Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • At the Quarter Circle ‘U’ Brewster-Arnold Ranch

    Arthur Rothstein, June 1939. "Cowhand at the Quarter Circle 'U' Brewster-Arnold Ranch, Montana."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration]

  • More Heath trees

    A return to Kenwood, Hampstead Heath, this morning:

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  • A detransitioner’s tale

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    Full text:

    When she was 12, Johanna Olson-Kennedy at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles put her on puberty blockers.

    At 13, she was put on testosterone.

    At only 14 years of age, she was given a double mastectomy!

    Clementine had suffered sexual abuse, and that was the source of great trauma, and is why she didn’t want to be a girl.

    Johanna Olson-Kennedy didn’t care about that. Within 30 minutes of her first appointment she was told she needed to go on puberty blockers, or she might kill herself.

    Her parents were told they could have a dead daughter or a live son. This is standard practice at gender clinics. The only way they can justify this child abuse is to say that kids will die if they don’t do it.

    Testosterone caused psychosis so Clementine went off it at 17.

    She has now just turned 20, and can probably never have kids. She’s trying to get reconstructive surgery but insurance companies only want to pay for destruction of children’s bodies, not reconstruction.

    I hope Clementine sues, and helps to bring down this industry, but mostly I’m incredibly thankful for her bravery in speaking up.

    If you don’t believe this is happening. please listen to her story.

  • All the blood is in vain

    Nassim Badani (a pseudonym) on Lebanon after the death of Nasrallah:

    All the blood is in vain. With deterrence now gone, the blood of Hezbollah’s many martyrs is in vain. The blood Hezbollah spilled in Syria to keep its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in power was in vain.

    Hezbollah and their allies killed hundreds of thousands to help Assad claw back control of the country. They supposedly entrenched themselves on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, promising a new front with Israel if war were to break out.

    None of that happened. Bashar has been quiet and largely stayed out of the conflict in Gaza. The so-called Golan Front was never activated — was there ever one to begin with?

    Invading Syria was sold as the necessary action to preserve and improve Hezbollah’s resistance capabilities. But when it came to it, these capabilities seemed nowhere to be found.

    In the end, Hezbollah turned into a cliche. Across the 20th century, Arab despots instrumentalized the Palestinian cause and, under the pretext of fighting Israel, turned their guns on their own people and sowed tyranny….

    Nasrallah is dead. No one is coming to save us.

  • An exercise in appeasing narcissists

    padding-left: 40px”>What’s really pernicious about this exercise, aside from being a waste of time and money, is the way it seeks to co-opt those of us who don’t buy into identity theory. We’re “agender”, according to the Scottish government, which means “a person who does not identify as having a gender”. A normal human being, in other words.

    Not sure about that. As I understand it those of us who don't believe in gender theory are just dismissed as boring old "cisgender", bovinely content to amble through life with the sex/gender with which we were "assigned" at birth. "Agender" then means a kind of extreme non-binary rejection of any sex/gender distinction at all – a Nietzchean Beyond Man and Woman, perhaps. But I could be wrong. This is all arcane cult-speak after all. 

    Scotland was one of the cradles of the Enlightenment, but it turned out that a couple of centuries of rationality was no defence against a belief system which is akin to magic. Suddenly, a handful of Scottish politicians affect to believe that sex isn’t fixed, that men can magically become women, and anyone who protests is smeared as Right-wing or “transphobic”.

    A group of people insistent on defining themselves in any way they choose has thus denied that courtesy to everyone else. It’s clear that the terror of being called a bigot has affected politicians throughout the UK, and the impact is evident in the absurd documents just published by the Scottish government’s chief statistician.

    When will someone call a halt to all this? We’ve witnessed far too much bowing and scraping to what is in effect a reality-denying cult. There are only two sexes, and collecting information about “gender” is nothing more than an exercise in appeasing narcissists.

  • A player with the Trans & Enby Football Club in Liverpool

    t: 40px”>On his X profile, Danvers frequently discussed his love for science fiction, notably Star Trek. In 2005, detectives from the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit claimed that of the over 100 offenders they had arrested in the previous four years, “all but one” was a “hard-core Trekkie.”

    Not sure what to make of that. It's fandom, Jim, but not as we know it. 

  • Before and after

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  • Ranting

    MEMRI TV:

    British-Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan claimed that Israelis are making plans to flee Israel after it collapses, in an October 14, 2024 video on his YouTube Channel. He said that most of the Ashkenazi Jews returned to Western countries, and similarly, a million descendants of Moroccan Jews wish to return to Morocco. Atwan continued to claim that there is a proposed bill in Morocco that would allow these Moroccan Jews, their children, and grandchildren, to return to Morocco. He continued to say that the “brothers” who demonstrated against Israel oppose this bill. Atwan said that there is no place for Israelis in any Arab country and that they are criminals who should be put on trial and executed for their crimes.

    Alan Johnson comments:

    Three points. 1. The BBC used to give this vicious antisemite a regular platform. Gavin Esler would treat him as a valued interlocutor every weekend on Dateline London until 2022 when the show was dropped. 2. It's all lies. We are dealing with an entire political culture built on lies, illusions, and fantasies: a Comical Ali Culture. 3. The ranting. Always with the bloody ranting.

     

  • In the dustbin of history

    She speaks fluent Persian.

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    Though opinions differ on the accent:

    "Wow I didn't know you were so fluent in Persian. You've got Shirazi accent, nice."

    "You've really nailed the Tehrani accent."

  • Punishing ideological disloyalty among young soldiers

    yle=”font-size: 11pt”>The report, covering incidents from August 2023 to September 2024, was distributed to state security bureaus at the corps and command levels throughout the military on Oct. 2. A military source told Daily NK recently that the report’s main objectives are to monitor and punish ideological disloyalty among young soldiers and prevent information leaks to the outside world.

    The day after distribution of the report, a public trial was held in a military front-line unit of the II Corps stationed in Kaepung county. Nine male soldiers in their 20s, investigated between June and early October for handling foreign media, stood trial. The location was chosen due to the high number of such cases in the area and to increase vigilance among soldiers close to the South Korean border.

    During the trial, seven soldiers were convicted of distributing illegal videos and sentenced to dishonorable discharge and prison terms of up to ten years and six months. Two others, identified as ringleaders in circulating unauthorized foreign-made electronic devices, received death sentences. The seven incarcerated soldiers were immediately sent to prison, while the two sentenced to death were executed at the unit’s firing range the following day.

    Simple as that.

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