Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • The crime of dancing

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    Surreal; This awesome graduation dance video got these female students into trouble. They now face prosecution for the “crime” of dancing during their graduation ceremony at Al-Zahra University in Bushehr, Iran. The university president threatened legal action against all these students. The individual who filmed this beautiful ceremony has been identified and his friends are concerned not only about her current situation but also her future.

    The Iranian regime is a gender apartheid regime, a reality reinforced time and again by the severe consequences faced by women for simple acts like dancing, highlighting the dire situation they endure under its rule. We’ve witnessed this scenario play out before. Nobody should be condemned, punished, or deprived of education simply for the ‘crime’ of dancing and experiencing happiness. We deserve to have a normal life.

  • The collapse of Israel’s campaign in Gaza

    e true. His strategy – to resist Israel’s assault until the international community tied its hands – is working wonderfully. What motivation has he to release any hostages now? What leverage is left to the Israelis?

    According to reports, Sinwar’s messianic tendencies are now in full flow as he revels in ecstasy underground. This weird trait of his used to be described as ‘pathological or out of touch with reality.’ It now seems anything but.

  • Putin’s Christian jihad

    nd Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not." Most people brought up as cosy Anglicans in the UK would very likely agree, whether church-goers or lapsed. But Christianity can take many forms, and in Russia it's clearly turned very nasty indeed – used to sanctify genocide in Ukraine. You'd be hard pressed now to choose between Islamist jihad and current Russian Orthodoxy on a moral scale. 

  • Labour on board

    And this is very encouraging, from Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting:

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  • Where have the media been?

    Hannah Barnes on Newsnight last night:

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  • Shaky foundations

    nical guidelines around the world over the past two decades. Thousands of children have received puberty blockers on the NHS since 2011, and referrals to its youth gender identity service have increased 100-fold in little over a decade.

    Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned by NHS ­England in 2020 to review services for children with gender dysphoria. Her final report has endorsed a ­fundamental shift in approach away from medical intervention towards a holistic model that addresses other mental health problems the children may have….

    The report contains 32 recommendations for overhauling services. “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress,” Cass said, adding that children must be seen “as a whole person and not just through the lens of their gender identity”.

    She said it was vital that services take into account high rates of autism and mental health problems in children identifying as transgender.

    Well done Hilary Cass! "Shaky foundations" is her polite way of saying: it was all ideologically-driven homophobic bollocks.

  • The six month war?

    all said simply that the president “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action.” But how did he make it clear?

    What we know is that once the call was over, Netanyahu rushed to a cabinet meeting where he quickly passed two decisions – to open the Erez Crossing to supply convoys going into northern Gaza and to allow supplies to Gaza to arrive directly from Ashdod Port. These were two steps that Israel has resolutely refused to make since October 7, and all it took was a phone call from Biden to make them happen. Whatever the president said, it was the sternest warning Netanyahu has received in six months – one that motivated him to hold the cabinet vote before National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the meeting.

    On Monday, Ben-Gvir’s warning that if the IDF doesn’t carry out a wide-scale operation in Rafah, Netanyahu “would not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister”, along with similar warnings passed on in a hastily convened meeting with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, forced Netanyahu to put out his statement on a date being set for the Rafah operation.

    Netanyahu now has two sets of red lines, one put down by Biden and the other by Ben-Gvir. He will continue trying to walk between them for as long as he can. Meanwhile, he will pretend that the war is still happening and that the Rafah operation is just around the corner. Perhaps there will be a much smaller and largely symbolic operation in Rafah. Or perhaps we will eventually find out that this was the week that the war ended.

    We shall see. Either way it's clear that Netanyahu's days are numbered.

  • Scottish police “simply cannot cope at the moment”

    to outnumber all other offences put together, figures show, as front-line officers warned they “can’t cope” with the surge.

    Around 8,000 hate crime reports have been made in the first week of the new Scottish legislation coming into force, which, if replicated through the year, would surpass the entire annual total of 416,000 crimes reported to police, according to an analysis of official data by The Telegraph….

    David Threadgold, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents front-line officers, told the BBC: “Police Scotland have gone public and said that on every occasion, reports of hate crime will be investigated.

    “That creates a situation where we simply cannot cope at the moment. Officers have been brought back in to do overtime shifts and the management of that is simply unsustainable.”…

    Analysis by The Telegraph shows Police Scotland is already failing to solve an increasing number of shoplifting cases, sexual assaults and car thefts. Clear-up rates – referring to cases where there is enough evidence for criminal proceedings –for two-thirds of all offences have declined since 2011 including violent offences, fraud and rape.

    It comes amid growing criticism of the Scottish Government’s crime policies, which have seen officer numbers fall to their lowest level in 15 years, the introduction of plans to shut 29 police stations and a policy of not investigating offences such as some minor thefts or criminal damage.

  • Death of a Palestinian writer

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  • Nazi propaganda targeting Palestinian Arabs

    alestinian Arabs. “Arabs in the pay of German agents are collecting signatures all over the country for a petition asking Hitler to take Palestine under his protection” pic.twitter.com/oYho7m6uci

    — James Vaughan (@EquusontheBuses) April 8, 2024

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