Free Republic

The committee that monitors sanctions on North Korea for the UN Security Council approved new U.S.-backed guidelines Monday to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to millions of hungry and impoverished civilians. The guidelines were crafted by U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and experts with the U.S. mission to the UN as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea remain high. Despite the new guidance on humanitarian aid, "the United States has been very clear that we will continue to enforce the current sanctions until we achieve the final, fully verified, denuclearization of North Korea," a U.S. official told CBS News...

PYONGYANG, Korea, Democratic People's Republic Of -- In North Korea, summer is not a good time to be a dog. With the sizzling heat upon the country, North Korea's biggest brewery is pumping out twice as much beer as usual, Pyongyang residents are queuing up to get their "bingsu" -- a syrupy treat made with shaved ice -- and restaurants are serving up bowl after bowl of the season's biggest culinary attraction: spicy dog meat soup. Euphemistically known as "dangogi," or sweet meat, dog has long been believed to be a stamina food in North and South Korea and is...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the country should feed its soldiers better, according to state media KCNA on Wednesday, after a defected North Korean soldier's health last year highlighted nutrition problems in the isolated state. On a visit to a military rations factory, Kim said it should produce tasty and nutritious food to "substantially contribute to improving the diet of the servicepersons", according to KCNA. Kim said "officials and employees of the factory should always overfulfill the production plan on all indices, bearing in mind the noble intention of leader Kim Jong Il (his late father) who spared...

English language news report from Shanghai TV talking about American Beef and Pork being pulled from the menu and substituted with Beef from Australia. Watch to the end of the report as it looks like the tariffs might crash the pig head market. Video here.

GENEVA: The top U.N. aid official, Mark Lowcock, will go to North Korea next week in the first such visit since 2011, the United Nations said on Friday. During his trip from July 9-12, Lowcock will meet government officials, humanitarian partners and people receiving assistance to better understand the humanitarian situation, the United Nations said....

The latest policy proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders is that the federal government offer a $15-per-hour job to anybody who wants one. If the Sanders policy is actually implemented, it will result in a drastic decline in the standard of living of most Americans, including most low-income Americans. That is, the Sanders policy will result in Americans consuming less in goods and services than we are currently consuming. The explanation of why the Sanders policy will result in Americans consuming less is simple: the policy will cause Americans to produce less, and you can't consume more than you produce. The...

Problematic, in a very big way even if the offer was made.Qatar’s ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t news. They’ve effectively served as intermediaries in everything from ransom exchanges for hostages to Taliban negotiations. But actually trying to secure terrorist swaps for prisoners on their own behalf would have been a new frontier. Before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison last week, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was...

South Africa is busy Zimbabwifying itself, ready to expropriate white-owned farms without compensation. At this point, it should be a pariah state. But in goes President Obama, likely to egg them on. The gushy New York Times piece about it pretty well calls Obama's planned trip to play community organizer abroad in South Africa a wonderful thing. He's been photographed kite-surfing with Richard Branson off Necker Island, relaxing on David Geffen's yacht in French Polynesia with Bruce Springsteen and Oprah Winfrey, river-rafting with his family in Bali and posing with a celebrity chef in Tuscany. To those who have paid...

Those who are unfamiliar with Venezuela’s unprecedented economic collapse might be surprised to learn that the country’s oil production has only slowed, even as the price of a barrel of crude has risen in most international markets. Unsurprisingly (it’s Venezuela), there’s a macabre explanation for this phenomenon: The workers at PDVSA – Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which once showered Venezuelans with oil wealth – are literally collapsing due to hunger and exhaustion as workers defy their government handlers and flee their jobs in their desperation as the value of their pay has been completely erased. Bloomberg spoke with several workers...

Last year the inhabitants of Venezuela led the world in weight loss with an average decline in weight of 24 lbs. per person. President Nicolas Maduro lamented that "the outcome would've been even better if more of the largest losers had been able to survive. Still, we are showing the gringos how to fight climate change." Former US President Barack Obama hailed the country's mass starvation method of weight loss as "a remarkable shrinkage of Venezuela's carbon footprint. The sacrifices made by their people to reduce global warming have been truly heroic. One of my biggest regrets is that I...

North Korean officials are ransacking homes and raiding farms in order to feed their starving army. Not only has the drought taken its toll on the nation, but this newest harsh seizure of food is causing internal clashes between the civilians and the army. Soldiers for the communist regime had already been given long periods of leave in order to try to find food and make money to purchase food. However, it hasn’t been enough. Collective farms are suffering due to drought and poor harvests, leading officials to ransack farms and homes in order to find any stored food or...

SAN CASIMIRO, Venezuela — Kenyerber Aquino Merchán was 17 months old when he starved to death. His father left before dawn to bring him home from the hospital morgue. He carried Kenyerber’s skeletal frame into the kitchen and handed it to a mortuary worker who makes house calls for Venezuelan families with no money for funerals. Kenyerber’s spine and rib cage protruded as the embalming chemicals were injected. Aunts shooed away curious young cousins, mourners arrived with wildflowers from the hills, and relatives cut out a pair of cardboard wings from one of the empty white ration boxes that families...

Just from the title, I bet you thought I was going to be talking about rabbits, right? Guess again. As the people of Venezuela continue to suffer from a lack of food and medical supplies under the yoke of their dictator, Nicolas Maduro did recently suggest that people begin eating rabbits. That idea didn’t go over very well, as most people consider them pets, though some of the more desperate certainly have resorted to that measure. But this is something different.Some of the people are hungry enough that they are breaking into the local zoos and slaughtering the animals...

Kim Jong Un doesn't want you to know it, but North Koreans are hungry—and desperate. An estimated 4.4 million people in the reclusive nation are in a state of "crisis, emergency and famine," meaning they have what the United Nations calls "food consumption gaps with high or above usual acute malnutrition." North Korea has a public distribution system for food, but it's insufficient, leaving much of the impoverished population to rely on street-food stalls to supplement their diets, according to a Reuters report out Friday. At these markets, people can access injogogi, a spicy soy bean-rice combination that translates to...

If you sit down at a major national restaurant chain nowadays, you might be greeted by a sign, banner, or tabletop tent quoting some questionable statistics, and warning you that there is hunger in America. They quote a study (out of context) reporting that one in six American children “experiences” hunger at least sometimes. “That’s 13 million children, the population of Illinois” as the tabletop tent at lunch exclaimed to me, constantly, as I ate my lunch. This brings to mind a flood of questions, among them: Is it true? If so, Why? And What can or should we do...

What the Stages of Starvation Have to Teach Us About the Decline of Our Culture Msgr. Charles Pope • October 16, 2016 • In a post from last week on The Eight Stages of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations we pondered some categories from the world of anthropology and sociology to try to gain perspective rapid on the current cultural collapse. Today’s post continues in that same vein and applies the stages of starvation to the current times. Ours is not a physical starvation; it is a spiritual one. But the stages of physical starvation comport eerily closely...

MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela authorities are investigating the theft of animals from a zoo in western state of Zulia that were likely snatched to be eaten, a further sign of hunger in a country struggling with chronic food shortages. A police official said two collared peccaries, which are similar in appearance to boars, were stolen over the weekend from the Zulia Metropolitan Zoological Park in the sweltering city of Maracaibo near the Colombian border. "What we presume is that they (were taken) with the intention of eating them," Luis Morales, an official for the Zulia division of the National...

CUCUTA, Colombia (AP) — Under a scorching sun just a short walk from Colombia's border with Venezuela, hundreds of hungry men, women and children line up for bowls of chicken and rice — the first full meal some have eaten in days. An estimated 25,000 Venezuelans make the trek across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge into Colombia each day. Many come for a few hours to work or trade goods on the black market, looking for household supplies they cannot find back home. But increasingly, they are coming to eat in one of a half-dozen facilities offering struggling Venezuelans a...

Venezuela is no stranger to protests, but the recent uprisings have rocked the country and stirred questions about the nation’s future.This past week, the “mother of all protests” has seen upward of 2 million Venezuelans take to the streets demanding an end to the notoriously corrupt Maduro regime.Beginning on what would be the 207th anniversary of the country’s independence from Spain, frustrated Venezuelans have taken to the streets demanding change. So far, three Venezuelans have been killed in the marches, hundreds have been injured, and 500 have been arrested.In the span of just over 20 years, President Nicolás Maduro, his...

April 12 (UPI) -- Some Venezuelans pelted President Nicolas Maduro with rocks and eggs during a pro-government military event, a moment shown on state television....