Singapore - Two Buddies Meeting

Last Update: June 14

The Trump - Kim Summit Presented by North Korean State TV 特朗普金正恩高峰会谈在朝鲜的国家电视

First meeting between US president Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
[ABC Action News, Tampa / Florida, quoting CNN.]




[Straits Times, Singapore]

The " Turbo Agreement ":

Mr Trump and Mr Kim signed a document pledging to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

But the broad agreement was light on specifics, largely reiterating previous public statements and past commitments.

The statement details the two leaders' plans to cooperate on denuclearisation and peace on the Peninsula. It also reaffirmed the Panmunjom Declaration, signed after the North and South Korean leaders met on April 27, which stated the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) committed to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

When asked by a reporter what made this time different, Mr Trump said America had a different administration and a different president.

"The sanctions will come off when we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor," Mr Trump said.

In exchange for Mr Kim handing over his nukes, Mr Trump has committed to providing security for America's old enemy.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean officials are due to hold follow-up negotiations "at the earliest possible date".

After the meeting, Mr Trump said he had formed a "special bond" with Mr Kim and the relationship with North Korea would be very different.

"This is going to lead to more and more and more.

[ABC News, headquarters Sydney / Australia, on June 12, 2018]




Read the complete document !




美朝就无核化细节没谈拢特朗普金正恩还要“再碰面”

America and North Korea didn't approach details of denuclearization in the
talks between Trump and Kim Jong-un; it is necessary to "meet again".

长期关注朝鲜半岛无核化的学者和前官员对此次会谈结果看法有不小的分歧。 乐观者认为美朝领导人会晤是历史性突破，悲观者认为会谈并未带来实质性 无核化路线图，与美国之前和朝鲜的任何谈判结果相比更加空泛。

Scholars and former officials occupied with the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula are showing a greater difference of views when confronted with the results of the actual talks.

Optimists consider the meeting of the US and North Korean leaders as a historic breakthrough, while pessimists consider that the talks don't bring with them a substantial roadmap to denuclearization, and negotiation results are even more vague in comparison with any results reached before between the US and North Korea.

[CaiJing 财经 "Finance and Economics", China, published on June 12, 2018]




美国共和党议员敦促特朗普对朝鲜要谨慎行事

US Republican lawmakers urge Trump to act cautiously toward North Korea.

Quotations from the English version of the article:

..........

Unlike Trump’s exultant attitude toward the summit, Republican lawmakers used a much more discreet tone to urge Trump to proceed with caution.

“We should not overlook the fact that Kim Jong-un was a butcher and slaughtered his own people. This is very important,” US Senator John Kennedy told reporters.

"Trying to talk to such a person is like hand-feeding a shark. It's not that you can't do this, but that you must be very, very careful," he said.

Although it cannot be immediately determined whether Trump’s performance in Singapore will affect the ongoing mid-term Congressional elections, it is clear that the Republican Party has not fully accepted Trump’s enthusiasm for Kim Jong Eun.

Bob Corker, chairman of the United States Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told Reuters: “It's hard to tell if something substantial happened.”

[Reuters, Chinese / English language service on June 13]

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Spotlight on two controversial characters:



June 11 Tweet by Le Monde Diplomatique, Paris, showing an example of London street art.




- Fox News finally tells the truth and calls Trump a "dictator". -
In a Trump TV/Fox News broadcast the right-wing propagandist
Abby Huntsman referred to the upcoming summit as a meeting
between "two dictators", a qualified Freudian slip of the tongue.




Trump Kim: Impersonators buddy up in Singapore - BBC News.

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Visitor to "blueprint news" coming from Rwanda in East Africa.



Visitor from Novi Sad, Serbia, reminding Obama's Speech on Transatlantic Partnership
held in Berlin in July 2008 before he became President of the United States.

G7 Meeting - Tough Talks

Last Update: June 11
including news about the
upcoming talks between
Trump and Kim Jong-un.

US president Trump's recently decreed import tariffs, his withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal and his position in the climate change discussion have raised much displeasure and resistance among other global leaders especially those from China, Canada and France.

His proposal to reintegrate Russia in the group of leading industrialized nations - now known as the G7 - has even more isolated him on the current meeting.

Russia was suspended from the group - then known as the G8 - in 2014 after the majority of member countries allied against Russia's annexation of Crimea, which Russia continues to hold.

Here's a news video provided by the Canadian TV station CTV and which is giving an idea of the tensions that exist between Trump and his host, the Canadian prime minister Trudeau.




The original article on the CTV website is "enriched" with tweets from "the real" Donald Trump.





At least, Trump can leave the G7 summit earlier to meet with someone of his own breed:



A reminder of the German proverbe "Pack schlägt sich; Pack verträgt sich" .....




Could have been created by the Chinese who invented Global Climate Change .....







特朗普奔赴“鸿门宴”美元将遭致命一击？
下周三大央行携两大峰会来袭！

While Trump is hurrying to a "Feast at Hong Gate", could
the US Dollar meet with its death from a single blow ?

Next Wednesday the [US] Central Bank will have to shoulder
two great summits !

Editor's Note:
In Chinese culture, the term Hong Men Yan ("Feast at Hong Gate") is used figuratively to refer to a trap or a situation ostensibly joyous but in fact treacherous. The historic event was about two rebel leaders rivalling for supremacy over China. One of them was planned to be assassinated at a "banquet of friendship".

[JinRongJie / Financial World 金融界 on June 9, 2018]




While the Western Alliance of Industrialized Nations is crumbling at the current G7 summit, the Chinese-led Central Asian Bloc is even expanding with its new members India and Pakistan, both hailed at this weekend's summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the northern Chinese port of Qingdao. Furthermore, China's leader Xi Jin-Ping presented Russian President Vladimir Putin China's first Friendship Medal at an elaborate ceremony in Beijing.

The creation of the Central Asian Bloc is a result of China's One Belt One Road Initiative. The bloc was founded in 2001 and is dominated by China and Russia and also includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

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Visitor to "blueprint news" coming from South Korea.

Israel - Trump Boosts Military Support

موقع ديبكا: خطة أمريكية لتقوية قدرات إسرائيل العسكرية

الرئيس ترامب أقر خطة شاملة لتعزيز القدرات العسكرية لإسرائيل
استعدادًا لمواجهة حاسمة محتملة مع إيران

DEBKA site: US plan to boost Israel's military potential.

President Trump appoved broad-based plannings for increasing Israel's military potential
to prepare it for a probably decisive confrontation with Iran.

[i24News, Israeli news service in Arabic on June 6, 2018]

The Arabic language article of i24News cited above is related to information from DEBKAfile, an Israeli source as well, and which was published the same day on June 6, 2018. Here the gist of the DEBKA publication:


US to boost its military presence in Israel, top up Israel’s advanced arsenal.

A broad-based US plan to fortify Israel’s armed forces against a potential military showdown with Iran has just been approved by President Donald Trump, DEBKAfile reports exclusively from its military and Washington sources.

It centers on the expansion of US military units based in Israel and the enhancement of Israel’s military capabilities to withstand a possible Iranian ballistic missile attack. The Israeli Air Force will also receive a large number of Boeing KC-46 refueling tanker craft for lengthening its range of operation and providing more flexibility.

President Obama withheld the new tanker craft so as to restrict Israel’s ability to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said last week, after meeting President Trump in Washington, that the alliance will not support Israel if it is attacked by Iran. He made a point of avoiding the impression that he subscribed to Trump’s campaign against Iran, so as not to put up the backs of the European members opposed to that campaign.

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A recent visitor from Cairo, Egypt, and who wants to be informed
about the military confrontation that is taking place in Syria.

North Korea - Military Leaders Replaced

Last Update: June 5

According to US and South Korean sources, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un should have replaced three leading officials of North Korea's people's army.

This happened prior to direct talks between Kim and US president Trump in Singapore and can be seen as a hint to differences within Kim's inner circle.

The replacements are seen as a strengthening of the ruling Workers Party's influence on North Korea's armed forces.




英媒曝金正恩内阁分歧 三名最高军官均已被撤职

British media expose differences in Kim Jong-un's cabinet.
Three high-ranking military officials are completely dismissed.

他们是朝鲜人民武装力量部部长朴勇植（Pak Yong Sik）， 朝鲜人民军总参谋长李明洙（Ri Myong-su）， 朝鲜人民军总政治局局长金正觉（ Kim Jong-gak）。

They are the minister of North Korea's people's armed forces Pak Yong Sik, the chief of the general staff of North Korea's people's army Ri Myong-su and the chief of the political bureau of North Korea's people's army Kim Jong-gak.

[DW 多维新闻网 quoting South Korea's news agency Yonhap on 3rd June, 2018]




Some former chief of the political bureau of the armed forces
who had been replaced earlier in February 2018. [china.com]


Sino - North Korean Relations:


中国派了一位将军去朝鲜

China sends an army general to North Korea.



General Jin Tao Shao 金涛少将 arrives in Pyongyang
to replace the military attaché at the Chinese embassy.

[SINA 新浪 quoting 长安街知事 on June 5]




Air China resumes air traffic between Beijing and Pyongyang on June 6, 2018.

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Visitors to "blueprint news" coming from South Korea and Vietnam.

US Trump Threatening German Car Export

Background Update added
for Germany Related News.



特朗普拟禁止德国豪华车进口:让第五大道没有奔驰

Trump planning to stop luxury car import from Germany.
"Keeping 5th Avenue free from Mercedes."

Here are some quotations from an article the Chinese economic journal CaiJing 财经 published yesterday the 1st of June. The article is using a common Chinese abbreviation for the German brand 梅赛德斯-奔驰 (Mercedes-Benz).

5月23日晚间，美国政府表示，将根据1962年通过的《贸易扩张法》 第232条规定“总统有权对危及国家安全的商品征税”，对进口汽车展开国家安全调查。 此前美国对进口钢铁和铝制品征收全球关税时也援引了同样的条款，理由同样是进口 钢铝制品危及美国国家安全。

In the evening of May 23, the US goverment declared that "the president has a right to impose tariffs on merchandise that is endangering the nation's safety" based on regulation no. 232 of the "trade expansion law" passed in 1962. [Therefore,] a national safety investigation has been launched for car imports.

Earlier, when America imposed global tariffs on steel and aluminium products, the same regulation was quoted as well. For the same reason the import of steel and aluminium products was seen as endangering America's national safety.

..........

对于特朗普拟对进口汽车征收25%关税，中国外交部发言人陆慷5月24日回应表示， 中方的立场是反对滥用“国家安全”条款，这将严重破坏多边贸易体制，扰乱正常 国际贸易秩序。

As to Trump's plannings to impose tariffs of 25% on car imports, China's foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang responded on May 24 as follows:

China's position is to oppose an abuse of the "national security" regulation. It is seriously damaging the multilateral trade system and disturbing the regular international trade order.

我们将密切关注美方调查的有关进展，也会对可能产生的影响进行全面评估。 中方会坚决捍卫自身的合法权益。

We are carefully paying attention to the progress of America's investigation, yet knowing about the influence it possibly generates on the proceedings of an overall evaluation.

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Germany Related News




Jerusalem Post on June 2, 2018

NATO will not side with Israel if the Islamic Republic of Iran attacks the Jewish state, the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization told a German magazine on Saturday NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Der Spiegel, “The security guarantee [of NATO] does not apply to Israel” because the Jewish state is not a member of the 29 country alliance.

In response to Stoltenberg’s announcement, Volker Beck – the German Green Party politician and former head of the German-Israel parliamentary group in the Bundestag – asked on Twitter: “That raises the question: What does this clarification mean for the security dialogue between NATO, EU, Germany and Israel? It points to at least very different starting points and positions of interest.”




Those would certainly help .....

Related Blogspot : Israel's Anniversary - Palestine Exploding


Here are quotations from an interesting article the US magazine Newsweek published on May 31, 2018. A similar story was told by World Israel News, an Israeli source, on the same day.


Israel planned to attack Iran and start a war, former spy chief says.

Israel planned to bomb Iran and initiate an all-out conflict in the Middle East, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former head of intelligence, who said he believed the move may have been illegal.

Tamir Pardo, who served as head of Israeli spy agency Mossad from 2011 to 2016, told local investigative program Uvda in an interview set to air Thursday that Netanyahu instructed his military command in 2011 to prepare for a strike against longtime foe Iran, which Israel has accused of developing nuclear weapons and supporting militant groups abroad. Pardo said then-Israeli chief of staff Benny Gantz informed the prime minister that the armed forces would be ready within 15 days.

..........

Pardo said that his first instinct was to look into the legality of the measure, which he said he would need to be "certain" was legal before carrying out, even though he was supposed to do so without question. He described the measure as tantamount to "launching a war," according to the Associated Press, and said he and Gantz ultimately protested.

..........

No overt Israeli war on Iran was launched. Instead, Iran's nuclear program suffered a devastating campaign of targeted assassinations that a number of outlets —including Newsweek and Politico— tied to the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were slain and another injured by assailants using bombs and gunfire. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its responsibility.

Iran has claimed its nuclear program was strictly for peaceful purposes, but the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia have cast doubt on this narrative.

US Alert - North Korean Cyber Attack

Different Updates Included .................. 朝鲜的黑客行动 .............. 朝美会谈在新加坡

In the middle of Trump's zig-zag politics regarding North Korea ( "I will talk - I won't talk - Of course I will talk but new sanctions on Pyongyang" ), now an official US cyber alert warning that North Korea is targeting America and, on the same day, the news of a meeting between North Korea's inofficial No. 2, a former intelligence chief, and US secretary of state Pompeo, a former CIA director. Looks like some kind of a poker game, much money surely involved as well.




Some hours ago: Cyber attack from North Korea [Reuters on May 29, 2018]




US security alert related to North Korean malware => complete article
[The Register, British cyber magazine on May 30, 2018]




与朝鲜有关的黑客使用谷歌Play商店中的恶意软件追踪脱北者

Hackers related to N Korea apply Google Play Store malware to track N Korean defectors.

A research team from McAfee found that three applications contain malware targeting special users. That malware is able to penetrate the Android devices of North Korean defectors. [CNBETA group in China on May 21, 2018]




中情局：北韓不可能棄核 FBI籲提防朝黑客活動

CIA: North Korea cannot abandon nukes - The FBI appeals
for promoting defense against North Korean hacker activity.

[SingTao 星岛日报 published in Canada on May 30]

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Today: Former head of North Korean intelligence visiting New York
[The Guardian, GB, on May 30, 2018]

Kim has been a border guard in the Korean demilitarised zone, a liaison officer with the United Nations, and a member of the team who held breakthrough negotiations with the South Koreans in the early 1990s. Over the past decade he was promoted to four-star general, and made head of the main North Korean intelligence service, known as the reconnaissance general bureau (RGB).

He has served three generations of the Kim dynasty and in recent months emerged one of the most powerful figures in Kim Jong-un’s regime, second only to the leader’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. He is vice-chair of the ruling Workers party and head of the section charged with dealing with the South. He was part of the North Korean delegation for the Winter Olympics closing ceremony, and he was at the leader’s side for meetings with the South Korean president Moon Jae-in and Pompeo.

Kim Yong-chol is going to meet with secretary of state Mike Pompeo, however, it remains unclear what would be the subject of their meeting.

It could be the vexed question of future US and South Korean joint military exercises, which Pyongyang sees as embodying hostile intent towards the regime. Or the far wider issue of what both parties mean when the call for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

The fact that Kim has flown to the US at all, in only the second such high-level visit since the Korean war, suggests it is a question that has to be resolved before there can be a summit in Singapore.

NBC news on Tuesday night quoted US officials as saying a new intelligence assessment advised that the regime in Pyongyang had no intention of dismantling its nuclear arsenal in the near future.


The Chinese news center SINA 新浪—新闻中心 published the following article on Kim Yong-chol's visit to New York:




韩媒:朝鲜高官金英哲或向特朗普转达金正恩亲笔信

South Korean Media: North Korea's high official Kim Yong-chol probably
delivered a letter handwritten by Kim Jong-un and directed to Trump.

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Visitor from Seoul / South Korea and who is interested in North Korean military activity.







Visitor from Taipei / Taiwan.

Israel / Iran - Talks on Troop Separation

Photo: Dr. Mostafa Moslehzadeh, Iran's ambassador to Amman. مفاوضات غير معلنة بين إيران وإسرائيل Unofficial negotiations between Iran and Israel. طهران تبلغ تل أبيب بأنها لن تتواجد عسكريا في درعا والقنيطرة Tehran communicates to Tel Aviv it will avoid own military presence in Dar'a and Quneitra. [Saudi-owned paper Elaph إيلاف on May 27]

Informal talks were held in a hotel in Amman, the capital of Jordan, with the help of a Jordanian mediator and who carried messages between both parties that were strictly kept apart in different rooms. Negotiations dealt with a separation of troops in the Golan area where fighting activity between rebel groups and Syrian regime troops is taking place. وكان السفير الإيراني في عمان، مجتبى فردوسي بور، تلقى وعدد من رجال الأمن الإيرانيين تفويضًا لمفاوضة الإسرائيليين في عمان، حيث قاد المفاوضات عن الجانب الإسرائيلي نائب رئيس الموساد برفقة عدد من رجالات الامن والعسكر.ـ The Iranian side was represented by Tehran's ambassador to Amman and who was accompanied by security personnel while Israel sent a Mossad deputy together with a security and military team.

德拉省南部与约旦接壤，东部毗邻以色列控制的戈兰高地。法新社报道， 叙利亚政府军及其盟友武装现阶段控制德拉省大约30%的区域， 其余区域由多支反对派武装和极端组织“伊斯兰国”掌控。报道说， 德拉省所处位置敏感，原因是以色列方面认定伊朗试图借叙利亚内战， 把军事存在延伸至更接近以色列的地区。 The southern part of Dar'a is bordered by Jordan and the east is adjacent to the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Agence France-Presse reported that Syrian government forces and their allies are currently controlling about 30% of the region in Dar'a, while the rest is controlled by armed opposition groups and extremist Islamic State. The report said that Dar'a's location was sensitive because the Israeli side believed that Iran had attempted to use the Syrian civil war to extend its military presence to areas closer to Israel. [Quotation from 21CN新闻——新华网 published on May 27, 2018. Original headline: 叙政府军要南下德拉？美国对叙发威胁：勿南进]

ISIS - Doom or Resurrection ?

Even though five leaders of the Islamic State ISIS have recently been captured, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed caliph of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims has evaded capture so far. Here are quotations from two related articles The Arab Weekly published for their weekend edition on May 27.



Photo: A wristwatch that belonged to an ISIS fighter
and is bearing the typical logo of the Islamic State.


US officials from President Donald Trump on down say the Islamic State (ISIS) should be on its last legs with its short-lived caliphate broken up in late 2017 and its fighters dispersed to the four winds.

However, as one terrorist horror follows another, the warnings from experienced counterterrorism specialists that ISIS would not go away gently but would strike wherever it could until it reorganises are proving to be deadly accurate.

The Trump administration seems to have accepted the harsh reality by announcing it was reversing plans to dismantle the US State Department’s special unit overseeing the war against ISIS.

Ten days earlier, Trump boasted that five of ISIS’s “most wanted” leaders had been captured by US and Iraqi forces, which lured them into a trap from their hideouts in Syria through Baghdad’s intelligence service.

..........

To the dismay of the United States and its allies, Baghdadi’s organisation, held together by seasoned militants who include former Iraqi Army officers and top intelligence operatives who served Saddam Hussein, have in recent weeks carried out dozens of attacks as far apart as Mali, Niger, France, Burkina Faso, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country and increasingly a linchpin in ISIS’s drive to reorganise from the splintered territories it holds in Iraq and Syria.




As ISIS 2.0 takes shape, new leaders are emerging on the internet, long a key recruiting tool for the extremists, and it seems that their propaganda particularly resonates in the United States.

One is Zulfi Hoxha, the son of an Albanian-American pizza store owner in New Jersey. He is known to have become a senior Islamic State (ISIS) figure and a key recruitment icon since he was seen, dressed in black, in a propaganda video beheading captured Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Syria.

[The Arab Weekly is a multinational daily printed in London, Britain]




عوض شفيق: عدد التنظيمات الإرهابية أكثر من 250 تنظيم

Awad Shafiq: Organized terrorism comprises more than 250 organizations.

Editor's Note: Dr. Awad Shafiq is a professor of international law in Geneva.
الدكتور عوض شفيق، أستاذ القانون الدولي في جينيف

[Copts United الأقباط متحدون, newspaper of the Coptic community in Egypt, on May 26, 2018]

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Editorial : Why Are European and
US Youth Joining ISIS ?

There are different reasons for European and US Muslims to join ISIS, and there is, as well, a common reason rarely being discussed.

In January 2015, the Huffington Post published an article that analyzed the reasons for European Muslims to join the Islamic State. Without going into the details, here is the essential item they excavated:

The European Muslims setting off to fight [the Jihad] usually belong to the second or third generation of immigrant communities from the Middle East or South Asia. These generations can be vulnerable because they are at the point of losing the culture of their ancestors and yet are not fully absorbed or accepted in the country in which they live, despite being citizens.

It must be added that the first generation of Muslim immigrants came in the frame of bilateral treaties between European states and the states of origin because there was an urgent need of "guest workers" in the years of economic prosperity in Europe.

This might differ from Muslim immigration to the USA and which seems to me as a rather private and unorganised business of those who want to live the "American dream".

One thing, however, seems to be equal in Europe and the USA and which I dare to describe as a " loss of basic values ".

European and US youth of a certain age, Muslims or not, are nowadays experiencing the moral decay of the Western society they are living in. A society concentrating on the benefits of economic growth and relating individual well-being to the consumption of lifestyle goods and services, thereby neglecting the basic requirements for living in a well-balanced society.

While former generations where aligned by a basic Christian or Muslimic education providing them with the rules that make up for life in a well- balanced society, now the credibility of such rules has become questioned as there is so much hypocrisy everywhere.

And it is at this point, when the "psychological warfare" of religious extremists is taking its toll.




[Source: ABC 15 Arizona]

As an indicator how Western societies are already infected by a loss of basic values, it only needs to look at the increasing number of school shootings that happened in different federal states of the USA. For 2018 alone, 43 of such incidents have been registered in the first five months.

Such shootings have emerged as well in Europe, however on a much smaller scale, because any development that once began in America is known to take some time before being fully adopted abroad.




مفتي الجمهورية: المتطرفون يتوهمون أن الإسلام جاء ليضيِّق على الإنسان ويعزله عن العالم.. وغاب عن الإرهابيين احترام الدين للعرف والتقاليد غير المخالفة للشرع

Mufti of the Republic : Extremists believe that Islam has arrived at
oppressing the human being and isolating him in the world ... and
the terrorists lose respect for the religion, its doctrine and tradition
but not the contradiction of Sharia.

Editor: Sheikh Abdul Karim Khasawneh, the Grand Mufti of Jordan is chief Islamic justice of his country.

[The Arab Today العرب اليوم , Amman / Jordan on May 27, 2018]

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A visitor from Amman, Jordan, and who reminds us of ISIS, the
Islamic State that once took over vast areas in Iraq and Syria.

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Today's traffic to "blueprint news" passing via Ashburn / Virginia,
"The Bullseye of America’s Internet", located in the neighbourhood
of Washington DC.

Israeli Incursions into Lebanon and Syria

Update included !

Latest news from the Jerusalem Post are pointing at most recent operations of Israel's air force and which are probably directed against alleged Hezbollah activities in Syria, at the same time threatening Hezbollah locations in Lebanon.

Earlier on Friday, the Lebanese army announced that on Thursday, May 24, five Israeli Air Force planes circled above Lebanese territory for some 15 hours altogether. According to the report, most of the flights took place in the southern and northern regions of Lebanon, but one of them was mentioned to have circled above "all regions of the country." No offensive action or operation was said to have been carried out by the aircraft.

On Thursday, Syrian state media said a military airport near Homs had come under missile attack which was repelled by its air defense systems.

"One of our military airports in the central region was exposed to hostile missile aggression, and our air defense systems confronted the attack and prevented it from achieving its aim," state news agency SANA said.

SANA earlier reported sounds of explosions heard near the Dabaa airport, about 12 miles southwest of the central Syrian city of Homs and 6 miles from the Lebanese border.

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner, when asked about reports of the attack, said the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria did not carry it out and the coalition does not target Syrian government positions.




Israeli F-35 stealth fighters of US origin
now ready to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.



In Memoriam: Israeli pilots who refused bombing civilian targets.




The Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari was representing his country in the 2013 Venice Biennale with “Letter to a Refusing Pilot”. The film and video installation was inspired by French existentialist writer Albert Camus’ epistolary essay “Letters to a German Friend”, from which it takes the following quote: “I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice”.

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Visitor to "blueprint news" coming from Danmark and
who is interested in North Korea's nuclear ambition.


By the way, US president Trump has not definitely excluded a meeting with Kim Jong-un
in June, maybe after recent emotions cooled off. However, this change of mind is neither
astonishing nor worth some fresh news tag. Let's just sit and wait what the little bird in his
head will twitter next on this subject.

Kim Meets Trump - A Tragedy for the People

Important News Update on May 24 ==> Update on the Dismantling of North Korea's Pungye-ri nuclear test site further down !

US president Donald Trump unexpectedly announced Thursday he is pulling out of the meeting with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, ending – for now at least – the hopes of a historic reconciliation with the nuclear-armed hermit regime. [Time, USA, only some hours ago]

Here are quotations from an article published by Time, USA, on May 22 about shortcomings of a possible nuclear deal negociated between Trump and Kim Jong-un when it comes to the living conditions and human rights of most North Korean citizens. In other words: It's about Kim Jong-un possibly reaching a deal that would allow him to maintain his private concentration camp for just another decade, while giving himself the aura of a wise statesman acting at eye level with the cream of global leaders in order to establish some kind of " fake peace ".




The goal for Moon and Trump seems to be a gradual denuclearization of the DPRK. For Kim, a deal would mean the normalization of his regime, and a loosening of the sanctions that make it difficult for him and his cronies to make profits.

The media has created endless hype about these “peace talks” and the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize for Moon and Trump. But what you very rarely, if ever, hear about are the nightmarish daily lives of 25 million people in North Korea.

Imagine being a North Korean defector. You risked your life to escape hell on earth, and you miraculously made it to freedom in South Korea. And you watch your new democratically-elected leader, President Moon. But you see that instead of promoting human rights in North Korea and expressing solidarity with your cause, he treats your former tormentor Kim Jong Un to an ostentatious feast while your family starves. You look at the press photos and watch as Moon and his colleagues smile and seem to be so genuinely happy—victorious even—as they try to make amends with a tyrant whose atrocities were compared by a United Nations inquiry to those committed by Nazi Germany in World War II.



Published by the Boston Herald.

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At this point in 2018 we have two decades of strong evidence to suggest that the Kim dictatorship manipulates peace talks to strengthen and cement its brutal rule. Sometimes, like in the case of the inter-Korean summit in 2000—a result of the former South Korean President Kim Dae- jung’s ‘Sunshine Policy’ of engaging with the North—these talks can even rescue and bail out the regime when it is at a moment of internal weakness. Many forget that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to South Korean president Kim Dae-jung in 2000 for bringing the Koreas together came after a payment of approximately $186 million to Pyongyang from Seoul when the Kim regime was close to economic collapse.

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Visitor to "blueprint news" coming from Hong Kong.

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This Morning: Dismantling of Pungye-ri Nuclear Test Site
and Renewed Threats prior to the US - N Korean Summit.



Report from NBC News on May 24.

Threats to abandon the Kim-Trump summit, planned for June 12, came
from Pyongyang after US allegations that N Korea might end like Libya.




Report from Morning Post - Singapore 早报—新加坡 on May 24.

This morning journalists from five countries were driven to the test site where
they watched some enormous explosions from a 500 m distance. North Korea
denies that the Pungye-ri site had already been severely damaged during the
latest nuclear tests and therefore been abandoned.

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Visitor to "blueprint news" coming from the center of Madrid / Spain.