Mick Hartley

Suppression of academic freedom

Rosa Freedman, a law professor at Reading University, is another academic who's been subjected to abuse for her opposition to gender self-identification (after Selina Todd, in Friday's post). This from December 2018:

A professor has said she faced online abuse and found her office door "covered in urine" after debating proposed gender law changes.

Prof Rosa Freedman said she feared for her safety after the reaction to her discussing a government consultation on how people can change their gender.

The human rights lawyer had raised concerns on how the changes might affect women's rights....

Prof Freedman, who has said she is against self-identification, attended debates on the plans to change the Gender Recognition Act.

She told the BBC that afterwards she found her door had been covered in urine.

Prof Freedman also said she was called a "Nazi" who "should be raped" and added it was a "tipping point" for her to "push back" against the abusers when she received anonymous phone calls.

Prof Freedman added: "I'm pretty public and open about the fact that I'm Jewish.

"I'm pretty public and open about the fact I've survived sexual violence - I have been throughout these debates.

"So obviously being told I'm a Nazi and being told I'm transphobic when I'm not transphobic and nothing I've said or done is transphobic...having been told I should get raped. None of them are particularly pleasant."

Now Freedman is demanding an inquiry into suppression of academic freedom after complaining of being blacklisted from events and jobs because of “spurious allegations” that she's transphobic.

Rosa Freedman, a professor at Reading University and one of the UK’s leading human rights experts, says senior university managers seeking to “silence, block and gag” are acting “in the style of tinpot dictators”.

Her demand for a “full investigation”, in a letter to her MP, Oliver Dowden, and to the universities minister, Chris Skidmore, comes after events involving female academics at Oxford Brookes, Edinburgh and Essex universities were scrapped following protests by students and trans activists.

The protesters objected to feminist academics questioning policies that give transgender people access to female-only spaces such as women’s changing rooms, prisons and sports teams.

Freedman, an adviser to the UN, complains in the letter that she was “disinvited” from speaking on a panel on anti-semitism this week at Essex University to mark Holocaust Memorial Week.

She was told that “the central university had problems with the third speaker (ie me), that there was a need to include a student member of the panel and that the committee had issues with me speaking at the event”, she says in her letter to her MP.

Freedman fears she was turned down for a post at Essex and is no longer invited to lecture, teach or speak at events at the university, one of the leading centres of human rights, “owing to spurious and non-evidenced accusations of transphobia”.

In December Jo Phoenix, a criminology professor at the Open University, was “no-platformed” at Essex after some staff accused her of being “anti-trans” and “exclusionary”.

It's not just the trans activists that need confronting here, of course. It's also the weak university managers who give in so readily to the activists' demands.

Update: more on this at the Jewish Chronicle.

Professor Rosa Freedman - the inaugural professor of law, conflict and global development at Reading University and a member of the UN secretary-general’s civil society advisory board – claims she was “disinvited” from a panel on antisemitism for an Essex University  Holocaust memorial event....

Prof Freedman had been particularly keen to speak at the Essex University event, given that over the past year, she and her research assistant had provided “the highest level of support” to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief to write the first UN human rights report on antisemitism.

She maintained that, in light of her “world leading expertise”, and also as a member of the Jewish community, Essex had led her to believe she would formally be invited as a panellist. But over a ten-day period, she received communications alleging problems over her participation, one of which was “that the committee had issues with me speaking”.

She accused the university of restricting speakers “on the basis that they are supposedly transphobic despite no evidence existing of such alleged transphobia”.

Prof Freedman told the JC: “I have been labelled within academia as transphobic although I have never said or done anything remotely transphobic. The hill I will die on is protecting people of all races and genders.”

New York in the 1940s

Fred Stein made a career as a photographer - first in Paris, then in New York - after he was forced to to flee his native Germany by the Nazi threat in the early 1930s. Though perhaps best known for his portraits of many of the great names of the mid-20th century (Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Willy Brandt, Arnold Zweig, Bertold Brecht, Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dali, Martin Buber, Fidel Castro, Thomas Mann, Le Corbusier...), he was also a pioneer of street photography. These pictures are from his New York portfolio:

Little Italy, 1943

El at Water Street, 1946

Man in Pushcart, 1944

Girl in Car, 1947

Central Park Snow, 1945

Ballfield, 1946

Shopkeeper, 1946

Post No Bills, 1946

Vaudeville, 1946

Traffic, 1949

Mystik, 1944

Girl on Gate, 1946

Flatiron Building, 1947

Dog Walker, 1949

Newspaper Hat, 1946

Man on Bumper, 1949

Foley Square, 1948

Shoeshine, 1948

Victory at Midway, 1942
[Photos © Fred Stein Archive]

A recent book, Fred Stein: Dresden - Paris - New York, provides an overview of his work.

Encouraging homosexuality

Here's former Jordanian MP Muhammad Tu’mah Al-Qudah, with highlights - as it were - from two of his recent TV appearances:

"The number of homosexuals in America has reached 50 million. One sixth of Americans are homosexuals, and they are ruling the world… That’s the tragedy. Fifty million morally depraved people are ruling the world. One sixth of the American people are morally depraved homosexuals, and they are the ones who rule the East and the West. 150 of President Obama’s employees in the White House are homosexuals. They form the President’s closest circle, and this is why Obama is encouraging homosexuality, and legislating laws to protect them. Obama supports same-sex marriage, and his government is seeking to legalize it in America. […]

"Ninety two percent of homosexuals in America commit suicide, because they are detached from religion. Ninety two percent of them commit suicide, and we pray to Allah that more of them [kill themselves]. Ninety seven percent of homosexuals in America visit psychiatrists. Imagine, if there are 50 million of them, how many visit psychiatrists? Due to the many mental illnesses in America, they had to build a new psychiatric clinic between every two existing clinics. The clinics they already had could not keep up. The hospitals that treat mental illnesses… The smallest hospital they have like the Medical City Center we have in Jordan. All these clinics for these 97% of homosexuals who suffer from mental illness. A quarter of American soldiers do not know who their father is. […]

May Allah overturn the earth beneath them and turn them and turn them into apes and pigs. Their minds are like those of apes and pigs."

And we all know who are the descendants of apes and pigs.

It's perhaps beside the point to expect accuracy here, but...well, Obama hasn't been in the White house for a while now...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

John Vachon - March 1941. "Bedford, Virginia."

[Photo: Shorpy/John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration]

Bodyguards at lectures

Oxford professor Selina Todd has featured here before as one of a number of academics who were concerned about being bullied into silence by trans activists for their feminist views. Well, it's now got to the stage where she actually needs bodyguards:

An Oxford University professor has been given security guards to accompany her to lectures after receiving threats from transgender activists.

Prof Selina Todd, a historian who specialises in the lives of women and the working class, said that she has now been provided with “routine security” to ensure she is not attacked.

The academic - who has been accused of being a “transphobe” for her involvement in women’s rights advocacy – was told by her students that she was potentially in danger.

“Two students came to see me and said they were very worried that threats had been made to me on email networks they were part of,” Prof Todd told The Telegraph.

“The university investigated the threats and came back to me to say their intelligence on them is such that they are providing me security for all of my lecturers for the rest of this year. They said 'you're having two men in the rest of your lectures'.”

At her most recent undergraduate lecture, a handful of students arrived in trans activists T-shirts, who she believed had come to cause trouble.

But the presence of “two big burly guys” at the back of the lecture theatre was likely to have put them off from any protests, she added.

Prof Todd said that transgender activists started making complaints about her on the basis that her teaching of feminist history was “transphobic”.

“My research suggests that women who posed as men  in the past were often lesbians seeking to protect themselves, or because they want to do jobs that were only available to men,” she said.

“The first complaint that was made against me was to say that I was transphobic because it would be impossible for a transgender student to be taught by me.”

Prof Todd said that the history faculty now receives “daily” complaints from activists calling for her to be sacked, which has left her feeling unnerved.

“I get frightened by the threats in lectures,” she said. “You can't help but worry. It's had a huge impact on me. You don’t expect to be defending yourself the whole time from complaints or threats of violence.”  

Sweet and Dandy

Toots and the Maytals, from The Harder They Come - one of the great soundtrack albums - as would-be star Jimmy Cliff makes a delivery to the studio:

With the inscrutable producer Lesley Kong calling the shots behind the desk. I'd always thought that the Maytals' Monkey Man was about Kong (Kong...King Kong...Monkey Man), but according to the Wiki entry it's just about  a girl choosing another man over Toots, with Toots reckoning the guy was ugly. Ah well, another myth laid to rest...

Toots goes way back to ska and the Sixties, helping to oversee the birth of reggae by giving the new style a new name:

In the winter of 1968, the cool rocksteady beat gave way to a faster, brighter, more danceable sound. Reggae was born. Toots heralded the new sound with the seminal, complex groove monster "Do the Reggay" advertising "the new dance, going around the town." Toots wanted "to do the Reggae, with you!" …From '69 to '71, Toots could do no wrong recording for Leslie Kong. With the consistent nucleus of musicians, the Beverley’s All-Stars (Jackie Jackson, Winston Wright, Hux Brown, Rad Bryan, Paul Douglas and Winston Grennan) and The Maytals’ brilliant harmonizing, Toots wrote and sang his unmistakable voice about every subject imaginable.

None of that heavy Rasta stuff with the Maytals. They weren't leaving Babylon and going back to Africa. In fact you got the distinct impression that Toots rather enjoyed Babylon: his music was all about having a good time.

Other Maytals classics:

Pressure Drop

54-46 Was My Number - about his time in prison for marijuana possession.

Sticking it to the Jews

A Twitter thread from Quilliam's David Toube - "If you were ever in doubt that the British Islamist scene cares more about 'sticking it to the Jews' than standing up for Muslims who are oppressed under totalitarian regimes, here is proof."

The oppressed Muslims here are the Uighurs of Xinjiang - for whom British Islamists appear have about as much concern as the Islamic world in general.

A Day at the Races

Photos by Jan Enkelmann of English race-goers, all dressed up for a day out at Aintree, Ascot or Epsom - with perhaps a nod to Martin Parr:

Horse racing is the second-most popular spectator sport after football in England. But, of course, it's much more than a sporting event. It's a chance to dress up, show off and be "seen".

Photographer Jan Enkelmann wanted to capture a more honest version of events.

"Once a year, a lot of effort is made, and often considerable sums of money are spent on hats and dresses, hair and make-up," he says. "Whether you have a seat in the royal enclosure at Ascot or are sitting in the grass at the Grand National, everyone is hungry for the camera. If not winning a prize, then maybe at least you might end up on the tabloid pages the next morning."

But instead of visiting the race grounds, he decided to wait outside railway stations closest to Aintree, Ascot and Epsom, to snap racegoers when they're not quite ready for the cameras. "Here, early in the morning, the picture is often less than glamorous," he continues.

"I become an observer to racegoers struggling with an unreliable rail system, changing from trainers into high heels and stocking up on fast food and cheap alcohol from pubs and high street chain stores. Estranged-looking couples are staring at their mobile phones. Betting shops. Fake tan. General grumpiness. And a dose of foul weather to round it all off."

[Photos © Jan Enkelmann]

Enkelmann previously - Smoking chefs in London's Chinatown.

A torturous and unnecessary path

The Tavistock Clinic, the only NHS clinic in Britain that treats children with gender-identity developmental issues, featured here last week with a post about Marcus Evans, who resigned from the Clinic over concerns that a fear of being labelled transphobic was pushing counsellors and mental health service providers into over-hasty diagnoses of gender dysphoria in troubled young people.

Now, from the Times (£) - Woman who halted gender transition sues child clinic:

A woman who underwent gender reassignment treatment but has sought to reverse the process is to lead a legal challenge to practices at Britain’s first NHS child gender clinic.

Keira Bell, 23, was in her mid-teens when she was given hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones at the gender identity development service for children and young people run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust in north London.

She says she found the experience so traumatic that she has since de-transitioned and has become the figurehead for a test case that seeks to challenge the basis on which the clinic obtains consent for treatment for children, some as young as 12.

Yesterday Ms Bell, an unemployed IT engineer from Cambridge, became the most prominent claimant in the case, which some lawyers believe will be decided by the Supreme Court and define the terms on which gender reassignment treatment is granted for children.

Her barrister, Jeremy Hyam, QC, told the High Court that Ms Bell had direct experience of the treatment path offered by the clinic. She argues that the clinic’s approach is unlawful because the risks are not adequately explained and children cannot give informed consent to such treatment.

Mr Hyam said: “She now very seriously regrets the process and feels that the way it was handled and her involvement in it was not appropriate.”

The Times reported in October [here - MH] that the case was originally brought by Sue Evans, 62, from Beckenham, south London, who worked as a mental health nurse and psychotherapist at the Tavistock in 2003-07 and who said she became alarmed by the speed at which children were assessed and referred for hormone blocking therapy. The second claimant is the mother of a child who is awaiting assessment for gender reassignment therapy at the clinic but who opposes its approach. [...]

In a statement after the hearing Ms Bell said: “I do not believe that children and young people can consent to the use of powerful and experimental hormone drugs like I did.”

She added: “The treatment needs to change so that it does not put young people, like me, on a torturous and unnecessary path that is permanent and life changing.”

Ken Ewing and his Musical Mice

In memory of Terry Jones:

The inconvenient truth about transwomen

In 2015 the Council of Europe passed Resolution 2048 and called on all member states to enshrine gender identity in national law, and to "develop quick, transparent and accessible procedures, based on self-determination, for changing the name and registered sex of transgender people on birth certificates, identity cards, passports, educational certificates and other similar documents". Self-determination, note. Whatever gender you say you are, you are.

Debbie Hayton, a transgender campaigner, looks at Scotland, where, she argues, the implications of introducing this kind of legislation have not been thought through:

At this very moment, Scotland is considering a change to the law that would allow people to change their legal sex without producing evidence of a psychological need. While they are not protecting gender identity — that would require a change to the Equality Act, which is not a devolved matter — it will have much the same effect.

“The Scottish Government seem bent on pushing badly written and poorly defined legislative change,” the Scottish campaigning group forwomen.scot tells me, “without due consideration for the potentially massive implications for the social and legal position of women in Scotland.”

Legislative change that has been planned in the dark. According to recent guidance for activists uncovered by the legal website Roll on Friday, secrecy is crucial: “Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure,” it urged. [...]

The political divisions are profound. On one side are the arguments that we trans people have a difficult time, and simplifying gender recognition makes our lives a little easier. But this is about more than trans individuals, it is about society.

Allowing male people to declare themselves female for reasons known only to themselves is open to abuse, and any law that relies on well-meaning people declaring that (abusive) men wouldn’t do that, would they? is questionable at best.

Women’s spaces are not protected because all men present a hazard, but a few do. In the same way, we don’t lock our doors at night because all passers-by are a hazard. But in both cases, some people will abuse trust and women need to take precautions just like householders need to take precautions.

The inconvenient truth is that transwomen are male, and — as a group — we present the same hazard that men present. Women can no more differentiate nice trans from nasty trans than they can distinguish nice men from nasty men. Allowing us to declare ourselves to be trans and then immediately self-identify into women’s spaces makes the boundaries meaningless. It is a safeguarding nightmare.

She identifies the groups that would be put at risk:

• Women, who lose control of their own boundaries. If any male person can declare themselves to be a female person, those boundaries become meaningless. While few men would call themselves women just to access women’s spaces, those that would are the reason those boundaries are needed.
• Children, who are told that they can choose their gender and — if they believe their body to be wrong — may end up railroaded into medical and surgical interventions. Children young enough to believe in the tooth fairy are not old enough to be put on a path that can lead to infertility, loss of sexual function, and medication for life.
• Trans people who risk losing the goodwill we rely on. Attempts to change the law to our advantage by policing the words — and even the thoughts — of others will not end well for us. If the Scottish Government doesn’t see the problem, others will and those people may find popular support and rebuild society in a way that is genuinely unkind to us.

Russia in black and white

Photos of Russian life from Aleksey Myakishev, born in Kirov and now based in Moscow:

[Photos © Aleksey Myakishev]

On Instagram.

Hosting the 2032 Olympics

A long-term dream of South Korea's President Moon is that North and South Korea put in a joint bid to host the 2032 Olympics - “A joint hosting of the 2032 Summer Olympics will serve as a golden opportunity to show to the world that the two Korea’s consist of one nation and to make a leap forward together.”

Now Seoul's mayor has joined in, calling for an end to all military drills:

Speaking to foreign correspondents in Seoul, Park said: “I proposed [the cessation] because we need to create a peaceful atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia right now so that we can make concrete preparations for bidding to host the Olympics.”

He also called for the easing of sanctions on North Korea to allow for humanitarian assistance and more cultural and sports exchanges.

A peaceful atmosphere on the Korean peninsula? With North Korea building up its nuclear arms, all the while hurling insults at the South? These people are seriously deluded. 

A Chosun Ilbo editorial sums it up nicely - Moon Lives in an Alternative Reality:

The government "decided," as the press release put it, in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympics with North Korea. Presumably no one would oppose such a plan if for example it led to reforms in the North or prompted the crackpot country to emerge from its isolation. The ping-pong diplomacy of the Nixon administration with China back in the 1970s showed that sport can be an effective means for rapprochement and peace. But North Korea would at least have to have shown a modicum of willingness to embrace this government's "decision," and one would not expect it in the wake of a threat from Pyongyang to unveil a "new strategic weapon."

North Korea has also tested 13 short-range missiles and artillery pieces over the last year that are clearly aimed at South Korea. At any rate, it is international philanthropy that is at the root of the Olympic spirit, and the Kim Jong-un regime has enslaved its entire people, and among other acts of goodwill to all nations locked up a young American student and beaten him to death. Trying to parade such a country that refuses to change under the Olympic banner is an insult to the very purpose of the global event.

The government's true intention is presumably to replicate, for a moment ahead of April's general elections, the warm and fuzzy feeling that was created during the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, when the North Koreans unexpectedly turned up. But in retrospect, the North only used the games as an opportunity to weaken international sanctions so it could develop its nuclear weapons. It is true that the leaders of the two Koreas agreed on paper during their Pyongyang summit in 2018 to seek the joint hosting of the Olympics. But since then North Korea has not made a single mention of the subject. It has not even commented on the prospect of fielding a joint team to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo this year, and North Korea has pulled out of the Asia preliminaries in women's football on Jeju Island next month, while the men's preliminary match was held in an empty stadium in Pyongyang last October.

Perhaps the whole government has moved to another planet. The mayor of Seoul has proposed halting all joint U.S.-South Korean military drills until 2032 to foment the Olympic mood, while the Unification Ministry is practically pushing South Koreans over heavily armed border on individual trips to the North even though no measures have been taken to ensure their safety. This must be the only government in the world that is actively encouraging citizens to travel to dangerous parts. "President Moon lives in a different, la-la land universe when it comes to perceptions of North Korea," said Phil Robertson at Human Rights Watch. There is no more accurate description.

Proselytizing a barely comprehensible gender typology

The Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF) in Canada, which oversees the majority of minor hockey in Ontario from players as young as six years old on up, now requires that coaches undergo a Gender Diversity course:

The underlying Human Rights Tribunal case that had led to the new training requirements was brought by Jesse Thompson, a trans-identified biologically female child who complained that he’d been prevented from using a boys locker room due to his female anatomy.... In the aftermath, the OHF delegated the authorship of new training materials to an LGBT activist organization called Egale Canada.

Egale, a Toronto-based charity founded in 1986, has published materials indicating that children understand their gender identity “between the ages of three and five.” And in the Gender Identity course that Egale produced for the OHF, it ratcheted that age down to “between 18-30 months.” In 2005, Egale gave legal support to Kimberly Nixon, a trans woman who accused Vancouver Rape Relief of violating human-rights law because it would not permit a male-bodied individual to serve as a volunteer among the clinic’s recovering (female) abuse victims.

Somewhat predictably, Egale instructs hockey officials that “pre-season chats are a great opportunity for everyone on your team, including coaches, assistant coaches and volunteers to share the name and gender pronoun by which they wish to be called.”  [...]

Several of the two dozen slides have nothing to do with hockey, but instead are devoted to the idea that “the gender binary…was imposed on Native societies…including on the land we now know as Canada.” These appear alongside maps showing the claimed transmission of the “gender binary” to the Americas, Africa and Australia from Europe. Later in the presentation, rank-and-file hockey moms and dads are informed that the term “Two-spirit” “seeks to restore traditional identities and roles that were actively buried by European Colonizers.”

On another slide, amid a parade of variously configured pink and blue male/female stick-people, the concept of “Polygender” is introduced to define “people who identify as multiple gender simultaneously and can be several genders all at once. Or they may alternate between their varying gender identities depending on the day or the week.” Coaches also get a slide on “genderqueer” individuals, who exist in an undefined extra-dimensional gender space that allows them to “reject gender altogether”—though this is not to be confused with “agender” (it gets its own slide), a label that applies to those who are merely “genderless.” Later in the presentation, there are hockey-themed quizzes (“Drag and drop each puck in to the corresponding net”) to test coaches’ understanding of these rarified terms.

If you don't accept all this, well, you can't teach hockey. One coach who complained - referred to as "John Doe" in the article in case he's accused of transphobia for speaking with the media - has decided his hockey coaching days are now over:

In response to Doe’s question about “polygender” kids who, Egale claims, can switch genders on a daily basis, for instance, Isen replied: “It is not outside the realm of possibility that the personal choice of what dressing room may feel the most comfortable and safest for any gender diverse person may shift over time as they navigate their own path toward affirming their identity while also navigating their own vulnerability to the possibility of transphobic harassment or bullying in those spaces.” 

On slide 28 of the Egale-authored materials, coaches are introduced to the concept of “cisnormativity”—which is illustrated with a sketched image of a person (presumably trans) seeking to avoid being crushed by a (presumably cis—i.e., non-trans) fist. After interacting with Hockey Canada and Egale fruitlessly, Doe concluded that the organizational priority had shifted from teaching kids hockey and making all feel welcome, to proselytizing a barely comprehensible gender typology. It had become clear that his days of coaching were effectively over: To even question these materials made a coach the human embodiment of that “cisnormative” fist.

The power of the Revolutionary Guards

Demonstrators in Iran are now daring to shout out "Death to Khamenei" and "Death to the tyrant". But there's a danger, argues Christian Oliver, that the all-powerful Revolutionary Guards will be happy to throw Khamenei to the wolves as a scapegoat for the failings of the system, and present themselves to the world as a new investment-friendly regime - while making sure that they keep control. 

Naturally, as in many revolutionary regimes, Iranians have sometimes required a chameleon-like ability to forge a new order out of the personalities of the old one. I remember one Tehrani hospital worker describing the story of her brother, who had been an interrogator-cum-torturer for SAVAK, the Shah’s dreaded secret police. In the revolution of 1979, he disappeared and she admitted she hoped he had died in the bloodletting. He re-emerged a few months later, performing his former role, but for the Islamic Republic.

This is one of the biggest challenges of potential regime change in Iran. Affable, multilingual men in ties will present themselves to the outside world as a new order of outward-looking Iranian “businessmen,” jetting in and out of Dubai. In reality, they could well be just part of a Revolutionary Guards network that will refuse to let go of prize assets....

Pessimists will argue that a hardliner such as Ebrahim Raisi, the judiciary chief, could succeed Khamenei and keep the nation under repressive lockdown for years to come. Many in the regime will see how Bashar al-Assad held on in Syria, albeit bloodily, and will reckon they can do the same.

Optimists will counter that Iran will be able to shake off the Guards, judiciary and basij paramilitaries and make the same success of its journey away from autocracy as Spain or South Korea did.

While protesters may dream of the latter course, the Romanian and Soviet experience shows that the international community needs to spend more time considering the risk of an internally orchestrated regime change. Trump is applying “maximum pressure” and praising anti-regime protesters, but does the U.S. or the EU actually have any plan for what happens next?

When Eastern Europe emerged from the grip of communism, Western companies sought to make money in new markets without asking tough ethical questions about who the new regimes really were. In the case of Iran, it would be a mistake to pursue the same uncritical model.

It's a dilemma, no doubt. After the overthrow of Saddam, many analysts blamed the subsequent descent into chaos on the determination of the allies to make a clean sweep of the Baathists, rather than maintaining some of the old power structure to help smooth the transition to a new post-Saddam government. But of course the situation is very different here. It's not at all clear that the West is going to be in a position to have any influence on the internal events in Tehran anyway, should the theocracy start to crumble. The main decisions will involve sanctions....if, and when, they should be lifted.