Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Cannon fodder

    A North Korean defector talks to the Daily NK about the grim reality of life for NK soldiers sent to Russia – and his belief that Pyongyang "doesn’t want a single soldier coming back alive from the battlefield":

    There have been multiple reports about North Korean troops in Russia suffering casualties during engagements with Ukrainian troops. Some are arguing that the North Korean troops in Russia amount to cannon fodder and that the North Korean authorities do not want them to return alive.

    “There’s a possibility that soldiers currently on deployment to Russia didn’t even know where they were headed until right before they left the country,” said a North Korean defector identified as Chung (a pseudonym) in a recent interview with Daily NK. Prior to his defection, Chung was a soldier who had been sent to Russia to work at a construction site.

    “When North Korean soldiers are sent to work on construction sites in Russia, their overseas missions are referred to as ‘deployments,’ not ‘assignments’ inside the North Korean military. The soldiers themselves aren’t officially informed about their place of deployment until shortly before they depart,” Chung said.

    Based on his personal experience, Chung said that soldiers deployed to the war zone may have been chosen by the military, without getting any say in the matter….

    According to Chung, even crack troops trained in the special forces are likely to become cannon fodder if they are actually sent to the battlefield.

    “Even if we’re talking about elite special forces with the Storm Corps, all their training was done in mountainous areas, but the current fighting in Russia is taking place on wide-open plains. I doubt that even the North Korean government expects much combat proficiency from the soldiers it’s deploying to Russia,” he said.

    “North Korea doesn’t want a single soldier coming back alive from the battlefield. The leadership will think that returning soldiers aren’t helpful for maintaining the regime since they may tell others the truth about what they experienced, which would stir up negativity about the regime,” Chung remarked.

  • In Berlin

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    From the Telegraph:

    Jews and gay people should hide their identity in parts of Berlin with large Arab populations, the German capital’s police chief has warned.

    “There are areas of the city, we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly gay to be more careful,” said Barbara Slowik.

    “There are certain neighbourhoods where the majority of people of Arab origin live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups,” she said, adding that they were often “openly hostile towards Jews”.

  • The Amsterdam aftermath

    The Times of Israel on the debate in Holland after the Amsterdam violence, and the reluctance to discuss the religion and ethnicity of those who attacked the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans: 

    Dilan Yesilgoz, leader of the center-right liberal party, brings a unique perspective to the events in Amsterdam. She served as justice and security minister under former prime minister Mark Rutte, fought antisemitism as an MP, and started her political career on the Amsterdam city council.

    Yesilgoz was born in Ankara and is the daughter of Turkish immigrants. Like Kreuger, she noticed a tendency among left-leaning parties to avoid mentioning the ethnic or religious background of the attackers of November 7.

    “It’s bad enough that Jewish institutions like schools and synagogues need to be protected, but now youths are demanding to see citizens’ papers to check if they are Israeli or Jewish. If they are, they get beaten up,” Yesilgoz told The Times of Israel.

    “This is an absolute low point for Amsterdam and an example of bad integration of migrants into Dutch society. The attackers were probably of Moroccan background, and police are investigating this,” she claimed.

    Yesilgoz said such tiptoeing around identity has been a frustrating experience throughout her career.

    “I can speak freely about antisemitism among the extreme left and right, but as soon as I mention Islam as a motive, everybody freezes up and starts talking about exclusion and Islamophobia,” said Yesilgoz. “But how can you fight the problem if you’re not allowed to talk about it?”

    Sound familiar?

    Many Moroccan households receive their news on the Israel-Hamas conflict through satellite television stations in North Africa and the Middle East. Teachers in the Netherlands’s bigger cities often find it difficult to speak neutrally about the wars in Gaza and Lebanon to their Muslim students, who in some areas of Amsterdam form a majority in their classrooms.

    Although the city was home to the famous young Holocaust diarist Anne Frank before she perished at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, history teachers frequently find themselves unable to teach lessons on the Holocaust because of racist and sometimes aggressive reactions by their students.

    David Beesemer, chairman of Maccabi Netherlands and Europe, says Dutch Jews are “gravely concerned” that they will be targeted next….

    “It’s a disgrace that the city of Anne Frank has become world news because of violent antisemitism and the city council’s priority seems to be to blame Israelis or the government in The Hague,” said Yesilgoz, leader of the center-right liberal party. “Damn it, I’m a citizen of Amsterdam. Show me you can and want to guarantee my safety. Show us at least that you care.”

    Well OK, city of Anne Frank – but she was betrayed in the end. The Dutch had the worst record of protecting Jews of any country in German-occupied Western Europe.

  • Sentenced to death

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  • Two hostile states

    h Koreans are that bothered. They're doing fine, and the costs of reunification would be absolutely horrendous – never mind that China would probably intervene before that could happen, should there be a threat to the Kim dynasty. The worry now of course lies in the new concord with Russia, and the sending of some 10,000 North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine. What will the North Koreans get in return?

    Kim Jong-un likely has a new spring in his step with the way things are going. On the other hand North Korea's relations with China appear to be deteriorating – and that may be something they'll come to regret. It's also something that an astute US could use to their advantage. But Trump?? Who knows.

  • Displaying appropriate cultural sensitivity

    ed shoulders. There are no regular mass demonstrations through London, nor widespread solidarity campaigns on campuses. And despite the punishment of homosexuality, there are also no high profile “Queers for Iranians” groups waving placards. Support for the people of Iran remains excluded from the omnicause; oddly outside the sink hole that sucks in everything from sex workers’ rights to Gaza.

    It is hard not to suspect this is because of an uncomfortable blind spot on the left. Across the West, progressives have a morbid fear of being accused of “isms” or “phobias”. And there is of course a hierarchy; racism is the worst, closely followed by Islamophobia. Transphobia trumps homophobia. And everything has more kudos than boring old sexism which, after all, only impacts those who might be useful as surrogates for gay men.

    If Iran was a Christian theocracy, progressives would know who the enemy was. Yet there is a squeamishness about standing against obvious inhumanity when it comes wrapped in an amameh (Iranian clerical turban). Telling women what to wear, or blaming them when they are raped, is wrong. Unless the person doing it is a Muslim. Then one must display appropriate cultural sensitivity, decolonising one’s thoughts to avoid causing offence. Because if the great monolith of Muslims are alienated, they think, only whiteys will be left carrying Socialist Worker Party placards, and that would be a PR disaster. Such tokenism is, of course, offensive to everyone regardless of faith — not least to the Muslim women taking a stand against the brutality of the Iranian state.

    In brief: no Jews, so no outrage.

  • Putting trans rights above women’s rights

    s sued the council she used to work at after it removed female-only toilets in its office in favour of gender neutral ones.

    Sarah Holman, 56, said she was hounded out of the job she loved at Bracknell Forest Council after she complained to HR and management.

    Mrs Holman spent 12 years helping regenerate Bracknell but felt forced to hand in her notice after the council 'put trans rights above women's rights'.

    She said the council was also excessively promoting controversial gender ideology while not celebrating any other protected characteristic in the same way.

    Yet what left her 'outraged' was the council's suggestion that gender neutral toilets were not a risk as women could also be alone in the lifts and during meetings.

    Mrs Holman told MailOnline: 'I don't think it's right. For privacy and dignity reasons, I don't want to share a toilet with a man.

    'I had a miscarriage in a women's toilet. The majority of women need to spend more time in toilets based on our biology….

    Bracknell Forest Council's chief executive Susan Halliwell said: 'We are unable to comment on individual cases. However, the council is committed to creating a safe, inclusive, and supportive work environment for all our staff.

    'We take the safeguarding and wellbeing of our employees extremely seriously and have robust policies in place to promote equality and diversity across our organisation.'

    Always with the old "inclusivity" and "diversity" mantras: never any concern for women. I guess you don't get to be Bracknell Forest Council's chief executive by thinking for yourself.

    Crowd Justice fund-raiser here.

  • An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit

    On John Oliver's rant the other night, in protest at the suggestion that trans issues may have played a part in Trump's victory – "there's no evidence that trans girls are at an unfair advantage or pose a threat to safety in athletic competition".

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    Full text:

    Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video's for you. An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn't.

    According to the UN, female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to trans-identified men competing against them in women’s sporting categories. Girls have been ousted from teams to make way for boys. Women have suffered serious injury playing against trans-identified men (see Payton McNabb, mentioned below).

    Again and again I've come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points. With a straight face, the 'believe the science' guys will say 'actually, we don't yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls'. The 'be kind' crew can't see what the issue is. 'Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?'

    To prove to their progressive credentials – and (coincidentally, I'm sure) indemnify themselves against repercussions from cultural elites in the media, academia and publishing who've showed themselves more than ready to kick people to the kerb for failing to mouth the approved mantras – people with a lot to lose are currently prepared to make idiots of themselves. They'll stare unabashedly into a camera and insist that their audiences' eyeballs are incapable of seeing what's plain as day, and that there's something wrong with the great unwashed for believing that girls are being robbed of opportunities and put at physical risk.

    If you want to tell the world you're happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world's population, fair enough; you're allowed your opinion. But if you've just told girls they don't deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your 'edgy' closing joke.

  • Putin’s response

    Germany's Scholz call to Putin, "ending Western isolation over Ukraine":

    In a phone call that was swiftly criticised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Scholz urged Putin to pull his forces out of Ukraine and begin talks with Kyiv that would open the way for a "just and lasting peace", the German government said.

    That worked well.

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  • Swastikas in Ohio

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