Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

recent posts

email me

  • The X revolution

  • Declining to “affirm” her transgender identity

    From Reduxx:

    A Ukrainian family in California says Child Welfare removed their teenage daughter from their home and placed them on the child abuse registry after they declined to “affirm” her transgender identity. Speaking to Reduxx under the condition of anonymity, the parents say the removal followed a report filed by their daughter’s psychiatrist without their knowledge.

    It’s not just that they no longer have access to their daughter:

    Shockingly, Ellie says that she and her husband have been entered into the California Child Abuse Central Index (CACI). This registry contains the names of individuals whom county Child Protective Services agencies have identified as suspected child abusers. Crucially, being listed on CACI does not require a criminal charge, arrest, or conviction. A person can be entered into the database solely based on a child welfare investigation and report. The abuse does not have to be physical, and “emotional abuse” is included as a justification for placement on the registry.

    Being listed on CACI can have life-altering consequences, even without criminal charges, as those on the registry are generally barred from working with children and can fail routine vulnerable sector checks.

    Ellie says this has impacted her ability to work as a teacher, and fears that it may impact her husband if he is ever required to produce a background check for his job.

    “We are now registered child abusers and we have been unable to file a grievance against this. I have no idea how long it lasts, or if it can ever be removed at all,” Ellie says.

    Welcome to California.

  • Petition to sign

  • This was not an exercise in liberation

    Terry Glavin on Trump and Venezuela:

    Most of the coverage of President Trump’s Caracas caper has been pretty superficial and muddled by shallow and partisan American coverage. Don’t be led astray. Here’s how I put it in the Post:

    “If you’re not careful you’ll end up believing that Trump is primarily intent upon regime change and the restoration of democracy in Venezuela. He isn’t. He’s sidelined and humiliated Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, referring to her only as a “nice lady” who doesn’t enjoy the respect of Venezuelans.“

    The scandalous fact is that the White House has now officially broken with the rest of the free world, specifically the European Parliament and Canada and several Latin American democracies that properly support Machado’s proxy, Edmundo González Urrutia. Gonzalez won the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election by at least 67 per cent of the vote. Maduro refused to relinquish power and Gonzalez, fearing for his life, fled to Spain.

    The Venezuelan pretender the Trump administration recognizes as president is Bolivarian hardliner and regime fixture Delcy RodrĂ­guez, who Trump describes as “gracious.” She’s going to the most extreme lengths to distance herself publicly from her newfound backers in Washington, giving every appearance of having had the reins of power forced into her unwilling hands.

    More from Glavin on the Iran_Venezuela link, and, yes, it really is all about the oil.

  • The Iran revolution

  • Trans rage

    Jo Bartosch in the Telegraph, on Bash Back, the new face of trans violence:

    It was an attack that stripped away the chintzy veil of victimhood that has long shielded the transgender movement, revealing well organised thuggery. Yesterday, Bash Back, the self-described “direct action project” hacked the Free Speech Union (FSU) website and published the names of donors, alongside the sums they gave and the campaigns they supported.

    The intention was unmistakable: to intimidate and punish private citizens after the FSU’s founder, Lord Young of Acton, commissioned a security report into the threat posed by the group. On Bash Back’s website, the activists make clear that more such actions are planned, welcoming visitors to “a new era of trans rage”.

    And yet lovely trans folk are meant to be a sad persecuted minority, just trying to live their lives. Ha!

    Since its launch in the summer of 2025, the group has pursued a steady escalation of criminal activity. In July, Bash Back targeted the constituency office of Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, smashing windows and spraying graffiti branding him a “child killer”, after the Government restricted the prescription of puberty blocking drugs. 

    By autumn, vandalism had become routine. Masked activists attacked the FiLiA feminist conference, explicitly targeting a venue where women and girls were meeting to discuss male violence. The group then vandalised the headquarters of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, dubbing the statutory equalities watchdog a “hate group”.…

    Yet ministers continue to insist that those who adopt a transgender identity are uniquely vulnerable, even as activists operating in their name engage in criminal behaviour. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has warned that trans people must not be used as a “political punchbag”, cautioning against abuse or targeting on the basis of identity. This rhetoric does not merely mislead; it helps to shape the response of institutions charged with maintaining public order.…

    It remains the case that many on the Labour benches still posture as embattled outsiders fighting “the Establishment”, oblivious to the fact that they themselves are the establishment. In doing so, they persist in treating trans activists as marginal or vulnerable, as on their side – the side of the “underdog” – ignoring the thuggish behaviour of groups like Bash Back. The result is an inverted moral logic in which vandalism is dignified as protest and threats are reframed as political expression.

    This is not a sustainable position for a democratic society. The law judges actions, not identities or grievances. If authorities continue to minimise organised intimidation while policing peaceful dissent with increasing zeal, they will not preserve social order. They will lose the consent of the public to be governed. Panes of glass can be replaced. Once shattered, trust in the equal application of the law cannot.

    Trans activists have always been violent, but no one in authority seemed much to care – perhaps because it was largely women and girls who suffered. The same can be said of the attitude to Islamism, from the cover-up of the grooming gangs scandal to the West Midlands police allowing themselves to be dictated to by Islamists – perhaps because it’s only working-class girls and Jews who suffer.

  • The state of the union

    As ever, the unions are mindlessly right behind the latest progressive group-think, with no awareness that its time has passed. Bear in mind, also, that more than 70% of Unison members are women, and you get an idea of how out-of-touch they are. If you object when you find a man in the woman’s toilet or the women’s changing room, Unison will not support you, but call you a bigot and side with your employer

    New leader Andrea Egan, on the issue of single sex spaces, has suggested that banning transified men from women’s toilets would be like banning people because they’ve got blonde hair or blue eyes.

  • Built by the Jews

    Rabbi Poupko:

    Here’s the truth about Haifa Palestinian revisionists do not want you to know:

    In 1890 there were less than 6,000 people living in Haifa. They were contained within the walls of the old city of Haifa.

    In 1891 Jews from Syria, Lebanon, and Morocco purchased a huge amount of land outside the walls of the city and the land became known as ‘Ard El Yahood’ اع؜ اليهود which literally means the land of the Jews.

    Since the Zionist movement came to the city the population exploded, reaching close to 100,000 by 1948.

    Many non-jewish people from lebanon, syria, egypt, and beyond emigrated to the city to benefit from its booming Zionist economy.

    In 1948 as the Palestinian nationalist Arab Liberation Army planned it’s invasion and annihilation of Haifa’s Jewish community, many of the residents who today call themselves Palestinian refugees simply returned to their families in Lebanon and Syria. Today they call it the Nakba, when they in fact left on their own accord.

    Either way, like much of the land of Israel, it was in fact build by the Jews.

    Like always, I encourage everyone to fact check this since these are basic facts that are well documented.

  • Miss Potter

    Transwoman Ella Potter accused of firebomb blackmail plot:

    Ella Potter, 28, is said to have demanded money with menaces in threats made against Norton Peskett solicitors, which has offices in Norwich and Great Yarmouth….

    Potter, of Westfield Gardens in Wymondham, did not enter a formal plea to the charge but told magistrates: “I think I will be pleading not guilty.”

    Wearing a skirt but with a full beard, the defendant was referred to as “Miss Potter” throughout the hearing despite being identified as male on court documents.

  • 124 years ago