Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Watching “impure recorded material”

    A North Korean betrayal. From the Daily NK:

    Police in Pyongsong city, South Pyongan province, arrested two young North Korean men in June 2026. A friend who had watched banned South Korean dramas with them turned himself in first, overcome with guilt, a source told Daily NK.

    A source in South Pyongan province said on Wednesday that the Ministry of Social Security, North Korea’s police agency, arrested the two men at the end of last month. Officers accused them of secretly watching a stack of what North Korean authorities call “impure recorded material,” a term the state uses for foreign videos it deems politically corrupting. The stack included a South Korean drama that has recently exploded in popularity among young North Koreans.

    The two men had been close friends since their school days. They had secretly watched videos smuggled in from outside North Korea for years, the source said. In mid-June, feeling it was a shame to keep the show to themselves, they invited a third close friend to watch with them.

    The drama the three watched has been circulating by word of mouth among North Korean youth under the nickname “The King’s Chef.” The source said it appears to be a North Korean name for “The Tyrant’s Chef,” a series that was a major hit in South Korea last year.

    The show follows lavish royal cuisine alongside a tender, tension-filled romance between its two leads. North Korean youth reportedly describe it as so addictive that “once you start watching, you can’t look away.”

    The case broke out just as the drama was spreading rapidly among young North Koreans, the source said. Some have started recreating dishes shown in the show. Others have started imitating the polished way its characters speak.

    The break in the case came from the third friend, the one who had been invited to watch. Guilt overwhelmed him, and he turned himself in to police.

    That friend had learned the other two had secretly watched outside videos together for years, the source said. He worried the habit would eventually catch up with them, and that he would be implicated along with them if it did. He spent several anxious days weighing what to do, then went to police.

    He confessed his own wrongdoing first and pleaded for leniency, the source said. He then reported the other two men for what North Korean authorities call “non-socialist” behavior, a catchall term for conduct seen as ideologically deviant. He also agreed to help police stage a raid. At the end of June, he arranged a day to watch the illegal videos with the two friends again. Police officers burst in mid-viewing and arrested the pair.

    Police released the friend who turned himself in without further consequences, the source said. The other two men now face house searches and intensive questioning.

    “The case is still under investigation,” the source said. “The families of the two arrested men fear their entire households could be expelled from Pyongsong and sent to a poorer, more remote part of the country because of this.”

    The two men themselves face a much worse fate than that.

    Given the undoubted allure of South Korean culture to the poor North Koreans, whose only culture is Kim-worship, it’s a shame that the South Koreans don’t make more of an effort to smuggle video content across the border. But yes, easy for me to say: I’m not faced with an insane nuclear-armed regime just fifty miles or so from Seoul.

  • Intent on imposing gender identity doctrine on society

    The LGB Alliance’s Bev Jackson has her say:

    Amnesty International is one of the many organizations that have strayed so far from their original principles as to be now diametrically opposed to them. It was founded in 1961 by a British lawyer named Peter Benenson. In his article “The Forgotten Prisoners”, he coined the phrase “prisoner of conscience” and asked people all over the world to write letters to demand the release of people locked up for their political or religious beliefs. Millions heeded his call. What a wonderful initiative it was.

    The NGO currently using the name “Amnesty International” is another organization altogether. It not only subscribes to gender identity doctrine but seeks to elevate this set of beliefs above all other causes.

    Three foundational assertions underpin the movement that is intent on imposing gender identity doctrine on society. One is “trans rights are human rights”, the second (a derivative of the first) is “trans women are women”, and the third is that there is no conflict between “trans rights” and women’s rights. All these beliefs are – though sometimes sincerely held, as are religious beliefs — demonstrably false. They are articles of faith recited and propagated by activists whose education is saturated in a soup of ideological orthodoxy….

    In short: how gender ideology rots everything it touches.

  • “The boss of Amnesty should be seriously considering her position”

    The pressure on Amnesty continues to build. There was another report, it seems. From the Times:

    Kerry Moscogiuri, the head of Amnesty International UK, should “seriously consider her position” after a second report by the charity unearthed by The Times revealed that “gender-critical” feminists were presented as anti-rights.

    The report by the British chapter of the global charity claims gender-critical people — those who believe a woman is a biological female and a man is a biological male — represent “a movement against the rights of women and LGBTI people”. 

    Published in May, and available on Amnesty’s website, the document states “the growth and influence of the GC [gender–critical] movement” is “worrying” and has been normalised by the media. It also calls on journalists to “qualify GC and explain that it is an ideological stance that seeks to restrict the rights of trans people” in their reporting.

    A reversal of the truth. The gender-critical movement is pointing out the unscientific nonsense behind the misogynistic and homophobic ideology of the trans movement, which seeks to restrict the rights of women.. Amnesty here are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

    The revelations will heap pressure on Moscogiuri, the chief executive, after a week in which JK Rowling, on behalf of the organisation Beira’s Place, pledged to fund legal actions against the charity over a different report, which also alleged gender-critical people were “anti-rights”. It has since been withdrawn. 

    On Thursday, Maya Forstater of the human rights organisation Sex Matters said: “Amnesty tries to suggest that its recent report containing defamatory remarks about dozens of human-rights organisations that focus on sex-based rights was some sort of lapse in its usually balanced and fair-minded processes. Far from it: Amnesty has been misrepresenting and denigrating anyone who recognises the biological and legal importance of the two sexes for several years now.”

    It’s the new Stonewall. Well, not so new. It’s been Stonewall for years, but under the disguise of a humanitarian charity.

    Meghan Gallacher, the Scottish Conservative equalities spokeswoman, said: “This latest damning revelation is proof that this anti-feminist culture is embedded within Amnesty. Those at the top of this once respected organisation are clearly hellbent on shutting down those who are standing up for women’s safety.

    “Bosses have serious questions to answer as to why legitimate concerns are being brandished in this way and there being a concerted effort to tarnish the views of women’s groups. In light of this, the boss of Amnesty should be seriously considering her position.”

    Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour MP for Gower, in Wales, tabled an early day motion to “condemn [Amnesty International UK’s] depiction and listing of organisations defending the rights of women, girls, children, and gay and bisexual people as anti-rights on the basis of them being gender critical”. 

    Antoniazzi said: “They are using their platform and their power to silence women. I’m not having it, that’s not okay. I would like them to fully retract what they’ve done and put it in the bin.”

    Added, from JK Rowling:

    Amnesty UK was already smearing feminists as ‘anti-rights’ back in May, according to @thetimes. It appears that, far from being an accidental slip up or an editorial error, the latest defamatory report accurately represents Amnesty UK’s deep-seated hostility to all organisations that believe sex is real and important in contexts such as same sex attraction and healing after sexual violence and trauma.

    Those who’ve been defamed are owed an explanation of why Amnesty claimed to have withdrawn the report because of its ‘language’ when, per @thetimes article, it had already expressed exactly the same beliefs, in the same language, months previously.

    Many of the organisations Amnesty has attacked are grassroots campaigners with a tiny fraction of a gigantic, well-funded international NGO’s resources. The defamatory report has already had serious consequences for a service supporting women at the most vulnerable time of their lives, as detailed by Beira’s Place lawyers in the legal letter sent two days ago. The withdrawing of the report cannot undo the harm it has already done and is continuing to do.

    If Amnesty is under the illusion that the women’s, children’s and gay rights organisations it has attacked will be unwilling to go to court, they have made yet another massive error of judgement. They underestimate both the solidarity that exists between the targeted organisations and my willingness to support legal action, not just on behalf of Beira’s Place, but for all women’s and LGB organisations falsely branded ‘anti-rights.’

  • A family of 18

    From the JC:

    A family of 18 from Gaza has won the legal right to come to the UK as refugees under human rights legislation, despite the Home Office refusing their application.

    A Gaza-born mother-of-three, who was previously granted asylum, was refused permission to bring her extended family with her to Britain, but appealed the decision in the courts on human rights grounds.

    An immigration tribunal has now overturned the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood’s, decision and ruled that the woman can bring her relatives, arguing that refusing entry would breach her right to family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

    The landmark ruling, first reported by the Daily Mail, means that the woman and her children can be joined by both of her parents; a brother, his wife and four children; a sister and four children; and another sister, her husband and three children in Britain, and will have access to public funds.

    The whole family was granted anonymity by the tribunal.

    Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, warned that the ruling risked “opening the floodgates to thousands of Palestinians claiming asylum in the UK”.

    Philp told the JC that the home secretary “must urgently appeal this shameful decision to a higher court”.

    “Why should immigrants – from Gaza or anywhere else – be allowed to bring their entire extended family to the UK?” he added.

    “We cannot have open borders with huge numbers of migrants exploiting human rights laws to come here and stay here.

    “This is yet more evidence that shows why the Immigration Tribunal must be abolished and why we must leave the ECHR.”

    Yep.

  • Nigerian devastation

    So this just happened in Nigeria.- more Christians slaughtered by Islamists:

    The man who has given voice to the devastation of 100 million Christians had to bury his own kith and ken on Monday.

    Pastor Ezekiel Dachomo, days after renewing a call for self-defense amid what he described as a pitiful response to genocide, buried nine members of his extended family killed by Fulani gunmen. They made clear as they broke into his relatives’ compound Saturday night that they would make him pay for speaking out…..

    The attack in Kum has once again raised concerns over civilian safety and what local leaders describe as a pattern of targeted killings aimed at land seizure.

    “For far too long, the indigenous peoples of Plateau State and, indeed, other law-abiding citizens have borne the unbearable burden of relentless terror,” Dalyop said during a press conference in Jos on July 15. “Our communities have become theatres of bloodshed; our ancestral lands have been violently invaded; our villages reduced to desolation; our farms abandoned; our economic life strangulated; and thousands of our people condemned to lives of displacement, fear and uncertainty.

    “Generations that ought to be building prosperity have, instead, buried loved ones, fled from their ancestral homes, and struggled merely to survive elsewhere,” he added.

    “The tragedy of Plateau is no longer an isolated security concern. It has become a protracted humanitarian catastrophe and a profound moral challenge to our collective conscience.”

    A member of the House of Representatives, Fom Dalyop Chollom, described the attack as a declaration of war.

    “What has happened is sad,” Chollom said during the mass funeral in Kum. “It is a clear manifestation of the fact that these people have declared war on the Christian natives.”

    Is the Church of England listening? Well no. They’re too busy condeming Israel, with Jew hatred now happily back in the pulpit.

  • Men’s talk

    Jonathan Sacerdoti, in the Spectator, on the lads – Andy Burnham and Gary Lineker – sharing a chat about Jews and genocide:

    Andy Burnham says political leaders must take clear positions quickly. He has certainly found time to take one on Gaza. First came the pre-recorded apology for Labour’s response to the war. Then came yesterday’s conversation with Gary Lineker, released through Lineker’s production company, in which Burnham again presented himself as the man prepared to say what his party supposedly previously lacked the courage to say.

    His choice of interlocutor tells us almost as much as the answers. Lineker, a former footballer and presenter whose interventions on Israel have hardly established him as a searching authority on Middle Eastern affairs, left the BBC after sharing a post about Zionism illustrated with the image of a rat, imagery with an obvious and repellent history. His apology was rejected by leading Jewish representatives as belated and inadequate. Burnham nevertheless decided that this was the setting in which to discuss Gaza, international law and Britain’s future policy towards Israel.

    This after his Gaza apology: that Labour didn’t come down hard enough on Israel – yes, Israel – after the Hamas pogrom of October 7th.

    Burnham appears to have calculated that the gullible or malicious parts of his party and the electorate must be placated. He may believe that apologising for Labour’s earlier caution, punishing Israel more aggressively and performing moral anguish over Gaza will recover Muslim voters and quiet the party’s extreme left. Even that cold political calculation is probably mistaken. Activist movements built around escalating demands rarely reward partial compliance. Starmer’s reward of recognising ‘statehood’ following the Palestinian massacre of Israelis didn’t help him survive in office. And Burnham declined to accuse Israel of genocide – though he let Lineker use the word with no challenge – prompting the Greens and the harder left to immediately complain that he had failed their test. Faced with a hungry crocodile, he has decided to feed it a banana.

  • Comedy line-up

    Good lord. Is this real? Washed-up comedians for a washed-up charity…..

  • The work of blinkered activists

    Janice Turner in the Times, on Amnesty:

    It’s a bleak irony that Amnesty International, founded in 1961 to support those punished by dictatorships for holding the “wrong” opinions, is now black-listing people for believing sex is real.

    Among the groups and charities accused of spreading hatred in Amnesty’s recent report, A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK, was Beira’s Place, an Edinburgh rape crisis centre. To designate a refuge for female victims of male violence “anti rights” suggests you don’t believe women deserve any rights at all. It is also somewhat stupid to defame a service founded and wholly funded by JK Rowling, a billionaire.

    Clearly no competent lawyer read the report before publication, which is why it was hastily taken down. Amnesty’s reputation, like Stonewall’s, has free-fallen. In the Supreme Court last year after the For Women Scotland judgment, I saw a gaggle of bemused-looking people. It was the Amnesty team whose shoddy, legally illiterate intervention, which argued no single-sex space has a right to exist, had spectacularly failed.

    This report is the work of blinkered activists who care nothing for genuine human rights abuse in Russia, Afghanistan or China; illiberal commissars who share the instincts of the Stasi, not its victims. To think of all those brilliant, moving Secret Policeman’s Ball concerts. (I bought the LPs.) Today Amnesty is like looking into the eyes of a beloved old friend and realising they’ve lost their mind.

  • What if we’d kept attacking?

    Well yes….

    Thomas Tuchel got it badly wrong.”

    “You’re one goal away from a World Cup final and instead of finishing Argentina off, you retreat, defend your own box and invite Lionel Messi to dictate the game. Against the greatest player of all time, that’s football suicide. You don’t survive against Messi by giving him more of the ball—you bury the game before he buries you.”

    “I couldn’t believe what I was watching from the touchline. England looked terrified. Every substitution, every tactical change screamed fear instead of ambition. This England team is packed with players who dominate for the biggest clubs in Europe, yet they were told to play like underdogs protecting a miracle.”

    “The moment England stopped pressing and stopped attacking, the game was over. Argentina sensed weakness, Messi smelled blood, and world-class teams punish fear without mercy. You cannot hand players like Messi that much control and expect to survive.”

    “I feel sorry for the players because they’ll carry this pain forever, but the truth is they were put in a position where they were reacting instead of playing. That’s not the England we’ve been building. That’s not how World Cup winners behave.”

    “This wasn’t one bad decision or one unlucky moment. This was a complete tactical collapse. England had one foot in the World Cup final and let it slip because the manager chose caution over courage.”

    “When you have a generation this talented, failure hurts even more. This squad should have been preparing for a World Cup final. Instead, they’ll be left asking one question for the rest of their lives what if we’d kept attacking?”

    Added:

  • To stay or not to stay

    Josh Glancy in Jewish News:

    What about centuries of relative peace and quiet rarely found in the annals of Jewish history? In this country, the majority of people remain broadly benevolent towards Jewish life, which has long been unusually compatible with this ancient and liberal democracy. Should we give up on that so fast?

    For me personally, if you’ll excuse a moment of mawkishness, Britain is home in the kind of deep-souled way that cannot easily be replicated. It is home because of Test match cricket and pubs and Manchester United, of George Eliot and George Orwell, of Anthony Trollope and Private Eye and The Sunday Times and Hampstead Heath and Ullswater and Oban harbour and the Yorkshire dales and on and on. It is the place where my family has lived and flourished for well over a century after fleeing pogrom and persecution. It produced the English language in all its multitude and magnificence, which is the enduring feature of my every passing day. Nazism failed here. Judaism succeeded.

    Is that story ending? I don’t think so. Not if we stay here and keep telling it.