Blog

35200b img-responsive” src=”http://mickhartley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/mt_imported_image_1758339967.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”Canadian-west11″ />

[Photos from the series Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle © Kyler Zeleny]

A report from the Daily NK suggests that many parents in North Korea aren't sending their children to school because they simply can't afford it:

North Korean authorities recently conducted an investigation into why the number of new elementary students in the country has fallen so much compared to last year, Daily NK has learned.

According to a source in North Hamgyong Province on Friday, local Ministry of Social Security offices and education ministry officials conducted an investigation into the issue from late June to early July. The investigation came after the education ministry ordered all schools to close again because of COVID-19.

According to a report written by the Ministry of Social Security’s Resident Registration Department, only around 70% of the students who should have entered elementary school have actually done so.

The authorities tried to analyze why this was the case and one theory suggested it may be because of the country’s reduced birth rate. One of the most prominent theories, however, was that parents refrained from sending their kids to school because it just costs too much.

This theory is backed up by the fact that parents have to pay for school clothes, shoes, school bags, and even school supplies in the country. Given that parents are already burdened by other expenditures – such as contributing money to construction projects – paying for school may be too much for many of them.

North Koreans facing even more dire economic conditions think that there is really no reason to send their kids to school because it is better for them to “engage in business” when they are older or “raise animals” to make money, according to the source.

The Ministry of Social Security report pointed out that students who did not enter elementary school instead find themselves in farm fields or picking greens in the mountains with their parents, he added.

Among the construction projects that the people are expected to pay for are prestige efforts like the Pyongyang General Hospital – where things aren't going too well…

he bad faith, the ulterior motive, the dog whistle bigotry. The hate that’s hidden within a woman’s cry of pain, and which only they can see. To the rest of us, it looks as though nothing has changed.

The new misogyny: just like the old misogyny.

=”display: inline”>
[Photo: Shorpy/DPC]

>

Saying that the construction coordination commission failed to solve all the problems in conformity with the Party's policy line, he said in the strong terms that if such situation is left to go on, the noble plan and intention of the Party which initiated the glorious and worthwhile construction for the good of the people could be distorted and the image of the Party be tarnished.

He instructed the relevant departments of the Party Central Committee to investigate the performance of the construction coordination commission as a whole and replace all the officials responsible and make strict referral of them.

More detail from Richard Lloyd Parry at the Times:

Kim Jong-un has publicly sacked the managers of a construction project for soliciting donations.

In a rare admission of malpractice among public officials, North Korean state media reported today that there were “serious problems” in the building of Pyongyang General Hospital….

The Pyongyang hospital eclipsed the building of a delayed tourist beach resort near the northeast city of Wonsan as the country’s top-priority construction project.

According to KCNA, Mr Kim ordered the party’s central committee to replace the errant officials on the hospital project. As far as their punishment goes, Mr Kim ordered that investigators “make strict referral of them”.

Sounds ominous.

The construction of the hospital is a prestige project, timed to be complete for the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea in October. The rush has meant shortcuts in the construction, with tales of workers falling to their deaths due to exhaustion and lack of proper safety equipment. 

The Supreme Leader's sister Kim Yo Jong, meanwhile, ordered the creation of a series of literary works focused on the Pyongyang General Hospital project a few weeks back. I wonder if this latest unfortunate setback will manage to find its way into one of these heroic socialist masterpieces…

d, told The Times: “People do not like to feel that they are being told only the partial truth . . . there is a serious problem with Islamist terrorism. The use of any term that obscures that fact risks damaging public trust in the police.”

Maajid Nawaz has been on hunger strike since last week, with a goal "to secure a debate in the UK Parliament on the imposition of Maginsky Act style sanctions on individuals who are responsible for gross human rights violations" against the Uighurs. 

His petition to the government – Impose sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims – has now reached over 120,000 signatures, which ensures a debate, so I assume – I hope – that his hunger strike is now over.

he study compares two countries that share similar societal models, including access to universal health care, but that adopted very different strategies to tackle Covid-19. Sweden avoided a proper lockdown, while Finland imposed tougher social distancing.

It’s not the first time researchers have raised questions about the merits of shutting schools during the pandemic. A French study last month found that school children don’t appear to transmit Covid-19 to peers or teachers. That investigation established that kids seemed to show fewer symptoms than adults, and to be less contagious. But the authors also said more research was needed.

Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the infectious diseases unit of Finland’s health authority and a co-author of the Nordic research, said that “children get sick with Covid-19 much more rarely and less severely.” She also cautioned that more data is needed, and that “children’s role in the transmission needs further study.”

But for now, “it would appear that their role in transmitting Covid-19 isn’t at all as big as with other respiratory infections, such as influenza,” Nohynek said. After two months of remote learning, Finnish children returned to school in May, and national infection rates have continued to decline since then.

Previously, Coronavirus does not “as a rule” pass from children to adults.

40px”>"He had agents who captured slaves from different places and brought them to him," my father told me.

Nwaubani Ogogo's slaves were sold through the ports of Calabar and Bonny in the south of what is today known as Nigeria.

People from ethnic groups along the coast, such as the Efik and Ijaw, usually acted as stevedores for the white merchants and as middlemen for Igbo traders like my great-grandfather.

They loaded and offloaded ships and supplied the foreigners with food and other provisions. They negotiated prices for slaves from the hinterlands, then collected royalties from both the sellers and buyers….

Nwaubani Ogogo lived in a time when the fittest survived and the bravest excelled. The concept of "all men are created equal" was completely alien to traditional religion and law in his society.

It would be unfair to judge a 19th Century man by 21st Century principles.

Assessing the people of Africa's past by today's standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology.

Igbo slave traders like my great-grandfather did not suffer any crisis of social acceptance or legality. They did not need any religious or scientific justifications for their actions. They were simply living the life into which they were raised.

That was all they knew.

Fine – but no one seems to have a problem judging 19th Century European men by 21st Century principles. Then again, it was 19th Century Englishmen who set about ending the slave trade, with the revolutionary belief that slavery was a vile custom that needed to be stopped.

Buying and selling of human beings among the Igbo had been going on long before the Europeans arrived. People became slaves as punishment for crime, payment for debts, or prisoners of war.

The successful sale of adults was considered an exploit for which a man was hailed by praise singers, akin to exploits in wrestling, war, or in hunting animals like the lion.

Igbo slaves served as domestic servants and labourers. They were sometimes also sacrificed in religious ceremonies and buried alive with their masters to attend to them in the next world.

Slavery was so ingrained in the culture that a number of popular Igbo proverbs make reference to it:

• • Anyone who has no slave is his own slave
  • A slave who looks on while a fellow slave is tied up and thrown into the grave with his master should realise that the same thing could be done to him someday
  • It is when the son is being given advice that the slave learns

The arrival of European merchants offering guns, mirrors, gin, and other exotic goods in exchange for humans massively increased demand, leading people to kidnap others and sell them.

Interesting:

The BBC has removed Mermaids and two other organisations from its information and advice web pages, a sign that it may have concerns over the quality of advice the organisations were giving.

As recently as late June, the BBC website had a whole page dedicated to “Information and advice: gender identity,” in which it referred viewers to the Gender Trust, Mermaids, and the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES).

This page has now gone and the page dedicated to “Information and Support: LGBT Issues” now refers viewers to the NHS website for information on gender identity.

There has been no official explanation for the change, but the organisations have come under increased scrutiny for the advice they give to families of gender-questioning children. There have been accusations that Mermaids, for example, has been accused of acting as a lobby group for medical intervention, rather than a support group for families.

BBC Newsnight recently reported that staff concerns over too-hasty referral of gender-questioning children to medical intervention were being ‘shut down’ by the national Gender Identity Development Service. And the NHS has ordered an independent review of the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria in children.

Mermaids was founded by Susie Green, who took her gender-questioning child to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery when the child was 16, and is a leading advocate of the concept of ‘trans children’.

A further sign that harder questions are now being asked of Mermaids, and more generally of the whole issue of gender identity – as mentioned here. The realisation is dawning – not before time – that medical intervention for issues of supposed "gender dysphoria", as pushed by Mermaids, is basically gay conversion therapy under another name.