Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Reporting trans crime

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  • Parole revoked for speaking out

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    Full text:

    It’s important that folks understand Cathleen was punished so harshly because she and Tomiekia Johnson were the first incarcerated women to speak against SB 132. The state needed to make an example of these two women. They needed to show ALL the other women housed in prison that they better shut up or they too would lose their job, their honor dorm housing, their parole, their everything.

    This tactic has been highly effective. But it is crumbling. I’ve waited so long to share Cathleen’s story and I am so proud that her bravery now has allowed her story to be shared in front of US Senators.

    California's SB 132 "allows incarcerated transgender, non-binary and intersex people to request to be housed and searched in a manner consistent with their gender identity."

  • “We Will Dance Again” controversy

    From the Jerusalem Post:

    Yariv Mozer, the director of We Will Dance Again, a documentary film about the Nova festival, said that he had to agree with the BBC to not describe Hamas as a terrorist organization if he wanted it to air, according to an interview he gave to The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.

    The film, which is set to broadcast on the BBC today, contains unseen footage of the Hamas massacre at the festival on October 7. It was commissioned by BBC Storyville.

    Mozer told The Hollywood Reporter that this was a concession he had to make if he wanted the film to be seen by the British public.

    “It was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organization or not,” Mozer said.

    The JC however spins it differently, after the film's official launch last night at JW3, the Jewish Community Centre on Finchley Road:

    There appeared to be a new controversy a few hours after the launch, perhaps reflecting some discussions during the process, when an interview with Yariv in the Hollywood Reporter reported him saying BBC had asked him not to describe Hamas a terrorist organisation if he wanted it to air. ‘It was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organisation or not.”

    However the word terrorist will be seen scores of times during the documentary as not only do many of the contributors use it but a title in the film says: "The IDF says that more than 3000 terrorists breached the 40 mile-long border in around 30 places”

    In a statement, a BBC spokesman said: “The BBC Storyville film shows in unsparing detail the way in which Hamas set out to slaughter as many people as possible at a music festival on October 7th. It is entirely focused on their stories, told in their own words without commentary, and their descriptions of Hamas as a terrorist organisation have of course not been changed.”

    The film is scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday 26th) at 9.00pm on BBC2.

  • “A straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism”

    : 11pt”>They're so brave, these writers…so principled.

    As, it turns out, are the Writers Institute and the university.

    At that point the Writers Institute and the University at Albany, which administers the program, had to make a choice: They could publicly condemn the antisemitism displayed by Gawad and Ko and make sure the festival-goers were aware of what had happened. In a series of phone calls Thursday afternoon, Albert says she tried to convince them to do just that. Or they could capitulate to the bigotry by trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug, and listing the cancellation on the festival’s website as the result of “unforeseen circumstances.”

    The institute chose the latter course….

    By the time I spoke to Albert over the weekend the shock had worn off, but not the anger. “Let’s face it,” she said. “The word Zionist is a newfangled word for Jew. Refusing to participate on a panel with a Zionist is a straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism.”

  • A tweet from the UN Secretary General

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    You have many thousands of UN soldiers in south Lebanon whose job, according to UNSC resolutions, is to stop Hezbollah. But they refuse to stop Hezbollah.

    You have two UNSC resolutions that demand Hezbollah disarm and leave the border, but you won’t even name them in any of your statements.

    You have systematically avoided any action that might have prevented this war. You refuse to protect the Israelis, you refuse to protect the Lebanese, you don’t even pretend to try to implement your own solemn decisions. And now, in your moralizing, you effectively run defense for Hezbollah.

    If you can’t protect us, if you can’t do a damn thing to push back the influence of malign and evil actors, at least shut up.

  • The dirty balloon war

    The North Korean rubbish ballons being sent over to the South, packed with anything up to and including human faeces, are getting more and more annoying – as, of course, intended. The South did return to the old loudspeaker broadcasts, halted since 2018, but they don't seem to be having any effect – if anything encouraging the North to send more balloons – and they're understandably reluctant to escalate any further such a ridiculously infantile exchange: “low-grade provocations unimaginable from a normal country". 

    Time for a more robust approach?. Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times:

    South Korea has promised to take “stern military measures” if North Korea continues its relentless barrage of hot-air balloons carrying rubbish across the border between the two enemy states.

    The angry threat comes after Incheon airport, one of the world’s busiest, was forced to close twice early on Monday because of the danger to aircraft presented by the drifting balloons. According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 5,500 of them have been released in 22 separate launches, carrying bags containing rubbish such as plastic bottles, used batteries, old shoes and faeces.

    The falling balloons and their cargo have damaged cars. The timers used to release the rubbish bags have even ignited accidentally, causing fires on the ground.

    “While there may be inconveniences and difficulties caused by North Korea’s trash balloons, our fundamental motive in eradicating them is to demonstrate that the enemy will gain nothing,” said Colonel Lee Sung-jun, a spokesman for the JCS.

    “Still, if serious danger is caused to the safety of our citizens or if the North is assessed to have crossed the line, our military will take stern military measures.”

    It's risky, though.

    Pressed for more details about what would trigger a military response and what it would consist of, Lee declined to clarify the “precise standard at the moment”.

    But it would probably involve attempts to shoot down the balloons, probably by helicopter, a risky undertaking in a border zone in which troops from both sides are constantly on alert.

    Committing important military resources to dealing with what are known as “grey zone tactics”, short of deadly force, would also risk encouraging the North to send even more balloons — and loss of face if for the South if it found itself unable to respond.

    Of course some countries – Ukraine, Israel – could only dream of being bombarded with shit rather than deadly high explosives. It could always get worse.

  • Labour stuttering on women’s rights

    r dysphoria are teenage girls who reject the burgeoning signs that they are turning into women.

    As I walk back in the rain, I wonder when 51 per cent of the population will ever become a priority. Do I trust Labour not to further dismantle women’s rights? Not really.

  • A war that benefits only Iran

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    In 2006, after the last clash between Israel and Hezbollah, UNSC 1701 ordered disarmament of armed groups including Hezbollah, with no armed forces other than UNIFIL and Lebanese military south of the Litani River. Hezbollah's forward position is in direct contravention to this.
    Hezbollah is a terrorist paramilitary and Iranian vassal parastate that has captured the Lebanese republic, terrorizing and assassinating anyone who challenges it. Hence the terrified performance of its president, ministers etc. Hezbollah was a major perpetrator of the biggest mass killing of civilians in the Arab world in modern times – the slaughter of 500,000 Syrians in alliance with the Assad dictatorship, Iran and Russia. So the narrative that Hezbollah has been provoked etc etc is inaccurate. Whatever one's view of the dire Netanyahu govt, Israel has no wish for a northern war; it has no presence in Lebanon and obviously after enduring the trauma and humiliation of the 7 Oct fiasco had no need for any more war.
    No country on earth would tolerate an 8000-missile bombardment that forced it to evacuate an entire region. Israel was unable to respond earlier. Now it is doing so to end an unprovoked bombardment over many months that is sadly overdue.
    It is a tragedy that Israeli civilians have been terrorized all this time; it is tragic too that Lebanon, once a thriving multi ethnic multi faith multi party system, has been sadly hijacked and captured by a ruthless terrorist vassal of Iran and that a few brutal potentates at the top of Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran are recklessly sacrificing Lebanese security and Lebanese civilians on the altar of anti-American, anti-Western democracy, anti-Israel 'resistance' and Iranian imperialism.
    It is worth repeating that Lebanon has no strategic clash with Israel; Israel occupies no part of Lebanon; Lebanon has no interest in a war with Israel. In fact Lebanon and Israel should not coexists but be close allies in a normal world. Hezbollah's forward positions are in contravention of UN1701 that ordered their withdrawal north of this area.
    And this is entirely a war launched on 8 October by Hezbollah and Iran that benefits only Hezbollah and its masters in Iran and only destroys the innocent civlians of Lebanon and Israel and noone else. Every civilian who suffers or dies in this conflict is one civilian too many! Plse may this end soon.

  • Pallywood fail

    A mourning father – and a child with an itchy foot:

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  • Trying to appease the unappeasable

    some backbone. Unfortunately, though the PM's principles may be sound, backbone is not something we've seen much of to date.

    Labour must rediscover its principles and – just as important – its international allies. Wasting time trying to appease the unappeasable can only lead to surrender of our own values and the betrayal of our true friends.

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