Author: Mick Hartley

On the Lea at Hackney Wick:

Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph:

Since Hillary Cass’s report came out in April, full of damning evidence against the medicalised approach of NHS clinics like the Tavistock towards children suffering from gender confusion, many have said the worst is over. Britain is sane again, they say. We have seen off the worst of the pro-trans movement.

I have not been so sure, and indeed, jubilation does seem a bit hasty. The madness persists, as was made clear last week with news that an NHS hospital – the James Paget University Hospitals Trust in Great Yarmouth – has told people working in obstetrics and midwifery to refer to new babies’ gender as having been “assigned female/male at birth” which it claims “accurately depicts the situation of what happens at birth”. An LGBTQ+ glossary of inclusive terms was helpfully provided, and staff now know not to address any audiences as “ladies and gentlemen” – but rather as “folks”, “everyone” or “honoured guests”. Anything that implies that there are only two genders if of course verboten – so no “opposite sex” either, thank you very much.

It’s all bonkers. Barking. But the stuff about referring to gender as merely “assigned” at birth is perhaps the barkingest. It is newborns that are deemed ripe for offence, or perhaps brainwashing, if their paperwork, on the day of birth, is marked “M” or “F”? Or is it their parents – people who probably came of age in a world where there were indeed just two gender options at birth, to precisely nobody’s consternation?

The point, I think, is to emphasise what gender activists like to believe is the arbitrariness of it, because doctors can only see the superficial outward signs but are unable to perceive the gendered soul buried deep within the wee child. The way is therefore clear for the child, at some later stage, to announce that the attribution was wrong and that they now wish to change their sex in line with the gender identity at last revealed – in a sort of Damascene moment, usually on exposure to social media – as the opposite to the sex to which they were so cruelly assigned at birth.

Further to my point wrt Genevieve's Gluck's tweet, where I argue the importance of the top-down gender studies queer theory nonsense coming out of academia in the spread of trans ideology, this from Robert Jessel's review at The Critic of Jennt Lindsay's new book Hounded:

Eschewing, though not denying, the simplistic explanation of misogyny, she argues the main reason is that the gender identity movement’s beliefs are indefensible — ill-defined, antithetical to reason and not even understood by their adherents. She gives the bleakly comical example of a man protesting a feminist book launch in Edinburgh. “So I don’t know too much about the book or the event,” he told a journalist, “except the fact that many people who are in gender studies or are well-educated in queer studies have condemned the contents … And I trust their condemnations.”

songs on the boys’ devices.

The punishment was particularly severe because the boys had not only listened to music from the “puppet state” – North Korea’s derogatory term for South Korea – but had also shared it with others.

Where it gets truly chilling:

A week after the boys’ detention, their families vanished, casting a shadow over the community.

Daily NK understands that both sets of parents have been sent to concentration camps – effectively a life sentence – for failing to properly raise their children. Even the boys’ siblings were imprisoned under guilt by association….

The North Korean regime has recently enacted several laws aimed at strengthening ideological loyalty among the younger generation. These include the DPRK Law of Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture in 2020, the Youth Education Guarantee Law in 2021, and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act in 2023.

;girl cock" or "gock" as these men call it, didn't come from Simone de Beauvoir. These men didn't read the massive tome titled "The Second Sex" (not gender, ahem), and it didn't come from Butler's obtuse word salad, either.

What lies behind the transgender/transsexual movement has always been the determination of the male sexual drive, and beyond the profits to be made and the observable homophobia, first and foremost at its bare bones is the ugly hatred of women by men with sexual pathologies.

These men dress up as women and mimic us because they have for a long time watched pornography depicting women being degraded. In their actions, they imagine themselves as the humiliated women they see in porn, and they are telling us out loud what they want to do to us. To humiliate, dehumanize, and degrade us.

They get support from the highest institutions of society, including the WHO and the APA.

I wake up every day angry about this, but also, that this isn't obvious to everyone.

Well yes, but surely an important part of the success that the trans movement has enjoyed is down to its almost universal acceptance in academic circles, and the endless books and articles in support of gender ideology that pour out of the ivory towers. The work of these people is based on the success of Queer Theory, and, yes, the works of Judith Butler among many others. This barrage of nonsense makes its influence felt across the "higher" cultural circles and filters down through media outlets to become established as the correct "progressive" approach. So yes, that push by men obsessed by porn and a hatred of women provides the power of the movement from the bottom up, but its cultural success requires the prestige of those big fat books that hardly anyone has read.

It’s time to speak about the parents of the women who attacked the LGB Alliance conference. I am going to call them women as I do not know if they were under 18. They are apparently part of the same group who occupied a building earlier. Some of those were as young as 13. Calls… https://t.co/3jKJbGB73D

— Sarah Phillimore (@SVPhillimore) October 13, 2024

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Full text:

It’s time to speak about the parents of the women who attacked the LGB Alliance conference. I am going to call them women as I do not know if they were under 18. They are apparently part of the same group who occupied a building earlier. Some of those were as young as 13. Calls were made for random adults to come and supervise them.

One of the ‘trans kids’ at earlier protest was asserted to be Jolyon Maugmam’s daughter. Another at the LGB Alliance has a mother who is a law lecturer at Kings College. I don’t know the truth of this but it seems that those at the LGB Alliance Conf were clearly not from a working class background.

What does seem to be established clearly is that Alan Baker, a man released on licence for offences of kidnap and attempted murder, was coordinating this attack. He assumes the identity of a woman ‘Sarah Jane’ and was briefly recalled to prison for inciting a crowd of thousands to punch women in the face.

I think the problem is this. Those in high ranking professions are insulated from mad and dangerous people. They can see them as curiosities or even charismatic and inspiring. Mad and dangerous people often can be. But when the mask slips they reveal themselves to be mad and dangerous. I am very worried for the safety of any young person who is being manipulated by such as Alan Baker and whose parents are apparently cheering them on. There are some people and experiences that class and privilege cannot protect you from – particularly not if you embrace them blindly.

We should not be treating any of this lightly. These women are being used and they are at risk of harm when they stop being useful or when they are pushed into even more extreme actions.

Now it's Chaucer's turn:

They are the acclaimed works of medieval literature that tell the story of a religious pilgrimage to one of the most important cathedrals in all of Christendom.

But to the astonishment of critics, a leading university has slapped a trigger warning on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales – because they contain ‘expressions of Christian faith’.

Nottingham University has now been accused of ‘demeaning education’ for warning students about the religious elements of Chaucer’s stories – saying that anyone studying one of the most famous works in English literature would hardly have to have the Christian references pointed out.

The Mail on Sunday has obtained details of the notice issued to students studying a module called Chaucer and His Contemporaries under Freedom of Information laws. It alerts them to incidences of violence, mental illness and expressions of Christian faith in the works of Chaucer and fellow medieval writers William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve….

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, said: ‘Warning students of Chaucer about Christian expressions of faith is weird. Since all characters in the stories are immersed in a Christian experience there is bound to be a lot of expressions of faith. The problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics.’

Historian Jeremy Black added: ‘Presumably, this Nottingham nonsense is a product of the need to validate courses in accordance with tick-box criteria. It is simultaneously sad, funny and a demeaning of education.’

A university spokesman said it ‘champions diversity’, adding: ‘Even those who are practising Christians will find aspects of the late-medieval worldview… alienating and strange.’

What are becoming increasingly alienating and strange are the universities themselves, and their asinine efforts to be "diversity champions".

this. 

The political and diplomatic side of events however, and the pathway to Israel’s strategic objectives via the current activities, seems much more opaque. As of now, the stated goal of the Israeli campaign is to enable 60,000 Israeli internal refugees to return to their homes in border communities. Some of these individuals and their families were evacuated after Hezbollah began attacks on 8 October. Others left of their own accord. Very few of them are willing to return until at the very least Hezbollah’s presence immediately adjoining the border is ended.

The main US diplomatic angle at present appears to be an effort to use Israel’s degrading of Hezbollah capabilities to force political change in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that the movement would no longer insist on any ceasefire being linked to a similar ceasefire in Gaza. But the US appears to be focused on securing Hezbollah concessions on the appointment of a new president in Lebanon. This post has been vacant since President Michel Aoun’s term ended in October, 2022. Hezbollah has been insisting on its own preferred candidate, Suleiman Frangieh, taking up the position. The parliament is divided, the situation deadlocked. Washington hopes that Hezbollahs travails may induce flexibility in this regard.

The problem is that the appointment of a new president would not address the fundamental point in Lebanon, which polite political and diplomatic society still seems unwilling to confront: namely, that the official Lebanese state institutions are not able to issue orders to Hezbollah, and have no mechanism for imposing their will on the organization.

Simply put: the state within a state inserted by Iran into Lebanon, which goes by the name of Hezbollah, is stronger than the official Lebanese state. So any arrangement which relies on the Lebanese state imposing its will on Hezbollah is doomed in advance to failure. Given that this is the case, the US diplomatic effort regarding the Lebanese presidency amounts to so much whistling in the wind. Hezbollah can be destroyed or driven back in Lebanon only by force. The Lebanese Armed Forces, which include a large Shia element with its own contacts to the movement, cannot achieve this.

That leaves Israel. But as of now at least, as noted above, the dimensions of the Israeli campaign, telling as they are, appear to fall short of what would really be needed to severely and permanently downgrade Hezbollah. And once the IDF withdraws from the areas it currently holds, as the US is keen for it to do, what is to stop Hezbollah from returning and rebuilding once again (unless a permanent Israeli buffer zone is established).

In one of the more ludicrous developments, The UN forces in Lebanon, having failed to implement Resolution 1701’s requirement to prevent Hezbollah’s presence south of the Litani, now seem determined to prevent Israel from implementing this either. But the matter of UNIFIL, while garnering media attention at present, is ultimately a side issue.

The key point is that the current dimensions of Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, and the diplomacy surrounding them, appear to be incommensurate with the achievement of Israel’s stated goals. Whether this implies an eventual broadening of these dimensions, or whether it is an example of the familiar Israeli combination of tactical brilliance and strategic incoherence, is not yet clear.

The key lies in Iran. And whatever plans Israel may have to counter Tehran directly, they'll almost certainly be opposed by Washington.

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“We had families and friends of years that turned on us. I explained that I can only share the Israeli perspective because that’s my life. My family is being evacuated from the north and one of my childhood friends is one of the hostages that is still there [in Gaza].”

McConnon, who is on maternity leave after giving birth to her youngest son, said she experienced discrimination while in a maternity hospital in Dublin.

“The stress and anxiety ended up with me having a very high risk pregnancy with a lot of complications and I was told I needed a C section within 48 hours to bring the baby out a month early,” she said.

“One of the doctors that came in for the consultation decided to completely and utterly smash into me with her political views. This was my doctor and I was in a high-stress environment. I demanded that she be removed from the team and I received an apology letter from the hospital.”…

Orli Degani, 45, moved to Dublin with her husband and two children in 2018 from Haifa in northern Israel. She said many Israelis in Ireland were afraid to leave their homes.

“Some people have left Ireland to go back to Israel but most who have left went to other countries in Europe with different views,” she said.

“A lot of Jewish people have removed any symbol that might identify them as Jewish or Israeli, they just don’t want to be identified. A lot of people, including myself, at some point in the last year rarely left the house or they didn’t leave the house by themselves.”

Degani, who ran as an independent candidate in the local elections in June in Dun Laoghaire, said she regularly received antisemitic messages and comments online. She was dropped from the ballot by the Social Democrats in April, who felt her stance on the war in Gaza was no longer compatible with the party’s.

“My business suffered because of it somewhat. I deleted all the messages, but a lot of them were about claiming I was a genocide supporter,” she said.

People calling for a “diplomatic resolution” for Lebanon:

It exists. It’s called UN Security Council Resolution 1701. It was passed in 2006. It was never enforced for 18 years. That’s why Israel is acting against Hezbollah. Because the international security architecture failed.

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 13, 2024

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