Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Intermission

    Off for a couple of days. Back Friday.

  • This constant hate

    were taking the line – just as with the US after 9/11 – that Israel, the Jews, had it coming. Even, for some on the left, that this was something to be celebrated: the oppressed at last rising up against the colonisers.

  • The anguish over Nasrallah

    is proof of the bigotry that lurks barely beneath the surface of ‘anti-Zionism’.

  • The BBC go-to “expert”

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    "standard exterminationist antisemitic abuse about "Chosen People", "holocaust" in Lebanon etc all without challenge. Profoundly and appallingly offensive."

  • “I don’t live now, I exist”

    This is just awful. From Anna Moore at the Guardian:

    October marks the 10th anniversary of the murder of Claire Throssell’s two sons, Jack and Paul, by their father. He had lured them to the attic with sweets and a new train set, then barricaded the house and started 14 fires. He’d locked all the doors, secured the patio doors with a heavy bike lock and used chairs and mattresses as extra barriers to slow down firefighters.

    Jack and Paul, aged 12 and nine, hadn’t wanted to visit their father, Darren Sykes. He had previously hit both them and their mum. He’d made them eat until they were sick. He used to call them “mummy’s boys”. Paul had explained all this to a worker at Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) in a formal interview. Throssell had said in an evidence statement that, when angry, Sykes was capable of hurting or killing the boys, that he had told her he intended to take his own life and that he could understand fathers killing their children. Still, contact was awarded to him.

    Ten years on – or, in her own words, “10 years into my life sentence” – Throssell cannot believe how little has been learned. “I’ve had sleepless nights knowing that the judge who made the contact order was still on the bench and the Cafcass worker who interviewed Paul has never been held accountable,” she says.

    “I don’t live now, I exist,” she continues, “and the only reason I exist is to make a difference. There are days I wake up disappointed I’m alive, but then I remember that I made a vow to get my children’s voices heard. We need a true overhaul of the family courts – and if I can’t get that, why am I still here?”  […]

    Paul was interviewed by a Cafcass officer for the section 7 report and described life with his dad, listing the many reasons he didn’t want to see him. The Cafcass officer then met with Sykes. The serious case review following the boys’ deaths found that Sykes became “agitated and uncomfortable” in that meeting and barred the door to prevent the officer leaving – her notes stated that she wanted extra support when with him in future. “If that Cafcass officer couldn’t handle seeing him alone, how the hell did she think a nine- and 12-year-old would? She had the power to overrule the contact order there and then,” says Throssell. “But she didn’t.” CCTV images have shown that, on leaving that meeting, Sykes went out and bought five cans of petrol. Two days later, during the next contact visit, he killed his sons and himself.

    Violent controlling men being appeased; women's concerns ignored. Again and again and again.

  • Working on the railroad

    Jack Delano, March 1943. "Cajon, California. Indian section gang working on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad track."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano, Office of War Information]

  • Simpering terrorist sympathisers

    cf”>In Saturday’s FT, it was noted that the ‘charismatic’ Nasrallah – who was eliminated on Friday by an Israeli strike on Hezbollah’s subterranean headquarters in Beirut – was described as ‘courteous, perceptive and funny’ by those who met him in recent years. For readers who are still unsure what to make of the man, the following paragraph rather charmingly reveals: ‘a life-long speech impediment, which left him unable to pronounce his Rs, was widely viewed as disarming.’ Cute. (And surely the perfect plotline for a follow up to 2010’s box office hit The King’s Speech. The Terrorist’s Tongue, anyone?)

    Over in Sunday’s Observer, Nasrallah was remembered as ‘politically astute’ and ‘adored by supporters’. Later in the piece, he is praised for his ‘dignified response’ to the death of his son, Mohammed Hadi, who was killed fighting the IDF in 1997. Not mentioned is the fact that Nasrallah rejected the Israeli offer to return his son’s body in exchange for the body parts of Israelis killed by Hezbollah, stating: “Keep it. We have many more men like Hadi ready to offer themselves to the struggle.” So dignified! What a dad!

    This insight was also strangely absent from the Washington Post’s farewell, where they tell readers that Nasrallah was seen as ‘a father figure, a moral compass and a political guide,’ by his followers. Adding: ‘He was lauded as the man who empowered Lebanon’s once downtrodden and impoverished Shiite communit.

    ’Not to be outdone, the New York Times claims that he, ‘maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians’ – dizzyingly at odds with Hezbollah’s stated aims of destroying Israel, allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader and establishing Islamist supremacy across the middle east….

    Obviously simpering terrorist sympathising in the western media is nothing new, but in a sea of bad takes since Hamas’ atrocities of October 7, glowing obituaries for Nasrallah still stand out as a low point. While it’s true that everyone has some good in them, singing the praises of a man who was responsible for the subjugation and death of hundreds of thousands of people, is completely deranged, and shows a lack of moral backbone and understanding of the horrors he inspired, rather than a fair and thoughtful disposition. Worst of all, it is an insult to everyone who suffered at his hands – whose names have, and will, fade into obscurity, while his is praised, and his cruelty re-written to suit the tastes of contemporary, progressive paletes.

    So often, less is more – and that is definitely the case when it comes to memorialising this monster. In fact, I think his obituary needed only seven words: yimakh shemo, may his memory be erased.

  • Coincidence of the day

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  • A history of Lebanon

    d 'ordered' him to do something, threatening that if he did not toe the line, Assad would 'break his head'. Hariri did not toe the line and was assassinated in February 2005. Hezbollah were the ones who committed the act.

    The cowardly Iranian regime had established Hezbollah as a proxy to fight Israel. In essence, cowardly Iran used Lebanon to fight Israel, causing the destruction of Lebanon while Iranian territory remained safe.

    So back to my first thought. The opposition cannot handle the truth. The only thing they can do is call us names.

    I have thick skin. We have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations and adversity wreaked upon us by these savage terroristic animals.

    Thank you, Israel, for Nasrallah's demise. It may create an opportunity for peace, but only if Lebanese leaders have the courage to seize the moment.

    I will repeat what the terrorists and their supporters don’t want to hear: The Iranian Regime, The Syrian Regime, all proxies of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, ISIS, Al Qaeda, The PLO, Islamic Jihad, PJ, PFLP, Syrian Baathist Party, all the Communist parties, all of these and more have been CANCERS in the World. They oppress their own people and us alike. They are savage animals who are stuck in the seventh century with the mentality of brutal conquests and war.

    Call me what you like. I was born a Phoenician, not an Arab. The terrorists took away my county, but God gave me America. I am grateful and I am blessed.

    I'm going to have an awesome day, and the terrorists are going to get their rears kicked. Have a good night.

    "To hear the truth, we turned to Radio Israel, Voice of America, and the BBC." Those were the days.

  • Cultures, not people

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