Mick Hartley

Blog

  • The carceral logics of racial capitalism

    Journal

    We need to preserve these gems for future generations.

  • “A hotbed of fascism”

    This is grim.

    Full text:

    According to him, he feels "very sorry for the Finnish people, who do not deserve the fate and situation they now find themselves in."

    "But if this utterly incompetent policy of Finland's current leadership leads to any tragic consequences, then that will be on their conscience. We know how to defend our interests, and we are prepared for any possible developments," he said.

  • An aura of untouchable purity

    An interesting article in Fathom from German-based Kurdish academic Dastan Jasim – White Feminism – White Orientalism:

    A German woman with blonde hair and blue eyes walking beside me – just her presence seemed to transform me into a different person on the streets of Iraq. I received friendly yet respectful looks from drivers, vendors, and esteemed researchers, where usually I received belittlement, disrespect or, at best, a full-fledged ignoring of my presence. It was as if my being was uplifted, even eased, by the fact that a white female companion covered me with the aura of her untouchable purity. They are valuable, worth a lot, and men in the Middle East recognise it….

    The average Middle Eastern woman could only dream about the esteem that white skin and blue eyes trigger in the hearts of their compatriots. The white woman, in turn, can now not only claim a privileged status in this new community, but also touch upon claims of being discriminated against. Especially for Germans – who could never find a healthy way to deal with their Nazi past – it signifies a welcome exit ticket from being the oppressor, right into the position of the oppressed….

    White female journalists covering Iran often gracefully follow hijab rules, which thousands of women in Iran openly defy every day, acting as if the hijab is a symbol of authenticity on the field. While in the past, the Twitter profile picture with a helmet and bulletproof vest signified courage for white international reporters, now the image of a white woman mingling ‘authentically’ with societies that are arguably some of the most hostile environments for women is a new prestigious symbol.

    But yes, read it all.

  • Elaborate political theatre

    From the Daily NK:

    North Korean authorities have organized a series of events to honor soldiers killed in the Russia-Ukraine war and comfort their grieving families, but some North Koreans describe these ceremonies as elaborate political theater designed to serve the regime’s strategic goals.

    You don't say.

    Critics point to scenes of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un weeping while consoling bereaved families as carefully choreographed moments aimed at showing both domestic and international audiences that North Korea will honor its military sacrifices while demonstrating its alliance with Russia.

    According to a Daily NK source inside North Korea, authorities were meticulous in selecting which veterans received public recognition. Only commanders and soldiers specifically chosen for their battlefield accomplishments were featured in the ceremonies.

    The choice of venue was equally deliberate. By holding the events at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea—a space typically reserved for the country’s top leadership—authorities sought to maximize the prestige and significance of the commemorations.

    North Korea also intentionally displayed only a small number of portraits of the fallen. Officials strictly limited how many were shown, believing that revealing the full extent of combat casualties might shock the public, the source explained.

    A key point. By presenting this as a case of a few brave heroes, rather than thousand upon thousand of saps slaughtered in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine for no reason beyond the survival and aggrandisement of Kim Jong-un, they're fooling the people in the cruellest way.

    Well…what else is new.

    This image from Korean Central Television of Kim Jong Un mourning while caressing a coffin containing the remains of a North Korean soldier who died on deployment to Russia was displayed in the background of an artistic performance at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater on June 29 with Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova in attendance.

    20250706_lsy

  • The state of policing

    Helen Joyce on the disgraced trans-identifying ex-cop weaponising the justice system – with the full backing of the police:

    This is a short post to explain why it’s a short post — the answer being because when Graham Linehan was arrested on the tarmac at Heathrow last week for three tweets, I was immediately pretty sure who was behind it. And my suspicions were confirmed in open court — the report about Graham’s supposedly criminal tweets was made by a disgraced former police officer and trans-identifying man called Lynsay Watson, who ever since he was sacked by Leicestershire Police in 2023 for gross misconduct has made what appears to be a full-time job out of putting in false crime reports against gender-critical campaigners, and seeking to judicially review any police force that declines to take them seriously.

    A lot has come out about Watson in the press since Graham’s arrest, and I talked to various journalists about it. Craig Simpson of the Telegraph has been particularly good.

    As you can tell from this, I’ve been immensely frustrated by the way the police have allowed themselves to be weaponised by this deranged, obsessive, anger-filled man. This has been going on for ages….

    I am in the throes of writing all this up for the Critic, the magazine where I have a regular column, but wanted to give a bit of a taster here, since that won’t be online for a while. In the meantime you can read an excellent overview of Watson’s career by blogger Stuart Campbell (Wings Over Scotland), another of Watson’s victims, and Stuart’s overview of the similar activities of one of Watson’s associates, Stephanie Hayden. The details are scarcely credible, but I can assure you that the reality is actually far worse — Stuart couldn’t possibly include it all because it would be impossible for anyone to follow.

    For now, I’ll just finish by saying that this has been an incredibly dispiriting insight into the state of policing….

  • A dope

    More on Gordon Guyatt, the Canadian doctor who coined the phrase "evidence based medicine", then went and signed a document supporting "gender-affirming care", where evidence-based medicine doesn't apply.

    He, um, didn't read it.

    Full interview on YouTube here.

    Added:

  • The case of the missing “a”

    I posted the other day about Cathy Larkman, visited by the police for "deadnaming". Here she is on Talk TV:

  • New policing guidelines

    It's the College of Policing we have to thank for the advice to police forces that they should "record all 'non-crime hate incidents' – incidents that are perceived to be motivated by hostility but are not criminal offences". How well that's worked out we can see from the Graham Linehan farce.

    And now:

    Transgender women are at risk of female genital mutilation, the College of Policing has claimed.

    New policing guidelines issued by the taxpayer-funded quango state that trans women could be forced to undergo female genital mutilation, despite them being biologically male.

    The suggestion that they might be forced to suffer mutilation specifically intended for young girls has been branded as “insulting” to victims.

    It's certainly insulting to our intelligence. They'd need to have the female genitals somehow installed before being brutally removed.

    Introduced in August, the guidance states that “as well as women and girls”, these orders protect “any other person who has female genitalia… and is at risk of harm from these practices and procedures”.

    This includes “intersex, non-binary, trans men and women, with or without a gender recognition certificate”.

    The college is now reviewing the guidance following the UK Supreme Court ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under the Equality Act 2010.

    Oh dear. Maybe it's time for the College of Policing to be excised.

  • People with reputations to protect

    Victoria Smith at The Critic on Malcolm Gladwell:

    Until this issue arose, I had no idea how many self-styled “good” people will support bad things on the basis that other, less important people can take all the hits. Maybe I was incredibly naïve, but I thought of my political opponents as people who believed different things to me, not people who believed the exact same things but considered themselves much more special and exempt from responsibility than their fellow believers. 

    Gladwell now admits that when he participated in a 2022 discussion on male people participating in women’s sports, “I heard that and thought, ‘This is nuts,’ and yet I didn’t say anything”. He claims to have been “cowed”. I get that. Everyone has something to fear in a world where you can be torn to pieces for simply saying sex matters. But this world only came into being because people who agreed with feminists spent years refusing to say so. We were scared, too, and we would have had far less to be afraid of had we had some support.

    Like many a terf, I have had years of people mistakenly believing that they can “support” me by telling me in private that they agree with me, even if in public they say the opposite. This is not support. While I can empathise with being afraid, all too often the reasons given for “not being able” to speak up rest on the assumption that those of us who do are blessed with some form of inferiority which mitigates the costs. Unlike people who have reputations to protect, friends they don’t wish to offend, concerns about playing into the hands of the far-right, women like me are apparently unimportant, insensitive and politically reckless. It’s only right that we should serve as cannon fodder in the gender wars, clearing the way for the “good” people to breeze in later.

    As recent books such as Hounded, TERF Island and The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht have made clear, the impact of the ‘gender wars’ on those who spoke out has been profound. Even if tomorrow every single person were to say “yes, you were right”, it won’t restore the loss of trust. Because we know that you knew we were right all along. You just didn’t think we mattered enough to say so. Instead of telling us how scared you were, why not think about what this has felt like for us?

    At bottom these people – like Gladwell, like Jon Ronson (mentioned earlier in the article, and a particular bête noire of Graham Linehan) – have shown themselves to be cowards. But it does demonstrate, in extreme form, how strong the pressure is to toe the line, not rock the boat, keep in with the in-crowd.

    In extreme form because, as Gladwell now admits, trans ideology is completely off-the-wall nuts. It requires an extraordinary suspension of critical thinking to believe any of it. Yet here we are…

  • A transgender propaganda reality show

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