RUTHFULLY YOURS

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea announced that it will suspend nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile launches ahead of its summits with Seoul and Washington, but stopped short of suggesting it has any intention of giving up its hard-won nuclear arsenal.

The announcement, which sets the table for further negotiations when the summits begin, was made by leader Kim Jong Un at a meeting of the North Korean ruling party’s Central Committee on Friday. It was reported by the North’s state-run media early Saturday.

Kim justified the suspension to his party by saying the situation around North Korea has been rapidly changing “in favor of the Korean revolution” since he announced last year that his country had completed its nuclear forces.

He said North Korea has reached the level where it no longer needs underground testing or test-launching of ICBMs, and added that it would close its nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri, which was already believed to have been rendered unusable due to tunnel collapses after the North’s test of its most powerful bomb to date last year.

The announcement is Kim’s opening gambit to set the tone for summit talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, set for next Friday, and U.S. President Donald Trump, expected in late May or early June.

Trump almost immediately responded with a tweet, saying, “This is very good news for North Korea and the World” and “big progress!” He added that he’s looking forward to his summit with Kim.

South Korea’s presidential office also welcomed North Korea’s announcement as “meaningful progress” toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Presidential official Yoon Young-chan said in a statement that the North’s decision brightens the prospects for successful talks between Seoul, Pyongyang and Washington.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/04/in-london-three-billboards-jonathan.html   Legendary pro-Israel activist Jonathan Hoffman was interviewed that same day regarding Corbyn and the Corbynistas’ despicable stance. https://videos.metro.co.uk/video/met/2018/04/17/8225605948739072762/640x360_MP4_8225605948739072762.mp4

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has married the disaffected blue-collar vote to traditional supporters of the mainstream Right. That’s why he’s loved and loathed across Europe—and why his government’s survival or rejection at the upcoming election has a significance far beyond his nation’s borders.

About a month ago in Hódmezővásárehely, a town in the south-east of Hungary (population 47,019, local attractions include thermal bathing), there was a small political earthquake. A local independent candidate in an election for the local mayoralty, Peter Marki Zay, who was supported by all the opposition parties, easily defeated the front-runner from the governing Fidesz party by a healthy margin of sixteen points.

This was a surprise on every count: the polls had suggested an easy Fidesz win; the town was regarded as a stronghold of Fidesz—an earlier mayor, Janos Lazar, is now effectively the deputy prime minister—and the national opinion polls have been predicting a major victory for the Fidesz party and Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the forthcoming general election on April 8.

Was this upset the promise of a bigger upset? If so, it would be an international upset, since Orban is a symbol of the “populist” upsurge throughout Europe and thus a scare-figure for the international Left, the European Commission, and those who see the election of populists as a threat to “liberal democracy”.

At once there was an outburst of optimistic rejoicing among Orban’s many opponents along the lines of … a Fidesz triumph wasn’t a foregone conclusion … if the opposition parties united as they had done in Hódmezővásárehely … the mathematics for an opposition victory were there … and so on. International reporters are now making their way to Budapest; the caravan has moved in for the kill.

In Brussels Jean-Claude Juncker has crossed his fingers in the hope of an Orban defeat that would mark the second death for populism—this time perhaps a more permanent death than Emmanuel Macron’s slaying of populism in the French elections had proved before populism revived in the German and Italian elections.

Orban himself did not discourage this kind of speculation. Indeed, he voiced it himself. There’s no doubt that the opposition could win, he grieved. And his people have been wearing glum faces around town, shaking their heads mournfully, and regretting that Fidesz will probably not get the two-thirds parliamentary majority it won in the last two elections.

With the illegal seizures and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 and the Syrian city of Afrin this March — with virtually no global reaction — Turkey apparently feels unchallenged and eager to continue; this time, it seems, with the oil-and-gas rich islands of Greece.

“To take an interest in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Crimea, Karabakh, Bosnia and other brotherly regions is both the duty and the right of Turkey. Turkey is not just Turkey. The day we give up on these things will be the day we give up on our freedom and future.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 2016.

Turkish needs are in reality supplied by its association with the US. Turkish officials usually get whatever they want from the West, but they seem to have chosen to align themselves with Iran and Russia, possibly in attempt to blackmail the West for more.

Turkey has been harassing Greece consistently. Most recently, this week, on April 17, two Turkish fighter aircraft harassed the helicopter carrying Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the Greek Armed Forces Chief Admiral Evangelos Apostolakis as they were flying from the islet of Ro to Rhodes.

With the illegal seizures and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 and the Syrian city of Afrin this March — with virtually no global response — Turkey apparently feels unchallenged and eager to continue; this time, it seems, with the oil-and-gas rich islands of Greece.

The Bay of Pigs freedom-fight transpired 57 years ago this week. Given that Hollywood and the mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing the hideous truth about a Kennedy’s perfidy and how the media/Democrat complex helped cover it up (i.e. Teddy, Chappaquiddick), who knows, perhaps one day they’ll level with us about what really happened at the Bay of Pigs.

“I really admire toughness and courage, and I will tell you that the people of this brigade [Brigada 2506] really have that…you were let down by our country.” (Donald Trump, addressing Bay of Pigs Veterans at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami FL, 11/16, 1999.)

“It’s a great honor and I’m humbled for this endorsement from these freedom fighters—from TRUE freedom fighters… You were fighting for the values of freedom and liberty that unite us all. (Candidate Donald Trump, receiving endorsement of Bay of Pigs Veterans at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami FL, 11/16, 2016.)

But let’s not hold our breath about the Hollywood/media complex finally coming clean about the Bay of Pigs as it just did about Chappaquiddick. So until that day arrives, here it is:

No, the invasion was not “doomed” from the beginning because of Castro’s “popular support” in Cuba—as the media/Democrat complex would have you believe.

No, the invasion was not “doomed” because the original CIA/military plans were “faulty”—as the media/Democrat complex would have you believe.

No, the “formerly rich, pampered and effete” Cuban invaders did not “quickly surrender,” as the media/Democrat complex would have you believe.

In fact, it was the voluntary actions of a Kennedy that lead to doom at the Bay of Pigs, same as at Chappaquiddick.

Fifty years ago this month, the British conservative Enoch Powell gave his “Rivers of Blood” speech about immigration, which has become as legendary as it is infamous. A classics professor who once aspired to become viceroy of the British Raj, Powell was one of postwar Britain’s most intelligent conservatives. Romantic about British traditions and deeply skeptical of the emerging European superstate, he would become a mentor to the young Margaret Thatcher. But instead of forcing immigration onto the agenda and propelling Powell toward Conservative Party leadership, the Rivers of Blood speech pushed the issue to the fringe and Powell’s career into the ditch. Powell’s fall became a rallying cry for racists and immigration a wedge issue for Europe’s populist “new right” parties, thus preventing candid discussion of policy.

In April 1968, Britain’s Labour government enacted the Race Relations Act, making illegal racial or religious discrimination in housing, employment, or public services. In response, Powell attacked the cross-party postwar consensus, not just on race relations but also on broader questions of national identity. Two decades of mass immigration, he warned, had started a “total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.” British society was “on the verge of a change”—and risking the kind of inter-ethnic violence that had stymied Powell’s ambitions to run India.

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding,” Powell said, and “like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood”—a classical allusion to the Sybil’s prophecy of civil war in the Aeneid. Less stylish was his description of immigrants’ children as “wide-grinning piccaninnies.” In response, the pro-European Conservative Party leader Edward Heath removed Powell from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary. In the East End of London, though, dockworkers marched under the slogan “Enoch was right.” Powell’s stance won working-class votes for Heath in the 1970 election. Many white Britons still mutter that “Enoch was right” behind closed doors whenever the subject of immigration comes up—which it does whenever people talk politics today.

For the first time in almost 60 years, Cuba has a head of state from outside the Castro family.

Raul Castro, 86, stepped down Thursday morning as president, handing the reins to his hand-picked successor, the much younger Miguel Diaz-Canel, who has been vice president since 2013.

Castro, 86, inherited the presidency from his brother, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for nearly 50 years, in 2008. Despite relinquishing the presidency, he is set to remain head of the Cuban Communist party and the country’s armed forces, which has led some observers to wonder how much freedom Diaz-Canel, 57, will have to exercise the powers of the office. At the same time, the move has touched off speculation about Cuba’s future as one of the last remaining Communist states, given its widespread poverty and need for structural reforms.

Diaz-Canel was born after the Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution, and has been curiously reluctant to share his opinion about it for someone who’s spent his life rising in the political system Castro created.

“I was born in 1960, after the revolution,” the future president told U.S. lawmakers in 2015. “I’m not the best person to answer your questions on the subject.”

He has a reputation for promoting more access between Cuba and the outside world, but he does not hesitate to censor and quash influences that run counter to the one-party state’s interests. In November, he said that “we continue to be open to relations” with the U.S. But last month, he complained that the Trump administration had “offended Cuba” and “attacked and threatened” the revolution.

Britain’s educational authorities also failed to note the underlying message of the Teacher Handbook: that jihadist violence is justified when committed by those who believe themselves to be victims. This is a crucial point: it accepts at face value what might only be many Muslims’ perception of “victimhood.”

Despite the Teacher Handbook’s questionable attempts to align Islam with secular, Western principles such as human rights, fundamental British values are undermined by the very content of theTeacher Handbook.

No amount of Western appeasement can counter jihad, which is, as openly admitted, a global expansionist project.

Many religious texts have violent verses, but in Islam people still live by them.

Sweeping reforms in Britain’s education system are having an unintended dangerous consequence: the infiltration of extremist Muslim influence on the teaching of Religious Studies.

This influence is visible in The Oxford Teacher Handbook for GCSE Islam, authored by a small team of educational specialists and Muslim community leaders. The purpose of the manual is to guide British teachers lacking in-depth knowledge of Islam to help their students pass the Religious Studies General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), the UK’s public examination for pupils at the end of Grade 11. This academic study of religions is an optional but relatively popular subject in British high schools — 322,910 students took the examination in 2017, out of a total GCSE cohort in all subjects of 3,694,771.

The understanding of Islam — absorbed by a significant proportion of each year’s 300,000+ Religious Studies students (whose school chooses to take the Islam module) — is sufficient to create a national climate of opinion, given that the GCSE is a near-essential first stepping-stone to higher education and influential professions in British public life. It is therefore alarming that a portion of such influence has been granted to the Islamic scholar and activist, Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, a co-author of the Teacher Handbook, who oversaw his fellow authors’ contributions.

“Why hasn’t any ‘kind-hearted’ anti-Assad Arab state (e.g. Saudi) taken any Syrian refugees? Shouldn’t countries that spent billions on arming militants (including terrorists) in the name of ‘liberating’ Syrians take refugees in? The only Syrian refugees that got attention in the Gulf states are the vulnerable underage girls they bought in the name of marriage.” — Dr. Abbas Kadhim.

“Why not bring Christians and Yazidis from the Muslim world here first?… Finally, why not bring Muslim girls and women who are already in flight from honor-based violence, including from honor killing, here next — before we extend visas, green cards and asylum to Muslim boys and men?” — Professor Phyllis Chesler.

“It is ironic that millions of Muslims are trying… to reach the borders of a civilization they have historically blamed for all the world’s evils… is it ‘Islamophobic’ to point out that there is no war in Greece, Serbia, Hungary, or Austria?” — Burak Bekdil, BESA Center for Strategic Studies.

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan slammed French President Emmanuel Macron for his recent offer to mediate between Turkey and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), saying he hopes Paris will not ask Ankara to help when terrorists fleeing Iraq and Syria arrive in France:

“With this attitude, France has no right to complain about any terrorist organization, any terrorist, any terrorist attack. Those who sleep with terrorists, welcome them in their palaces, will understand sooner or later the mistake that they made.”

On April 7, hours after a man ploughed his van into pedestrians in Münster, Germany, Erdogan threatened France again, referring to the incident: :

“France, [you are] being a stooge… providing support to the terrorism, you are hosting terrorists at the Elysée Palace… You are seeing what is happening in Germany, right? The same will happen in France. The West will not able to free itself from terror. The West will sink as it feeds these terrorists.”