Communist Party General Secretary and commander-in-chief Xi Jinping has asked the nation’s military and police forces to take full precautions regarding the possible collapse of the Kim Jung-Un regime.
Chinese sources close to the foreign-policy establishment said earlier this week that Xi, who chairs the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, had moved additional troops as well as the para-military People’s Armed Police to areas bordering the DPRK.
To demonstrate its seriousness, North Korea is now poised to launch a medium-range missile, which it had moved to its east coast. The regime led by the third in the dictatorial Kim dynasty, Kim Jong-un, is said to have made all the final preparations necessary to fire the missile – most likely in a test mode – as soon as this Wednesday. April 10th also happens to be the day that North Korea had given to foreign embassies to evacuate their personnel from North Korea’s capital Pyongyang to ensure their safety.
This warning followed on the heels of North Korea’s decision to suspend the last vestige of inter-Korean cooperation at the Kaesong joint industrial park just inside North Korea.
Kim Jong-un is going to the brink of war in an effort to consolidate his own power back home and wring concessions from South Korea and the West, as his father and grandfather had done before him. “Pyongyang has mastered the art of appearing unhinged in order to manipulate other powers,” as Stratfor Global Intelligence put it. Only this time, the youthful inexperienced dictator is operating at the razor’s edge with virtually no room for error. Kim Jong-un’s father and grandfather had followed threatening but predictable patterns of behavior. They knew when to pull back, helped by a succession of U.S. presidents who gave in too easily to their demands in order to buy a temporary peace. Kim Jong-un may be trying the same tactic, but is feeling his way awkwardly and encountering more resistance from the international community.
China wants to revert to the relatively stable conditions on the Korean Peninsula that had prevailed, with few major disruptions, from the end of the Korean War to the assumption of power by the unpredictable Kim Jong-un. Not wanting to see a sharp U.S. military build-up in the region in response to Kim Jong-un’s provocations, China is still hoping that he will end up following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and know when to pull back in time from the brink. However, China is aware of the limitations on how far it can pressure Kim Jong-un without causing unintended consequences.
The world is treating Iran like 1938 Germany, former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman said Tuesday, comparing the latest round of failed diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear program to the world’s appeasement of the Nazi regime.
Liberman, who heads the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and may re-assume the foreign minister-ship should he be cleared of the breach of trust charges he currently faces, said he made the same comments to Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, who is visiting Israel.
“The result of the latest round of talks between the powers and Iran… is a de-facto acceptance by the West of an Iranian nuclear bomb, like the past acceptance of a nuclear North Korea and of the take over of Czechoslovakia by Hitler [in 1938],” Liberman wrote on Facebook, following the meeting with Baird.
Such acceptance means that “by the end of the year Iran will be able to manufacture a nuclear bomb,” Liberman wrote. “That’s a dangerous message for peace in the region and the entire world.”
In 1938, Europe’s powers allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia in a bid to avoid war with Nazi Germany. The so-called Munich agreement is often cited as a historical precedent for the failure of appeasement.
Liberman, like many government officials, has long seen the negotiations between six world powers and Iran as a futile exercise that is buying Tehran time to enrich enough uranium for a nuclear bomb. The six world powers — the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany — say time remains for diplomacy.
Security, counter-terrorism and military experts speaking at a conference at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research said the Government's approach in collecting biometric data and securing its interests was an example that should be followed by other nations.
"The UAE is at the forefront, in contrast to many countries around the world," said Dr Austin Long, a member of the Arnold A Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and a professor at Columbia University, both in the United States.
The professor said biometric data collection by the Emirates Identity Authority (EIA) is key not only to national security but international security, too. The national ID card helps track suspects after an event takes place but is also useful for pre-empting threats, he said.
The national ID card has the cardholder's name, nationality, gender and date of birth on it. The card also bears a unique 15-digit identification number, which is used for identity verification by the Government and private entities.
Inside the card is an electronic chip that contains personal and biometric data about the cardholder.
Cypriot Chaos Assists EU Centralization
Remarks by members of the European Union's elite suggesting that banking deposit seizures may become standard practice appear to have heightened the risk of a European bank run and perhaps even a catastrophic collapse of the euro. Any threat to the euro is a threat to the European public's conception of the Union's manifest destiny. As such, I believe members of the EU elite may be purposefully leveraging the crisis to push for a centralized European banking system to cement the political framework of an EU superstate.
EU leadership has made moves to continue its policy of the past two decades: bring as many Europeans as possible into the sphere of a centralized EU superstate. Under the pretense of democracy, the EU has expanded to 27 member nations, mostly through democratic referendums (though not without considerable backlash from wealthier, northern European nations). Some may wonder why so many countries would yield their sovereignty to a remote body of bureaucrats in Brussels.
What better way to unite the EU than a potentially catastrophic collapse of the euro?
Cyprus is small, but it has a banking system nearly five times the size of its economy. Many of its deposits are suspected of being owned by the Russian mafia, and so losing 60-100% of these deposits would cause little resentment outside Russia. However, the simple fact that such a seizure could be approved by central banks has engendered a fear of bank runs throughout Europe.
In the midst of all this, the world was astounded when Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup consortium of finance ministers, declared publicly that the Cypriot solution of making depositors and bank bondholders liable would become a "template" for future bank bailouts. After a quick and fierce backlash, Dijsselbloem officially back-peddled. But the damage was done.
H7N9 May Mutate 8 Times Faster Than 'Regular Flu'
The new bird flu could be mutating up to eight times faster than an average flu virus around a protein that binds it to humans, a team of research scientists in Shenzhen says.
The researchers found dramatic mutation of haemagglutinin in one of the four flu strains released for study by the central government. Nine of the protein's 560 amino acids had changed. In a typical flu virus, only one or two amino acids could change in such a short period of time, He said.
"It happened in just one or two weeks. The speed may not have caught up with the HIV, but it's quite unusual for a flu."
The fast mutation makes the virus' evolutionary development very hard to predict. "We don't know whether it will evolve into something harmless or dangerous," He said. "Our samples are too limited. But the authorities should definitely be alarmed and get prepared for the worst-case scenario."
IDF Chief: No Weapon Formed Against Us Shall Prosper
Though he failed to reference the Bible or acknowledge God directly, Israeli army chief Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz did seem to give a nod to the biblical promises concerning Israel while marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Auschwitz death camp on Monday.
Speaking to a large number of Israeli, Jewish and non-Jewish dignitaries, Gantz echoed Isaiah 54:17 in declaring that "there is no weapon or evil intention that can stand" against Israel.
Gantz said the presence of Israeli Jewish soldiers in Auschwitz, along with their supporters, was "living proof of the victory of light, the victory of morality, [and] the triumph of Israel."
Even the most calculated and well-oiled attempts to destroy the nation of Israel have failed, and those who devised them have fallen from power, just as the prophet warned.
But knowing that such attempts will not cease, Gantz said Israel "knows better than to make light of existential threats," a likely reference to the defiant Iranian nuclear program.
The Curious Goulishness Of Thatcher-Death Celebrations
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