90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, May 27, 2021

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1366

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Girls With Guns

“Devil woman” Kim Yo Jong orders probes of government agencies and executes officials who “get on her nerves,” they say.

CNN Proclaimed: Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics

Government officials in North Korea are living in fear after a series of executions of their colleagues on the orders of leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, two officials told RFA.

Since her brother’s rule began in 2011, Kim Yo Jong’s rise to power in her own right culminated in her becoming an alternate member of the Politburo in April 2020. At the time, her brother was rumored to be having health issues and some experts believed she could have been an option to replace him in the event of his death.

But she was demoted during the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s Eighth Party Congress in January, becoming just a member of the Party’s Central Committee, with her rank reduced from first deputy director to deputy director. Still, she remains one of North Korea’s most powerful people, and sources said she has ordered executions of government officials simply for “getting on her nerves.”

“News that they shot to death a high-ranking official in Pyongyang is spreading among officials in Hyesan right now. We don’t know who the executed official was, but I heard from an official close to me that he was executed on the orders of Kim Yo Jong,” an official of an administrative agency in central northern Ryanggang province told RFA’s Korean Service May 13.

“In November last year, a gold smuggling incident was reported to the Central Party. A total of 10 state security officials and soldiers of the border security command were executed by firing squad in December, while nine residents were imprisoned for life. Dozens of their family members, meanwhile were sent to political prison camps.” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

RFA reported in November that that two soldiers were caught smuggling some $10 million worth of gold into China near Hyesan, on Nov. 1. One was arrested immediately, while the other, a border security guard, fled into China and was believed to be in the custody of Chinese authorities, according to local government sources.

Sources in the Ryanggang provincial government told RFA that the soldier caught Nov. 1 revealed during the investigation that they had been working with six residents on what had been their fifth trip smuggling gold to China. The six were arrested on Nov. 16, a judicial official told RFA at the time.

One of the Ryanggang sources told RFA in November there was a possibility that smugglers be executed because gold is strictly controlled by the state. Their offenses also included defying a strict border lockdown imposed to combat...

“Please, ignore the CDC guidance”

A professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has said that there is a general dismissal of the fact that more than half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to the coronavirus and that it constitutes “one of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership.”

Dr. Marty Makary made the comments during a recent interview, noting that “natural immunity works” and it is wrong to vilify those who don’t want the vaccine because they have already recovered from the virus.

Makary criticised “the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history” for not clearly communicating the scientific facts about natural immunity compared to the kind of immunity developed through vaccines.

“There is more data on natural immunity than there is on vaccinated immunity, because natural immunity has been around longer,” Makary emphasised.

“We are not seeing reinfections, and when they do happen, they’re rare. Their symptoms are mild or are asymptomatic,” the professor added.

“Please, ignore the CDC guidance,” he urged, adding “Live a normal life, unless you are unvaccinated and did not have the infection, in which case you need to be careful.”

“We’ve got to start respecting people who choose not to get the vaccine instead of demonizing them,” Makary further asserted.

The professor’s comments come amid a plethora of media generated propaganda suggesting that natural immunity isn’t enough, and that those who do not choose to take the vaccine should be socially ostracised.

The likes of the World Health Organisation have even shifted the definition of ‘herd immunity’, eliminating the pre-COVID scientific consensus that it could be achieved by allowing a virus to spread through a population, and insisting that...

Not everything is about Trump.

That may be difficult for some to comprehend as, even now, reporters try to keep the narrative focused on the former president.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is no stranger to media tricks, however, and when a reporter attempted some sleight of hand at a news conference earlier this week, DeSantis did not stand for it.

When asked whether his bill cracking down on Big Tech censorship was really an effort to protect Trump, DeSantis tore into dishonest inquiry and set the record straight.

“When you de-platform the president of the United States but you let Ayatollah Khamenei talk about killing Jews, that is wrong,” DeSantis said over cheers from the crowd.

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A viral video of the incident was shared on Twitter.

DeSantis’ reaction to the reporter’s question demonstrates two things.

First: DeSantis doesn’t put up with nonsense.

Second: He is not a partisan hack and, regardless of his...

On Friday 21 May, while walking her dog, Amanda, 27, from Umeå, in Sweden, was beaten by a group of "young men". She justified wanting to speak out about the incident, suggesting that in these cases, victims should rather remain silent.

The badly injured woman said she hoped that the culprits – foreigners, according to her – would be arrested so that other people do not suffer the same fate. “It’s not just for me, but so that others don’t get hurt,” she told Swedish news outlet Samnytt.

Last Friday, around nine in the evening, Amanda went for a walk with one of her dogs, a small one. Normally she takes her two dogs for a walk, but on that evening she left her large dog, a German Shepherd, at home.

Near Mariehem’s water tower in Umeå, a gang of four dark-haired foreign men in their twenties suddenly confronted her. “What are you looking at?”

Amanda decided not to take any notice of the troublemakers. “I ignored them and did not answer. They lined up and blocked the way and did not move so I have to go into the woods to get around them. And the moment I pass them, one turns, I can hear him come towards me and kick me. Then I don’t remember much.”

The woman lost consciousness after the assault. She does not know how long she was unconscious, but when she awoke, the group of men was no longer there. She said she “hadn’t provoked them at all”.

The “foreigners” spoke Swedish, and they used slang expressions. “I saw that they looked foreign, but maybe they were born in Sweden,” Amanda said. She believes they were from the Middle East, but said she was not sure. She had never met any of the men before.

Samnytt contacted the Västerbotten area police, who confirmed that...

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has introduced a bill that would triple the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, a proposal that is sure to make many hardworking taxpayers infuriated.

The Restoring the IRS Act of 2021 would nearly triple the budget of the government agency from $11.8 billion to $31.5 billion for mandatory annual spending.

Warren said that the goal of the proposal is to go after wealthy Americans and corporations that might be gaming the tax system.

“For too long, the wealthiest Americans and big corporations have been able to use lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists to avoid paying their fair share — and budget cuts have hollowed out the IRS so it doesn’t have the resources to go after wealthy tax cheats. The IRS should have more — and more stable — resources to do its job, and my bill would do just that,” Warren said, according to a Monday news release.

The release cited a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research which suggests that the top 1 percent of income earners in the United States underreport a fifth of their yearly incomes.

In addition, Warren referenced a hearing with IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, where he said that the agency would greatly benefit from mandatory funding.

“In the last decade, our enforcement personnel — we’ve lost 17,000 enforcement personnel. So we have 17,000 fewer people to do exactly what you’re asking and the point is we actually have 6,500. That’s our population that go after the high income taxpayers, the most egregious cases, and the corporate world. So, if you were to add 17,000 to 6,500, I think you would see a reversal in those numbers,” Rettig said in March.

“Mandatory, consistent, adequate multi-year funding allows us to plan appropriately. Every time we go into hiring, we have a concern whether we can actually feed those folks the next year,” he later added.

For those who do not think the wealthy pay their “fair share”, the top one percent of earners currently pay 38.5 percent of all income taxes in the United States, according to the Tax Foundation.

Warren’s bill falls in line with President Joe Biden’s plan, which would add 87,000 employees to the agency to crack down on...

BEIJING (AFP) — “Fast & Furious 9” star John Cena made a U-turn Tuesday, apologizing to Chinese fans after he called Taiwan a “country” and sparked outrage in the world’s largest movie market.

Beijing sees democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory which is to be seized one day, by force if necessary, and rages at any diplomatic attempts to recognise the island as an independent nation.

But American wrestling star turned actor Cena left his diplomatic lane during a trip to Taiwan in early May to promote the franchise of action movies about fast cars, making the “country” comment during a fan meet.

On Tuesday, as outrage billowed across China’s social media, he released an apology on the Weibo platform in conversational-level Mandarin.

“I did many, many interviews for Fast & Furious 9, and I made a mistake during one interview,” Cena said in the video, without repeating the controversial term.

“I must say, which is very very important, that I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry for my mistake. I apologise.”

The video was played 2.4 million times on the strictly-controlled social media site, while Chinese media leapt on the apology.

Fast & Furious 9 smashed through the box office during its May 21 release in China last weekend, raking in $148 million, according to the nationalist Global Times newspaper.

But social media users appeared only partially appeased.

“Please say ‘Taiwan is part of China’ in Chinese, or we won’t accept it,” said one Weibo handle, while another lamented...