Author: Mick Hartley

After the so-called Abraham Accords, which saw the normalisation of relations between Israel and the UAE, the usual suspects in the Muslim world – generally those now associated with Iran – have extended their fixation with the evils and moral turpitude of the Zionist Entity to include the Emirates. 

Here's Houthi Scholar Muhsin Al-Hamzi:

"Our enemies – the Emirati regime and the Saudi regime – are in total collapse. The latest scandal of the Emirati regime, maybe you have heard about it… The latest scandal of the Emirati regime relates to its Jewish-like decision, or worse, to permit homosexuality, even in public places. They permit it! Now it is easy – grab yourself a boy in the street, do whatever you want with him, and you will face no legal consequences. The latest scandal of the Emirati regime is to permit homosexuality even in public spaces.

"Another scandal from a few days ago, is [an agreement] between the UAE and the Zionist entity on the exchange of prostitutes. I apologize for using this language in this place, but I'm doing it to make a point. Emirati whores – I don't know their origin – were sent to Israel, and Jewish whores were sent to the UAE. A whore exchange [program]. Do you see how an alliance with the Jews works? This is an alliance with the Jews. Some call it 'normalization,' but it is an alliance."

they own, that officials said show China’s government is failing to adequately enforce United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

The sanctions block any assets the companies have within U.S. jurisdiction and could complicate their dealings overseas, including the ships’ ability to transport goods.

Tuesday’s action follows the November blacklisting of several Russian companies the Treasury said are exporting North Korean laborers to Russia and China, as well as a new reward program offering up to $5 million for reports on sanctions-evasion by Pyongyang and its facilitators.

The usual view of North Korean diplomacy under Trump is that it's just a tale of wind-baggery and failure, with nothing having been achieved despite all the hot air and summits and self-serving pronouncements. There may be some truth in that, but important stuff is still going on in the background….

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Erich Hartmann. Girl in bus and figures in street during snowstorm. New York City. USA. 1967 © Erich Hartmann | Magnum Photos

Dennis Stock | WALES. 1962. Christmas in Wales. © Dennis Stock | Magnum Photos

Martin Parr | GB. England. Hebden Bridge. From 'Bad Weather'. February. 1978 © Martin Parr | Magnum Photos

Martin Parr | GB. England. West Yorkshire. Slaithwaite. From 'Bad Weather'. March. 1980 © Martin Parr | Magnum Photos

Chris Steele-Perkins. Pensioner by fire. Middlesbrough. England. G.B. © Chris Steele-Perkins | Magnum Photos

Dennis Stock. Christmas in Wales. GB. 1962. © Dennis Stock | Magnum Photos

icipate in the court.

Reliable evidence and undeniable documents and details obtained from Assadi’s note and communication with the operative team left no doubt over his role in the crime….

Despite contradictory claims raised by the defendants and their attorneys, the court once again highlighted the Iranian high-ranking officials’ involvement in the plot. The NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi, who was the main target based on evidence and prosecutors’ argument, pointed out the role of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi.

She also affirmed the imperative of shutting down all the Iranian government’s front centers and institutions that pave the path for terror plans under the banner of cultural or religious activities.

“It is now time for an international tribunal to be set up and to prosecute the leaders of the regime, who are the true masterminds of hundreds of terrorist acts around the world,” the NCRI delegation also announced.

We're familiar with Iranian support for terrorist acts in the Middle East, but this was in the heart of Europe – and clearly seems to have been instigated at a high level within the Tehran regime.

Iran is, in every sense, a rogue state.

And now there's the possibility of this swap, of Assadi for Ahmadreza Djalali. The Iranians arbitrarily imprison innocent visitors and keep them on ice, as it were, for just such occasions…

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Hotel, Portugal by Jonk (2019)

Swimming Pool, Italy by Jonk (2019)

Theater, Abkhazia by Jonk (2019)

d away and neglected with little treatment. 

According to a Daily NK source in the North Korean military on Monday, military authorities have established quarantine facilities in temporary buildings next to military hospitals so that medical teams can handle soldiers displaying symptoms related to COVID-19. However, as the number of quarantined soldiers has sharply risen, medical teams cannot treat them due to shortages of not only food, but also water, beds and medical supplies. 

According to Daily NK’s own reporting, the cumulative number of military personnel at military quarantine facilities as of the end of November was 54,620, including 43,000 soldiers, 6,200 seamen and 5,420 airmen….

Above all, the most serious problem is apparently the lack of medical equipment and medicines. The number of quarantined soldiers is skyrocketing; however, due to the lack of medical supplies, medical teams can neither properly diagnose them nor can they do anything for serious cases hovering between life and death.

“If [doctors] judge that the patient has no chance, they just leave them in isolation without treating them, so naturally the number of deaths is rising,” the source said. 

Daily NK found, based on reports from sources, that a total of about 4,180 soldiers have died in military quarantine facilities as of November.

The country’s military authorities not only keep families of quarantined soldiers ill-informed as to where they are being isolated, but also strictly ban quarantined soldiers from making phone calls or sending letters. So if a soldier or officer dies in quarantine, families receive only a letter of condolence.

In accordance with military law, military authorities process the bodies of those who die in the line of duty, so families are unable to receive the remains of their loved ones. 

“As recently as this summer, if a soldier died in a quarantine facility, the body was decontaminated, cremated and handed over to his unit to be buried on a nearby mountain. Now, however, the bodies are being cremated en masse,” said the source. “Because there are too many deaths [these days], starting in September the authorities aren’t even bothering with firing a salute, which is the custom for those killed in action.”

Hornbeams in Queen's Wood this morning:

t;. That's precisely what they're doing. A translation: "We're banning this view that might be deemed offensive, though we would never ban views that might be deemed offensive because of our support for freedom of speech". Jesus.

A problem I'd never considered before: what to do with all those grapes after prohibition came in? Here are two very learned and distinguished gentlemen contemplating that very question.

January 12, 1921. Washington, D.C. "Geo. C. Husmann & Secty. Meredith." The noted pomologist and viticulturist George Husmann with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Edwin Meredith:

[Photo: Shorpy/National Photo Company Collection]

Passage of the 18th Amendment has resulted in special activities in the Department of Agriculture to devise means of consuming the enormous quantity of grapes formerly used in the manufacture of wines. Prof. George C. Husmann, grape specialist of the Department, has spent many months in experiments to improve the quality of varieties not formerly considered adapted to table use. Photo shows Secretary of Agriculture Meredith and Professor Husmann in his laboratory with clusters of 37 varieties under test in the Government experimental vineyards. ("Camera News," Feb. 14, 1921)

-history-turn-blind-eye-to-china”>Slavery will never be history as long as we turn a blind eye to China:

Forced labour is an essential part of the Chinese state’s programme to humiliate and destroy ethnic minorities. The parallels with the antebellum south reach to the cotton fields. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) runs prison factories and its own paramilitary force to keep its captives in line. It helped create the Chinese cotton industry, which now supplies 20% of the world’s cotton market and, maybe, the clothes on your back. XPCC sends forced labour to pick cotton because no one has ever picked cotton unless poverty or slave masters forced them to. It’s hard to know what is worse: the backbreaking work or the exposure to pesticides.

Mechanisation might spare the conscripts the pain. But Amy K Lehr from the Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that, after scouring the websites of Chinese companies and officials for evidence, she was surprised by the amount of cotton still hand-harvested in Xinjiang. Perhaps it is not so surprising. If the Chinese Communist party has a reserve army of forced labour, it has no need to spend on technology. Indeed, forced labour allows it to defray the costs of repression. […]

When I talk to Rahima Mahmut, from the World Uyghur Congress, she’s close to despair at the cowardice of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia and all the other Muslim-majority countries that stay silent about the persecution of Muslims for love of Chinese money and fear of Chinese retribution. She is not wholly despondent, though. The mapping of China’s “re-education” camps only began in 2018, she says. Whether with forced labour or the overthrow of the rule of law in Hong Kong, the tyrannical turn in Chinese policy is taking time to sink in.

Last week, MPs in the China Research Group recommended that Britain join with Biden’s America and other democracies, not for a cold war, but to ensure basic protections. Included among them was the requirement that “supply chains are free from slave or child labour from political prisoners and persecuted ethnic minorities in China”. Most may still not want to look, but the world has gone past the point when it can pretend slavery is history.

Admittedly Apple are probably way down the list of guilty parties here. It's the fashion industry where we're likely to find the worst offenders.

And it's not just the Uighurs. North Korean slave labour is widespread now in Chinese sweat shops, even manufacturing PPE [personal protective equipment] for the western market.