Mick Hartley

Confronting the Jewish White Supremacists

Back in August I posted about Laith Marouf, a Canadian activist who was paid large amounts of public money to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting - despite being an out-and-out raging antisemite. Jonathan Kay in Quillette:

In an era when people can get fired for clicking the like button on a problematic social-media post or using the wrong pronoun, this out-and-proud hatemonger has—until just days ago—maintained his entree with Canadian broadcast regulators, even while tweeting that “there are none on this earth more cunty than Zionists”; describing his desire to beat up “ugly inbred fucking Zionist Colonist tourists”; rhapsodizing about the coming liberation of Palestine, when “all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists … will return to being low-voiced bitches of their Christian/Secular white supremacist masters”; and describing his personal “motto” as being that “Life is too short for shoes with laces, or for entertaining Jewish white supremacists with anything but a bullet to the head.”

But then this is progressive Canada, where antisemitism can easily be excused as some kind of principled pro-Palestinian activism.

Now here's the man on Lebanese TV:

The MEMRI synopsis:

On November 22, 2022, Mayadeen TV (Lebanon) aired an interview with Canadian political activist Laith Marouf, who has recently been banned from several social media platforms and who has had his contracts with the Canadian government as an “anti-racism” trainer canceled due to antisemitic statements he has made. Marouf said that the Zionists have “forced” social media companies like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok to “circumvent” laws, and that the Zionists have created a situation in which they – instead of the courts – get to define racism and antisemitism, since Zionism is otherwise indefensible. He criticized the Canadian government and legal system for being unjust, and he said that Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims must confront the Zionists “on all battlefields” since there is an “open war” with them. He also claimed that deplatforming him has cost the Zionists millions of dollars. In addition, Marouf said that the Zionists are part of the ruling system throughout the West, and that politicians can only win elections by gaining the favor of Zionists. According to online reports, Marouf has collected over $600,000 in Canadian federal government contracts since 2015. In a tweet from September 2021, he said that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the feelings of Jews, in another tweet he referred to “the Jewish White Supremacists” as “loud mouthed bags of human feces.”

Letting down vulnerable women in Scotland

That Zero Tolerance meeting on male violence against women and girls in Edinburgh yesterday - where mention of the issue of single-sex spaces for women was banned to spare guest speaker Nicola Sturgeon's delicate sensibilities - did have its moments:

A protester interrupted a speech by Nicola Sturgeon on tackling male violence against women after the audience was urged not to mention her controversial gender reform plans.

The woman was ejected from the event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of charity Zero Tolerance after telling the First Minister she had “let down vulnerable women in Scotland”.

Critics of Ms Sturgeon's legislation allowing Scots to self-identify their legal gender have said male sexual predators would have a new means of gaining access to women's spaces, such as changing rooms and refuges.

In a lengthy diatribe, the unidentified protester told the First Minister: "You are allowing paedophiles, sex offenders and rapists to self-ID in Scotland and put women at risk.

"Women campaigning for women's rights are not against trans people. Shame on you for letting down vulnerable women in Scotland, not allowed to have their own spaces away from any male."

“Shame on you, Nicola Sturgeon” #womenwontwheesht #letwomenspeak pic.twitter.com/yH8atY3NnE

— Ocean Breath Cafe (@OceanbreathCafe) November 29, 2022

In her speech, Ms Sturgeon said she had a "determination to do whatever I can do to help build a Scotland where women and girls can and do feel safe.”

The First Minister said she would continue working with the sector on “achieving that vision of a country free from violence against women and girls”.

Some brass neck: she's doing her best to allow predatory men into women-only spaces. 

Owego Bridge

Tioga County, New York, ca. 1901. "Bridge over the Susquehanna at Owego."

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

The new ideology

Via Jerry Coyne, a paper from chemistry professor Anna Krylov, just published at Heterodox STEM and based on a paper originally delivered last year at Duke University. She's now at the University of Southern California but was educated at Moscow State University. She's concerned at the invasion of "progressive " aka "woke" ideology into science - a process she compares to the ideological constraints on science she experienced in Russia, most disastrously with the triumph of Lysenkoism.

From Russia with Love: Science and Ideology Then and Now. Some extracts.

My everyday experiences as a chemistry professor at an American university in 2021 bring back memories from my school and university time in the USSR. Not good memories—more like Orwellian nightmares. I will compare my past and present experiences to illustrate the following parallels between the USSR and the US today: (i) the atmosphere of fear and self-censorship; (ii) the omnipresence of ideology (focusing on examples from science); (iii) an intolerance of dissenting opinions (i.e., suppression of ideas and people, censorship, and Newspeak); (iv) the use of social engineering to solve real and imagined problems. [...]

Just as in the USSR everything was analyzed through the Marxist theory of class struggle, we are now told to view everything through the lens of Critical Social Justice. [...]

Just as happened in  Soviet Russia, the new ideology is declaring entire disciplines—for example, mathematics—racist. There are proposals, some already enacted in Oregon and California, that call to “dismantle white supremacy” in the mathematics classroom. How does white supremacy manifest itself in the classroom? By “the focus [being] on getting the ‘right’ answer” and asking students “to show their work.” Google “equitable math instruction” to see what this is all about. These programs are backed by serious institutions, such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

In California, there is a proposal to do away with advanced math programs in schools. Why? Because they are racist. Why are they racist? Because their demographics do not match the state’s demographics. How can we make math instruction equitable? Instead of raising the quality of education for everyone, the SJW favor the path that socialist regimes—real and dystopian—took: bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator. 

For the same reasons, proficiency tests are being dropped, grading standards lowered, standardized tests eliminated, and so on. 

What will the consequences of such policies be? I think they will be devastating, possibly on the scale of Lysenkoism. 

But read it all.

Sparing Nicola's blushes

The latest from Scotland:

A charity event to push for an end to male violence against women and girls has banned discussion about single sex spaces.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, is scheduled to give the main speech to the 30th anniversary gathering by Zero Tolerance in Edinburgh today. The charity‘s core belief is that male violence should not be tolerated.

If it's violence from males who claim to be women, then it's nae bother, mind.

A note sent to attendees said it wanted “to create a safe and supported environment for our guests and ask you to support us in this aim by refraining from discussions of the definition of a woman, and single sex spaces, in relation to the gender recognition act”.

It added: “As feminists we have strong opinions on these subjects, but this is not the place for that conversation.”

In Scotland, nowhere's the place for that conversation.

The decision might have been made to “save the blushes of the first minister”, suggested Marion Calder, director of For Women Scotland.

She praised Zero Tolerance’s work but said: “Thirty years on, Scottish women must be wondering what has happened to this organisation.”

Pretending to care about women victims of violence, while legislating to remove all of the single sex protections that are there to reduce opportunities for that violence.

Last word to JK Rowling:

I'd say this is unbelievable, but of course it isn't. When our First Minister attends an event about male violence towards women and girls, the last thing she wants is some uppity woman mentioning the importance of female-only refuges or crisis centres.https://t.co/wDYVKLMy5Z

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 29, 2022

Green’s obviously ludicrous ideas

Former Mermaids CEO Susie Green never lied about who she was, or about her motivation. In her famous TED talk she boasted about putting her son on puberty blockers at an early age because he liked to play with girlie toys, and Dad didn't approve. On his sixteenth birthday the lad was whisked off to Thailand to have his bits removed - though, much to Green's amusement, the surgeons didn't have much to work with when trying to construct a new vagina, since the boy's penis hadn't developed because of the puberty blockers. But never mind: Susie Green and Mermaids became untouchable.

Hadley Freeman at UnHerd:

During her time at Mermaids, Green has been advising parents, schools, the police, the media and NHS trusts about how to deal with other children who dare to not be gender stereotypes. She was their first staff member — before Mermaids was run by volunteers — and under her leadership, she has transformed the organisation from a quiet, low-key charity to an energetically active lobbying group, and her theories about childhood and gender have been at least as influential as Judith Butler’s. Mermaids has been endorsed by the Be Kind brigade, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jameela Jamil and Emma Watson, accrued a slew of corporate sponsors and been awarded £500,000 by the National Lottery. Progressive newspapers advise readers to contact the service should they have any concerns about their child.

Since 2017, I regularly asked editors at the newspaper where I worked [that would be the Guardian - MH] if I could write about Mermaids in general and Green specifically, because it was so obvious that something was very wrong here. The answer, always, was no, but the reasons given were fuzzy: it wouldn’t be right in that section, they couldn’t see the news peg, it felt too niche. A more likely reason was one articulated to me with some passion on social media any time I tweeted anything sceptical about Green or Mermaids: to question either was to wish trans children would die.

But the tide is turning. Susie Green is suddenly gone from Mermaids, and the ship is sinking.

Maybe the Mermaids board belatedly realised that if they want their organisation to endure, they needed to get rid of the wacky front woman. Ultimately, I don’t care why she went, because so much damage has already been done. But what I do want to know is this: how did so many people take Green so seriously for so long? Why did so many people turn off their intelligence when faced with this former IT consultant from Leeds? And how could so many LGBT activists champion and defend a woman who saw effeminacy — and therefore homosexuality — in her two-year-old and feel she had to “correct” this “defect”? ...

I’m not waiting for celebrities such as Emma Watson to own up to their foolishness, mainly because I don’t care what Emma Watson thinks about anything. But all the journalists, teachers, editors and activists who endorsed Green’s obviously ludicrous ideas and shouted down anyone who didn’t, they really need to take a long look at their judgement, their motives and themselves. Because Green never once hid who she was.

Threatening players' families

Why did the Iranian players refuse to sing the national anthem before the England game, but then did sing it before the Wales game? This might have had something to do with it:

The families of Iran’s World Cup soccer team have been threatened with imprisonment and torture if the players fail to “behave” ahead of the match against the USA on Tuesday, a source involved in the security of the games said.

Following the refusal of Iranian players to sing the nation’s national anthem in their opening match against England on November 21, the source said that the players were called to a meeting with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The source said that they were told that their families would face “violence and and torture” if they did not sing the national anthem or if they joined any political protest against the Tehran regime....

The source, who is closely monitoring Iran’s security agencies operating in Qatar over the World Cup period, said that dozens of officers from the IRGC had been drafted in to monitor the Iranian players who are not allowed to mingle outside the squad or meet with foreigners.

“There are a large number of Iranian security officers in Qatar collecting information and monitoring the players,” the source said.

And don't expect so many of those brave Iranians in the crowd holding up “Woman, Life, Freedom” signs this time.

“In the last game against Wales, the regime sent over hundreds of these actor supporters in order to create a false sense of support and favor amongst the fans. For the next game against the U.S, the regime is planning to significantly increase the number of actors into the thousands,” the source said.

The detransitioner's tale

A Twitter thread:

🧵Getting told by therapists and the internet the lie that you are born in the wrong body when you are a child, surely does something to you. I was told this lie when I was only 9 years old, without my parents knowledge. 1/11

— G (@G_This_IsTheWay) November 29, 2022

Here's the rest of the thread, for easier reading:

I had to undress myself in front of a colleague of my therapist, with me being highly uncomfortable and my parents not being informed about it, all because I was a tomboy who struggled with the mean comments she often got for her masculine clothes and hobbies. 2/11

Telling children they are born in the wrong body is negligent! Ofc a 9 year old believes this and will think something is wrong with them. I, was a vulnerable child and was told the body I was born in was wrong and that a mistake was made creating me… 3/11

while also being made even more uncomfortable, by having to undress myself in front of a stranger even though they knew how hard that was for me. Brainwashing starts young. 4/11

This is unacceptable and that’s why it’s important parents know what their children get told by other adults. My mom saved me the first time from transitioning, but sadly the idea that I was born in the wrong body had already been implanted in my mind… 5/11

and when I outed myself again with 14, instead of blaming my therapist for making me hate my body even more , my parents were blamed for not allowing me to transition earlier and they were told that it’s a dead child or a trans child. 6/11

Despite all of this, and I know of other people with similar stories, us detransitioners often get blamed by TRAs that it’s our fault and they make fun of our traumatic experience. How could I have known better? 7/11

I was just a child that wanted to not be forced by my school to wear a dress. That wanted to be allowed to play pirate and cowboy in school without others telling her, she can’t because she’s a girl.I wanted to become a pilot but was told by a friend and her parents that… 8/11

girls can’t become pilots, because according to them they can’t think straight in serious situations. I wanted to wear boys clothes and have short hair and not get asked every hour if I’m a boy or a girl. 9/11

All the things added up and brought me to a therapist and that therapist didn’t question the reasons for my wish of wanting to be a boy. 10/11

And my mom was deemed the bad one and would have been called transphobic by TRAs for saying her daughter is just a tomboy. They didn’t stop until they were able to scare my mom into allowing me to medically transition. We trusted these „professionals“ and we suffer everyday 11/11

"It’s a dead child or a trans child." Jesus, these people....

Systematic sexual violence

Harriet Barber in the Telegraph:

Since Russia’s soldiers first stormed Ukraine, women have been gang-raped, men castrated, children sexually abused, and civilians forced to parade naked in the streets, according to the United Nations.

The Kremlin stands accused of terrorising the Ukrainian population with sexual violence in a systematic and unsparing manner. It is thought that the full-extent of this barbarism will not come to light until years after the war.

The allegations come ahead of a major international conference for preventing sexual violence in conflict, held in London on Monday, during which dozens of survivors from around the world will speak out about their abuse....

Last month, a UN Commission documented what it described as “patterns” of rape and sexual violence inflicted on Ukrainians throughout the war. “Victims range from four to over 80 years old,” it said, detailing a series of appalling accusations in October’s report.

One Russian soldier forced a four-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him in the presence of her parents, according to the report. The 22-year-old mother was raped, her husband sexually violated, and the pair were also forced to have sexual intercourse in the presence of the armed forces.

A 83-year-old woman described how, while her village was occupied by Vladimir Putin’s forces, she was raped by a Russian serviceman in front of her physically disabled husband.

In the summer, a video circulated showing a Russian soldier with blue surgical gloves castrating a Ukrainian prisoner.

The Telegraph could not independently verify these accusations, but these reports have been described as the tip of the iceberg by lawyers, aid workers and sexual assault experts we interviewed. Cases will be underreported for years to come, they say, because it can take years for survivors to speak about such violence....

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said Moscow’s war on Ukraine “is aimed at exterminating the Ukrainian people” and that Russia’s use of sexual violence intends “to spread a state of terror, [and] cause suffering and fear”.

Dr Ingrid Elliott, MBE and one of the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict experts, said that the Russians have two methods of sexual violence – the first of which is staged during an attack on a village.

“People are dragged out to the streets and paraded, men and women,” Dr Elliott said. “There are circumstances where the man would be killed and the woman would face sexual violence afterwards. Sometimes the women are rounded up, and held in basements, where repeated sexual violence is inflicted upon them, for days of even weeks.”

The second pattern of abuse happens in detention centres in occupied territories. While it is hard to document this abuse, people who have fled or been liberated have come forward with information.

“What we see then is sexual torture against men,” Dr Elliott said. This can take the form of genital electrocution, castration or sodomy.

This week, Reuters news agency reported that some Russian commanders have encouraged and ordered sexual violence.

British lawyer Wayne Jordash told Reuters that in around the capital of Kyiv some of the sexual violence reported involved a level of organisation by Russian armed forces that “speaks to planning on a more systematic level”.

Muslims do not have time to watch soccer

An Egyptian Islamic scholar gives his views on the World Cup: Qatar should have spent the money on a nuclear bomb, like Iran:

"How many hours do people waste watching these [World Cup] matches? [...]

"This is a waste of Muslim's time. Muslims do not have time to watch soccer. [...]

"We want all people to engage in sports, but our nation has a goal in this life. [...]

"You should play sports to strengthen your body, because Allah loves strong believers more than weak ones. You should do it so you can worship Allah and wage Jihad against the enemies. [...]

"[Soccer players] who should be treated as lowest of the low because they are infidels, heretics, or deviants, are being placed on a pedestal and treated like stars. This is a very big problem. You see people are starstruck by the so-and-so and follow his example, even though he is an enemy of Islam, like Messi, for example. He was [photographed] with the Wailing Wall behind him. [...]

"A guy like that Cristiano Ronaldo... It was reported that he married his children's mother. He announced that he married his children's mother! And before that? Who did those children belong to? [...]

"The third thing has to do with the concept of 'Allegiance and Disavowal.' As Muslims, our allegiance should be to Allah, His Prophet, and the Muslims. [...]

"Soccer makes people love or hate others not according to one's religion and faith, but according to the soccer [team] they [support]. [...]

"You should love or hate people in accordance with their faith, not according to their soccer [team]. [...]

"We are not proud that an Arab country is hosting the World Cup and has spent billions on it. We wish we could be proud of them in other areas. For example, they could have produced a nuclear bomb, like Iran has."