North korea

Another day, another hack. This morning, Facebook and Instagram went dark. Facebook has blamed a technical glitch; ‘Lizard Squad’ celebrated another successful attack: Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad — Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 27, 2015 Yesterday, the group claimed responsibility for defacing the website of Malaysia Airlines. One of the more active of many mysterious groups, they have claimed responsibility for a range of online mischief in the last year, from hacking into online games networks to the temporary internet blackout in North Korea in December 2014 (although the latter isn’t easy to prove).

Home The government spent days announcing how the Autumn Statement would allocate funds. ‘Frontline’ parts of the National Health Service would get an extra £2 billion for the time being, £750 million of it diverted from elsewhere in the Department of Health budget. Another £1.1 billion from bankers’ fines would go to support GPs. Labour said it would give the NHS twice as much. Out of the £15 billion already set aside by the government for roads, a tunnel would be built for the A303 past Stonehenge. Of £2.3 billion (over six years) earmarked for flood prevention, only £4.3 million was set aside for the Somerset Levels, but £196 million for the Thames estuary.

Home Checks began at British airports for passengers who might have come from west Africa with Ebola fever (even though there are no direct flights from the countries most affected). People who rang 111 with suspicious symptoms were to be asked whether they’d come from a high-risk country. Police arrested three men and three women from Portsmouth, Farnborough and Greenwich as part of an anti-terrorism operation. Of five men arrested the week before, two were released. The trial began before a jury at the Old Bailey of Erol Incedal on charges of preparing for acts of terrorism; parts of it will be held in secret.

Who owns Scotland? The people who most commonly ask this question believe that the land has been wrested from ordinary Scots by evil lairds and rich foreigners (by which they chiefly mean the English). Now the Scottish government is bringing out a report on how to correct this alleged injustice. It may recommend extending community ‘right to buy’ powers and allowing tenants to buy their holdings even if the owners do not want to sell.  This would have the unintended effect of ending all new tenancies. But the SNP’s misunderstanding of the situation is even more radical than that. It believes that big Scottish landowners are rich because they own the land. For a long time now, it has been the other way round. They own the land because they are rich.

Imagine if correspondents in late 1944 had reported the Battle of the Bulge, but without explaining that it was a turning point in the second world war. Or what if finance reporters had told the story of the AIG meltdown in 2008 without adding that it raised questions about derivatives and sub-prime mortgages that could augur a vast financial implosion? Most people would say that journalists had failed to provide the proper context to understand the news. Yet that’s routinely what media outlets do when it comes to outbreaks of anti-Christian persecution around the world, which is why the global war on Christians remains the greatest story never told of the early 21st century.

There was an extraordinary meeting of the Juche Ideas Study Group (England) in London last week, held to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army. For various domestic reasons I was unable to be present, but I think it went off quite well. Sandwiches, tea and coffee were served after the various speeches. Juche is the political ideology of North Korea, emphasising a steely self-reliance in the face of Yankee and Jap imperialist aggression. The meeting was taken by a chap called Dermot Hudson, who may or may not have recited the poem he wrote a while back about Kim Il Sung, the founder of the DPRK. I hope he did, because it deserves to be recited whenever three or four people are gathered together.

Are Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms necessary to bring fairness to our benefits system? This week's Spectator leading article argues the work and pensions secretary returned to front-line politics for one reason only — to end the present waste of human potential. Author and Independent columnist Owen Jones disagrees; he debates with our associate editor Toby Young on this week's View form 22 podcast (10:38). Will IDS' reforms radically change the welfare system for the better? Is the government striving for more or less equality? And will the coalition's legacy stand up to closer scrutiny from the left at the next general election? Clarissa Tan discusses her cover feature on Asia's arms race (0:41).

Top marks to Paul Watson for this nipping satire, published in today's Guardian: 'In fact it is almost impossible to find any piece of positive European journalism relating to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The days of cold war pantomime journalism and great ideological battles might be over, but North Korea remains an area in which journalists have free licence for sensationalism and partiality. The lack of western sources in North Korea has allowed the media to conjure up fantastic stories that enthrall readers but aren't grounded in hard fact.