RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/north_korea_goes_all_out_to_hide_its_coronavirus_cases.html

China’s coronavirus epidemic has spread to nearly every country in Asia, with one little curious exception: North Korea.

Sure, a casual outside observer might note that North Korea is a tightly controlled communist country, but actually, it’s got a pretty porous border with China and, being a totalitarian hellhole, a vigorous black market trade moving in and out for goods.

This might just mean it’s got more coronavirus than it’s letting on.

That’s what the reports are now saying, starting with Australia’s Daily Mercury:

The North Korean capital of Pyongyang was supposed to stage a massive military parade on Saturday to spark its 72nd anniversary celebrating the founding of the country’s armed forces. Last year, the country’s dictator Kim Jong-un presided over a grand procession displaying all of the hermit nation’s new weapons, with an onslaught of soldiers marching in perfect step. This year, nothing like that took place. Local media reports, heavily controlled by Mr Kim and his ruling party, said the Workers’ Party had been successful combating “severe and dangerous difficulties” but didn’t mention the parade at all. That sparked suspicion the coronavirus, which originated in mainland China and has spread to almost 30 countries worldwide, had reached the hermit nation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/justin-trudeau-is-up-to-his-old-tricks-again-as-canada-heads-down-the-totalitarian-road/

The true north strong and free, as the Canadian national anthem has it, is no longer true, strong or free. It is still north, of course, but this is no cause for celebration. While retaining its position on the geographical compass, it has lost its place on the moral compass. Our “basic dictatorship”-loving Liberal Prime Minister, friend of the late Fidel Castro, is taking the country down the path of increasing socialist control and totalitarian closure: unsustainable debt, skyrocketing taxes, rising unemployment, media bribery, the stink of corruption and—the cake under the icing—“totalitarian tendencies” and gradual police state governance.

As Lee Harding writes in the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, “Canada has no explicit re-education camps. But Trudeau’s leadership has introduced softer forms of forced belief, religious oppression, political indoctrination, restricted communications and mass surveillance.” Bills such as C-16, C-25, C-59, C-75 and C-76 reduce and even criminalize freedom of expression, infringe on rights, compromise due process and render government transparency dark as night.

We know that Justin Trudeau is a thin-skinned prima donna with a vindictive and imperious nature who cannot tolerate criticism. His latest caper is to go after dissident journalist and author Ezra Levant, founder of Rebel News, for publishing and promoting a book, The Librano$: What the Media Won’t Tell You About Justin’s Trudeau’s Corruption, during the October 2019 election campaign. As one of the very few honest media sites in the country, the network has been consistently maligned in the press and in politically left platforms such as Wikipedia where terms like “far right” and “neo-fascist” are bandied about indiscriminately. Trudeau is clearly counting on public sentiment and media collusion in pressing an utterly fraudulent and indeed farcical case against Levant.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15576/china-coronavirus-li-wenliang

[T]he disease ravaging the country could be, as is now said, China’s “Chernobyl,” the cover up of a disaster eventually leading to the downfall of the regime.

Many analysts expect Beijing to stimulate the economy, but stimulus works only if there is underlying economic activity. With much of the economy shut down, there is not much to stimulate. A dead economy is an existential crisis for a regime whose primary basis of legitimacy is the continual delivery of prosperity.

The boldness of recent demands shows that, due to the outbreak, the Chinese people are starting to lose their fear of Xi and the Communist Party. Rudd and Chinese propagandists are saying the Party will weather this crisis, but when people are no longer afraid, anything can happen.

“If they do not give us an explanation, we will not give up,” said Lu Shuyun, the mother of Dr. Li Wenliang, demanding to know why Wuhan police harassed him while he was trying to save patients.

In this contest, bet on the mother. After all, she has about 1.4 billion angry people on her side.

On hearing the news that Dr. Li Wenliang had died from the coronavirus on January 31, people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, under strict quarantine, opened their windows and cried. Others took to the streets to blow whistles for the whistleblower. Grief and anger, expressed from China’s streets and balconies and social media platforms, has reached almost unprecedented levels in recent days.

Li, reprimanded with seven other doctors for warning of the outbreak in December, was accused of “spreading false rumors” and “disrupting social order” and, for his brave efforts, was briefly detained, interrogated, and forced to sign an “admonishment notice.” Li undoubtedly contracted the virus treating patients at Wuhan Central Hospital.

The first official announcement of his death, on Thursday night, sparked online outrage. State media, perhaps to mollify public opinion, then said he was alive but critically ill. When he was pronounced dead for a second time, the announcement was followed by a white-hot uproar. Chinese censors scrubbed millions of social media postings supporting the young doctor. Li was 34 years old.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15557/russia-wagner-group

The Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin still manages to exploit opportunities in Africa and Latin America that threaten to diminish U.S. influence. To this end — to extend its power to regions beyond its borders and limited resources — Moscow established the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group masquerades as a private commercial enterprise, but it is actually a mercenary arm of the Russian Defense Ministry, run by a long-time Putin associate, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Putin has pledged support to rebel leader General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), in his effort to overthrow the UN-recognized government in Tripoli.

One motivation for Putin’s support for Haftar’s rebel army may be Moscow’s desire to gain access to Libya’s oil wells, almost all of which are under Haftar’s control.

The Wagner Group provides Putin with an aggressive force to safeguard his interests, while allowing him plausible deniability in the event of a confrontation with Washington…. One hopes the White House is listening.

Although Russia is no longer the superpower it was during the days of the Soviet Union, when it posed a genuine threat to U.S. interests around the world, the Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin still manages to exploit opportunities in Africa and Latin America that threaten to diminish U.S. influence. To this end — to extend its power to regions beyond its borders and limited resources — Moscow established the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group masquerades as a private commercial enterprise, but it is actually a mercenary arm of the Russian Defense Ministry, run by a long-time Putin associate, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. A paramilitary organization that enjoys technical support from the Russian Army — receiving armor, artillery and rocket systems — the Wagner Group may receive direct orders from the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), the institutional successor to the old Soviet KGB spy organization, in which Putin was a career officer.