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on. It was a calculated, ideological jihad. The hostages taken into Gaza were not merely bargaining chips; Hamas deliberately humiliated, tortured, and paraded them as trophies, demonstrating the same medieval barbarism that Isis once displayed. Yet there are those – like the authors of Understanding Hamas – who still seek to portray this organisation as a misunderstood political entity. Hamas has repeatedly stated that 7 October was not an aberration, but a blueprint. Its leaders have boasted that they will repeat such attacks again and again….

The West’s intellectual and academic class has indulged the illusion that Islamic terror groups like Hamas are products of oppression rather than theocratic, totalitarian movements. This naïveté –whether driven by ideological bias, cowardice, or wilful ignorance – has allowed jihadist ideology to flourish under the guise of “resistance.”

The simple truth is this: Hamas is not a liberation movement. It is not a political party. It is a genocidal jihadist organisation that exists solely to destroy Israel and kill Jews. It says so itself, acts on it, and has proven time and again that it will never stop until it is utterly dismantled.

And, as I've said, this refusal to see Hamas for what they are – a genocidal jihadist organisation – rather than some kind of heroic resistance movement, also governs the BBC's lamentable coverage of Gaza. 

heir case,… pic.twitter.com/qgJ7PSsOjU

— Darlington Nursing Union (@DarlingtonUnion) February 19, 2025

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Full text:

Enough is enough. The UK's biggest trade union @unisontheunion no longer supports women who don't want to undress in front of men at work. The Darlington Nurses have therefore faced no alternative but to start their own union to protect women in the workplace.

Their case, supported by the Christian Legal Centre, began when a man without warning, identifying as 'Rose' and backed by an NHS policy, began using the female changing room at Darlington Memorial Hospital.

The nurses raised concerns with HR, but instead of being supported, were told they needed to ‘broaden their mindset’ be more ‘inclusive’, 'compromise' and get 're-educated.'

The Darlington Nursing Union (DNU) is believed to be the first of its kind and has now been launched with three founding principles:

🚨Equality and respect for all workers regardless of their protected characteristics (including both gender reassignment and biological sex).

🚨Securing and defending workers’ rights, dignity and decency at the workplace (including in particular access to safe single-sex areas for changing and hygiene, and protecting women from inappropriate exposure to members of the opposite biological sex).

🚨The right to raise concerns about any genuine workplace issues without fear of retribution, and to have such concerns addressed promptly, constructively and reasonably.

The union is free and it can run alongside any other union membership. It is also not just for nurses and any healthcare professional can join.

If you are a worker who believes in biology, not trans ideology, and want women's spaces protected, don't suffer in silence, get in touch and join the Darlington Nursing Union (DNU).

Direct messages are open or contact info@darlingtonnursingunion.uk .

Courageous NHS Fife nurse, Sandie Peggie, has recently joined…

a bigot, a far-right conspiracist, a vicious bully, a racist; accused of having been radicalised online as though I were an 18-year-old incel, not a fiftysomething female book publisher; and told I was widely despised by my colleagues and everyone in the industry. These posts would copy in my employers and various staff networks at Hachette. They came from all sorts of people in and around publishing, some anonymous, some not, some who had themselves complained about being bullied online, and some with tens of thousands of followers. One of my most persistent critics was a self-styled publishing commentator who continued to be platformed by the industry at the London Book Fair and was appointed as a judge for the British Book Awards. She was in addition an enthusiastic advocate for a group of young people in publishing who set up a social media account, The Young Refuseniks, which they used to advertise their curation of a “blocklist” — crucially different from a blacklist, you see — which identified all the “transphobes” in the industry, so that people could be kept “safe” from us (because of course, I was on the list). After they realised that blacklists, sorry, blocklists, are considered somewhat problematic, the whole thing disappeared, but not before it had garnered a great deal of support from many in the business.

On and on it goes, the petty vindictiveness of the trans supporters – so sure of their virtue. A grim reminder of the state of the publishing world….

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It's almost – phallic and non-phallic – as though they're talking about men and women.

But those trans activists saw what was going on:

A group of transgender activists have vowed to try and crash a “women’s night” at a San Francisco bathhouse after the spa owners introduced one session a month where only biologically-born females can go nude.

Archimedes Banya — a clothing-optional Russian spa — created a “Cultural & Religious Women’s Night” specifically to cater to clients who “observe practices requiring a female-only environment based on sex assigned at birth,” according to its website.

The bathhouse runs another night — dubbed “Inclusive Women’s Night” — that is open to all females, including trans women….

But activists were quick to accuse the spa owners of enacting anti-trans and exclusionary policies — with some vowing to still try and attend the night set aside for those who may adhere to religious or cultural rules.

Well of course. Women can't ever be allowed to have a night for themselves.

about people like Lindsey Graham, who say that Trump gave us a master class in representing the interest of America.

No. Trump gave us a master class in moral nihilism, and Lindsey Graham gave us a master class in selling one’s soul to the devil….

Worth reading in full. 

I don't think it's of very much use to speculate what hold Putin may or may not have on Trump. It's more that, at bottom, they share the same understanding of the world, where people – little people – don't matter, and the powerful and strong get to decide, just because they're powerful and strong.

hile terms like ‘dragon’ or ‘king’ are obvious examples of Western culture,” the Bureau stated in its decision to punish the teenagers.

“Since these teenagers are all children of senior military security officers, the Bureau concluded that mere self-criticism statements would be insufficient. They notified the Socialist Patriotic Youth League branch at the teenagers’ school about the behavior and requested special measures,” the source said.

The teenagers subsequently faced harsh criticism from the Youth League’s school branch and were required to write multiple self-criticism statements over several days.

Their punishment extended beyond this – they were also ordered to perform two months of unpaid labor, with the case escalated to the provincial Youth League branch….

The punishment shocked both the families and the broader community.

“Such incidents rarely happen in Chongjin,” the source noted.

“The parents are experiencing severe distress watching their children subjected to forced labor. Local residents were stunned to learn that young boys could be forced into unpaid labor.

“The teenagers themselves suffered the greatest shock. Having always believed their powerful parents in military security would protect them, they were terrified and astonished that this could happen to them,” the source added.

ined by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s, the same Muslim Brotherhood funded and supported by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

Yet the LSE Middle East Centre desperately clings to the university’s Code of Practice on Free Speech:

“We endeavour to provide a platform to facilitate discourse on contemporary matters by encouraging critical debate, within the law, where the views of all parties are treated with respect.”

The views of Christians, Jews, and other religious people do not appear – at time of writing – to figure in this event, nor do they figure much in academia generally.

For instance, a session at the National Union of Students conference voted this year to ban its Jewish student group. Calls to “globalise the intifada” sprang up on university campuses around Britain – a call which the largest university lecturers’ union (among others) also backed.

We must urgently save academia from such racist, anti-inclusive incitement to violence. We must stop subsidising substandard degree courses on which paid agitators get to spread their poison and we must stop handing out qualifications like candy from institutions that were once beacons of intellectual excellence and honest inquiry to people who couldn’t find Israel on a map.

Our esteemed halls of learning have become, in the words of Professor James Orr “ivory asylums” that seem to care more about the diversity of immutable characteristics than diversity of opinion and genuine intellectual debate, let alone the truth of empirical evidence, historic fact and contemporary data.

And so, Black Lives Matter, except in Africa where black Christians are being decapitated and young girls kidnapped as sex slaves.

LGBTQ+ rights matter, except in Islamic countries that execute homosexuals (in Yemen you can be crucified for being gay).

And women should always be believed, unless they’re Jewish, in which case even videos of grotesque sexual torture, videos made by their torturers themselves and posted by them live on social media, must be Israeli propaganda.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

George Orwell, 1984

Peter Brookes in the Times this morning:

Times lead:

President Trump said he found it “easier” to deal with Russia than Ukraine as he claimed that President Putin was “doing what anybody else would do” by intensifying his bombing of the war-torn country.

The US president, who has been widely criticised for his willingness to trust Putin and see the conflict from Russia’s perspective, added that the Kremlin leader “wants to end the war … and I think he’s going to be more generous than he has to be”

The Kremlin's most useful idiot.

n style=”font-size: 11pt”>People don't fall for this bullshit any more.

Now journalists should no longer feel cowed into toeing the activists’ line. It is critical that all reporters seeking to report the science are not intimidated into falsifying reality or into fooling their readership. I hope, too, that this IPSO decision has repercussions beyond the industry. I know of academics who have been furiously rebuked within their profession for going down the “biological male” route, even when they are guilty of nothing more than the faithful recording of facts. So, let us throw out the reflexive accusations of transphobia once and for all. This, ultimately, is about honest and transparent reporting of an issue at the heart of fair play. “Transphobic dog whistle”? How about just settling for the truth?

And abandoning this new Lysekoism once and for all.

d has long been a trailblazer on LGBT rights, made the comments on his new podcast.

"I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that," Newsom told conservative figure Charlie Kirk. "It is an issue of fairness, it's deeply unfair. We've got to own that. We've got to acknowledge it."

Newsom's change of tone comes amid a debate within his party over the extent to which cultural factors played a role in their resounding defeat in November, when Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Note how the problem is framed (by the BBC here) as banning trans people from female sport. The issue is: banning men from female sport – but they never say that.

Anyway, other Dems don't seem too keen. Apart from Newsom, they've learnt nothing.

A number of Democrats quickly denounced the governor's comments.

"We woke up profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks," a statement from California's LGBT legislative caucus read….

Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called Newsom's remarks about trans athletes "disgusting".

Pramila Jayapal, a left-wing Democrat representing a district in the north-western state of Washington, told Politico that her party should not "take the bait and give into their anti-trans people rhetoric".

Newsom makes a strange champion of sex realism, mind:

Newsom made the state the first sanctuary for transgender youth and protected school curriculums that included LGBT history.

Last year he signed legislation that made California the first state to bar school districts from requiring staff to notify parents if their child changed gender identity.

Making an early bid for leader of the Dems? Well, at least he's now woken up and smelled the coffee, however cynical his move may be. And there doesn't seem to be anyone else. Kamala Harris has disappeared off the face of the earth. Tim Walz was stumped yesterday when CNN asks him who leads the Democratic party….