Author: Mick Hartley

An important article from Kyle Orton in Fathom on Iran's "ring of fire" round Israel, and "the West’s ongoing appeasement of Tehran and refusal to see plain the IRGCs transnational Jihad":

Synopsis:

Soleimani’s ‘ring of fire’ strategic concept envisioned surrounding Israel with IRGC units—in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, and Yemen—that are steadily equipped with better and better missiles to threaten Jewish population centres and the Israeli economy, making Israeli life unliveable as part of a grinding war of attrition that ends in Israel’s destruction. Analyst Kyle Orton argues that although this Iranian attack was ‘essentialy a symbolic episode’ choreographed with the US not to be military significant, the pressure on Israel from the West not to retaliate has shifted the Overton window yet again. The view that Israel was supposed to just live with rocket fire on her civilians from Gaza was long ago normalised, and the idea has now entered the mainstream of respectable Western opinion that an enemy State can openly fire hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel and Israel should absorb this without response. This will have lasting effects whether or not Israel defies this pressure.

But do read it all.

size: 11pt”>She questioned whether it was right that the student had received £150,000 in legal aid to bring the case.

“The judge is clear that the child’s statements were not written by her alone. Indeed this mum intends to send her second child to Michaela, starting in September. At the same time, this mum has sent a letter to our lawyers suggesting that she may take us to court yet again over another issue at the school she doesn’t like, presumably once again at the taxpayer’s expense….

“Last year, we watched our Muslim pupils put under pressure by a tiny number of others to fast, to pray, to drop out of the choir, to wear a hijab.

“I watched one of my black teachers racially abused and intimidated, another teacher who had her personal home nearly broken into, and another with a brick thrown through her window. I have a duty of care to protect all of our pupils but also to my staff.

“There is a false narrative that some try to paint about Muslims being an oppressed minority at our school. They are, in fact, the largest group. Those who are most at risk are other minorities and Muslim children who are less observant.”

You have to wonder what group was behind this – another clearly orchestrated attempt to impose Islamic standards on a secular institution, and funded by the taxpayer.

40px”>At least four people suffered "non-life-threatening" injuries, police say. The attacker was also hurt.

The incident was captured on a church livestream and quickly triggered unrest in the suburb of Wakeley.

Australian police define terror offences as being ideologically motivated. Investigations are still under way, but they say they are satisfied this is a case of religious extremism.

We're left to fill in the gaps. What religion inspired this young man? No one can say.

The Spectator helps out with information the BBC felt unable to share:

An arch-conservative in a conservative church, Bishop Emmanuel is known for attracting controversy. His views on social issues, notably homosexuality, are biblically hardline and, while having been supportive of Palestinians in the war in Gaza, he is on the record as having questioned the validity of Islam as a faith. During the pandemic, the bishop expressed scepticism about vaccines and lockdown restrictions.

Whether any of these views motivated the still-unidentified 16-year-old boy to attack Bishop Emmanuel remains unclear. But a video of the alleged attacker appears to show him calling out, in Arabic, ‘if he (the bishop) didn’t swear at my prophet I wouldn’t be here.’

We're beginning to get the picture.

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From the article:

What constitutes mathematical knowledge? What is included in mathematics? Who gets to decide? These are some of the questions being asked in a growing decolonisation movement.

“Mathematics is a universal human phenomenon, and students of under-represented and minority groups and colonised peoples are starting to be more critical about accepting unquestioningly the cultural hegemony of mainstream European-based mathematics,” says Professor Rowena Ball from the ANU Mathematical Sciences Institute.

Professor Ball leads a research and teaching initiative called Mathematics Without Borders, aimed at broadening and diversifying the cultural base and content of mathematics.

“Mathematics has been gatekept by the West and defined to exclude entire cultures. Almost all mathematics that students have ever come across is European-based,” she explains. “We would like to enrich the discipline through the inclusion of cross-cultural mathematics.”

“Indigenous and First Nations peoples around the world are standing up and saying: ‘Our knowledge is just as good as anybody else's − why can't we teach it to our children in our schools, and in our own way?’

Answers on a postcard please.

Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.

“In fact, as most mathematicians know, mathematics is primarily the science of patterns and periodicities and symmetries − and recognising and classifying those patterns.”

Indigenous societies often excel at non-numerical mathematics, she says.

Aka, non-mathematical mathematics.

Letter in the Times from Maya Forstater, Stephanie Davies-Arai, Kate Barker, et al:

Sir, Following the release of the Cass review, Stonewall now says it supports Dr Hilary Cass’s recommendations of a cautious, evidence-based non-medicalised approach to children with gender distress. This is a stark contrast to its previous stance that children can identify an alternative gender identity from as young as two, that puberty blockers should be prescribed to teenagers and that warnings about the lack of clinical evidence to support paediatric transition should be ignored.

In your report “Debate on trans rights ‘shut down by bullying’ ” (news, Apr 10), Dr Cass said: “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views.” Stonewall has played a significant role in creating this culture of fear. If it is going to try to fix the toxicity of the debate the first thing it should do is withdraw the allegations it has made about Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She is under investigation by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions because Stonewall reported that she took a “determinedly anti-trans stance” when she, just like Dr Cass, urged caution in legislating to ban “conversion therapy”. Stonewall should withdraw its complaint, apologise to Baroness Falkner and let the EHRC get on with its job.

fety and biological reality.

This must now stop. pic.twitter.com/ljwQkXqu1O

— Victoria Atkins (@VictoriaAtkins) April 15, 2024

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an regime on British Muslims.

It claimed the Islamic Centre of England (ICE), which is run by a direct representative of Iran’s supreme leader, was the “nerve centre” of Iran’s presence in the UK.

It said Iran uses the ICE and other institutions across the UK to project soft power and influence, with increasing numbers of Iranian clerics moving to Britain to spread Tehran’s strand of Islam.

Policy Exchange also uncovered figures revealing that the UK has granted 100 visas to Iranian religious figures since 2005, with 21 of them issued to clerics who are trained by and must remain loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Home Office denied visas to a further 44 Iranian religious leaders over the same period….

Another example the report gave of Iran’s “ability to stir the pot of religious prejudice within the UK” include the protests that occurred outside Batley Grammar School in 2021, which forced a teacher who had shown his pupils a cartoon of Muhammad into hiding.

It also cited the incident at a school in Wakefield in February last year where four schoolboys were suspended after one of them reportedly scuffed his own copy of the Qur’an.

The three examples “serve as an indication that de facto blasphemy codes can be enforced on the streets if protestors commit to doing so,” the report said.

And if the police and local authorities are too scared to take any action.

The report is here.

ns by North Korean authorities on the viewing of South Korean media, young people are finding various ways to continue watching it under the noses of the government.

“Enforcers from the Sinuiju Task Force against Anti-Socialist and Non-Socialist Behavior have been closely watching for signs of illegal video viewing, conducting two or three searches of residents’ homes every day. But young people are using notetels to avoid detection when watching illegal media,” a source in North Pyongan Province told Daily NK on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Notetel, short for “notebook television,” is a Chinese-made portable media player that is widely used in North Korea. One feature of notetels is that they can play a wide range of media files stored on compact discs (CDs), SD cards and USB flash drives.

This has inspired young people to keep a CD of legal movies or dramas in the drive while watching illegal media on an SD card or USB flash drive. They store illegal media on SD cards or USB flash drives because they are smaller and easier to remove and conceal than a CD.

When someone knocks on the door, the teens quickly remove the SD card or USB flash drive and immediately play the legal media on the CD in the drive so it looks like they were watching it all along, the source explained.

This was the method used by a young man in Sinuiju to fool enforcers who paid him an unexpected visit on March 30 while he was watching a South Korean movie.

According to the source, the young man removed the USB flash drive from his notebook as soon as he heard a knock at his door. After hiding the flash drive, he opened the door.

Enforcement officers checked the CD in his notebook for illegal media and then opened all the drawers in the house to look for storage devices that might contain illegal videos. When nothing objectionable was found, they left the house.

“When you ask who is at the door, the enforcers do not identify themselves, they just ask people to open up. So now people are in the habit of hiding anything that could get them in trouble if there’s a knock at the door. And that’s exactly what this young man was doing,” the source said.

“The enforcers will search you if they find something suspicious, but otherwise they’ll just move on to the next house. People here [in North Korea] have been dealing with searches since they were born, so they’re smart enough to trick the enforcers. That’s how they get away with watching South Korean dramas and other illegal media,” the source said.

Considering the punishments now for watching "anti-socialist" videos – anything from years in a forced labour camp right up to execution – that takes some courage. But that's the world they live in.

Jack Delano, January 1943. Riverdale, Illinois. "Blue Island Yard of the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad with view of the icing platform."

[Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

At the steps over the Shoreditch railway bridge to Cheshire Street. 

This morning:

And in 1968, taken by John Claridge:

Before the invention of the aerosol spray can.