hes….
Director of the National Security Office Chang Ho-jin, in a briefing, said, “We have decided to take measures that North Korea will find hard to endure,” in response to the provocations. He described the trash balloon launches and GPS jamming as “low-grade provocations unimaginable from a normal country.”
Julie Burchill in the Spectator:
In a decade’s time, what we widely recognise as feminists – people who put women’s rights at the centre of their concerns – may no longer exist in the Labour party, so widespread is the adoption of trans ideology. Labour is now the only major political party in the UK never to have had a woman leader and the way things are going, it’s entirely likely that the first one will have a penis.
The grim reality of rural life in North Korea, from the Daily NK:
People living in farming communities in South Pyongan Province are suffering extreme hardship, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in the province said Wednesday that life is “indescribably hard” in rural parts of the province, including Kangdong and Songchon counties. “Local residents are doing everything they can to escape their hardships, but they are desperate as the situation is not improving at all,” he said.
People living in rural South Pyongan Province have struggled to maintain their livelihoods since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, more and more families are barely surviving on water, without even gruel to eat. They are doing everything they can to overcome this crisis, focusing on small-scale farming to feed their hungry stomachs. But the source said they are frustrated by the reality they face of mounting debt with no improvement in their lives.
“In farming villages today, most people survive on gruel made from grass from the hillside and a handful of corn powder, but many families can’t even afford that,” the source said. “When you see how people live in the farming communities, it’s hard to believe that people actually live like that.
“People live tenaciously by cultivating their small private fields just for a spoonful of rice, but it’s like pouring water into a sieve,” he continued, adding: “This is because they borrow everything they need to farm, from seeds to fertilizer, at high interest rates, so when fall comes, they have almost nothing left after paying off their debts.”
According to the source, a 40-year-old Kangdong County resident said he currently survives on “grass collected from the hillsides” while farming.” “Living without food or even a penny to my name is a living death. And I have no choice but to live on money borrowed at high interest rates. I’ve tasted bitterness and cried tears of blood because of the high interest, but people like me who have nothing are still grateful. Since we’re struggling, there’s not much else we can do.”
A resident of Songchon County in his 50s said that his entire family “would have starved to death if it weren’t for the grass in the mountains.” He said that all grasses are edible now “because grass isn’t poisonous before Dano. But he added, “Even that’s a struggle. Everyone’s busy preparing to gather grass.”
The man went on to say that some people “pick grass all day, from morning to evening” and that people who do not know this “would think that the animals have eaten all the grass.” He added: “People work hard on their farms, hoping there will be light at the end of the tunnel, holding on tenaciously, but the future looks bleak.”
Havana, Cuba, ca. 1904. "Courtyard of Hotel Florida, Calle Obispo."
[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]
Kathleen Stock in the Telegraph welcomes Kemi Badenoch's latest moves to clarify the Equality Act – but why has it taken the Tories so long?
Part of the reason must be that they were amongst its principal architects. Far from shoring up the Equality Act in favour of single-sex services where needed, Maria Miller MP set the ball rolling to dismantle them, chairing a scandalously one-sided Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into what was deemed “Transgender Equality” in 2016. This recommended that males with Gender Recognition Certificates be allowed into woman-only spaces and services without restriction, and implied that in many cases males without certificates should be granted access too.
Then, in 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May initiated the pursuit of “streamlining and demedicalising” the process for acquiring a Gender Recognition Certificate – something that was manifestly bound to cause further interference with the terms of the Equality Act in practice. Three years later, Nokes launched another inquiry into “Reform of the Gender Recognition Act”, once again recommending loosening the restrictions on who could legally change gender as an outcome.
Successive leaders after May have been utterly cowardly about facing up to her damaging legacy in this area, pretending not to notice as Stonewall-backed law became embedded into both public and private institutions on an epic scale. Within only a few years, prisons, hospital wards, swimming pools, rape crisis services, schools, universities, domestic violence shelters, and nightclubs have all rewritten their policies, permitting male strangers to get up close and personal with females as they undress, use the bathroom, or sleep.
Female complainants have been vilified for being “transphobic” – sometimes even by Conservative MPs. For the Party to address this mare’s nest only now – advertising on social media yesterday that “we know what a woman is”, in supposed contrast to Starmer’s Labour – is rich, to say the least. There is no doubt that the Conservative Party knew all along what a woman was. Whether it cared, is another matter entirely.
Yes, there's every reason to be concerned about the prospects of a Labour government, given its general capture by the gender cult and its grim record on women's rights, but it's all been happening under the Tories – and it's a little late now for them to start suddenly making the right noises.
From the Daily NK:
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in North Hwanghae Province told the Daily NK on Wednesday that two high school boys in Sariwon’s Mangum district were publicly tried on May 23 for “inciting the corrupt and depraved spirit of capitalism by distributing songs and photos of the puppet state [South Korea].” One of the boys was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor and the other to life imprisonment.
The trial was held in a conference room at the Sariwon court and was attended by the heads of all the neighborhood watch units in the Mangum area, as well as school staff and ordinary citizens.
The two boys had often played songs and videos of South Korean idol singers on USB flash drives without their parents’ knowledge. They were so obsessed with the songs that they sang the tunes and performed the dances at school.
Even when they were not in school, the two boys carelessly sang South Korean songs and performed dances in the presence of people from their neighborhood watch group. Their behavior rubbed off on other teenagers in their neighborhood when they were reported by a state security informant and put on trial.
“This public trial was held with the purpose of sounding an alarm for all of Sariwon. While the public’s attention was focused on the trial, the authorities denounced the two boys for their treacherous affection for the ‘puppet state,’ knowing full well that South Korea is an enemy state and not the same nation as North Korea. The authorities concluded by saying that the two boys can’t be allowed to live in the same society as other North Koreans,” the source said.
The mothers of the two boys were also brought in and kept their heads bowed throughout the trial. When their sentences were read, the mothers let out terrible screams and fainted on the spot.
“Those attending the trial had assumed that the defendants, being teenage boys, would receive at most a few years in juvenile detention, so they were stunned by the harsh sentences handed down at the end of the trial. Many were confused as to why the boys had to be punished so harshly when it wasn’t as if they had killed anyone, and lamented that the world is gradually becoming more brutal,” the source said.
Well, the North Korean world, certainly…
he last half-decade?
Whatever the reason, it’s some sort of tribute to the Eye that when it looks the other way, a scandal can fester for years. Ian Hislop’s only achievement during this time was ignoring the elephant in the room, even as it trampled every value the Eye was meant to uphold.
on by the war in Ukraine, was “not only escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula by advancing the nuclear and missile capabilities of North Korea, but also affecting the battlefield in Europe.”
“This means that the crisis on the Korean Peninsula is no longer a problem limited to the Korean Peninsula, but rather a problem for all of us,” he said.
He said that North Korea, in return for providing Russia with weapons, was getting money and technology to expand its military power.
“North Korea’s reckless development of (a) nuclear and missile program which can strike all countries represented here poses an existential threat for us.”
Jack Delano, March 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. Provident Hospital, a Negro institution. Laboratory technician."
[Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]
Shocking. "Woman adult female human". "Man adult male human". And on the first day of Pride month too!
No place for this in Beeston.
This goes against the spirit of postbox toppers which aims to bring communities together & not divide.
Conscious decision to place this on the 1st day of Pride month 😡 🌈
Thanks to the people who went to take it swiftly down. pic.twitter.com/zOAgSUwHjk
— Broxtowe Labour Councillors 🌹 (@broxtowelabour) June 1, 2024