Author: Mick Hartley

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Video here. Be warned: it's horrible. Awful. "Unbearable suffering".

offence to their group? Assuming progressives are not animated by an explicit and conscious hatred of Jews, I believe there is only one plausible answer: Even though Muslims (to continue with the same example) are demographically, territorially, and economically (in total accumulated wealth) far superior to the Jews, they are viewed as a vulnerable and persecuted minority, while Jews – especially when associated with Israel – are denied this status. If Muslims constitute two billion people in the world, or close to 30 per cent of world population, and the Jews barely 15 millions, or 0.2 per cent of the people who inhabit this planet, the latter clearly better qualify to the status of vulnerable minority in global terms. But in western democracies, Jews are treated as a dominant (and ‘white’) group, a perception buttressed by the fact they are mentally associated to Israel, a military state victorious in numerous wars. Survey after survey, in Europe and in the USA, it was found that a third or more of the population believed Jews have too much power. More interestingly, young people, more likely to be progressive than older people, are also more likely to think Jews control too much of the economy and the media.

This asymmetry between the leftist treatment of Muslims and Jews betrays a double form of discrimination: It views Islam as in need of protection, despite its territorial reach and religious power, revealing an Orientalist condescension (protecting Islam differs from protecting from real and present discrimination the Muslim minorities who live in Western countries). And it cancels the minority status of Jews, because they are implicitly associated with power and domination.

More than that: when forced to legitimise the existence of Israel, Jews usually invoke the argument of persistent antisemitism, and this argument, in the progressive moral grammar, ipso facto cancels itself. It is discounted and recoded as an ‘instrumentalisation’ or ‘weaponisation’ (to use the fashionable word) of a tragic history to Jew-wash Israel’s crimes. The fear or denunciation of antisemitism by Jews is tautologically transformed into a ‘proof’ or sign of cunning manipulativeness, thereby automatically disqualifying it. Note that the wily manoeuvres of Iran and other Muslim countries to discard and disqualify any critique of political Islam as Islamophobic has never met with a similar a priori suspicion by the progressive Left.

Worth reading in full.

A Times editorial reminds us of the horrors we ignore:

This week, more than 40 churchgoers were killed by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an affiliate of the murderous death cult Islamic State, as they maintained a nocturnal vigil at a church in Komanda, a rural town in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nine of the dead were children; the Catholic community’s shops were burnt and looted. Christian worshippers in remote areas, where state security is non-existent, are easy prey for Islamists. In February the ADF beheaded 70 Christians in a church in the neighbouring province of North Kivu.

These acts of religious hatred are increasingly common in sub-Saharan Africa, where Islamist groups are perpetrating heinous crimes with seeming impunity. Last month, Nigeria’s Fulani jihadists — acting like their Congolese counterparts under cover of darkness — set upon a Catholic mission in the village of Yelwata. Armed with rifles and machetes, they killed about 200 people and forced thousands more to flee their homes. “Most of them,” said Terhemba Lormba, a farmer who lost three of his children in the massacre, “were burnt alive.” As the Pope noted in the hours following the attack, to be Christian in a volatile and contested land means being “targeted relentlessly” by sectarian violence.

Such is life for embattled Christians in the nations where their faith is not the default or established religion. In Pakistan, Christians who resist conversion to Islam are regularly beaten and killed, and women and girls raped or forced into marriage. One Christian, Waqas Masih, 22, who worked at a paper mill in the Punjab, ended up in hospital after refusing his employer’s attempts to convert him to Islam.

Even countries that have been historically tolerant of Christians are now witnessing a grim uptick in violence. In Syria last month, Islamic State was blamed for a suicide bomb and gun attack on a Greek Orthodox church in the suburbs of Damascus during a Sunday evening service in which 25 people were killed and 63 wounded. It was the first time the city’s Christian community had been targeted openly since conflict with the Druze in 1860.

Even as church attendances creep up across Europe and North America, the plight of Christians is neither a fashionable nor popular cause for the socially conscious. But westerners owe their solidarity — and western governments their diplomatic might — to these embattled minorities. Church leaders in Britain and abroad must take up the cause, ensuring that these atrocities are not relegated to footnotes in the news agenda.

Not to worry. When Labour have got their Islamophobia agenda sorted we won't have to put up with this kind of depressing read any more.

his country on the world stage.

Yep.

Added: Giles Fraser at UnHerd.

Hamas is getting exactly what it wants. Why, now, would it give up hostages? What reason does it have to agree to a ceasefire? It only needs Israel to keep on fighting for a few more months to achieve its ultimate goal. The paradox is, if Hamas refuses peace, then the UK will recognise Palestine. This is batshit crazy: Starmer’s announcement will only prolong the agony of the Palestinian people. Whether the West wants to hear it or not, since October 7, Hamas has used the agony of its own people as a way of manipulating the rest of the world into supporting it. Whereas Israel is doing everything it can to bring its people home, Hamas uses the grotesque suffering of the people of Gaza as a means to its own end. And it will be done with renewed confidence now that this wicked strategy is so obviously working.

What is particularly shabby about Starmer’s announcement is that he is playing with people’s lives — with Palestinian and Israeli ones — not because he believes recognising a state of Palestine is the right thing to do at this moment, but because of his own troubled domestic political situation. With Corbyn’s new party on his shoulder and a few hundred of his own MP’s lobbying him, Starmer has caved.

Reports that the state of Israel may sue the New York Times for $10 billion over the fake news they spread using pictures of sick children that have nothing to do with starvation. Reports indicate the lawsuit will include personal lawsuits against the journalists who wrote the… pic.twitter.com/yYm2DzAGvA

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) July 30, 2025

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Good.

Is there a deliberate nod to the Madonna and Child motif in that photo? The holy child persecuted by the Jews….

'LGBT health' makes no sense.
The needs of gay people and those of young adults with gender distress are miles apart.
The review led by Dr Michael Brady cannot be independent as he has helped oversee the expansion of affirmation only gender clinics.https://t.co/XPoPvaZik7

— TransgenderTrend (@Transgendertrd) July 30, 2025

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Article here:

Wes Streeting has ordered an LGBT+ health review despite previously axing a key women’s health target.

For the first time, the NHS will conduct a six-month review of its “unequal” treatment of LGBT+ patients. Recommendations on improving the experiences of people who consider themselves LGBT+ will be made to the Government in December, the health service said.

It is likely to ignite further criticism from women and campaigners, who accused the Health Secretary of “sidelining” women after he removed women’s health targets in annual NHS planning guidance earlier this year while also setting up a men’s health strategy.

Anyway, LGBT isn't a thing – let alone the +. If the trans movement is noted for anything – apart from its misogyny – it's the homophobia. "Transing away the gay". LGB are same-sex attracted, while the Ts (and the +?) deny the reality of sex.

Tom Harris in the Telegraph:

So here is the latest triumph in British international diplomacy as crafted by the Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary, David Lammy: we will recognise Palestine as a state, but only as a punishment for Israel if it fails to secure a ceasefire with Hamas terrorists. If the Islamists, however, manage to obstruct a ceasefire agreement – for example, by refusing to release the hostages that are still languishing in Gaza – they will be rewarded with international recognition.

A primary level child could see the problem with such a “solution” but it seems to have escaped our Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Not only has he created perverse incentives for Hamas to extend the fighting in Gaza for a couple of months, but he has also made the release of Israeli hostages, many of whom have already been murdered in captivity, less likely….

Seems a fair summary. Some acolyte cobbled it together, they just glanced through it, said yeah fine: fingers crossed that'll keep the backbenchers and the Muslim vote happy for the moment….

Added:

A senior Hamas official has welcomed Sir Keir Starmer’s promise to recognise Palestine, saying that “victory and liberation are closer than we expected”.

Well done Sandie Peggie for enduring, with grace and obvious sincerity, a vile, class-ridden attack on her integrity that some people have likened to a lynching. She has done an enormous service to all nurses and other hardworking women – not just in the UK but worldwide – who…

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) July 29, 2025

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"…who refuse to sign up to the fashionable doctrine that some men are women and deserve more consideration than actual women."

It's a noteworthy fact, given the obvious class element here – a privileged management group trying to punish a working class woman for refusing to accept their elitist and misogynist beliefs – that not one single trades union that I'm aware of would support Sandie Peggie here. Certainly not the Royal College of Nursing. They're all completely behind the gender cause. Such an obvious case of workers' rights under attack from middle-class management, and they all look the other way.

In response to growing European initiatives to recognize a Palestinian state:

Recently, we've seen an increase in initiatives calling for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state – all while 50 hostages have been held captive by Hamas for 663 days.

Recognizing a…

— Bring Them Home Now (@bringhomenow) July 30, 2025

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Full text:

Recognizing a Palestinian state while 50 hostages remain trapped in Hamas tunnels amounts to rewarding terrorism. Such recognition is not a step toward peace, but rather a clear violation of international law and a dangerous moral and political failure that legitimizes horrific war crimes.

The abduction of men, women, and children, who are being held against their will in tunnels while subjected to starvation and physical and psychological abuse, cannot and should not serve as the foundation for establishing a state.

If the international community truly desires peace, it must join U.S. efforts by demanding first the release of all hostages, followed by an end to the fighting.

Recognition of a Palestinian state before the hostages are returned will be remembered throughout history as validating terrorism as a legitimate pathway to political goals.

The essential first step toward ensuring a better future for all peoples must be the release of all hostages through a single, comprehensive deal.

ar as North Korea prepares for large-scale labor dispatches to earn foreign currency.

According to a Daily NK source in Russia recently, at least three North Korean workers were sent home between late last year and early July after being caught with portable storage devices containing foreign cultural content, including South Korean dramas.

One male worker in Moscow was questioned and repatriated early this year after being discovered with foreign content in December. A similar incident occurred in another Russian region around the same time. In early July, a worker in his thirties from Vladivostok was caught with a USB drive containing South Korean dramas and questioned by North Korean state security agents stationed in Russia. He is scheduled to be sent home later this month.

Not just sent home, of course. A long period in a labour camp almost certainly awaits – after extensive "interrogation".

The heightened surveillance follows a corruption case involving Choi Sung Chol, a North Korean state security agent stationed in Russia, which gained international attention when North Korean workers exposed it publicly. In response, North Korea overhauled its worker control systems, preparing for additional large-scale labor dispatches to Russia.

North Korean state security agents deployed overseas conduct comprehensive surveillance that goes far beyond ideological oversight. They monitor workers’ daily routines, conversations, behavior, and outside contacts, then report their findings to authorities.

In worker dormitories, personal belongings are inspected daily after evening roll call. “Optional searches” – surprise inspections of lockers, luggage, and even under beds – occur frequently, according to the source.

“What’s happening now isn’t arbitrary control by state security, but systematic management based on clear state orders,” the source explained. “They’re building a system to prevent problematic elements and uncontrollable incidents before North Korea significantly increases overseas worker dispatches.”

Possessing electronic devices like laptops or MP3 players, or storage devices like USB drives or SD cards, is strictly forbidden and can lead to severe punishment for “ideological deviation.” Workers are extremely cautious about not only sharing foreign content but even consuming it privately.

Workers are also prohibited from meeting foreigners. Personal conversations with local Russians or workers of other nationalities are considered “independent activity without organizational approval” and trigger investigations by state security agents.

“In some locations, CCTVs monitor dormitory and workplace hallways, and workers are completely forbidden from leaving at night,” the source said. “Workers who enter at unusual times or visit unclear locations must explain themselves and sometimes face punishment.”

Yep – however much you resist the cliché, as Christopher Hitchens noted 15 years ago, you just can't avoid the Orwell 1984 comparison. They make you say it.