin, and the hepatitis B vaccine, collectively saving millions of lives. You and your family may well be alive today thanks to Jews.

Approximately 50 per cent of Pulitzer Prizes for non-fiction have been awarded to Jewish individuals.

Jews have thrived, most notably in the US. Films, music (Dylan, Lou Reed…), literature. The Great American Songbook was, with the exception of Cole Porter, a Jewish achievement.

We pose no threat to your faith. Ours is a non-coercive, non-missionary system. We do not want you to convert; Judaism actively discourages it. Yet we are not ethnically exclusive. Like Ruth the Moabite in the Bible, Judaism has always recognised and welcomed sincere converts who fully enter the covenant and the Jewish people.

We do not seek to impose laws governing how non-Jews must live, only laws that regulate our own daily conduct, ethics and responsibilities. We have seven suggested universal ethical principles, the Noahide laws, and we do not force them on anyone.

Jews have no grand plan of territorial expansion or colonialism. Israel, the Jewish state, represents 0.015 per cent of the world’s land mass. Since its re-establishment in 1948 and its subsequent defensive wars, Israel has officially relinquished approximately 90.5 per cent of the territory it once controlled at its maximum extent. It did so in pursuit of peace.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The number of secondary schools in the UK marking it has fallen from over 2,000 in 2023 to 854 in 2025, a reduction of approximately 57.3 per cent. This followed the genocidal invasion of Israel in 2023 by a group whose own codified charter calls for Jewish annihilation, when 1,200 people were murdered.…

And so the question remains. A people less than two-tenths of one per cent of humanity. A population still unrecovered from its last attempted eradication. A community that produces disproportionate benefit, seeks no converts, claims almost no land, threatens no faith and barely registers in global demographics. And yet again, targeted, obsessively, violently.

What are the chances? You do the maths.

Mia Hughes:

In 2019, German psychiatrists observed a sudden surge of adolescent girls presenting to clinics with abrupt-onset Tourette-like tics. This immediately raised alarm bells. Tourette’s typically affects boys and begins in early childhood.

This was an entirely new patient population.

Researchers quickly identified the index case: Jan Zimmermann, a young Tourette sufferer, whose YouTube channel had recently exploded in popularity. The girls displayed the exact same symptoms as Jan: the same outbursts and catchphrases.

The phenomenon soon migrated to TikTok, where it spread like wildfire.

Researchers coined a new term for what they were observing: mass social media–induced illness — a modern iteration of the long-recognized phenomenon of mass sociogenic illness.

Yet, in 2014, when paediatric gender clinics across the Western world began to fill with adolescent girls — another entirely new patient population — “gender-affirming” clinicians didn’t even bother to look for the trigger.

And it wouldn’t have taken much effort to find. All it required was a glance at the cultural messaging of the time.

Because 2014 was the year Time magazine put Laverne Cox on its cover with the headline: The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.

And with that, the modern trans rights movement launched.

Trans-identified celebrities were everywhere, trans characters appeared in children’s books and television shows, trans influencers proliferated with astonishing speed online, and schools began teaching gender identity ideology as if it were scientific fact.

And in a perfect-storm scenario, smartphones and social media exploded in popularity, creating the ideal super-spreading environment for this seductive idea to go viral.

The message adolescents received was simple: If you hate your body, that could mean you’re trans.

And right on cue, legions of confused adolescents who hated their developing bodies began showing up at gender clinics believing themselves to be trans.

Just like the TikTok tics. A mass social media–induced illness.

Except on this occasion, instead of scrambling to contain the epidemic, doctors picked up their syringes and scalpels and set about permanently medicalising the innocent youth caught up in this powerful cultural storm.

And activists marched in the streets demanding that these young people be allowed to sacrifice their health, fertility, and body parts — while swiftly demonising anyone who dared point out the obvious parallels to social contagions of the past.

I guess a social contagion – a mass social media–induced illness – has to fit in with the mood of the times to really catch on. Tourette’s Syndrome may be appealing perhaps as a way of being different in a kind-of-cute but dramatic way, but doesn’t carry any particular significance beyond itself. The trans movement on the other hand could be used by groups like Stonewall to capture the old gay lib spirit after gay lib had won its battles. Sold as progressive, in other words. Plus, in the US at least, doctors could make serious money out of it.

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— John B. Holbein (@JohnHolbein1) January 26, 2026