Mick Hartley

Intermission

Off for a break. Back Monday the 6th.

Pittsburgh 1908

From the files of the Detroit Publishing Company.

"Fifth Avenue, looking north."

"General market, Diamond Square."
[Photos: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

Inside North Korea

Photos from war reporter Stephan Gladieu:

A group of woman during a mass dance rehearsal in front of the monument to the foundation of the Workers' Party of Korea

In the 3D movie theatre at SCI Tech Complex

O Yong Ae, a traffic woman, poses in the center of Pyongyang. They are chosen for their looks and women must leave the role if they marry, with compulsory retirement looming at just 26

Three workers in a rice field planting rice in Sariwon collective farm

Kim Un Ju and Ri Sol Hwa at Ryugyong Opthalmic Hospital

Kim Su Ryon in the subway

Hong Su Jong at the Kwangbok, or Liberation, department store in Pyongyang

A wall painted in tribute to the North Korean space programme at Munsu water park

Kim Hyang and Kim Ju Hyang pose in the Meari Shooting Range, where Gladieu had hoped to get some less staged shots

A group of children plays with manual bumpers cars at the 700,000 square metre Mangyongdae amusement park

Dr Ri Su Rim examines Yu Hyang Suk at the Zhenghsu Pyongyang textile factory, which has 8,500 workers, 80 per cent of them women

Four students during a break at Kim Il-sung University, which was built in 1946

A farmer works at the Sariwon co-operative farm

Kim Gum Sim and Ryu Song Hyang, at a food factory in Pyongyang's Mangyongdae district. The fifth floor has been turned into a waterpark, complete with pools and basketball hoops, sunloungers, a fish pond, grotto and sauna

Did Kim Jong-un order men to copy his hairstyle? Nothing was entirely clear to the photographer during his visits

Pak Chol Guk on Kim Il-sung Square

Gwang Chol, Ri Son Gyong pose in front of the 50m monument of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang.

Kim Gyong Tae, Gwon Gang Hun and Kim Jong Hyok at Golden Lane Bowling in Pyongyang
[Photos: Stephan Gladieu]

"Volunteering" for internal exile

From South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

The North Korean regime has been sending elite young Workers Party functionaries into internal exile at remote construction sites to shore up crumbling discipline.

The practice is being presented as "volunteering," but it appears they are not given a choice.

One senior defector said, "One of the biggest problems leader Kim Jong-un faces is young people who have been influenced by South Korean culture and angry about the economic crisis. The aim appears to be to neutralize them so they can't foment internal dissent."

The official Rodong Sinmun daily on Sunday published a statement from Kim to mark Youth Day the previous day. "What makes me especially happy is to see young people who have been left behind make the magnificent decision to sacrifice themselves for their country and start fresh by moving on to difficult and demanding areas," he said.

He attributed the "weakness" of young North Koreans to the "stubborn ideological and cultural infiltration schemes of the imperialists."

The victims gathered in Pyongyang to hold what was billed as a "debate" last week. They included a graduate from Sariwon Teachers College who "volunteered" to teach in a school in a remote outpost, a youth guidance official from Nampo who "chose" to work on a cooperative farm, and a high-end store worker in Pyongyang who "opted" to work on a ranch in Kangwon Province.

The echoes of the massive reeducation efforts of China's Cultural Revolution or Cambodia's Khmer Rouge are unmissable.

One intelligence official here said, "Many young North Koreans are essentially being sent to labor camps."

Here's the Rodong Sinmun report on these brave young people "demonstrating the stout mettle of the Korean youth with hot blood and soaring passion in every corner of the country". Deep breath...

Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, sent a letter of congratulations to the trustworthy young people who volunteered to work in the difficult and challenging sectors of socialist construction on Saturday. 

The full text of the letter of congratulations is as follows: 

In the stirring period, when a dynamic struggle is being waged for the rejuvenation of our great state, our excellent young men and women volunteered to work in the difficult and challenging sectors of socialist construction, instilling a firmer confidence and greater fighting spirit in all other people and demonstrating far and wide the revolutionary character and fighting mettle of the Korean youth, who go through fire and water in response to the call of the Workers' Party of Korea. 

With an ardent affection for and unshakable conviction in socialism, you have turned out to work bravely for the revolution, defying trials and sacrifice; I highly appreciate your laudable patriotic deeds, and extend warm congratulations and militant greetings to our young people. 

My warm thanks go to the excellent parents and teachers, who supported the laudable determinations of their beloved children and students and encouraged them without hesitation, and to the organizations and officials of the youth league, who helped these young people's valuable decisions turn into patriotic minds and inspired them. 

I also would like to extend warm congratulations to all other young people across the country, who have greeted Youth Day while demonstrating the stout mettle of the Korean youth with hot blood and soaring passion in every corner of the country. 

Though your native homes and the dreams you nurtured in your minds are different, you, with the same dream and ideal of supporting the Party's intention, have settled in the workplaces, to which others do not dare to go, and in other places strange to you; you are a great pride of socialist Korea and source of its great strength, as well as young patriots of our era, beloved of your country and fellow people. 

Your deeds are an expression of your thoroughgoing faith to share your destiny for ever with socialism, your ardent love for your state and your outlook on beautiful life of finding the honour and worth of life on the road of working for the Party and revolution. 

Amid the remarkably soaring enthusiasm for volunteering by young people in response to the call of the times and their motherland in practice, not in words, the ranks of young people who volunteered to the difficult and challenging sectors have increased rapidly after the Eighth Congress of the Party; this fact showcases the wonderful ideological and spiritual state of our current young men and women. 

Young people around the world are flowing into their capital and other cities in pursuance of their avarice and personal pleasure. Only the Korean young people who have grown up under the embrace of the socialist motherland unhesitatingly volunteer to exchange their cards of capital citizenship with notes of dispatch to coal mines, cooperative farms, grand construction sites and islands far from cities. 

Our Party identifies, in your beautiful and laudable spiritual world, the patriotic soul and revolutionary spirit which remain unchanged and yet alive no matter how many generations have been replaced. 

You volunteered for the posts at which, you knew, you would have to suffer extraordinary hardships away from your dear homes, brightly illumined cities and beloved families. Your lofty spirit is a splendid inheritance of the ennobling spirit of the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters who fought shedding blood in the blizzard-swept wilderness after parting with their families. 

The red blood of the anti-Japanese forerunners who pioneered the revolution under the leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung is now running through the veins of the rising generations, and this clearly proves that the lineage of the revolutionary cause of Juche which started in Mt Paektu is being stoutly inherited. 

The enemies are now trembling with terror at this powerful current and spirit. 

The imperialists' anti-DPRK attempt to degenerate and undermine the ranks of our young people by means of vicious sanctions and pressure and tenacious ideological and cultural infiltration has vanished like bubbles in the face of this strong current. 

It is a wild goose chase to try to pull down the bulwark of socialism by breaking away our younger generations from the revolution. 

The revolutionary advance made by you, hot-blooded young people, is heightening the morale of the ranks of the general onward march as the days go by and injecting confidence in sure victory and youthful vigour into the whole country....

[Continues...]

Multicultural propaganda

Meanwhile, in Russia:

A Russian sushi company has offered a public apology for an advertisement that featured a black man after its owner received death threats from hardline nationalists.

Konstantin Zimen, the head of the Yobidoyobi company, said the threats began when the online advert was sharply criticised by the leader of a nationalist movement called Male State.

While the company initially insisted that it would not give in to pressure, it removed the advert on Saturday. “We would like to apologise to the Russian nation for having hurt Russians with our photographs,” Yobidoyobi said in a post on VKontakte, a popular social media website.

The advert showed the man and three young women eating noodles and seafood. Zimen said that he was accused of “the propaganda of multiculturalism”.

Only 17 per cent of Russians think that black people should be allowed to live in Russia, according to a survey published last year. Only 6 per cent said they would be willing to have a black person as a neighbour. The Kremlin has said that it does not believe that Russia has a xenophobia problem.

The new homophobia

The new face of LGBT Pride. No room for LGB - it's all about the T:

It was Manchester Pride this weekend. On Saturday, a young gay man in attendance suffered abuse and damage to his property and had to be escorted from the event by police for his own safety. All because his LGB Alliance hat and t-shirt upset a vituperative gang of woke Stasi.

Alexander Braham was at Manchester Pride, wearing a hat and t-shirt bearing the LGB Alliance logo. While he was attending a march to protest cuts to LGB+ charities, his hat was stolen and he was abused and attacked to such an extent that police had to remove him for his own safety.

All over Twitter, people were congratulating themselves that a gay man was subjected to this violent and abusive behaviour and forced to leave a Pride event.

It seems that April Preston was one of the ringleaders. She is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Withington in the forthcoming local council elections and a member of the Lib Dem Federal Board:

"Five minutes in got a terf removed. Happy with that."

So a straight woman succeeded in bullying a gay man from a Pride march.

It's a take-over, in effect.

Misgendering is literal violence but attacking a gay man and forcing him out of a Pride event is totally fine. Welcome to the new homophobia.

More here.

 

Architectural styles

Early images from the Detroit Photographic Company, showing some of the different styles of architecture that were being built over 100 years ago: Beaux Arts, Neo-Tudor, Neo-Classical....

New Orleans circa 1910. "Audubon Building, Canal and Burgundy Sts."

Cambridge, Massachusetts, circa 1913. "Riverbank Court from Harvard Bridge."

Augusta, Georgia, 1903. "Georgia Railroad Bank, Seventh and Broad Streets."
[Photos: Shorpy/DPC]

The case of the bearded woman terrorist

As Jo Bartosch points out, the case of American far-right terrorist Michael Hari sets a new precedent. Not only are his lawyers trying to get him housed in a woman's jail because of his supposed new trans identity, but they're also claiming that the torment he suffered over his gender identity actually affected his mental state, and played a key part in the inner turmoil that led to his crimes:

Michael Hari now wants to be known as ‘Emily Claire’. In 2017 he was part of a far-right militia. Prosecutors allege its aim was ‘to terrorise Muslims into believing they are not welcome in the United States and should leave the country’. Hari’s gang used a sledgehammer to break a window of the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Centre in Bloomington, Minnesota. They then lobbed a nine-kilogram pipe bomb and a container full of fuel into the imam’s office. It caused an explosion which left worshippers terrified.

Hari’s group was known as the White Rabbits. During the investigation, federal agents uncovered a White Rabbit arsenal including a fully automatic machine gun, tactical gear and communications equipment. Before bombing the mosque, the White Rabbits had attempted to bomb abortion clinics.

Hari’s lawyer, Shannon Elkins, is asking for the minimum possible sentence of 30 years, instead of life imprisonment, on the grounds that Hari was apparently suffering from ‘inner conflict’ over his ‘gender identity’ at the time of the crime. Hari is also seeking to be moved to a female prison estate.

‘As she formed a ragtag group of freedom fighters or militia men and spoke of missions to Cuba and Venezuela, Ms Hari secretly looked up “sex change”, “transgender surgery” and “post-op transgender” on the internet’, Elkins explains. ‘As she purchased military fatigues for their “missions”, she also purchased dresses and female clothing for a planned trip to Bangkok, Thailand, for male-to-female surgery. She was living a double life.’ Elkins even claims that Hari, despite his violent offending, is a ‘pacifist’ at heart.

This is the latest in a stream of stories from the US in which transgender ideology and woke sensibilities have collided with common sense. Debates around transgenderism have fractured along party lines. The Republicans and Christian conservatives lobby for sex-based rights, while the Democrats push to make any mention of biology a crime.

One of President Biden’s first actions after assuming office was to sign an executive order that effectively removed the sex-based rights of the four million women who work in the federal government – and of the many more who rely on statutory services. For most legal purposes in the US, ‘woman’ now means ‘anyone who identifies as a woman’, rather than adult, human female.

This is a particular problem when it comes to criminals. Legislation has been passed in many US states that explicitly allows males to be transferred to women’s prisons. In California, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act allows prisoners who identify as ‘transgender, non-binary and intersex’ to be housed and searched in a manner ‘consistent with the incarcerated individual’s gender identity’. According to the LA Times, in California there have been over 260 requests by males seeking to move to female prisons. Around 20 per cent of California’s male inmates who identify as trans are sex offenders....

In media reports, Hari’s bearded photo has been accompanied by the name ‘Emily’ and female pronouns. How legal professionals, journalists and policymakers could have been so easily manipulated into disbelieving their own senses is an open question.

Most of the time, when a self-declared ‘trans-woman’ commits the kind of criminal act that is overwhelmingly associated with males, we are supposed not to notice. What’s unusual about Hari’s case is that we’re told that he committed the offence because of the inner turmoil of being ‘trans’.

The dark irony at the heart of this case is that self-proclaimed liberals, the woke and Democrats are taking the side of a racist white man who terrorised Muslims over the women Hari is likely to be imprisoned with. The women who could soon be forced to share a cell with Hari will be those at the bottom of the social-justice heap. Who’s left to speak up for them?

It's hard - well, it's impossible - not to take a cynical view of all this. Does anyone outside his defence team, and outside the strangely submissive US media, really believe that this is anything but a crude attempt to pull in some of that trans sympathy that seems to be so much in vogue in liberal circles there, and to enjoy a much easier life inside a woman's jail?

As noted at the Glinner Update, gender critical feminists were accused of lying, and trading in moral panic, when they suggested that such cynical opportunism might be expected when male criminals can simply claim they're women and be believed, and then be housed in soft female prisons, free to terrorise the inmates. #ThisNeverHappens, they were told. But it does keep happening:

There have now been several examples of dangerous men saying they’re women in order to receive lesser prison sentences and/or to be housed in women’s jails.

Last year a judge in the UK jailed a man, who used a hammer to threaten a shop worker, to six months in jail. But one hour later he changed his mind and said, because the man identified as a woman, he should be immediately released.

Here’s six further examples of judges giving violent and sexual offenders lighter sentences because they now identify as women.

And they exclude the analysis we ran this April and May, which found at least eight trials took place in the UK in those months of men who identify as women, and one of a man who identifies as non-binary. Seven of the nine defendants were convicted paedophiles, the other two were guilty of extreme violence and terrorism. Their judges expressed sympathy for at least three of them, due to their ‘gender identities’, and two even avoided jail because of this.

But don’t worry - #ThisNeverHappens.

Crackdown on creeping decadence

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo on the crackdown north of the border:

The North Korean regime seems increasingly terrified of dissent among the younger generation, threatening draconian punishment for the slightest deviation from the puritanical Stalinism that is its ruling ideology.

The rubberstamp Supreme People's Assembly is to discuss a law on "ensuring education of young people" next month to try and brainwash a generation that has grown up with some nascent freedoms and glimpses of the outside world thanks to open-air markets.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April called for crackdown on creeping decadence like South Korean-style clothing, slang and other behavior among young North Koreans.

The assembly meets on Sept. 28 to deliberate on the law, the official Rodong Sinmun reported Thursday.

Last December, the regime also made distributing South Korean films and videos punishable by death and watching or listening to them by up to 15 years in prison. The state media have repeatedly inveighed against "anti-socialist" behavior and demanded absolute ideological fealty.

At a Workers Party meeting in April, Kim said, "Turning all party cells into healthy and viable ones which are closely knitted in bonds of human feelings... Those that are not knitted in bonds of human feelings cannot become loyal cells."

A cheap shot to compare with our northern border, I know, but with the way things are going in Scotland...

A surreal universe

Helsinki-based photographer Dasha Pears produces stylish and surprising images which act as "doors to a surreal universe where any psychological state becomes beautiful".

“Up and Go!”

“Invasion”

“Scarlet Caravan”

"Envy"

"Target"

"The Right Angle"

"Silence"

One of her projects is Synesthetic Letters:

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In grapheme-color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers are associated with specific colors and sometimes colorful patterns....

This project attempts to show how we, two synesthetes, Dasha Pears and Jane Kristoferson, view the world and see letters in colors, sometimes attributing additional concepts to them.

A small selection:

"B"

"E"

"M"

"P"

"S"

"U"
[Images © Dasha Pears]

On Instagram.