Breaking: man wears lipstick. More on this ground breaking exclusive as it develops.
— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) February 2, 2026
You know, you compare this heavy handed, ideologically burdened anti-aesthetic dirge to the fun gender bending of the 80s and it’s just so pedestrian, state approved, boring and naff https://t.co/LgzdZF5SLJ
Mick Hartley
Politics and Culture
-
From the Daily NK:
North Korean neighborhood watch unit leaders have given households their yearly quotas for various scrap materials they are supposed to collect for the government.
Families have been given heavy quotas once again this year, eliciting sighs and lamentations from many North Koreans.
A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK recently that the yearly quotas had been handed down during meetings of neighborhood watch units at cities and counties throughout the province, including Chongjin and Hoeryong.
“People at these meetings all had grievances to share,” the source reported.
And what are these quotas, typically?
According to the source, one neighborhood watch unit in Chongjin provided the following quotas to each household in a meeting on the evening of Jan. 14: 40 kilograms of scrap metal, 10 kilograms of scrap paper, 5 kilograms of scrap rubber, 2 kilograms of oil crops, and three 25-kilogram sacks of dried night soil.
Dried night soil? That’s dried human excrement. How do they dry it? Presumably by spreading it out in the sun in the back garden. Who knows?
Three 25-kilogram sacks: that’s a lot of shit. There have been cases in the past of excrement being stolen by those unable to fulfil the quota. Only in North Korea.
It was used as fertiliser – and, judging from this, still is. Which is why North Koreans get intestinal worms.
The case of the soldier who escaped in November 2017 by running across the demilitarised zone is instructive here. Badly wounded, he was rushed to hospital, where his intestines were found to be full of parasitic worms. The surgeon responsible said that he’d never seen anything like it before outside of textbooks. Other doctors have also described removing various types of worms and parasites from North Korean defectors. This, it’s generally believed, is a direct result of using human excrement as fertiliser.
-
On the cancellation of author Rachel Rooney – previously here, from 2021 – and the naked elitism of the Society of Authors. From Kate Clanchy on Substack. An excerpt:
But I am perhaps most struck, in the context of all the talk of inclusion and diversity, by the prejudice so openly on show. The Society of Authors does not hesitate to exploit the credulity of someone they know to be autistic, ridiculing her behind her back. It does not seem to occur to their CEO that she is treating Rooney as less important than wealthy, connected, ‘Clara’ and ‘Shirley’, any more than it occurred to Vulliamy that she was treating Rooney differently to Jessica Ahlberg, daughter of Janet and Allan Ahlberg and another member of the literary elite. But it’s blatant elitism, crude class prejudice, and cowardice beside. A scapegoat was selected who couldn’t afford a lawyer and who didn’t have powerful friends to fight her corner and none of these fine, right-thinking people could see that was unfair. That’s the trouble with declarations of virtue: with your eyes on heaven, like Burns’ Holy Willie, you can’t see what your hands are doing.
But yes, read it all.
-
John Lithgow in Variety on playing Dumbledore in the upcoming Harry Potter series:
Asked about J.K. Rowling trans statements, he said: “I take the subject extremely seriously. She has created this amazing canon for young people and it has jumped into the consciousness of the society. It’s about good versus evil, kindness versus cruelty. I find her views ironic and inexplicable. I’ve never met her, she’s not really involved in this production at all. But the people who are, are remarkable.”
He added: “It upsets me when people are opposed to me having anything to do with this. But in ‘Potter’ canon you see no trace of transphobic sensitivity. She’s written this mediation of kindess and acceptance. And Dumbledore is a beautiful role.”
“It was a hard decision. It made me uncomfortable and unhappy that people insisted I walk away from the job. I chose not to do that.”
Oh so brave yet sensitive. Honest yet humble. But why are her views “ironic and inexplicable”? They’re certainly not inexplicable: she’s explained them very clearly on numerous occasions, but it boils down to “live your life as you want, but people can’t change sex so don’t expect everyone to play along with your fantasy”. Ironic? Because she’s a horrible transphobe yet writes such humane books?
No, it’s just Lithgow weaseling his way into the good graces of the arts world by trying to sound sympathetic and playing along with the gender crowd.
On X:
“Good grief. Lithgow, get a spine. All he had to do was say “JKR is entitled to her opinions. I thought the role was great so I took it.” Done. No need for all this hand wringing and apologizing for something that has nothing to do with him.“
“Can’t be seen to defend her, because I’m too cowardly. I reckon it’s safest to condemn her, but I’ll dress it up a bit: a confusing here, a complex there, perhaps an inexplicable would work? However this plays out, the woman writes gold dust & I’m not turning down the cheque.”
-
Meanwhile, in Bologna:
A music venue in Italy cancelled an American metal band’s concert after the lead guitarist asked for a Palestinian flag to be removed from the stage.
Dylan Carlson of the historic Seattle-based drone metal band Earth reportedly asked if the Bologna venue TPO could take down a Palestinian flag from its stage just minutes before Earth’s scheduled concert there on Tuesday, which prompted the venue to call off the performance altogether.
According to the music blog Stereogum, the flag had been on display at the multi-purpose social centre since it hosted a cultural event for activist groups the previous weekend. Explaining the cancellation of Earth’s performance on Instagram, TPO Bologa wrote: “We’ve been asked to remove the Palestinian flag from the stage. It wasn’t a possibility for us. So we decided to cancel the concert.”
-
It never gets stale in Middle Eastern punditry, does it? – the antisemitic brain rot; the mad look in the eyes.
Lebanese journalist Ziad Njeim in a January 20, 2026
appearancerant on LBC TV. Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel in order to achieve world domination. This goal has already been achieved: today Jews rule the world through the media, the economy, and by force….started two world wars…soon the Greater Israel plan will be concluded…You know the story.
-
In 2011, building workers digging a ditch in Moscow city centre unearthed a mass grave near his residence containing a pile of human bones, including two children’s skulls covered with lime or chlorine.
Beria basically spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought to his home to rape. Those who resisted were executed and buried in the garden.
There was an underground torture chamber and his sexual predations were so well known by the Soviet leadership that Stalin once urgently telephoned his daughter Svetlana when he discovered she was alone with Beria at his villa. He ordered her to leave immediately because he feared Beria would rape her.
Beria only fell after Stalin’s death.
-
Better late than never, I suppose. From the Telegraph:
The Metropolitan Police has admitted that it failed to protect Jews from a “racist mob” at a Notting Hill restaurant.
Scotland Yard has apologised for the “distress” caused to the Israeli business owner and “wider Jewish community” over its policing of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last month.
The apology came after a cross-party group of 89 MPs and peers wrote to Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, to express their “extreme concern” about the way protests outside the restaurant were policed.
They said the restaurant, Erev, and its takeaway counter, Miznon, in Notting Hill, co-founded by chef Eyal Shani, had been “targeted by extremists on seven occasions since August last year”.
The letter, seen by The Telegraph, goes on to detail one of the protests, which took place on Jan 9. The signatories said it amounted to “violent disorder” and left diners at the restaurant feeling intimidated.
The MPs and peers described how “around 50 protesters were allowed by police to stand close to the restaurant’s entrance, chanting violent and intimidating slogans amplified by loudspeakers and drums”.
Footage shared on social media at the time of the protest showed one activist proclaiming the “right to resist by any and all means necessary, for the full liberation and from the river to the sea”, to cheers from the crowd.
So what about all the other occasions when Jew-hating mobs have paraded through our cities? Or is just this one apology because MPs and peers wrote a letter? And have West Midlands police apologised yet for the Maccabi Tel Aviv debacle?
Mick Hartley 