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‘This…Is Like Hell’: North Koreans Reveal Horrific Turn as Dire Conditions Inside Hyper-Reclusive Nation Worsen

North Korea is already one of the most diabolical countries for human rights violations. Consistently rated the worst nation in the world for Christian persecution and known for its brutal crackdowns on liberty, the hyper-reclusive East Asian country is now experiencing a new layer of internal chaos: increased food shortages and starvation.

The already deplorable conditions inside North Korea are worsening and were recently described to persecution watchdog Open Doors USA in the most stirring of ways. 

“This situation is like hell — it can’t be imagined or understood without experiencing it,” an unnamed North Korean source said.

When you explore the current dynamic inside North Korea, this description seems fitting. Food shortages have long been a problem, but issues intensified in January 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led North Korean officials to shut down the Chinese border and halt trading. 

There was an immediate impact on the availability and price of food and resources — one that hasn’t subsided.

To underscore just how dire the situation has become, Open Doors noted North Korean leaders have taken the unusual step of openly talking about the nation’s woes. Just consider North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s admission earlier this year that his country is facing its “worst-ever situation.” 

Citizens pay tribute to North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in front of the statues on the occasion of the 76th founding anniversary of the Worker’s Party in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

He also spoke in an address this month for the 76th anniversary of the Workers’ Party, noting that “unprecedented” challenges are imploring officials to do more to stem the chaos. Kim even reportedly labeled the current scenario a “grim situation.”

Open Doors has more:

Normally, North Korea is slow to admit anything negative in the county or ask for help from the international community. But in April, North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un made public statements about the crisis—signaling a dire situation.

Speaking to his party officials, the 37-year-old leader called on them to “wage another, more difficult ‘Arduous March’ in order to relieve our people of the difficulty, even a little.” The Arduous March refers to the name the North Korean people gave the great famine of the 1990s in which 2-3 million people died.

North Koreans who have spoken to Open Doors are warning that food prices are rapidly increasing and that resources are even more scarce than normal, with the pandemic fueling an already raging inferno of dysfunction.

Radio Free Asia reported Monday that the North Korean government is warning citizens to prepare for shortages until at least 2025 and the Daily Mail is reporting the government is simply telling people to eat less until then. 

The border with China isn’t expected to re-open until that time, either. 

“Two weeks ago, they told the neighborhood watch unit meeting that our food emergency would continue until 2025,” one North Korean resident told RFA, noting it seems slim the border issue will be remedied before then. “The food situation right now is already clearly an emergency, and the people are struggling with shortages.” 

The individual continued, “When the authorities tell them that they need to conserve and consume less food until 2025 … they can do nothing but feel great despair.”

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the food shortage for 2021 alone will come in around 860,000 tons, which is deeply concerning, as the Daily Mail noted.

All of these facets have played a role in the supply chain issues the nation is facing. And with winter fast approaching, residents understandably fear an inability to sustain themselves.

In the midst of the murky uncertainty, North Korea and South Korea recently reengaged communications for the first time in months. Despite the renewed discussion channels, the North has been ramping up its military activity and missile tests — something sure to create distrust along the way and could further alienate the North Koreans.

Pray for the North Korean people during this deeply distressing time.

US Issues 1st Passport Listing Gender as ‘X’

The United States has issued its first passport with an “X” gender designation and expects to be able to offer the option to nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people early next year, the State Department said Wednesday.

Jessica Stern, the U.S. special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights,said the moved bring the government documents in line with the “lived reality” that there is a wider spectrum of human sex characteristics than is reflected in the previous two designations.

“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” Stern said.

The department did not announce to whom the passport was issued. A department official declined to say whether it was for Dana Zzyym, an intersex Colorado resident who has been in a legal battle with the department since 2015, saying the department does not usually discuss individual passport applications because of privacy concerns.

Zzyym (pronounced Zimm) was denied a passport for failing to check male or female on an application. According to court documents, Zzyym wrote “intersex” above the boxes marked “M” and “F” and requested an “X” gender marker instead in a separate letter.

Zzyym was born with ambiguous physical sexual characteristics but was raised as a boy and underwent several surgeries that failed to make Zzyym appear fully male, according to court filings. Zzyym served in the Navy as a male but later came to identify as intersex while working and studying at Colorado State University. The department’s denial of Zzyym’s passport prevented Zzyym from being able to travel to a meeting of Organization Intersex International in Mexico.

The State Department announced in June that it was moving toward adding a third gender marker but said it would take time because it required extensive updates to its computer systems. A department official said the passport application and system update with the “X” designation option still need to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all government forms, before they can be issued.

The department now also allows applicants to self-select their gender as male or female, no longer requiring them to provide medical certification if their gender did not match that listed on their other identification documents.

The United States joins a handful of countries, including Australia,, New Zealand, Nepal and Canada, in allowing its citizens to designate a gender other than male or female on their passports.

Stern said her office planned to talk about the U.S.′ experience with the change in its interactions around the world and she hopes that might help inspire other governments to offer the option.

“We see this as a way of affirming and uplifting the human rights of trans and intersex and gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people everywhere,” she said.

‘Complacency On This Set’: Authorities Recover Bullet, Detail Baldwin Shooting; Criminal Charges Still On Table

Authorities in New Mexico said in a press conference Wednesday that they think there was “complacency” on the set of a movie, where actor Alec Baldwin shot dead a cinematographer.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza also said a lead projectile, which police consider to be a bullet, was recovered from the shoulder of director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting.

“I think there was some complacency on this set, and I think there are some safety issues that need to be addressed by the industry and possibly by the state of New Mexico, but I’ll leave that up to the industry and the state as to what those need to be,” Mendoza said.  Mendoza added that there is no footage of the actual shooting.

During the shooting of “Rust,” Baldwin fired a gun he thought to be “cold,” meaning unloaded. The projectile hit Halyna Hutchins, who died on the way to the hospital.

At the press conference, District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said it is too early to decide if criminal charges will be filed in the shooting.

“If the facts and evidence and law support charges, then I will initiate prosecution at that time,” she said, adding “we are not there yet.”

Said the sheriff: “The investigation will continue and if the Sheriff’s Office determines during our investigation that a crime has occurred and probable cause exists, an arrest or arrests will be made and charges will be filed.”

“Otherwise, we will complete our investigation and forward the complete investigation and evidence to the District Attorney for review,” Mendoza said, adding that more interviews will be conducted.

The Sheriff’s Office has already said more search warrants could be coming.

The “complacency” comment comes after some on the set said live ammo was used after shooting for target practice. “We have recovered what we believe to be possible additional live rounds on set,” he said.

“We know that there was one live round as far as we are concerned on set,” the sheriff said. “We are going to determine whether we suspect that there were other live rounds. But that is up to the testing. But right now, we are going to determine how those got there, why they were there. because they shouldn’t have been there.”

The sheriff also said officials have recovered “500 rounds of ammunition… a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and what we are suspecting are live rounds.” On the recovered lead projectile, Mendoza later hedged, saying that he considered the “bullet live because obviously, it did fire from the gun.” But added, “Until it’s proven by the crime lab, it’s a suspected live round.”

As for who else was involved, Mendoza said: “We identified two other people that handled and or inspected the loaded prior to Baldwin firing the weapon. These two individuals are armorer Hannah Reed- Gutierrez and Assistant Director David Halls. All three individuals have been cooperative in the investigation and have provided statements.”

Major gun-rights group joins abortion advocates in protest of Texas pro-life law

In a surprise development last week, an influential gun-rights group sided with abortion advocates in protest of Texas’ new six-week abortion ban.

What are the details?

The Firearms Policy Coalition filed an amicus brief in support of abortion providers in a legal challenge to the new law, arguing that the legislation sets a dangerous precedent that could potentially be exploited to limit constitutional rights, Bloomberg Law reported.

The law, which took effect in September, bans abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, something that typically occurs at around six weeks gestation. But unlike similar laws passed in other states that have been blocked by the courts, Texas’ ban relies solely on private individuals for enforcement by empowering citizens to file civil lawsuits against those who perform, aid, or abet an abortion after six weeks.

That unique approach has angered abortion advocates both in the state and across the country and now has attracted opposition from a gun-rights group that is usually supportive of conservative causes.

“The approach used by Texas to avoid pre-enforcement review of its restriction on abortion and its delegation of enforcement to private litigants could just as easily be used by other States to restrict First and Second Amendment rights or, indeed, virtually any settled or debated constitutional right,” representative counsel Erik Jaffe wrote in the brief on behalf of FPC.

Jaffe — a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas who has elsewhere defended abortion restrictions — claimed that such a result “is wholly anathema to our constitutional scheme regardless [of] what one thinks of abortion or, indeed, of any other hotly debated constitutional right, such as the right to keep and bear arms.”

“It’s hard to miss the parallels between abortion and guns,” he said, Bloomberg reported.

What else?

Similar arguments have been offered by those on the other side of the political spectrum, such as Brigitte Amiri of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Take almost any individual constitutional right and it “could easily fall into a similar scheme by any state that disfavors that right,” Amiri, an attorney representing the Texas abortion providers in their complaint, argued, according to Bloomberg.

She suggested that the Texas case is essentially about whether a state can “pass an unconstitutional law and do so in a way that would evade court review,” not necessarily about the right to an abortion.

Since its passage, the Texas law, known as Senate Bill 8, has been the target of legal challenges. It was briefly blocked earlier this month by a district judge before being reinstated only days later as the result of an appeals court ruling.

The jockeying comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on a separate state abortion ban out of Mississippi that could also have major implications on abortion precedent in America.

Build Back Better Act to Have $500 Billion in Climate Carveouts

The Build Back Better Act, President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion infrastructure bill, will reportedly contain more than $500 billion in carveouts to combat climate change.

Axios reported Tuesday that the Build Back Better Act will contain more than $500 billion in spending to address climate change.

Axios’ Alayna Treene said this would amount to “the single biggest component of the sweeping package.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Axios that the provision would exceed $500 billion in spending.

“Everything else is getting a massive haircut, but this isn’t,” Schatz said.

“This will be, just as a matter of fact, the biggest climate bill in human history. At least half a trillion dollars. That’s a pretty good story to tell at the Conference of Parties (COP26),” Schatz added.

President Joe Biden will travel to the 2021 United Nations climate conference Thursday in Glasgow, Scotland. Biden has hoped to use the passage of his dual infrastructure bills as a way to tout America’s mission to combat climate change.

KEARNY, NEW JERSEY – OCTOBER 25: U.S. President Joe Biden gives a speech on his Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and Build Back Better Agenda at the NJ Transit Meadowlands Maintenance Complex on October 25, 2021 in Kearny, New Jersey. On Thursday during a CNN Town Hall, President Joe Biden announced that a deal to pass major infrastructure and social spending measures was close to being done. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also announced on Sunday that she expects Democrats to have an “agreement” on a framework for the social safety net plan and a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the next week.The reconciliation package, which was slated at first to cost $3.5 Trillion, would still be the biggest support to expanding education, health care and child care support, and also help to fight the climate crisis as well as make further investments in infrastructure. Congress still needs to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill by October 31 before the extension of funding for surface transportation expires. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The White House also hosted approximately a dozen climate advocacy group leaders to review Biden’s efforts to combat climate change.

“If Biden walks into Glasgow without an agreed-to framework, it would undercut his credibility in global climate talks with world leaders,” Axios noted.

Biden’s inclusion of $500 billion in climate change funding would give more ammo to Republicans that this bill would amount to a “Green New Deal Lite.”

House Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (R-SC) charged in a memo in August that the Build Back Better bill amounts to “essentially a Green New Deal Lite.”

“Only $110 billion of the so-called $1 trillion-plus bipartisan infrastructure package goes toward road, bridges, and other major projects that the American people generally consider ‘infrastructure,’” Banks wrote.

Banks said that the remaining provisions of the bill are “Green New Deal provisions.”

White Male Hospital Executive Wins $10 Million Payout in Discrimination Case After He Was Replaced by Two Women – One Black, One White – For ‘Diversity’ Program

A white male hospital executive won a $10 million settlement in a discrimination case after he was replaced by two women, one of whom is black, as part of the company’s ‘diversity’ program.

In 2018 David Duvall was about to celebrate his fifth anniversary at Novant Health, a North Carolina-based health care system, when he was promptly fired and replaced by two women in the name of ‘diversity and inclusion.’

Duvall said he was fired as senior vice president of marketing and communication without warning in his discrimination lawsuit against Novant Health.

A federal jury on Tuesday awarded Duvall $10 million.

ABC News reported:

A former top executive in a North Carolina-based health care system who claimed in a lawsuit that he lost his job because he is a white male was awarded $10 million by a federal jury on Tuesday.

In his 2019 lawsuit, David Duvall said he lost his job as senior vice president of marketing and communication at Novant Health due to efforts to diversify top leadership positions, news outlets reported. The jury said Novant Health failed to prove that it would have dismissed Duvall regardless of his race.

Duvall said in his lawsuit that he was fired in 2018 without warning or explanation shortly before his fifth anniversary with the company. He said he was replaced by two women, one Black and one white. Duvall, who worked in Mecklenburg County, accused Novant of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race and gender discrimination in the workplace.

No Woke Agenda in Court: Rittenhouse Judge Says Rioters Can’t Be Called ‘Victims,’ Approves This List Instead

The trial for Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of shooting three people during Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is set to begin on Nov. 1.

But on Tuesday, the judge delivered a possible blow to the prosecution.

While in court, Judge Bruce Schroeder said the defense team will be allowed to call the men who were shot “rioters,” “looters” and “arsonists,” WTMJ-TV reported.

Two of the men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, were killed during the riot. Gaige Grosskreutz was wounded by a gunshot but survived.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Schroeder had previously ruled the prosecution could not call the men “victims” because of the “loaded” nature of the word.

While the two rulings may seem to contradict each other, there is a simple explanation. Words like “rioter” or “looter” describe the actions the men had already taken that night. By contrast, the word “victim” assumes Rittenhouse is guilty of a crime before the trial takes place.

Because Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz are not on trial, Schroeder ruled the defense team can accuse them of various actions that night. Given that Grosskreutz survived and has not been charged with rioting, looting or arson, Schroeder said referring to him as such could be a risk for the defense team.

“He can demonize them if he wants, if he thinks he’ll score points with the jury,” Schroeder said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Rittenhouse is the one on trial, so it stands to reason that the prosecution would be banned from using words that encourage the jury to assume his guilt. The Tribune reported that prohibiting words like “victim” is “not uncommon in self-defense cases.”

Schroeder even went so far as to say that the prosecution is free to demonize Rittenhouse via terms such as “cold-blooded killer,” in the same way the defense can call the men “looters.”

Nonetheless, leftists on Twitter were immediately up in arms and accusing Schroeder of unfair treatment.

Never mind the fact that back in April, leftists threatened to riot in the streets if former police officer Derek Chauvin was not convicted on three counts of murder in the death of George Floyd.

After making threats that very likely could have swayed the jury’s decision, they suddenly care about fair trials. Furthermore, they are convinced the system is somehow rigged against them despite the fact that they got their way in the Chauvin case.

Rittenhouse deserves a fair trial, and that is exactly what Schroeder is trying to give him. Before jumping to conclusions, Americans on both sides of the aisle ought to let the justice system work as it was designed.

ANOTHER In-N-Out Burger Shut Down For Refusing To Be ‘Vaccine Police’

The Burger chains are being punished for refusing to ‘segregate’ their customers.

A second chain of In-N-Out Burger has been closed down by county authorities in California after it refused to go along with enforcing proof of vaccination orders.

The Washington Times reports that the restaurant in Pleasant Hill has been indefinitely closed by Contra Costa County health officials after ignoring orders to verify vaccine status or proof of a negative COVID-19 test among diners.

The report notes that the restaurant did display mandated signage detailing the requirements, but has refused to enforce the mandate.

Other chains of the restaurant in the area have also received warnings and fines, according to the Times.

As we previously reported, In-N-Out Burger is rebelling against what it calls the “clear overreach” of COVID-19 mandates by insisting “we refuse to be the vaccination police.”

A San Francisco branch of the burger chain was shut down on October 14 before being reopened but only for takeout and outdoor service.

In-N-Out Burger’s chief legal and business officer Arnie Wensinger said in a statement that “As a Company, In-N-Out Burger strongly believes in the highest form of customer service and to us that means serving all Customers who visit us and making all Customers feel welcome.”

Further describing the proof of vaccine mandate as a “clear governmental overreach,” as well as “intrusive, improper, and offensive,” Wensinger urged that “We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” and “It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not, whether based on the documentation they carry, or any other reason.”

Virginia Delegate Races Could Reflect National Anti-Democratic Mood

Some of the many overlooked but critically important offices in the American political landscape are the ones held by state legislators and members of general assemblies. These are the people who are most like us, the ones who live in neighborhoods close to ours, sit in the pews on Sundays and attend the local high school football games with everyone else.

They are the elected officials who rarely have an entourage but have as much of a vested interest as you in ensuring that roads and bridges in your town are safe, because they have to drive those same roads.

When they are on the ballot, their elections often give us hints on the most granular level, either of how the electorate feels about each political party long before a big national election or of whether something is brewing that the press and politicians are missing.

Last November, when President Joe Biden narrowly defeated then-President Donald Trump, the blue (Democratic) wave predicted to happen down-ballot along with Biden defeating Trump in double digits never materialized. In fact, if you paid attention in down-ballot races in state legislative bodies across the country, there was indeed a red (Republican) wave instead.

In Pennsylvania, where Biden won, there were no Biden coattails down-ballot. Democrats lost five contested state Senate seats they were expected to win, along with two upset losses in statewide races.

In fact, despite having an excess amount of money from Democratic super PACs run by former Attorney General Eric Holder and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg dumped into races across the country, Democrats actually lost ground in important state legislative races from the Rust Belt to the Arizona Sun Belt.

These were races they all bragged that they would win.

Those results were telling us something most didn’t pay attention to, in the same way that too few people paid attention here in Richmond four years ago, when Virginia Republicans’ 32-seat majority in the House of Delegates almost completely evaporated in 2017.

By the time the next off-year election rolled around in 2019, the Republicans’ by-then flimsy 51-49 seat majority turned into a 45-55 deficit, putting Democrats in the catbird seat.

The race here in 2017 told us that college-educated, center-right suburban voters wanted nothing to do with anything associated with Trump’s comportment. For them, it had infected any attachment they felt for conservative policies.

While much of the media is paying attention to the gubernatorial race here, it will be interesting to see if these same center-right suburban voters are telling us how they feel about the state of things in the world. In short, have the media and the Democrats been effective in still making everything and everyone that is a Republican a mini version of Trump that will storm the state capitol on any given day?

Or are center-right suburban voters unsatisfied with how the Democrats have handled the power voters gave them?

All 100 state House seats are on the ballot. Will voters tell Democrats they are seen not as a governing body but as a party with a bad overreach problem?

As in 2020 nationally, Democrats running for the Virginia House also have a sizable cash advantage over the Republicans, and they have had luminaries such as former President Barack Obama coming in to remind voters to vote straight Democratic. Then again, ask former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds how much that helped him in his run for governor in 2009, when voters were reacting to national Democrats’ supermajority (and superoverreach) in that election cycle.

There is a possibility the Republicans could win one of the five suburban House seats Democrats are defending; there is also the possibility that Democrats gain new seats.

If it is a real wave, though, Democrats could lose all five, and their counterparts in Washington could put the brakes on their overreach. But don’t count on it: Washington Democrats, to their own subsequent detriment, didn’t flinch in 2009 when their party lost the governors’ offices both here in Virginia and in New Jersey.

In short, the spending continued, and so did the growth of government—and within a year, House Democrats in Washington were handed the biggest loss for a party in a midterm election since 1938. And by 2014, Republicans won a record number of state legislative races, thus controlling state legislative bodies in 66 of the 99 state chambers nationwide.

By 2016, Trump won a presidency people somehow never saw coming despite all of the evidence from the ground up.

Sometimes, local elections tell us everything we need to know: A move by an inch here or there for the Republicans in this very blue state should tell Democrats a lot more than they appear willing to hear.

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