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ern nation. Yet in recent years, women’s rights have come under attack from the conservative leadership.

Politicians, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have repeatedly made statements denigrating women’s rights — claiming that women are not equal to men and that those who do not have children are “incomplete” and “deficient”.

Activists say this has bred an environment where women’s lives are seen as less valuable — and where men can get away with murder.

“Women are hunted like birds here, and [the politicians] are just watching,” said Gulsum Kav, founder of We Will Stop Femicides, a Turkish women’s rights organisation. “I don’t believe the international community realises the seriousness of femicide in Turkey.”

This is happening at the same time as Erdogan is pushing his Islamist agenda – most notably with the recent decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque. It's almost as if the two are related in some way.

That international social media campaign, encouraging women across the world to post black-and-white pictures of themselves in memory of female victims of violence, lost its focus for a while:

As the hashtags were translated and shared in other languages and western celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria and even Ivanka Trump picked up on the trend, the original context appears to have been lost on most users, morphing into a lighthearted – if directionless – display of female solidarity.

Some, like Nigella Lawson, have realised their mistake: “I have only just found out that this challenge was originally meant to draw attention to the growing number of murders of women in Turkey, and am mortified didn’t know when I posted. It seems inappropriate now, and hardly fitting for the serious and terrible issue of femicide. I apologise”. 

Nothing yet from Ivanka Trump, but we live in hope.

Here we go again:

Labour MP Rosie Duffield has denied allegations that she is transphobic, after a row erupted following her comments about a cervical cancer campaign.The debate started last night on Twitter after Ms Duffield commented on a CNN tweet about new American Cancer Society guidelines that state: “Individuals with a cervix are now recommended to start cervical cancers screening at 25 and continue through age 65, with HPV testing every five years.”She liked Piers Morgan’s reply ‘Do you mean women?’ After being flooded with complaints, Duffield added: “I’m a ‘transphobe’ for knowing that only women have a cervix….?!”

The JK Rowling saga started with a similar comment on basic female biology, as I recall. On seeing a message aimed at "people who menstruate", she replied "I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?". Now it's Rosie Duffield's turn to provide a biology lesson which doesn't meet with trans approval.

The people at Labour Campaign for Trans Rights are horrified: 

We in the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights are shocked by the comments made by Rosie Duffield today. To insist that “only women have a cervix” denies the existence of trans men and many nonbinary people. Not all women have cervixes, and not everyone who has a cervix is a woman.

Inclusive language harms nobody and costs little; it is a simple act of support for trans people in a political culture that is increasingly hostile towards us. The level of hostility that exists towards something as basic and harmless as inclusive language is representative of this climate of intense transphobia.

Labour MPs partaking in this right-wing campaign to marginalise, exclude and oppress trans people is unacceptable if we are to continue calling ourselves the party of equality. Moreover, it is contrary to the socialist principles of equality and liberation and represents a deep failing of that MPs responsibility to their transgender constituents.

We expect the party whips to take this forward, and the Labour Complaints Team to take forward the numerous complaints we know of already.

We need education and engagement to build understanding and solidarity towards trans people at every level of the party; including MPs, the leadership, party staff, and ordinary CLP members….

They want understanding and solidarity but only on their terms, while completely failing to understand how petty and vindictive they sound.

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tyle=”font-size: 11pt”>Hertfordshire police received backlash for failing to reveal a critical detail, hindering an investigation that the lead investigator herself had acknowledged was “highly complex and challenging.”

Barrister Kama Melly QC said: Being attacked sexually in the street is a terrifying experience and all victims are entitled to a proper police investigation. The police know that the best way to find that perpetrator is by circulating an accurate description promptly and efficiently. Descriptions of suspects have never in my experience taken into account political tensions or personal sensibilities.This victim, like all victims, is entitled to a robust investigation – I fail to see how such an inadequate description of this suspect assists in bringing this suspect to justice.

brecht in the JC:

Arts organisations have sent me copies of a questionnaire they are expected to fill out about their staff before they can pass the first threshold for subsidy. The questions are so brutally personal that anywhere but the public sector they’d get the interrogator charged with privacy violation. But this is Whitehall and we’re talking money, so here’s what arts managers are required to disclose.

“Please select your gender identity”. There are four options: “Female (including trans women), Male (including trans men), Non-binary (e.g. androgyne)” and “prefer not to say”. Some applicants cross out the last line and write “I’ve never looked”. Seriously, though, does Whitehall need to know?

Next question: “Is your gender identity different to the sex you were assigned at birth?” Well, who can remember that? If it weren’t for the circumcision, I’d be stumped for an answer.

“Please select your sexual orientation,” the form continues, with a whole ice-cream menu of options that I won’t splash across your Friday-night dinner-table for fear of mixing one dubious streak with another. I’m advising colleagues to write in mango with raspberry ripple, which seems vaguely neutral and even a little creative.

But this is where it gets distinctly sticky and a touch sinister for Jews. “Please select your ethnicity,” demands the Arts Council. Eighteen different options are available, starting with White British, White Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller and Any Other White Background. Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi are three separate ethnicities, on grounds I cannot understand. Are Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands different on ethnic grounds, or just historically so?

Black Caribbean, I see, is not the same as “Black and White Caribbean” and the word “Arab” covers up a multitude of hostilities, religious and territorial. I wouldn’t say it aloud in my Iranian grocer’s store. Most shocking to my eye, however, is that, among 18 dominant ethnicities in the arts of England, there is no designation on the form for a person of Jewish ancestry.

If Jews are not ethnic, what are we? We come from all over the world with a religion that divides us rather than unites and a civilisation that is more distinct and diverse than any other on the list. Yet, when it comes to dishing out Rishi’s dosh, Jews are the ethnicity that dare not speak its name.

A gentile friend who knows the official mind better than I do says “well, Jews come under Any Other White Background”, but we don’t, do we? There are Jews whose skin is darker than Wiley’s and whose music is way out of harmony with European tonality. There are Jews of every tongue and nation, every shade of Jewish opinion. The refusal to recognise Jews as an ethnic group is an act of blatant prejudice, and it may run deeper than we think….

Well, as Wiley knows, Jews are all wealthy lawyers, exploiting artists of other ethnicities. No subsidy needed for them….

ing credibility. Finally it seems ordinary citizens are waking up to the offline reality of online identity politics – let’s hope Scotland gets the memo before articles like this one become criminalised.

Sarah Vaughan, live in Sweden, 1964. Classy as ever:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc0mL1ro0W4&w=550&h=309]

With Kirk Stuart (piano), Charles "Buster" Williams (bass), and Georges Hughes (drums). 

I think we need some help from Wikipedia here:

"Baubles, Bangles & Beads" is a popular song from the 1953 musical Kismet, credited to Robert Wright and George Forrest. Like all the music in that show, the melody was based on works by Alexander Borodin, in this case the second theme of the second movement of his String Quartet in D. The "Kismet" setting maintains the original's 3/4 waltz rhythm; pop music settings change the rhythm to a moderate four-beat accompaniment. Jazz musicians are especially drawn to the song's beguiling melody and advanced harmonic structure. The familiar AA'BA+Coda structure of the song is energized by a key change up a major third interval for every section; the transition is marked by a bracing harmonic progression from the central major key of one section to the tritone minor key of the following section. Jazz players and singers have enjoyed the musical challenges of this song for decades.

The best-selling version of the song was recorded by Peggy Lee on September 16, 1953…

And here is Ms Lee, from 1959. More on the louche side, I'd say.

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ent space."…

Then, claiming to have put "anything remotely near considered antisemitic to one side", the journalist writes that "not too many seem prepared to vocalise their consternation for some of the recurring themes Wiley believes is the stranglehold one community seems to have over another in particular relation but not confined to, the music business."

Later in the article, Mr Campbell writes: "There is no way to put this all in one nutshell but the hypothesis that you need to get a Jewish lawyer in order to progress in the music business may be a complete fallacy (I haven’t done the numbers, looking into the correlation in respect of who is and isn’t successful with or without one), but yet it remains.

"I’ve never seen anyone Jewish refute or confirm this (maybe there was never a need felt to do so), but maybe, it’s a discussion that needs to be had?"

Really? 

At one stage in the interview Wiley suggests "Slavery hasn’t stopped it’s just dressed up in a million pound record deal.”
 
Questioned over what his issue with the Jews he has worked with is, Wiley then tells the newspaper: “The things that need to change is the way that the system was set up, why all of these families are rich, or all of these people have heritage, not just England, like, worldwide.”

“They still see us as slaves. Slavery hasn’t stopped it’s just dressed up in a million pound record deal and it’s dressed up in trainer deals, nice shoes and it’s dressed up as come over here …."

Complaining that even successful black artists "making these people millions and trillions, and then at the end of the black kids career he hasn’t even got a property" Wiley adds, "they have got ten properties and this and that and their kids have got wages to go to school forever. It’s set up so that they win and we lose.”

So "Britain's Favourite Black Newspaper" publishes an interview in which Wiley is allowed to repeat his antisemitic slurs, and they can't manage any sort of rebuttal. In fact they wonder if perhaps he's on to something. "Maybe, it’s a discussion that needs to be had?" 

That, to put it mildly, is disappointing.

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