Author: Mick Hartley

he premises on which it was based were proved false. And yet Joe Biden can’t wait to reenter the JCPOA, with Secretary of State-apparent Antony Blinken pledging to keep “non-nuclear sanctions” intact, signaling his clear intention to lift nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.

The only thing that could interfere with such wonderful plans, the press warns, is an impending Trump strike on Iran, which might come any day now. According to The New York Times, Trump asked his cabinet for military options after the U.N. reported that Iran had exceeded its limit of enriched uranium.

Does that mean Trump or Bibi is actually on the verge of attacking Iran? Of course not. On both the American and the Israeli fronts, Trump administration policy was to get American troops out of global hot spots as fast as possible—not start wars. What the war drums mean is that the phony communications infrastructure that marketed the Iran deal from 2013-2016 is up and running again. […]

Biden’s prospective Middle East team shows very clearly that Obama will be calling the shots. Reportedly in line for a top job is Obama’s Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who spent the last four years threatening America’s key regional ally that it better not get too comfortable with Trump—or else the next Democratic administration would punish them. Rob Malley is also likely to be a major presence. Obama’s key point man on the Middle East recently lamented that the legacy of his boss “was premised on his being succeeded by someone like him, maybe a Hillary Clinton, but certainly not a Donald Trump.” The “experiment that got suspended halfway through,” as Malley put it, can now be completed under the protective cover of a “moderate” Biden administration.

In other words, Biden will very likely be looking to cement some kind of second JCPOA deal with Iran. And if he does he'll no doubt claim that it's tougher and more realistic than the previous version. But, given Tehran's duplicity, that's unlikely to be the case. All the mullahs want is to have sanctions lifted and to return to their old pre-Trump ways of destabilising the region – and prolonging their rule at the expense of the long-suffering Iranian people.

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The LGB Alliance, of course, is far from being a hate-filled transphobic organisation. It was formed as a breakaway from Stonewall UK last year after it became clear that Stonewall had abandoned its original gay agenda in favour of a trans activism which many saw as a regressive throwback to old gender stereotypes, dressed up in progressive trans-friendly clothing.

The LBG Alliance is filling a gap left by the LBGT movement’s uncritical embrace of trans politics. Today there are no longer any mainstream services, groups or even dating apps that are exclusively for those who are same-sex attracted. Many LGBT organisations today campaign, in effect, against the right to be homosexual. This is because transgender politics calls for people to be recognised for who they claim to be internally, not for the sex of their bodies. The result is that, this year, ‘Chiyo Gomes’ – a female who has had a mastectomy – is a finalist in next year’s Mr Gay UK competition. Furthermore, despite the female biology and lack of penis, in Britain today it could be construed as a hate crime to refer to ‘Chiyo’ as a straight woman rather than a gay man.

For the crime of offering an alternative to transgender ideology and for defending the importance of biological sex in homosexuality, the LGB Alliance has been hounded and smeared across the media.  […]

Like most ordinary people, most lesbian, gay and bisexual people aren’t particularly engaged in the culture wars. Aside from moaning about Pride becoming commercialised and feeling a bit emosh about Nicola Adams having to drop out of Strictly, there is not that much pulling us together, especially when the only messages we get from the likes of Stonewall are that ‘trans women are women’ and ‘debate is hate’. But ask any gay man if he would have sex with a ‘man with a vulva’ or a lesbian how she feels about penises, and it will be pretty obvious that despite the online tantrums of transgender activists, biological sex still matters.

Russell Lee – May 1940. "A residence and post office at Paradise, Cochise County, Arizona, former center of mining development, now a fruit section."

[Photo:Shorpy/Russell Lee]

Stroud Green:

A professor at the University of Calgary gives us a taste of the kind of material presented by the powers-that-be, in their rush to embrace the current dogma that we all inhabit an apparently irredeemable state of racism. From the university's "courageous conversations" about equity, race, systemic racism and anti-racism:

It’s not only public figures like Trump and so on, who constantly deny that they are being racist and claim to be non- or even anti-racist, but ordinary people also, perhaps your friends and your family constantly repeat how “that wasn’t racist” or “I’m not racist.” But I’m suggesting that beyond this well-known denial of racism, what is particular to what I’m calling “not racism” is that it contains a definition of racism, which is constructed negatively through opposition. This definition is characterized by the fact that it denies racialized people’s subjective understanding of what racism is and negates this experience. In this way, “not racism” is what I call a form of discursive racist violence… “Not racism” as a redefinition of racism lends itself to a positivist approach to social science, one that historically has been bound up epistemologically with the idea of race. So “not racism,” I hope to encourage you, is also epistemically racist.

Not racism is epistemically racist. OK. So racism is….epistemically non-racist? Am I doing this right?

Birds on birds at Alexandra Palace:

the world. Do you consent to being forced to respect it?

Perhaps what is meant is that Cambridge wants decorum and politeness. These are codes, much like a dress code, to which any reasonable person might be expected to conform. But please do not tell us what to think and feel.

an style=”font-size: 11pt”>Thank you for your email. We agree that words are important. As ActionAid UK is an organisation focused on supporting the most marginalised women and girls in the world, it is important to us that we are clear that when we are talking about women and girls, we are including transgender women and girls in our definition of women and girls.

ActionAid UK defines women and girls as anyone who self-identifies as a woman or a girl. Allowing self-determination of our bodies is a basic feminist principle. ActionAid UK understands there is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’, and that a person’s genitalia doesn’t determine their gender. As such, we’ve used the word gender not sex, and include trans women and girls in our definition of women and girls. ActionAid UK also recognises that many non-binary people and trans men face gender discrimination.

As Sarah Phillimore responded at the time:

ActionAidUK declares itself to be a charity ‘that works with women and girls living in poverty’. It apparently recognises the harm done to women and girls by violence. Women and girls do not ‘chose’ to become victims of violence, rape, sex trafficking, FGM or abortion from their mother’s wombs. They haven’t ‘self identified’ into this condition. It is immediately obvious to those who hurt and kill them, who deny them an education, who force them into marriage aged 12, what sex they are. For about 99% of living humans, it is immediately obvious what sex they are.

Women are not oppressed, raped and killed for their GENDER.

They are oppressed, raped and killed for their SEX .

That Amnesty International can claim, astonishingly, that there's no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’ indicates just how far and how deep the mind-rot has spread.

Photographer Reuben Wu uses drones to add artificial light to natural landscapes. In his series Light Storm, he's capturing the dramatic eroded stone shapes and canyons of Utah and New Mexico, lending them an extraordinary other-wordly look. 

[Images: Reuben Wu]

On Instagram.

As Tina Traster has noted, the trans activist line is that young troubled teenagers who've been seduced on social media into buying the whole gender dysphoria packet – and we're talking mostly about girls here – are subject to nothing less than parental abuse if their demands for irreversible medical intervention are not fully and enthusiastically embraced. The corollary is that parents who are not happy with this – and frankly, what responsible parents would be? – may see their children taken into care, just as if they were actually guilty of physical or sexual abuse of the child.

Which is what's happened in Australia (via):

A teenager has been taken into care in Australia’s first known case of parents being judged abusive and potentially harmful for failing to consent to their child’s self-declared transgender identity and wish for irreversible cross-sex hormone treatment.

A state children’s court magistrate cited the risk of self-harm when making the protection order in October — almost a year after the teenager, who was born female and cannot be named for legal reasons — was removed from the family by police at 15 after discussing suicide online.

The parents said they knew their daughter had been depressed and in need of help, but they wanted an independent psychologist to consider all possible underlying causes, not just gender issues, and to look into non-invasive treatment options.

Queensland University’s dean of law Patrick Parkinson, speaking in a personal capacity as a family law expert and critic of “gender affirming” medical treatment for young people diagnosed with distressing “gender dysphoria”, said he believed the child removal was the first of its kind and “a very troubling development”.

He's not kidding.