Author: Mick Hartley

Meanwhile in Greenland ! pic.twitter.com/fqP9igQeeR

— Mary Coughlan (@mary_coughlan4) January 10, 2025

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nical attempt to denigrate and undermine the memory of the Holocaust by drawing false parallels between the Holocaust – a unique and unprecedented episode in history – and unrelated current events,” she said.

“Such demands, including calls to make the day ‘more inclusive’ or to insert contemporary political agendas, not only insult the memory of the 6 million Jewish men, women, and children who were systematically murdered, but also undermine the fundamental purpose of Holocaust Memorial Day.

“It is vital that commemorations maintain their focus on the Holocaust, that Jewish victims are properly honoured, and that the central role of anti-Semitism in this genocide is unequivocally recognised.”

She's right, of course.

Last summer, the IHRC claimed “Zionist financiers abroad” were to blame for “enabling” far-Right groups during the riots which spread across cities in the UK following the death of three young girls at a dance class in Southport. Axel Rudakubana, 18, is charged with their murders and will stand trial later this month.

Massoud Shadjareh, the chair of IHRC, took part in a vigil in 2020 for the late Qassim Soleimani, a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who was credited with masterminding the spread of Iranian influence across the Middle East.

Mr Shadjareh said at the vigil: “We hope and we pray and we work hard to make sure that there will be many many more Qassim Soleimanis. We aspire to become like him.”

In an independent report carried out in 2023, the Prevent counter-terror strategy called the IHRC an "Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime", and noted that several of IHRC's leaders have shown support for violent jihad and expressed a desire to eradicate "Zionists." The IHRC responded…well, you know how they responded. The report was, of course, Islamophobic. Very fitting, given that, at least according to some sources, the term "Islamophobia" was coined by Iranian Islamists back in the Seventies, on the lines of "xenophobia", with the aim of making criticism of Islam akin to racism.

er woo in the literary world. In October the Cheltenham Literary Festival highlighted “gender-critical views” as the kind of speech which should not be tolerated by decent literary folk, prompting JK Rowling to write on X: “Might start a literary festival where legal beliefs can be expressed from the stage without the chairpeople wetting themselves.”

Ah well. Let's hope the Oxford festival organisers are made of sterner stuff.

ing-left: 40px”>These concerns have been brought into sharp focus in the past week because the APPG report gives the example of ‘grooming gangs’ as a ‘subtle form of anti-Muslim racism’. 

In the past, this has led to people who’ve drawn attention to the overrepresentation of Muslim men in grooming gangs being branded Islamophobic, even though we have good evidence of that.

The threat to freedom of speech could hardly be clearer. This is precisely the same mentality that led to the rape gangs cover-up in the first place.

In light of the chilling effect the APPG definition of Islamophobia has had on discussion of the rape gangs, is it time to consign this term to the history books? As Christopher Hitchens said: ‘It is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.’

As has been said often enough, this is introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Islam isn't a race; it's a religion, an ideology. The problem lies in the Muslim belief that Islam is not just something you believe in, but forms an essential part of your being – hence the seriousness of apostasy. For them, then, the term "Islamophobia" is equivalent to racism in that the belief is inseparable from the person. But that's no reason to accept those terms here, where freedom of speech has been fought for over generations, and remains central to our democracy.

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Transcript (via):

Question: Hi. Washington State is being sued by a woman who was forced to share a jail cell with a six foot four male who sexually harassed and assaulted her over many days and weeks. And she was told by the prison the Washington State Prison to not report it because she might get retaliated against. She had to suffer that for a long time until he was found on top of her when she was unconscious. His hands on her body and it’s being sued. There are many, there are about a dozen males in the Washington State Prison for women, and women are being traumatized. This is a Geneva Convention violation against women again, against women’s rights. What, what will you do to stop it, especially since you passed a bill that made it harder to find out which males are in the women’s jail? Thank you.

Response: So before getting elected, I worked on an organization called Disability Rights Washington. And at this organization I did some work around this issue of making sure that trans women who are incarcerated had what they needed to be able to navigate safely through our business system. I’m proud of the work that we did there. One of the bills, I’m not sure if it’s what you’re referring to, but one of the bills that I worked on was actually to make sure that things like sensitive images are not released to our public records act. One of the things that we found out in our work with trans women was that you know, those big body scanners you go through at the airport, walk through them to stand up with your arms up. The prisons have similar ones but that are much more high tech, so they don’t have to do invasive cavity searches, but they take pictures of naked bodies and that was subject to our Public Records Act. So we went in and we made that change to protect not just trans women, but to protect all people who were having to go through that to make sure that their naked bodies did not end up in a public records disclosure somewhere. I’m proud of the work that we did there. We need to hold to the work that we did there and we were always gonna stand up for folks who are incarcerated, who are dealing with all sorts of different horrible situations. We can do that. I continue to work on that the community safety committee, and I find it important to state that we’ll always stand with the LGB LGBTQ community.

And they applaud at the end! Hey, she said good things about always standing with the LGBTQ community! And she completely avoided that awkward question – even pretended it was another question entirely ("I’m not sure if it’s what you’re referring to") – without a hint of embarrassment. Now there's a good politician.

I’m sure you’re right on both points. But just to reassure the sceptics and naysayers could you produce a list of British-Pakistani Muslim community leaders and/or prominent spokesmen (I assume they will be all men) who have been robust in condemning the rape gangs? https://t.co/3uil66qSH5

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) January 11, 2025

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Rachel Pepper, author of "The Transgender Child," was asked what to do about "extended family members" who are "skeptical" about your 4-year-old "trans kiddo."

Pepper says to cut them out of your life because they're "not safe people for those children to be around." pic.twitter.com/xaNIKNEviO

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) January 18, 2023

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wouldn't know, but he's the one living this, and it's at least plausible. But it's not the prescribed, required view…

s centre lie two competing notions of rights. The liberal argument for surrogacy — as with assisted dying or prostitution — is that a woman can do with her body what she wishes. But surrogacy is freighted with power and privilege: did any wealthy woman ever birth a child for a poorer family? Whether from Mexico’s favelas or Manchester’s council estates, women are not gestational vessels for the rich.

Added on X:

At the Modern Family Show surrogacy expo, mentioned above, I was struck by how the women (vital to the whole process obv) were barely mentioned Except to say they were all health checked & told to stay off recreational drugs etc. ie good breeding stock. Pure Handmaid’s Tale

September 1937, Washington, D.C. "Capital Transit Locomotive 1135 on Pennsylvania Avenue at Post Office Department. Wheel arrangement: PCC."

[Photo: Shorpy/C.W. Witbeck from the Louis A. Marre Rail Transportation Photograph Collection]