Mick Hartley

As North Korea's relations with China improve, the prospects for North Korean defectors in China are getting worse:

Once strained, the relationship between North Korea and China appears to be on the mend again as the two countries mark the “year of North Korea-China friendship” to celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations. This situation is leading to fears among North Korean defectors in China, many of whom worry that North Korea and China may improve cooperation on repatriating defectors as the countries grow closer.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in China told Daily NK recently that defectors in China “feel more frightened and insecure than ever about being repatriated because the closer North Korea and China are, the greater the risk that defectors will be repatriated.”

He said defectors in China have felt troubled since reports emerged that Zhao Leji, the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the third-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, discussed plans to strengthen exchanges and cooperation to develop China-North Korea ties when he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a visit to North Korea on April 11-13.

Defectors in China who were already feeling uneasy after China forcibly repatriated a large number of North Koreans last October now live in extreme fear following the high-ranking Chinese official’s visit to the North, according to the source. 

In fact, anxious North Korean defectors have dramatically grown in number, with word recently going around that “if relations between North Korea and China improve, we’ll all be repatriated.”

North Korean defectors in China say that if Beijing and Pyongyang grow closer, bilateral cooperation on the defector issue will intensify — and if this is the case, they never know when they will be caught and sent back to the North.

According to the source, one defector said if North Korea-China relations improve, “China will present us to the North as a bribe, and we’ll get sent to a place from which we’ll never leave.”

The individual added: “Nowadays, during the day, I’m afraid to even leave my bathroom for fear that somebody is coming to get me, while at night, I suffer nightmares. It doesn’t feel like living.”

Plans to head for South Korea – obviously the defectors' destination of choice – are being abandoned:

After hearing about the recent repatriation of North Korean defectors living in China, an increasing number of defectors there are shelving plans to head to South Korea, Daily NK has learned.

“Reports about recent repatriations have been rapidly spreading here [in China], leaving many defectors anxious and afraid. An increasing number of people are saying they’ve given up any idea of going to South Korea,” a source in China told Daily NK on Monday.

And cases like this, in China's Jilin Province bordering North Korea, don't help:

Jilin Province authorities recently handed down a 10-year sentence to a North Korean defector for human trafficking, Daily NK has learned.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in China said last Thursday that police in the city of Songyuan, working in cooperation with police in the city of Baishan, placed two Chinese men and one female North Korean defector under arrest for human trafficking in February.

The trio were put on trial in late April. The two Chinese men were given three years in prison, while the North Korean woman was given 10 years. All three have already begun serving time in prison. 

During their investigation, police in Songyuan seized a list of dozens of North Korean women who had been illegally trafficked into China. They also determined the identities of Chinese nationals who purchased North Korean women.

Sandra Pertot, a retired clinical psychologist, on the Queer theory underpinnings of gender medicine:

The thing that has played on my mind ever since I became embroiled in the gender wars is, how did we get here? How is it possible that large sections of Western society—including health professionals who should know better—have come to accept ideas such as sex isn’t binary, a person can change sex, it is right to tell children they might have been born in the wrong body, and it is good medicine to give these children powerful drugs to “pause” puberty….

A key factor in females gaining independence from male control and being accepted as equals was the development of effective birth control: the ability to control when and how often a woman had a child gave her the freedom to take control of her life. No longer bound by the needs of a continually growing family, women were able to pursue their own goals in their personal lives, in education, employment, and so on: biological reality in action.

The cynic in me speculates that as female issues of inequality were addressed and largely resolved, at least in the Western world, the academics who service the departments of Gender studies in tertiary institutions were left with nothing controversial to trade on, so they had to come up with a new area related to gender and/or sexuality to justify their existence.

The malleability of gender roles provided the perfect solution….

Correspondingly, gay activist organisations like Stonewall, having achieved their aims and with nothing left to trade on, took up the trans agenda – with Queer theory ideology helpfully supplied by the gender studies academics.

The basic ideas proposed by Queer theory are not new: society does influence our understanding and beliefs about sexualities (straight, gay or bi) and gender roles. The feminist movement of the 1970s-80s was all about challenging the restrictions imposed on females simply because of their biology. Also in that period, gay rights groups peacefully sought to have their sexuality acknowledged and recognised as a normal variation in human sexuality.

But Queer theory takes this to a new level which becomes nonsensical when the aim is to challenge norms just because they are norms. Paradoxically, queering the definitions of sex and gender creates new norms which then, according to trans activists, aren’t allowed to be challenged. For example, lesbians must accept “transbians”, who typically retain male genitals, in their groups. And rules such as using preferred pronouns must be obeyed. Queer theory in practice is the ultimate hypocrisy….

In the wake of the Cass report, it is time for gender-affirming health professionals to consider the real possibility that they have been conned by a sophisticated, well-organised network of trans activists who want to reshape society into their version of normal. It is time for health professionals to reflect on how they came to put their faith in the gender-affirming model as the best form of care for gender-questioning clients.

We've heard from Oxford students about the "Free Palestine" camps there. Now here's Devika Shah at Cambridge:

I am a third-year undergraduate student at Cambridge, and have been following the activities of a small number of my fellow students currently occupying the lawn outside King’s College and the official response of the university. I am writing to say that I am appalled by the response that the university has offered.

Freedom of speech is critical to the wellbeing of any university. There must be space for us to express our views, disagree, and engage in dialogue to enrich our own understanding of the world. Yet what this does not mean is that this university may remain impartial and silent about the right of existence of a sovereign state, and the right of its inhabitants to have exactly the same rights as other sovereign peoples around the world: their own self-determination.

The protesters in front of King’s College are openly calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Their placards that are currently emblazoned around their encampment and calling for a “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”. The protesters know exactly what this means. It means that in their view a Jewish state should not exist. It means that the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea should not be home to the 7.2 million Jews who live there (as well as the two million Israeli Arabs, and the half-a-million Christians and others – groups that consistently respond at a rate of about 70 per cent to independent polls saying they support the Israeli state).

A Palestine “from the river to the sea” means no Israel, no Israelis, and no security for Jews in the Middle East. Where do the protesters propose the Jews and Israelis go if a Palestinian state were to exist from the river to the sea?

Again, I would like to reiterate that freedom of speech must be protected. Regardless of my own opinions on the matter, to call for a ceasefire, or to advocate for the quick removal of Benjamin Netanyahu, or to express the absolutely critical empathy that is deserved by all the inhabitants of Gaza should be encouraged. Yet the university’s statement fails to address the genocidal aims of Hamas. The latter’s 1988 Charter says: “The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews… when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.” This could be an exact description of what happened on Oct 7 2023. When Israeli men and women had to hide in cars, under dead bodies, in bushes, and wherever else they could find so as to not be brutally murdered by militant Islamists.

This is what “Palestine from the river to the sea” means. Because, according to this logic, any means are justified if you are fighting a “colonial” regime, and Hamas are simply “freedom fighters” for the Palestinian cause.

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating? In an Oct 10 statement, publicly available on Instagram, the Cambridge University Palestine Society said the “Israeli regime is entirely responsible” for the “violence” seen on Oct 7. These are the words of actual students from the University of Cambridge. The university’s silence on the slogan “from the river to the sea” used in the occupation of King’s College lawn suggests that those hellbent on the destruction of Jews in the Middle East have a free pass to do so.

Fair and justified criticism of Israeli foreign and internal policy should never be followed by the words “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”, and if we do hear this in Cambridge, it should be denounced while upholding the right to freedom of speech. The rhetoric in general – that Israel and Zionism are Western constructs built exclusively on colonialism – is at best a complete ignorance of Jewish history and at worst thinly-veiled anti-Semitism that the university’s weak response fails to address….

From the NYT:

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

The documents show that Hamas leaders, despite claiming to represent the people of Gaza, would not tolerate even a whiff of dissent. Security officials trailed journalists and people they suspected of immoral behavior. Agents got criticism removed from social media and discussed ways to defame political adversaries. Political protests were viewed as threats to be undermined…

Like the Stasi. A police state, in other words. What a surprise.

The grim reality of the lives of North Korea's nuclear scientists turns out to be very different from the indulged favourites of the regime that we assume. From South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

“North Korean nuclear scientists have no autonomy over their lives, with their life paths set for them in almost every aspect – including research fields, housing, food, and marriage – from the time they are elementary school students. In a society where failure is viewed as disloyalty, they live under dehumanizing conditions, forced to work relentlessly for the “task of the fatherland” until death.”

It is widely believed that North Korea, which is heavily investing in nuclear and missile development, favors its 10,000 nuclear scientists. But the the reality is quite the opposite, according to an analysis by a Korean Peninsula expert based in Washington, D.C.

Robert Collins, who served 31 years in the United States Forces Korea, including as the chief strategist for the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), detailed the struggles of North Korean nuclear experts in his report “Slave to the Bomb” on May 10. His report is based on testimonies from North Korean defectors he interviewed and various classified materials….

According to the 200-page report obtained in advance by The Chosunilbo, a North Korean child’s fate as a so-called “slave to the bomb” is determined at an age as early as ten. North Korea has a system that allows administrative units, whether rural or urban, to select and recruit children who excel in mathematics and science.

“The best students from each region are gathered and trained in math, science, physics, and other subjects,” Collins states in the report. “If they stand out, their entire families are sometimes forced to move so that the students can advance to a higher-level school in the capital city.”…

The report states, “Once a nuclear scientist achieves significant academic success in a particular research field, their professional fate is sealed.” They must live a life dedicated to serving the Kim regime, and from then on, the only variables in their life are which nuclear facility they work for and the quality of their associated housing.

As we heard yesterday, the ACLU now seems to be concerned chiefly with trans rights, and in particular with the rights of trans women (male) criminals to get themselves into women's prisons and rape with impunity – condoms provided. Genevieve Gluck has an X thread on the subject:

The @ACLU hates women and is led by a gay man: a thread.

One of the most powerful lobby groups in the United States pushing "gender identity" policies is the ACLU.

Currently, the organization is leading the legal fight to place violent men, including sadistic killers and… pic.twitter.com/rY84edrEy6

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) May 12, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

"Currently, the organization is leading the legal fight to place violent men, including sadistic killers and rapists, into women's prisons.

"The executive director since 2001 is Anthony Romero.

"In the past the organization defended NAMBLA, asserted that child pornography is free speech, defended child marriage, took money from pornographers, and argued that sex trafficking is "work.""

• The ACLU mourned the execution of a convicted child rapist who murdered a 14-year-old girl and a single mother of two. Duane Owen, who the ACLU referred to using "she/her" pronouns, said he raped women in order to harvest their hormones and souls.
• In 2019, the ACLU represented an anonymous transgender inmate in a lawsuit that secured gender self-identification in New Jersey prisons. The inmate was would-be terrorist and "adult baby" fetishist Danielle Demers.
• As a result of the @ACLU victory in New Jersey, one of the first trans-identified inmates moved to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women was a Satanist named Perry Cerf who tortured and murdered a prostituted woman before drinking her blood.
• Another man transferred to a woman's prison on behalf of the @ACLU is a sadistic pedophile who tortured his 7-year-old daughter to make child abuse material for his "transgender porn" business, and is classified as a "female" by the state of New Jersey.
• The ACLU launched a legal complaint against the Indiana Department of Corrections on behalf of a transgender inmate they say was denied "gender affirming" surgeries. Jonathan Richardson, also known as Autumn Cordellioné, murdered a baby.
• The @ACLU of Kansas is supporting a violent and "sexually sadistic" transgender inmate demanding to be turned loose in a women's prison. Thomas "Michelle" Lamb, who murdered one woman and raped another, says he "needs to have close contact with females."
• In 2022, the @ACLU filed to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to halt the transfer of male inmates to women’s prisons. In the brief, the ACLU claimed that denying male sex offenders transfer to women’s prisons was “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional.”
• As a direct result of @ACLU lobbying in California, at least one woman has been raped in prison by a 'transgender' inmate, at the Central California Women's Facility. The alleged assailant is a trans-identified male previously championed by activists.
• A violent transgender inmate at Washington's only women's prison was supported by the @ACLU in a claim to receive taxpayer-funded breast implants. Nonnie Lotusflower murdered a 17-year-old girl.
• A violent male inmate convicted of slaughtering his family, claiming they did not support his gender identity, was supported by the @ACLU . Andrew Balcer was quietly moved to a facility that houses women in the Maine prison system.

Matt Ridley, co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, looks at some significant new information from a couple of key figures in the Covid saga that was revealed last week before the US Congress. See the article at Spiked for details (it's complicated). Ridley's conclusion:

The case for the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins becomes ever more overwhelming with every further revelation, admission and concession. We are not quite there yet, however. The Chinese government and its scientists have yet to admit they caused the pandemic. But in exactly the right city, at exactly the right time, they were playing with exactly the right kind of genetic insertion into exactly the right part of exactly the right gene of exactly the right kind of virus, in exactly the right way. And they showed exactly the wrong kind of openness about it afterwards. It would be a heck of a coincidence and awfully bad luck if somehow Covid broke out naturally, right there and at the same time.

A Scottish mental health clinician speaks out, in today's Sunday Times:

I have worked for 20 years with mental health patients in Scotland. Before the pandemic I saw only two people who were transitioning. Both were men who identified as women.

My caseload is small because my patients have complex problems. Over the past two and a half years, however, I have looked after nine female patients who wish to be men. Most are in their late teens to early twenties. Emotionally they are quite young.

They are in fact among the most vulnerable patients I have seen, often struggling with multiple mental health issues after difficult childhoods.

Dr Hilary Cass, who wrote the report on the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service in England, addressed the Scottish parliament last week.

Just as she says, some of my patients are on the autistic spectrum, others have survived childhood trauma including neglect and sexual abuse. Among those transitioning are patients with eating disorders, patients using self-harm to cope and patients with borderline personality disorders who struggle with distress.

During our appointments some patients have described growing up without clean clothes or help with basic personal hygiene. They have talked about their poor social circumstances and being unable to afford the normal things most children have. They grew up feeling they were on the outside, ostracised by their parents and their peers.

They have endured all of this, pouring their energy into surviving at the cost of maturing. And then, with little idea of their own identity, they have found the camaraderie of a trans peer group and embraced the idea that they were born in the wrong body.

They now believe it is their body that is wrong and needs to change. This view has then been endorsed by the NHS, schools and even politicians. No one has said to them: “You are fine just the way you are. Let’s help you.”…

Professionals seem too frightened to question whether changing gender is what these patients really need….

I worry that many will look back at the NHS in a few years and think: “What have you done to me? I have no breasts and I cannot have children. My life is wrecked just like my childhood was wrecked.” I feel I am seeing a medical scandal unfold before my eyes.

No surprise here, sadly:

A director of an Islamist group who described the Islamic State executioner known as Jihadi John as “a beautiful young man” has been giving advice and support at pro-Palestine encampments at British universities.

Asim Qureshi, the research director of Cage, which has regularly campaigned on behalf of terrorism suspects, was invited to give a “teach-in” at a camp set up by students at University College London (UCL) on Friday evening.

He later went on to pray with Muslim protesters occupying the green at the nearby School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas).

Posting photos of his activities on Twitter/X yesterday, Qureshi wrote: “I was really honoured to provide a teach-in to the brave students from @UCLAFP [Action For Palestine] encamping at UCL.

“I spoke on the Qur’anic ethics of disobedience in times of structural violence. I was also really glad to bring some food cooked for the camp by my wife.”

Well he wouldn't have cooked it himself, would he? That's a woman's job. He's too busy studying the Qur’anic ethics of disobedience in times of structural violence. And lauding ISIS executioners.

Rape in a women's prison? How could that possibly be? We know the answer of course – it's gender identity, innit? Men with penises can get into women's prisons just by saying they're women. Why wouldn't they?

Natalie [not her real name] had been housed with Tremaine Carroll in a prison cell in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) for just a few days when she says he attacked her in the shower and raped her. According to charges filed by the Madera County District Attorney’s office – which includes enhancements because Tremaine has prior sex offenses – there was at least one other victim at the prison besides Natalie.

Before California passed SB 132, “The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act”, the law already allowed males who had surgery, and were deemed to not pose a “management and security risk”, to request housing in women’s facilities. However, the law did not allow men with penises, or those who were considered too dangerous, to be housed with women, regardless of gender identity. That all changed when California passed SB 132, which went into effect in 2021.

After serving nearly two decades of his sentence, Tremaine began identifying as a woman and seeking transfer to a women’s facility shortly before SB 132 went into effect. The law was intended to facilitate the transfer of male inmates like Tremaine, who had penises and did not meet security standards for “gender identity” based housing in the women’s prison.

SB 132 is being challenged by four women who have already experienced harm from this policy: Janine Chandler, Krystal Gonzales, Tomiekia Johnson, and Nadia Romero, who are represented by the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF).

Tremaine is one of four intervenors in the lawsuit, represented by the ACLU of Southern California and other advocacy groups supporting the right of male prisoners to self-identify into women’s prisons. Even if they have ordinary male anatomy. Even if they are sex offenders. In a sworn declaration to the court, Tremaine stated, “I am not a threat” to the women at CCWF. Now, he is charged with forcibly raping two of them and has been moved back to the men’s facility.

The ACLU – now committed to enabling rapists. It's been a long way down under Chase Strangio.

Tremaine is just one of the many dangerous men with whom the women in California prisons are now forced to live. One-third of the men requesting transfer into California women’s prisons are sex offenders. According to FOIA records, 50% of men in federal prison who identify as women are sex offenders. This is likely understating the problem – Tremaine himself is not considered “sex offenders” under this definition, despite his first- and second-strike offenses being for a kidnapping which included “forced oral copulation.”

Amie Ichikawa, Executive Director of Woman II Woman, revealed that there are now 16 pregnant women housed at California Institution for Women (CIW), another one of California’s women’s prisons. Some women may enter prison pregnant, but CDCR has confirmed via a new Public Records Act request that at least one woman this year has already become pregnant while incarcerated at CCWF where the male rapist was also housed.

"I wish I could say that Tremaine was abusing SB132/TRADA or that it’s being taken advantage of in some way," said Amie, "but I can’t. The law is being used exactly the way its author intended it to be: without guardrails and with complete disregard to the safety and well-being of women.”

Advocacy groups like Woman II Woman and WoLF have warned the California Department of Corrections of Rehabilitation (CDCR) for years about the risk of pregnancy and rape when women are forced to be housed with men. The state acknowledged this risk by providing condoms to the women’s facilities for the first time in 2021, immediately following the implementation of SB 132. In 2023, a Special Review by the Office of the Inspector General reiterated this concern, stating: “Because not all transferees have undergone gender-affirming surgery, the potential exists for pregnancies… in prison.”

Providing condoms?? Jesus. Isn't there a slightly more obvious way of avoiding pregnancy in women's prisons? It's like they don't care about the rapes per se, just the occasional embarrassing consequence.

“We don’t need the state or anybody else to acknowledge the risk, because we all know how babies are made,” WoLF Executive Director Sharon Byrne told 4W.

“Housing men in women’s prisons is California’s progressive patriarchy. The state has an obligation to keep everybody safe to the best of its ability. It cannot throw incarcerated women under the bus when there are alternative ways to keep men at risk of sexual violence safe in men’s prisons, such as by getting a waiver to provide a third space.”