Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • De-escalation

    font-size: 11pt”>Meanwhile the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in many ways the driving force of the Iranian regime, is still not proscribed here in the UK despite its well-documented activity here against those opposing the Tehran regime. The excuse is that we need to keep the channels of communication open – advice that could come straight from the  Starmer schoolboy book of international relations.

  • A power gay in Tel Aviv

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  • An era of manifold blessings

    eeting of Active Neighborhood Unit Leaders in March this year – shows another unacknowledged problem…

    Jung-pong

    …the leader's unfortunate body odour. No one dares to mention it.

  • All change at the Ministry of Justice

    t officials are focused on “having the best people working in MoJ”, rather than increasing diversity.

    All references to external benchmarks that the department has participated in, including the Stonewall 100 list of the most inclusive workplaces for LGBT employees, have also been removed.

    Sounds good. Though they're not allowing themselves to get too excited about it.

    A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “These routine changes are being made in line with Civil Service-wide guidelines.”

    Sir Humphrey couldn't have put it better.

  • Martina interview

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    Plus, you know – they're men, for god's sake.

    Full interview here.

  • Culture, not ethnicity

    nces in Islamic history of women leaders who have challenged men.

    This is important because mosques have a key role in shaping and changing the behaviours of many Muslim men in the thirty five to sixty age bracket, where many of the child offenders sit within. After Casey’s report, there is an added impetus for imams and mosque committees to make child safeguarding and women’s rights front and centre in their sermons. For too long I have heard them talk about foreign affairs or discuss issues of no real relevance to the lives of Muslim men and women in Britain. Casey’s report is a stark wake up call for things to change.

    Muslim leaders need to stand with the women who had their lives shattered when they were girls by Asian men of Pakistani heritage. These men lived split lives, some acting as if they were holier than holy, yet their actions demonstrated that they were monsters who could not spare an ounce of empathy for vulnerable children. Such actions happen because religious, political and social leadership in British Muslim communities have failed to speak up to protect the weakest in our society.

    It's not earth-shattering, but it's a rare and welcome acknowledgement of the problem from a British muslim. 

  • The “anti-U.S. joint struggle month”

    Coming soon. From the Daily NK:

    North Korean authorities have ordered intensified anti-American and anti-South Korean propaganda activities during the “anti-U.S. joint struggle month” from June 25 to July 27, with special focus on indoctrinating young people.

    According to a Daily NK source in Pyongyang recently, the ruling party’s propaganda and agitation department convened a meeting for central government and provincial party officials above department chief rank early this month. The meeting emphasized that anti-U.S. and anti-South Korean ideology would be the centerpiece of this year’s campaign, with officials instructed to focus particularly on reaching youth.

    The department warned that the “revolution cannot survive if generations that haven’t experienced war become consumed by individual selfishness.” Officials were instructed to “awaken youth class consciousness by repeatedly emphasizing the atrocities committed by U.S. imperialists and puppet forces during the Korean War.”

    The campaign calls for maximizing anti-American and anti-South Korean sentiment through shocking imagery—depicting U.S. tanks crushing elderly people, women and children during the Korean War, or American troops burying and burning people alive.

    Officials were directed to organize visits to propaganda centers and field trips to cultural facilities displaying anti-American artwork.

    Perhaps with South Korea’s recent presidential transition in mind, the meeting reaffirmed North Korea’s policy of completely ignoring the South under the party’s “two hostile states” doctrine.

    “The propaganda and agitation department made clear that regardless of which government holds power in South Korea, it remains fundamentally a hostile force, and our party will maintain its strategy of ignoring South Korea indefinitely,” the source explained. “Officials said political changes in South Korea after the election provide no reason to alter this policy.”

    Perhaps that'll go some way to deter South Korea's recently elected left-wing president Lee Jae-myung, who has a starry-eyed vision of reconcilation with the North.

    Will South Korean President Lee Jae-myung Bring Peace to the Korean Peninsula? File under "questions to which the answer is no".

    The South seems to alternate between right-wing North Korean haters, like Moon the disgraced former president, and cosy left-wing reconciliationists like Lee. It makes absolutely no difference to the North. 

  • “We have no choice”

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  • The point of no return had been reached

    , anti-western Islamists and left-wing, anti-western and post-truth ideologies. Israelis perceive to their stupefaction that Israel, the victim of genocidal attack and having gone to greater lengths than any other military to minimise civilian casualties in war, has been demonised in Britain as the aggressor and wanton killer of children. Israel is targeting Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure while Iran is targeting Israeli civilians — a war crime. Yet the usual suspects are accusing Israel of aggression and engaging in “tit for tat” attacks.

    If Israel now smashes the Iran-based Shia axis, this will reshape the Middle East for the better and remove an unconscionable threat not just to Israel but to the West too. “When you chant ‘Death to America!’ it is not just a slogan — it is a policy,” said Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2023. In Britain, the security service has warned of an “extraordinary threat” of Iranian terrorist attacks.

    Israel is doing the West a huge service — for which the Jewish state is paying in blood — that much of the West still obdurately refuses to realise.

  • The weakening of Iran

    n itself. An optimal result would be the fall of the regime. But a battered, isolated Tehran, stripped of its nuclear programme, missile array and allies, would also suffice.

    Since the October 7th Hamas massacre, Israel has been busy destroying Iran's proxies. The once-lauded Shia crescent surrounding Israel is looking a lot less threatening. Hezbollah has been destroyed, Hamas and the Houthis have been severely weakened, and Syria – though the aims of the new regime are still unclear – is now clearly sided with Sunni Turkey. Next, Iran itself… 

    What all this means is that, little noticed by western commentators who were busy with their myopic focus on Gaza, Israel has, over the last 18 months, effectively reversed two decades of Iranian advance across the Middle East. The result is that Iran now finds that its intended envelopment of Israel with proxy militias has been dismantled. Tools for Iran to exert pressure from the ground no longer exist.

    This means that the current confrontation looks set to focus on air, missile and drone warfare. As to how things proceed, much will depend on the continued capacities of Israel’s air defences, its ability to keep its current air corridor to Iran open and to continue reaping a toll on Iranian regime assets and personnel.

    The goal must be the crippling or drastic weakening of both the regime’s nuclear programme and its ability to govern. The result: either the permanent weakening of the Islamic Republic to a point where it can no longer busy itself with seeking to project power and aggression against its neighbours, or, preferably, the reduction of the regime’s capacities to a point where the Iranian people are able to free themselves from the mullah’s yoke. The latter outcome would be an appropriate end both to Tehran’s two-decade project of aggression in the Middle East, and to its ally Hamas’s decision to launch war in October 2023.

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