Author: Mick Hartley

er being caught with portable storage devices containing foreign cultural content, including South Korean dramas.

One male worker in Moscow was questioned and repatriated early this year after being discovered with foreign content in December. A similar incident occurred in another Russian region around the same time. In early July, a worker in his thirties from Vladivostok was caught with a USB drive containing South Korean dramas and questioned by North Korean state security agents stationed in Russia. He is scheduled to be sent home later this month.

Not just sent home, of course. A long period in a labour camp almost certainly awaits – after extensive "interrogation".

The heightened surveillance follows a corruption case involving Choi Sung Chol, a North Korean state security agent stationed in Russia, which gained international attention when North Korean workers exposed it publicly. In response, North Korea overhauled its worker control systems, preparing for additional large-scale labor dispatches to Russia.

North Korean state security agents deployed overseas conduct comprehensive surveillance that goes far beyond ideological oversight. They monitor workers’ daily routines, conversations, behavior, and outside contacts, then report their findings to authorities.

In worker dormitories, personal belongings are inspected daily after evening roll call. “Optional searches” – surprise inspections of lockers, luggage, and even under beds – occur frequently, according to the source.

“What’s happening now isn’t arbitrary control by state security, but systematic management based on clear state orders,” the source explained. “They’re building a system to prevent problematic elements and uncontrollable incidents before North Korea significantly increases overseas worker dispatches.”

Possessing electronic devices like laptops or MP3 players, or storage devices like USB drives or SD cards, is strictly forbidden and can lead to severe punishment for “ideological deviation.” Workers are extremely cautious about not only sharing foreign content but even consuming it privately.

Workers are also prohibited from meeting foreigners. Personal conversations with local Russians or workers of other nationalities are considered “independent activity without organizational approval” and trigger investigations by state security agents.

“In some locations, CCTVs monitor dormitory and workplace hallways, and workers are completely forbidden from leaving at night,” the source said. “Workers who enter at unusual times or visit unclear locations must explain themselves and sometimes face punishment.”

Yep – however much you resist the cliché, as Christopher Hitchens noted 15 years ago, you just can't avoid the Orwell 1984 comparison. They make you say it. 

On that fake "starving child in Gaza" story:

Not an apology
Not a retraction
And it was posted on @NYTimesPR, which has 88k followers, instead of @nytimes, which has 55 million
So a massive lie spread across the world, and now less than 1% of the people who saw it will ever see this pathetic little footnote https://t.co/yvGcPQXi8v

— Emily Gian 🎗️ (@emilygian) July 29, 2025

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th (@benjaminbutter) July 29, 2025

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Refusing a ceasefire has served Hamas very well so far. The more intransigent they are, the more the West panders to them. Why change course now?

size: 11pt”>The report noted that human rights conditions deteriorate further after dispatched workers arrive in China. Their passports are immediately confiscated by supervisors, they face 24-hour surveillance in factory dormitories, and strict controls on movement make contact with the outside world virtually impossible.

Workers endure 12-14 hour workdays and routine verbal abuse, the report revealed. Those who attempt to escape face severe punishment if caught, or are forcibly repatriated and subsequently disappear without trace of their fate. This complete deprivation of workers’ freedom to refuse labor constitutes the core requirements of forced labor as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Forced labour – or slave labour. Take your pick.

women’s clothes and makeup, he would certainly draw negative attention to himself, and would likely be subjected to ridicule, hostility and possible harm."

Oh dear.

Couldn't he wear a burkha?

Anyway, don't the Algerians have a proud tradition of celebrating men who present as women? Olympic gold boxer Imane Khelif comes to mind….

efuses to ask. In 2005, Israel uprooted every Jew, dismantled every settlement, and even removed the dead. Gaza became a laboratory. The reagents: international aid, Israeli withdrawal, and Palestinian self-rule. The result: rockets, tunnels, human shields, and ultimately the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. The experiment ran for eighteen years. The conclusion writes itself….

There is a path forward. It is not a utopia, but it is achievable:

• • Palestinian reform must come before international recognition, not as a reward for avoiding it.

  • Hamas must be defeated, not “demilitarized.” You do not negotiate disarmament with a group that views compromise as apostasy.

  • Education must be de-radicalized, not subsidized. Palestinian children deserve books that teach coexistence, not maps that erase Israel.

  • The right of return must be relinquished, not romanticized. No peace will come from imagining that Tel Aviv is negotiable.

  • And finally, Israel must be recognized not merely as a fact, but as a moral necessity—a refuge state for a people nearly extinguished, and the only one of its kind.

Until those terms are met, every recognition letter, every UN podium gesture, every Elysée photo-op is an act of profound irresponsibility—a theatre of virtue where tragedy is the curtain call.

Macron’s letter is already being archived as “historic.” It is no such thing. It is the bureaucratic paraphrase of a failure to learn, a polished signature at the bottom of a diplomatic hallucination. The same moral calamity that allowed Europe to whisper through the rise of Islamism at home now shouts Palestine abroad, hoping it buys a little more credibility in the salons of global virtue.

What it buys, in fact, is a narrative in which Israel becomes the permanent villain for surviving and the Palestinians the permanent victim for refusing to evolve. It preserves grievance, fossilizes failure, and punishes memory. And it dares to call that “peace.”

Let it be remembered, when the next war breaks out—and it will—that the match was struck not in Rafah or Tel Aviv, but in the offices of those who mistook theatrical compassion for strategy, and who never paid the price for their illusions. Others always do.

But very much worth reading in full.

No political group that's arisen in Palestine has ever signaled a willingness to recognise Israel. No political group that's willing to recognise Israel would stand a chance in Palestine – Gaza or the West Bank. And the more they show their hatred of Jews, and their readiness to resort to violence, the more so many in the West, from Macron on down, are willing to appease them.

More on Saturday's London "trans rights" parade – a misogynistic hate march – from Jo Bartosch at UnHerd:

Trans activism has always attracted bullies. I received my first threat nearly a decade ago — and since then, women’s rights campaigners I know have faced stalking, assault, bomb threats, and legal harassment for trying to organise meetings. Others have been pushed out of jobs or dragged through the courts.

For years, this behaviour was ignored by politicians, while Stonewall, celebrities and HR departments lent a sheen of legitimacy to demands that were unhinged from the start.

But the shine has now worn off. Thanks to a resurgent women’s movement and the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming that sex means biology, the trans lobby has been dragged into the daylight. It’s come as a shock to activists who, just a few years ago, were on the brink of rewriting the law.

And, in the cold light of day, as we wake from the gender nightmare, the rampant misogyny at its heart becomes too obvious to ignore.

There was no mandate for this movement’s demands. Changes to law and policy were pushed through by stealth, with lobby groups co-opting employers through training sessions and model policies. But when the public caught on, they said no. And for those used to getting their way, “no” is frighteningly unfamiliar.

The Government should have listened to those who first sounded the alarm. Feminists — many of whom recognise the tactics used by abusers — warned that this was never about kindness. It was always about coercion. Now, with “Arm trans people” as a rallying cry, the direction of travel is obvious. The placards at Trans+ Pride weren’t a glitch. They were a sign of things to come.

We have been warned.

Dr. @Miriam_Grossman articulated so well that the concept of gender identity has been fraudulent from its very inception. If you or your child were harmed by gender "medicine," contact us for support and to learn more about your legal options. @BrandonMShow @FTC pic.twitter.com/oFHq2UOYUI

— Transition Justice (@TransJusticeOrg) July 29, 2025

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ont page of Britain’s Daily Express and then on that of The New York Times and elsewhere as the symbol of Israel’s cruel starvation of innocents. After the photographs were seen around the world it became clear that the child in fact suffers from cerebral palsy and other conditions unrelated to starvation. The suffering child ended up being less the intended symbol of Israeli evil than of how genuine misery can be put to use by practitioners of narrative war.

You might have thought that hunger in Gaza would work against Hamas, forcing the group to have mercy on its own civilians and accept the ceasefire desired by Israel and the U.S. and currently under discussion in Qatar. But Hamas knows that the opposite is true: The disaster they’ve engineered in Gaza fuels the global campaign against Israel. That’s presumably why the crescendo of hunger stories coincided on Friday with reports that Hamas has now hardened its positions in the talks, leading to their suspension. (One of Hamas’s top demands, according to an American official cited by The Wall Street Journal, is shutting down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.)

One of the terrible facts of this war is that the Palestinians who started the war, and who constructed the twisted battlefield on which it has been fought, won’t act to save their own people. Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop.

ditch them? What a shameful capitulation to the anti-Semitic mob.

Numerous Jewish-themed comedy shows have been binned at the Whistlebinkies venue in the city. Rachel Creeger, Britain’s only practising Orthodox Jewish comedian, has been told her show Ultimate Jewish Mother is no longer going ahead. Jew-O-Rama was next for the chop. That’s a comedy night that features a ‘rolling line-up of Jewish and Jew-ish comedians’. It’s been running at the Fringe for nine years. Not anymore. Seems funny Jews aren’t allowed in 2025.

And now the host of Jew-O-Rama, Philip Simon, says his one-man show ‘Shall I Compare Thee in a Funny Way?’ has been cancelled at the Banshee Labyrinth venue. ‘I am still processing the concept that in 2025 I can be cancelled just for being Jewish’, says Mr Simon. We should all be processing that. We should all be asking how it is possible that at a comedy festival in the 21st century, Jews are being booted off stage.

The reasons given by the venues for their blitzing of the Jewish acts are ridiculous. They say it is not because the comedians are Jewish – I guess it is entirely coincidental that every one of the gagged comics is a Jew.

There's a name for that.

Philip Simon says he was told that his one-man show was scrubbed because his views on ‘the humanitarian crisis in Palestine’ do not align with those of the venue. What are his scandalous views? Well, he calls himself ‘pro-Israel’ and he has pleaded for the release of the Israeli hostages. Wanting Jews to be freed from the violent clutches of a neo-fascist militia is a cancellable offence now, it seems.

There’s a neo-McCarthyite vibe to these venues’ erasure of Jews who fail to toe the ‘progressive’ line on the Israel-Hamas war.

Well yes – but it's surely worse than just neo-McCarthyite. Their views, like the safety concerns waffle, are not the real issue here. What matters is that they're Jews. 

Stephen Pollard, again in the Spectator, has more:

You don’t have to be a comedian or an expert in decoding sophistry to understand what’s going on here. You just have to have a basic knowledge of history, because it’s what has been going on for millennia. Jews have been banned for being Jews. Here we go again. They can dress it up in any drivel about health and safety they want, but when you translate ‘concerns over staff safety’ into reality it means, ‘Jews are banned unless they manage to sneak in because no one has realised they are Jews’….

It could hardly be more blatant: two Jews have been cancelled because they are Jewish. The rest is noise. The fact that neither Creeger nor Simon have expressed anything other than a desire for peace and freedom for the hostages is irrelevant, because one of the strongest lessons of Jewish history is that they come for the ‘good’ Jews too. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re behaving as they want you to behave: in their eyes, all that matters is that you’re a Jew.

Politicians are wont to repeat the phrase, ‘There is no place for antisemitism in [add the name of a city or country]’. In reality, however, in Britain in 2025 there is every place for antisemitism. Always and everywhere.