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nd much of her fortune to the vulnerable, the bullied, the forgotten and the abused, then you are under a spell. If you believe that men can fairly compete against women in their sports–including contact sports– then you are under a spell. If you believe that men will not go to the most extreme lengths to gain access to women and children, then you are under a spell. If you believe that children as young as three years old can agree to a procedure that puts them on a medical pathway for life, that arrests their natural puberty, and that has almost no scientific proof as to its efficacy as a treatment for dysphoria, then you are under a spell. 

Social media has created a through the looking glass world which is robbing everyone of their ability to think. My final statement on Twitter, the straw that broke the camel’s back, was simply “Men are not women.” A world where statements like “Men are not women” is hate speech is a world on the brink of chaos. Feminists are just the canary in the coalmine in this upside-down world where public discourse depends on the whims of a small group of men in Silicon Valley. Gender identity ideology began in American Universities, is uncritically disseminated by the popular media, but social media companies and their users are the enforcers.

People do not understand the extent to which they have been indoctrinated by this ideology.  Women who oppose it are trying desperately to be heard. Helen [Staniland], who is here with me today is only one example of thousands. I have heard from young lesbians who are frightened that their sexuality will have them labelled transphobic, I have heard from therapists unable to tell distraught children that their favourite author does not want them dead, I’ve heard from detransitioners who tell of young women being groomed by older men in trans youth groups.

The reason you have not heard the things that I have heard is that the discourse is being shaped by trans rights activists. In place of reasoned arguments and democratic discussion, we have mantras like “No debate” and “Transwomen are women”, we have policies passing by stealth, we have bogus statistics about trans murder epidemics and we have the unconscionable weaponising of suicide for political ends.

The discourse is broken. Women’s rights are being stripped away, our children are not safe, and we are not allowed to talk about it. 

Full text here.

Linehan was banned from Twitter last summer after “repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation”, by stating – as he notes above – that men aren't women.

At the Hill Garden, Hampstead:

ect blame for the global pandemic.

This follows the farcical WHO "fact-finding" visit to Wuhan, which was policed by the Chinese to the extent that the investigation of a possible lab leak from the Wuhan Virology Institute took the form of asking the lab people if they thought there'd been a leak and taking their word for it, on the grounds that they were the people in the best position to know. Some WHO members have even parroted the Chinese line that the virus could have originated elsewhere.

Saying that it's racist to maintain that the virus originated in China is, I suppose, like saying it's transphobic to maintain that biological sex is real. Thanks, postmodernism.

The Germans, of course, have special reason to be nice to the Chinese, seeing as how central the Chinese market is to their car industry.

Iraqi-born Edwin Shuker, who visits Baghdad regularly, expressed disappointment that the Iraqi government “wasted a historic opportunity to reconcile with its Jews by inviting them to attend the ceremony at Ur and use the occasion to recognize and correct the injustice committed against them by successive governments.”

The pope’s message was given and stood in contrast to the stance of the Iraqi government. “As the children of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with other believers and all persons of good will, we thank you for having given us Abraham,” the pope prayed on Saturday.

However, the Iraqi government officials ignored the history of the Iraqi Jewish community. This was the case at Ur and also during the pope’s subsequent trip to Mosul, where a Jewish community once thrived. At least half a dozen ancient synagogues have been uncovered in Mosul.

The history of Jews in Iraq goes right back to the time of the Babylonian captivity, ca. 586 BC. At the end of the 19th century Jews constituted over a quarter of the population of Baghdad, and apparently were so well established that they were generally uninterested in the Zionism that was gaining traction at the time with European Jews. That all changed with World War 2, and in particular with the Farhud in 1941, when a pogrom against Jews was launched following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali. Some 200 Jews were killed and 1,000 injured, with widespread looting and destruction of Jewish property. It was effectively the beginning of the end of the Jewish population of Iraq.

So when they say that a Jewish community once thrived in Iraq, they're not talking about something small and insignificant. Iraqi Jews constituted one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities in the world. And it's effectively all gone. Current estimates of the number of Jews in Iraq don't make double figures.

A pack of wild smooth-coated otters crosses Penang Road in Singapore. The otters are well known locally and are nicknamed the Zouk family.

[Photo: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock]

kinds that are sneaking into the country in a bid to shore up the regime's increasingly brittle control.

On Sunday the official Rodong Sinmun daily published a whole slew of articles that lambasted the "degenerate" way North Koreans now speak, dress and wear makeup.

The regime recently passed a draconian law that mandates the death penalty for disseminating South Korean movies, TV dramas or music videos.

"The use of dishonorable language harms the harmony and unity of the community and has a bad influence on society." Keeping North Korean culture pure "is a matter of whether we will be able to protect our national identity from an invasion by all kinds of unhealthy and degenerate ideologies and lifestyles," it added.

Any culture which doesn't involve the idolisation of the Kim dynasty – the sacred Mount Paektu bloodline – is, according to the official line, "unhealthy and degenerate". 

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Albion Street, Surry Hills, 1911

Argyle Cut (looking west), ca. 1912

A by-way to Pitt street, ca. 1920s

The Canyon, Martin Place, 1925

Steam and sunshine, Newcastle BHP, 1934

Sydney Bridge, ca. 1934
[Photos © Harold Cazneaux]

I doubt we'll be hearing much of this in our news. From the Times of Israel:

Three Palestinian fishermen were killed in an explosion off the coast of the Gaza Strip in what appeared to be a misfired rocket launched by the Hamas terror group.

The explosion occurred close to the coast of Khan Younis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. The three deceased fishermen, Yahya Mustafa al-Laham, Hamdi al-Laham and Zakaria al-Laham, were two brothers and their cousin, Gaza fishermens’ union head Nizar Ayyah told local media.

“They were the martyrs of their daily bread,” the al-Laham family said in a statement on their official Facebook page. The three had died, the family said, after “a local mortar struck their boat.”

A local mortar.

Hamas regularly fires experimental rockets toward the sea, both to test their military capacities and as a show of force.

Hamas’ military wing said it mourned the death of the three fishermen “with great sorrow.” …

In a statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry also said it was “investigating the incident.” The terror group, which avowedly seeks to destroy Israel, regularly condemns Israel for other incidents that have led to wounded fishermen in the Gaza Strip.

It was not the first time that technical errors with weaponry were said to harm or even kill civilians living in the Gaza Strip. In the past, blasts have sometimes been caused by accidents as operatives of terrorist organizations in the territory built bombs or otherwise handled explosives.

Last month, a blast ripped through a building in northern Gaza, injuring at least 36 civilians. The Israeli military charged that Palestinian terror groups had stored weapons inside civilian homes. Hamas promised to investigate the incident, but no conclusion has yet been reached.

d83451ebab69e2026bdec24f05200c img-responsive” src=”http://mickhartley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/mt_imported_image_1758336216.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”IMG_6991s” />

Los Angeles ca. 1956. From a Shorpy series of billboard photos from the files of Pacific Outdoor Advertising.

[Photo: Shorpy/Pacific Outdoor Advertising]

One wiped her bottom with Chiffon Bathroom Tissue: the other one used a lower quality brand. But can you tell which is which?