RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-kim-jong-un-disappears-north-korea-watchers-advise-caution-11587918517?mod=hp_lead_pos5

One question swirled among North Korea watchers this weekend—where is Kim Jong Un?—as the dictator’s unexplained absence stretched past two weeks and Twitter lighted up with speculation about his incapacitation or death.

As of late Sunday, there was little information about the third-generation leader’s health. The guessing game began when Mr. Kim missed the country’s most important holiday on April 15, then ratcheted higher after a South Korean publication reported he had had heart surgery. On Saturday, a Japanese magazine took it a step further, writing that he had been left in a vegetative state after the procedure was botched.

The rumors illustrate North Korea’s outsize dependence on a single person for its political stability. The answer to the question of his health holds significant implications for the future of high-stakes nuclear negotiations with the U.S. and the stability of a country on China’s border.

“These persistent rumors suggest that there are concerns that his health could impact his ability to lead the country,” said Jean Lee, a public-policy fellow at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center. “And those concerns are always worth paying attention to with a country like North Korea where the system has been built around the rule of one family.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15931/coronavirus-china-cuba-venezuela

China and its Latin American allies are aggressively attempting to convince the world that the U.S. is secretly the original source of the virus and that China is the only country that can save us. This state propaganda is enforced through a digital army of upwards of two million state-backed internet trolls dubbed the “Wu Mao” or “50 cent” army, named after how much the PRC reportedly pays per pro-China post.

China and Cuba have been complementing their propaganda with “medical diplomacy”, which appears to serve as a gateway to enhance their strategic positioning in Latin America. Efforts include aggressive propaganda, such as the fake news that Cuba has the cure for the coronavirus. The message is then spread in Spanish through social media and messaging platforms. Meanwhile, Cuba has been sending medical missions, manned by physicians who are evidently victims of human trafficking, to Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Belize, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil.

The Cuban and Chinese medical diplomacy also stretched to Spain, where, on March 30, shortly after Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa announced the purchase of $467 million in medical supplies from China, 39 Cuban doctors were dispatched to neighboring Andorra. The shipment from a Chinese manufacturer included “quick result” COVID-19 tests that were faulty and had to be sent back.

Cuba has been touting its Alfa 2B drug as a potential cure to COVID-19 in state media platforms, which are parroted by China. This claim…. prompted a South African spokesman to warn that “there is still no cure for the killer virus.”

Cuban state media loves to boast that the export of Alfa 2B is in demand in more than 15 countries and has been used to cure 1,500 cases of the coronavirus in China. What it is actually exporting is the propaganda around the drug. Several fabricated “news” clippings have surfaced in recent weeks on Spanish social media saying that Cuba has a cure for COVID-19. This propaganda is being spread by Cuba’s allies in the “Bolivarian network” led by Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

The increasing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 might have originated in a Wuhan laboratory is sparking an intense global battle of credibility between Washington and Beijing. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), however, has already been fighting this war through an aggressive disinformation campaign against the U.S. in various parts of the world, including in Latin America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/pope-francis-calls-relaxation-sanctions-against-robert-spencer/

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has again and again shown himself to be an enemy of the West and the Judeo-Christian tradition, and a friend of those who oppose and would destroy them. And so it came as no surprise when the Islamic Republic of Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency reported this week that after receiving an appeal from a senior member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran, Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, Pope Francis has called for the relaxation of international sanctions against Iran.

The Pope issued his call in the course of his solemn Urbi et Orbi blessing on Easter Sunday, saying: “In light of the present circumstances, may international sanctions be relaxed, since these make it difficult for countries on which they have been imposed to provide adequate support to their citizens.” The Pontiff didn’t say anything about the fact that the Iranian mullahs used the bulk of the billions Barack Obama showered upon them not to improve the economic plight of their people, but to support jihad terror groups worldwide. He was likewise silent about the likelihood that if sanctions were relaxed, the mullahs would probably spend the money on jihad terrorism yet again.

Why is the Pope siding with those who routinely chant “Death to America,” and who likely don’t look kindly upon the Catholic Church, either? One clue may be in the fact that the Pope has given numerous indications that he really does hate the West and the Christian tradition. Some time ago, used the French epic The Song of Roland to issue yet another mea culpa to Muslims, saying: “A scene from The Song of Roland comes to me as a symbol, when the Christians defeat the Muslims and line them up in front of the baptismal font, with one holding a sword. And the Muslims had to choose between baptism or the sword. That is what we Christians did.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/lessons-unlearned-have-come-back-haunt-us-david-horowitz-0/

As I write this, there are over a quarter of a million recorded deaths from the corona virus and many many more to come. We know now that the virus originated in Wuhan China, probably in its virology lab, and that the Chinese concealed the fact that it was contagious between humans and deadly for weeks. They allowed a Lunar New Year celebration in Wuhan that involved tens of thousands of people, and also permitted 5 million inhabitants of Wuhan to leave the city and spread the virus. Moreover, they permitted hundreds of thousands of Chinese to travel abroad to celebrate the Lunar New Year and infect people in more than 200 countries across the globe.

Whatever one may say about the origin of the virus – it could have been the result of an accident – what cannot be denied is that the cover-up by the Chinese Communist dictatorship was deliberate and calculated, as most likely was its failure to close its borders until the virus was contained. In other words, this was a hostile attack on an innocent world, justified most probably as an effort to protect the Chinese Communist regime. So ferocious is this self-preservation imperative that the regime has launched a global campaign accusing the United States military of creating the virus, a lie so monstrous it is reminiscent of the lies promulgated by the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

For almost twenty years since China was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2001, the Chinese regime has been mistakenly regarded by western leaders as a worthy member of the international community of nations. American leaders have regarded it as worthy of being entrusted with the supply lines of medicines and other health supports vital for survival during a pandemic like this one. Prior to 2001, China was treated as a pariah state, a policy that took root when the Communist Party seized power in Beijing in 1949, and proceeded to murder more than 100 million Chinese in the process of transforming China into a socialist state. China’s 1950 decision to go to war with the United States and prop up another totalitarian regime in North Korea was also a warning to the West to treat China as the hostile power it most self-evidently still is.