Blog

Meanwhile, in Norwich:

A Green councillor has been accused of calling a group of women holding a silent vigil for Afghan women and children "Nazis".

Charlie Caine, a member of Norwich City Council, is said to have launched the verbal attack on the event outside the Forum.

The vigil was organised by the Norwich Women's Rights Group and Women's Rights Network (WRN) Norfolk, which have previously raised concerns about the impact of gender ideology on women and girls.

The councillor, who is a transman – the term for someone born female but who identifies as a man – is accused of shouting at the gathering, calling those assembled "Nazis" and "transphobes"….

Sarah Walker, a member of the group, said: “As soon as I announced our vigil we were approached by Green Party city councillor for Mile Cross, Charlie Caine, who stood on the library steps above us and screamed abuse, yelling as loud as possible that we were 'transphobes' and 'Nazis' and looking around at passersby as if trying to rouse them to join in abusing and harassing us. It was quite extraordinary.”

Liz Wills, a WRN co-ordinator, said “It’s worth stressing that this situation had nothing to do with trans issues.

"The women who turned up, including the Muslim women, were there solely to support Afghan women who are actually the most oppressed group in the world.

"This cannot be dismissed as a battle of rights, it was abuse, harassment and public disorder.”

Somehow it's always the Greens.

ture, in which those institutions still clinging to the fashionable ideas of the 2020s exile themselves from the mainstream and doom themselves to irrelevance as the rest of society simply moves on.

The big beasts of capitalism are already moving on. Bud Light, for instance, is focusing on blokey good humour now in their latest Superbowl ad, trying to put the Dylan Mulvaney disaster behind them. Universities and cultural institutions, on the other hand, are going to take a lot longer. The people there actually believe this stuff: often enough it's how they got their jobs in the first place. Sometimes a touch of cynicism can be a good thing.

Baroness Nicolson provides a perfect coda to the Science Museum heteronormative Lego saga:

I don't have full access to The Herald Scotland, but I like the start of Kevin McKenna's article on the Sandie Peggie case – NHS trans tribunal is about much more than a nurse's fight for her job:

What better way to side-track the liberal left from their main goal of relieving poverty and opposing capitalism than by promoting an imaginary dogma of oppression? There’s a reason why corporate power and public sector influence has swung behind the campaign for trans rights. If you can convince sincere and well-motivated people that this is the moral crusade that defines the age then you can be left relatively undisturbed to amass your profits.

And what better way of doing this than by conjuring up an ethereal and contrived suite of slogans and declarations: trans rights are human rights; love is love?

The case of Sandie Peggie against NHS Fife is one of those cut-through moments when the general public have been afforded a glimpse behind the veil that’s been carefully drawn over the trans debate by Scotland’s political class.

d Jews.

But other Nazis got him on Oct 7 2023. pic.twitter.com/jprEuoiXXY

— David Collier (@mishtal) February 11, 2025

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

For more on the Farhud, see here.

From MEMRI TV:

In a Friday sermon delivered in the Gaza Strip, during the February 7, 2025 funeral of Hamas military commander Marwan Issa, who was reportedly killed in March 2024, the imam addressed the crowd and told them: "You […] love martyrdom for the sake of Allah. You love to kill for the sake of Allah." He added that the resistance fighters could not have waged Jihad and massacred the Jews, had it not been for the "grace of Allah." He quoted a verse from the Quran stating: "You did not kill them it was Allah who killed them."

Regarding Trump's plan to relocate Gaza residents, the imam said that either they return to their land within the 1948 borders, referring to Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ramla, Haifa, and Jerusalem, or they will be martyred. He pledged to continue on the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine. The sermon was delivered during a ceasefire between Hamas and Gaza and aired by Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas).

"The [Islamic] nation has been plagued with a disease, of love for the material world and a hatred of death. You however love martyrdom for the sake of Allah. You love to kill for the sake of Allah.

"By Allah, the resistance fighters could not fight, and could not massacre the Jews, if it had not been for the grace of Allah."

He's not wrong. Yes, it's all for the sake of Allah. It's all about Islam.

months.

However, a lower tribunal judge ruled that he should not be deported back to Pakistan as it would be “unduly harsh for the children to be without their father”.

The Home Office appealed the decision and was backed by an upper tribunal judge Judith Gleeson who set aside the ruling, criticising it as “contrary to the evidence, plainly wrong and rationally insupportable”. 

The case is ongoing.

of nuclear weapons to state security agents while motivating them to identify and eliminate any signs of ideological discontent that could threaten regime stability,” the source explained. However, they added, “State security agents alone can’t prevent public dissatisfaction. As living conditions worsen, many people question the value of maintaining nuclear weapons.”

efore, as a matter of UK law, Dr Upton is a man for all legal purposes, including the Equality Act 2010 and the 1992 Regulations. 

The 1992 Regulations are strict. There is no flex in them. NHS Fife is under an obligation to provide separate male and female changing facilities for staff. Providing a changing facility labelled “female only” while engaging in a practice of allowing a man to use it is not providing separate male and female changing facilities. 

 This is clear as a matter of law. What remains to be determined is whether the failure to provide a female-only changing room and the use of purportedly female-only facilities by Dr Upton constitute unlawful harassment and discrimination against Ms Peggie. I’ve written elsewhere about those legal questions, for those who are interested.

That didn't take long (via):

Let's be clear. The sequence of anti-trans measures brought in by Trump echo the antiSemitic Nuremberg laws of the Third Reich.
They are also in line with express demands of the GC movement such as the Women's Declaration which most leading GCs signed.
If it walks like a Nazi.

— Roz Kaveney (@RozKaveney) January 31, 2025

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I beg and beseech them to repent and accept what they have helped bring about before they are more complicit in the unforgivable than they already are.

— Roz Kaveney (@RozKaveney) January 31, 2025

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js