Author: Mick Hartley

of the matter, and is key to the danger of the precedent set. If every protest against Islam is presumed to be a protest against Muslims, if criticism of doctrine is redefined as hatred of believers, then space for lawful criticism of that religion – or any religion – collapses. My case turned on that blurring of categories.

In other words, the judge accepted the Islamic argument that there is no meaningful distinction between Islam and its followers: when Islam is criticised, it's an expression of a hatred of Muslims. Which is precisely the argument used for the ridiculous concept of "Islamophobia". 

As has been said often enough. this is introducing a blasphemy law by the back door. Islam isn't a race; it's a religion, an ideology. The problem lies in the Muslim belief that Islam is not just something you believe in, but forms an essential part of your being – hence the seriousness of apostasy. For them, then, the term "Islamophobia" is equivalent to racism in that the belief is inseparable from the person. But that's no reason to accept those terms here, where freedom of speech has been fought for over generations, and remains central to our democracy.

Or did.

In 2022, I claimed asylum in Britain. Why here? Because I believed it was a country where an atheist refugee could speak without fear. That belief brought me to the gates of the Turkish consulate on 13 February.

Had I known that challenging the Islamist propaganda which destroyed the country I grew up in could lead to prosecution, I might have thought twice about coming. But I am here now. And I will not remain silent.

The Free Speech Union funded my defence and stands ready to provide any assistance needed to get this judgment overturned. Because this is no longer just about me. It is about whether Britain still believes that no religion is beyond criticism, especially when it shapes public life and political power. That was the principle I was imprisoned for defending in Turkey and it was the principle I was defending outside the Turkish consulate. I have no intention of abandoning that fight.

Israel of luring starving Palestinian children to the aid centres in order to kill them.

On the other side of the pond, the Washington Post ran the unverified, Hamas-based narrative of an Israeli attack on civilians queuing for aid in Gaza before finally, three days later, and after the original false story had already been widely circulated, admitting that the attack "couldn't be verified".

The far more influential New York Times also promoted the proscribed terror group's unsubstantiated claims about a “massacre” at the Gaza aid centre. However, unlike the Washington Post, the US “paper of record” has published no such mea culpa. In fact, as our CAMERA colleague showed, their reports not only failed to walk back their initial coverage, but actually concealed and muddled the Israeli denial in a word salad positioning the IDF statements as a potential confirmation of sorts….

Most remarkably, none of the outlets we mentioned saw fit to report on an IDF video posted on X on Sunday evening appearing to show Palestinian gunmen in Gaza shooting at civilians reportedly going to collect aid, which is illustrative of the fact that reporters in the UK and US ignored or significantly downplayed the possibility that Hamas or other Palestinian gunmen could have been responsible for the shooting of civilians queuing in line for food.

Given that Hamas had, several days before the Sunday incident, denounced the new US-Israeli-backed aid distribution system as an “agent of the occupation”, warning Palestinian civilians who accept its assistance that they “will pay the price, and we will take the necessary measures", one would have expected Western journalists to give at least equal weight to the possibility that the terror group – and not Israel – was the party responsible for the alleged massacre.

Western media coverage of the Gaza aid shootings once again shows that far too many journalists adopt the default position of believing the worst about Israel even when unverified claims come from dubious and/or politically motivated sources – including “local journalists” – and serve Hamas’ propaganda agenda.

Losing your moral compass. From the JC:

Tony Greenstein, a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), has caused outrage with an X post which seems to justify Monday’s “terror” attack in Boulder Colorado.

Responding to an X post by international human rights lawyer and “proud Zionist” Arsen Ostrovsky, which read: “When they say ‘Globalize the intifada’ …” along with a picture taken in the aftermath of the attack, Greenstein, who is Jewish, wrote: “They were marching in support of genocide and got a taste of what Palestinians experience every day – what's the problem?”

They were marching to raise awareness of the hostages – to keep their memory alive. But Greenstein knows that…

MEMRI TV has the video recorded by jihadist Mohamed Sabry Soliman before his Boulder attack. It is, of course, all about Allah.

Matters, said: “It’s deeply disturbing that the safety and welfare of some of the most vulnerable women in London — those in the care of state mental health services — are being so seriously compromised by NHS trusts.

“The Supreme Court judgment was crystal-clear that single-sex services must be run on the basis of biological sex. There is no excuse for a dangerous ‘case-by-case’ approach that deems some men safe to be housed in women’s accommodation.

“These NHS trusts are missing the point: no male patient should ever be allowed in female accommodation under any circumstances. If health care managers cannot understand why this matters so much in mental health services, then they are not fit to run NHS trusts or to have female patients in their care.”

=”font-size: 11pt”>They no longer recognize it as their representative, demand an immediate end to its rule, and urge the formation of a new, legitimate national leadership.

Only with Hamas removed can there be hope for a peaceful future, one where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side.

t on trains for a better life, so the New Nazis promise Palestinians food as ‘a pretext for slaughter’.

There was one problem with these breathless accounts of a wicked massacre: it seems no such thing took place. Last night, the BBC backtracked. It said it has now studied the ‘graphic video’ of the ‘aid-centre massacre’ and has ruled that it is ‘incorrect’. We were told the ‘massacre’ took place early in the morning, yet the ‘direction of the shadows’ in the clip point to an event that took place ‘after 7pm local time’. More devastatingly, the Beeb geolocated the clip and found that it was filmed in a part of Khan Younis that is 4.5km from the nearest aid-distribution centre. A journalist in Gaza confirmed it: the events in the viral clip are ‘unrelated to any aid-distribution site’….

The magnitude of 1 June and its fallout cannot be overstated. Our media classes lapped up the lies of Hamas. They made themselves its Lord Haw-Haws, uncritically repeating a horror story that worked to the benefit of that army of anti-Semites while further isolating the Jewish nation it dreams of destroying. The untruths have piled up this past fortnight. We were told 14,000 Gazan babies would die in 48 hours – not true. We were told Hamas does not hide in hospitals – not true. And we were told the IDF picked off the starving – not true. We are being lied to about Israel on an industrial scale – day in, day out. I have never seen anything like it.

It's been happening since October 7th. Remember the Al-Ahli hospital bombing in late October 2023? Hamas claimed it was an Israeli strike that killed hundreds, and the BBC reported the Hamas story as fact before it turned out that this was a strike on a car park by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket. There's a long history of the BBC's institutional hostility to Israel…

Of course the BBC isn't alone in its hostility to Israel, but it does set the tone – certainly here in the UK, but to an extent worldwide, given its reputation. It's enough for the White House to get involved. And I don't doubt that it's playing a major part in the current explosion of Jew-hatred that we're seeing now.

They're Kim Jong-un's favourite – and, it seems, a rare case of an in-demand North Korean product. 

North Korean cigarettes known as “7.27” — favored by leader Kim Jong Un — are gaining popularity in parts of China’s Liaoning province despite costing four to six times more than regular Chinese cigarettes.

A Daily NK source in China said recently that “7.27 cigarettes from North Korea are selling well here even though they cost several times more than Chinese cigarettes,” adding that “people without economic means find the price burdensome.”…

“People who’ve tried them say they ‘don’t disappoint,’ ‘worth the money’ and ‘no wonder Kim Jong Un smokes these,'” the source said.

The marketing effect of being associated with Kim Jong Un and the cigarettes’ scarcity appear to be the main factors driving the premium pricing.

The name “7.27” refers to July 27, the date of the Korean War armistice agreement. North Korea calls this day “Victory Day in the Fatherland Liberation War” and celebrates it annually. The cigarette packaging includes the war years 1950-1953, showing how North Korea uses tobacco products for regime propaganda.

“North Korean cigarettes have been smuggled over and sold here for a long time,” the source said. “Premium cigarettes like 7.27 used to require special requests to import, but now they’re trickling in through illegal trade.”

The source added that “some Chinese people say everything is free in North Korea and it’s a good place to live, and they have a favorable image of Kim Jong Un,” which may explain “their strong curiosity and desire to buy North Korean cigarettes, especially 7.27.”

In North Korea, the light gray 7.27 cigarettes are also classified as premium and primarily used for bribes. Ordinary citizens cannot obtain these cigarettes even on special occasions like holidays.

of Khelif as ‘transphobia and misinformation’. None offered a word of concern for the women in the ring.

The media, of course, played their part. From the BBC to the Associated Press, most outlets dutifully referred to Khelif as ‘she’, presenting him as a victim of conservative backlash or of a sinister Kremlin plot. Predictably, the Guardian went one further, publishing a spectacularly unhinged piece that framed concerns about Khelif punching women as the rantings of tradwives and MAGA trolls.

Perhaps the most glaring hypocrisy came from boxing pundit Steve Bunce. Last year, he said of Khelif on the BBC, ‘Despite what you’ve read in the newspapers, she has always been a she’, while condemning the IBA’s sex testing. Yet this week, he attempted a feint. He claimed he supports reliable sex tests while dismissing criticism of Khelif as a ‘witch hunt’ based on his appearance. It’s fair to say, he was bested on social media.

To be clear, Khelif is not claiming to be trans. He is simply a man with a genetic disorder. Yet last year, a legion of commentators and organisations were sure he was a woman and convinced he had been persecuted. Just as with the debates around trans participation in sport, the people who assume they know best decided women’s right to fair competition doesn’t matter.

The IOC and those complicit commentators and journalists could have listened to the women who took the punches. They could have followed the IBA’s lead. They could have used their eyes. But there was more social currency in defending the indefensible. For some supposedly kind and enlightened people, it seems that a man punching a woman in the face is a sign of progress. Their contempt for women’s sport and safety is shameful.

It's curious that those most determined to ignore the evidence, and cheer on the sight of men beating up women for sport, are those who think of themselves as progressive and kind. Well, that's where we are…

Pasadena, California, ca. 1911. "Colorado Street at Broadway."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

ont-size: 11pt”>“BBC Arabic’s editors specifically seem to be trapped inside an echo chamber,” a spokesperson for Camera UK said.

“This precedent would be unimaginable were Alagha to target any other minority group in the UK, let alone a group involved in the same conflict he purports to cover.”