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Israel has been banned from UK’s flagship defence show. Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph:

What more is it going to take to bury the notion that the UK remains an ally of Israel? It’s been revealed today that the Government has banned Israeli officials from attending DSEI, the international defence conference and exhibition which is due to take place in London between 9 and 12 September. Although Israeli companies are still being allowed to come, all Israeli officials – political, defence or administrative – have been told to stay away.

The message could not be clearer or more consistent. From its first days in office, Labour has been ever more zealous in its treatment of Israel as an enemy, rather than a key strategic ally.

Within weeks it had restored funding to Unrwa, the UN agency, despite allegations that it employed some of the terrorists behind the October 7 2023 massacre….

As the only UN agency devoted solely to one particular group, it also provides official licence to the idea that Palestinians are permanent refugees whose troubles can only be ended by the destruction of Israel – never mind that its funded schools taught Jew-hatred and the glories of jihad, allowing Hamas to ignore all the tedious business of running a country so they could concentrate on building tunnels and stockpiling arms.

The UK Government now seems so hostile to Israel, perhaps Israel will take the hint. It is not as if Israel does not have cards to play. The UK and Israel have had decades of cooperation in counter-terrorism and work closely in cyber-security and defence technology. Our joint military exercises have helped keep British troops safe, especially through drone technology, missile defence and radar systems based on Israel’s world-leading expertise.

Israel has also shared critical counter-terror intelligence with the UK on threats to Britain posed by Iran, ISIS and others. Our intelligence services regard that cooperation as vital to security. If Israel is regarded as a bad actor to be punished, why should it work to help the Government seeking to punish it?

At a time of grave threats across the globe, when the reliability of the US in these areas may be compromised, we should be deepening and strengthening our links with countries with which we have always worked so well. Instead, we have a Government which regards political posturing, perhaps driven by fear of a Muslim vote backlash, as more important. For shame.

There's bad timing, and then there's this. pic.twitter.com/2O3BQ2j8NH

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) August 29, 2025

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A comment: "Documenting the transition from "Affirm us or we'll k*ll ourselves" to "Affirm us or we'll k*ll you."

heir reporting unless it’s in reference to a male rapist, sex offender or murderer?

How do they think it feels for women to be erased in discussions about their own health?

Worse still, how do they think it feels for women to see the sentence, “She was obsessed with killing children”, in print, or, “A woman killed her husband with a samurai sword "stabbing and slicing him" more than 50 times before replacing the sword in its sheath on a stand, a court heard.” [See here – MH]

When we read these things, we feel distress: distress for the victims of these crimes first and foremost, but distress too that as a sex class we are being libelled and defamed.

We know there will be many members of the public who are mis-led by this reporting and wrongly attribute these crimes to women.

We also know that crime statistics may well falsely record these crimes as committed by women, skewing important data.

But these are not women’s crimes.

o have single-sex spaces. No, what struck me most was that all the UCL academics the Mail spoke to chose to remain anonymous.

The apparent reason for their anonymity was not a fear of repercussions from their employer or the journals they publish in, nor of the backlash they would inevitably face from their own students. According to the article, they were reluctant to speak publicly because they have fallen at the last, most disappointing hurdle – that is, they fear being ‘vilified’ by their colleagues.

Oh the poor things.

Their continued cowering from the public square is all the more depressing given the clear legal protections that academics enjoy. Since 2021, gender-critical beliefs have been protected under the Equality Act. There is now the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, alongside the Office for Students’ robust guidance on free-speech issues. We saw how effective these both can be in March this year, when the University of Sussex was fined more than £500,000 following its shameful treatment of gender-critical philosopher Kathleen Stock. And, of course, the Free Speech Union, where I work, is on hand to come to the defence of any academics should their employer choose to ignore all these legal protections and its duty to uphold them. If gender-critical academics won’t speak up now, then when will they?

In a way you can't blame them though. It's often more than just being given the cold shoulder in the canteen.

I know from experience just how brutal this can be. Last year, I was suspended from my committee position at Leeds University radio station, simply because I expressed gender-critical views. I was told I had to submit a written apology to members of Leeds students’ union and undergo a ‘re-education’ course.

For standing up for women’s rights, I was ‘vilified’ by my peers. What was meant to be one of the best years of my life turned out to be one of the loneliest. The one friend who stood by me was told that he should make sure not to be seen in public with me if he wanted to remain respected within the radio station. Over time, I have discovered the impact this kind of shaming has had on some of my now closest friends who have also taken the risk of speaking out. Their relationships have been profoundly damaged, and their career prospects now uncertain. Indeed, I realised that the worst cancellations at university are the ones that go unnoticed.

The fact is students do not enjoy the same legal protections afforded to academics. It should not be left to students to play guessing games as to whether their professor might be a secret TERF. They should not have to weigh up the risk of outing themselves as a ‘transphobe’ to the person marking their work on the off chance that their professor is on side.

‘Courage calls to courage everywhere’, as suffragist Millicent Fawcett said, and if there was ever a time for feminist academics to be bold, it is surely now. On behalf of students afraid to speak out, I implore gender-critical academics to collectively make themselves known – not just online, but on campus, too.

The consensus among these students is that the fear of being ‘villainised’ by colleagues is no longer washing. The causes of biological truth, women’s rights and free speech are too important.

Courage, mes braves!

“Is it your intention to run trans people out of the state of Texas?”

Republican State Rep Angelia Orr: “Just out of the bathroom.” 🤣

BOOM

MEN DO NOT BELONG IN WOMEN’S BATHROOMS. This isn’t hard. pic.twitter.com/jxP9avYH71

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 29, 2025

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Jesus, the New York Times. Their latest, a hit piece on men-out-0f-women's-sport campaigner Riley Gaines, archived here. 

With caps covering their hair, goggles over their eyes, and sleek suits down to their knees, the eight swimmers on the pool deck looked indistinguishable from one another. They crouched in identical poses: One foot back, head down, rear up, hands dropped forward on the starting block. Together, they waited for the starting signal….

Indistinguishable from one another?? The guy racing against the women – Lia Thomas – is well over 6ft.

First of all, they make you deny the evidence of your senses…

A TW allegedly kills people – he's a man. He wins an award – he's a woman https://t.co/L45Oe5nxye

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) August 27, 2025

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When we hear all about trans heroes – and when we don't.

Leor Sapir on The Broken Chain of Trust in Pediatric Gender Medicine:

The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest and most powerful doctors’ organization in the United States. It has also consistently supported pediatric medical transition, or “gender-affirming care,” which includes puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries administered to minors. The AMA has passed a resolution promising to protect these procedures, joined an amicus brief in a lawsuit challenging a state age-restriction law, and written a letter urging state governors to veto similar legislation.

The AMA has done all this despite the findings from systematic reviews—the gold standard of evidence-based medicine (EBM)—of weak evidence for these treatments’ mental health benefits, and despite the corresponding health risks. In 2021, AMA board member Michael Suk publicly called pediatric transition “medically-necessary, evidence-based care.” He did so after health authorities in several European countries, including progressive Sweden and Finland, had already begun to change course and prioritize psychotherapy for pediatric gender dysphoria cases.

Skeptics of the AMA’s position have wondered how a professional medical organization could have ignored systematic reviews. New videos, one of which was published by the Daily Wire, provide a possible answer. The videos reveal the AMA’s president, the Michigan-based otolaryngologist Bobby Mukkamala, making false claims about pediatric gender medicine and demonstrating ignorance of basic concepts in EBM. Mukkamala appears to believe that only doctors involved in medical practice can be trusted to evaluate the evidence for the treatments they perform. Where EBM sees a potential conflict of interest, the president of the AMA sees a credible source of expertise….

Rotting from the top down.

A woman in Afghanistan – from the Times:

Having run out of stitching supplies, Hira, a 23-year-old embroiderer, went to her local market in northern Afghanistan to buy some more.

But what started as a routine errand led to her being punished in public by flogging, as a crowd of men jeered and loudly counted out every blow of the whip.

Upon entering a shop, Hira was approached by Taliban soldiers who accused her of being in the market without a male guardian.

They asked why she was speaking to a man who was not her “mahram”, or male family member, and questioned if she was there to date the shopkeeper.

She was allowed to go home, but she and her family struggled to sleep that night, concerned about the repercussions of her encounter and the accusation of adultery.

“I felt that this could be the end of my life and I will be stoned to death in front of hundreds of men cheering the punishment,” she told The Times.

Since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in August 2021, public floggings have drastically risen, with hundreds occurring each year….

The next morning, Hira, whose real name is being withheld, was arrested and taken to a jail. There, she was questioned by two women wearing veils and was directly accused of being a woman in public without a mahram, of interacting with a man and having an affair with him.

She remained in jail for a week, before being brought before a Taliban court without any legal representation.

Her denials of an improper relationship with the shopkeeper persuaded the judge not to impose a death sentence by stoning, which is among the Taliban’s penalties for adultery.

However, Hira was convicted of appearing in the market without a male guardian and of interacting with a stranger. She was sentenced to 39 lashes.

A crowd of men then gathered to watch her punishment, she said. “After the court’s verdict, I was taken to a public area filled with dozens of men. My face and head were covered, and I endured immense suffering and humiliation as I was whipped in front of the crowd, who loudly counted each lash,” she said.

Overwhelmed with the pain, she cried out. Sobbing, she was then taken back to her jail cell and held there for another day to allow her wounds to heal.

How kind.

From the Daily NK:

A public struggle session was held earlier this month in Mundok county, South Pyongan province, targeting a person caught with South Korean video material.

“A farm worker in his 50s at Oryong Farm in Mundok county was arrested during an Aug. 2 raid of his home for possessing South Korean video material,” a Daily NK source in South Pyongan province said recently. “They held a roughly two-hour public struggle session in front of all the farm workers in the yard outside the farm’s management committee office.”

The farm worker was immediately arrested when the raid turned up a storage device containing South Korean films and music. He was then handed over to local police….

Later, county police organized a public struggle session at the farm before the entire workforce.

A police official revealed the farm worker’s actions and declared, “South Korea isn’t just a foreign country, but an enemy trying to plunder our nation. The cultural materials they’re trying to spread are ideological poison, and this reactionary act of poisoning even one’s own children can never be tolerated.”

The farm workers then took turns condemning their colleague. Throughout the entire struggle session, the farm worker just stood with his head down and remained silent.

Ring any bells?