Kim Jong Un’s Apparent Weight Loss Sparks Speculation Over Health

/0 Comments/in , /by

North Korea watchers are eager to get the skinny on leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss — which some speculate might be a sign of deteriorating health.

The famously corpulent despot looked noticeably slimmer in photos released by state media Saturday — after not being seen publicly for a month, the Guardian reported.

South Korea-based NK News, which analyzed photos of Kim addressing a ruling party politburo meeting last week, said he appeared to have lost a “significant amount of weight.”

If he lost the weight intentionally for health reasons, that “likely improves his position at home,” Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at MIT, told the outlet Tuesday.

Being more secure at home “in turn provides more predictability perhaps for regional actors like Japan, the ROK and the US who may have greater confidence that he will be running the show,” Narang said. (Read more from “Kim Jong Un’s Apparent Weight Loss Sparks Speculation Over Health” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Guatemalans Protest VP Visit: ‘Kamala GO HOME’

/0 Comments/in , /by

A group of Guatemalans protested Sunday as Vice President Kamala Harris arrived for a visit to their country.

Signs reading “Kamala Mind Your Own Business” “Kamala Go Home” and even, “Kamala, Trump Won” were displayed outside the airport. . .

“We’re against their agenda of imposing the LGBTQ, pro-abortion ideology,” a member told El Faro. “In Guatemala we’re pro-life,” (Read more from “Guatemalans Protest VP Visit: ‘Kamala GO HOME'” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Google Pushes Chinese Propaganda About South China Sea – With Wikipedia’s Help

/0 Comments/in , /by

A discussion at the Wikipedia Reddit community yesterday noted that Google searches asking if China owns the disputed South China Sea prominently featured a result from the online encyclopedia parroting the Chinese government position that it “enjoys indisputable sovereignty” over the sea. Reddit users noted the line appeared to be taken from a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement quoted in the article, a fact not included in the Google snippet. The line was removed after the Reddit discussion brought it to attention.

This is only the latest case where Google’s prioritizing of Wikipedia for prominently displayed information has spread propaganda or falsehoods.

Numerous territorial disputes exist regarding the South China Sea, most significantly the dispute over the Spratly Islands. Several Southeast Asian countries as well as the communist Chinese government and the government on Taiwan (who each officially claim the islands as governments representing China) dispute control over some or all of the islands. China’s claims in the sea incorporate other islands and together are cited by the government as the basis for its “nine-dash line” territorial claim, which asserts nearly the entire sea is under Chinese sovereignty. Other countries have criticized the claim as overly broad and vague.

The opening post of the discussion on the Wikipedia Reddit community showed a screen-cap of a Google search asking “Does the South China Sea belong to China?” where the “featured snippet” from Wikipedia’s article on “territorial disputes in the South China Sea” seemed to uncritically recite the mainland government’s stance by stating: “China enjoys indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea and the island. China’s stand is based on historical facts and international law. China’s sovereign rights and positions are formed in the course of history and this position has been held by Chinese Government for long.” Other searches for variations of the question displayed the same snippet.

Such “featured snippets” are reportedly produced by Google’s search engine based on its algorithm determining what “will help people more easily discover what they’re seeking” with the search. Users noted the Google snippet matched a quote on the Wikipedia page from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu, who was responding to an oil exploration deal India’s oil exploration company had signed with Vietnam’s state oil firm, a deal involving parts of the South China Sea. (Read more from “Google Pushes Chinese Propaganda About South China Sea – With Wikipedia’s Help” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Soldier Charged With Mutiny for Anti-Vaccine Speech

/1 Comment/in , /by

A military officer who gave a speech at a anti-mask rally and urged his fellow soldiers to not distribute COVID-19 vaccines is now facing mutiny charges from the Canadian military.

In December, Officer Cadet Ladislas Kenderesi was introduced to a large anti-mask crowd in Toronto’s Yonge and Dundas Square. Lamont Daigle, one of the rally’s organizers and an influential Canadian anti-masker, gave the man an introduction fit for an action hero. . .

Kenderesi, introduced under his real name, strolled on stage wearing his military greens—complete with a knife sheathed in a shoulder holster—to the applause of hundreds.

“I’m asking the military, right now serving, truck drivers, medical, engineers, whatever you are, do not take this unlawful order in distribution of this vaccine,” he says to a cheering crowd. “My job is to protect you, not just from foreign (threats) but also from domestic.”

“I might get in a lot of s**t for doing this. But I don’t care any more.” (Read more from “Soldier Charged With Mutiny for Anti-Vaccine Speech” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

China Debuts Three-Child Policy To Fight Dramatic Decline in Births

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Communist Party of China announced on Monday it would allow couples to have a maximum of three children, an expansion of the recently imposed “two-child” policy and apparent response to its dismal, and worsening, national birth rates.

China published its 2020 national census this month, finding a modest increase in the population but an extremely low number of annual births. Since 1979, the Communist Party banned married couples from having more than one child, a law that resulted in mass infanticide, forced abortions, and a disproportionately high number of men in the population due to families’ preferences for baby boys.

Dictator Xi Jinping first eased the policy in 2016 to allow two children, but a lack of interest in having children on the part of young couples and a shortage of women of child-bearing age resulted in declining birth rates even after this modification. The policy applies only to ethnic Han women, the majority of the population, but China has implemented a widespread campaign of forced sterilizations of ethnic minority women, particularly Uyghurs, that undercuts its de jure looser permissions for minority families. . .

The “one-child policy” resulted in the killing of 400 million children, or, in Communist Party terminology, it “averted an estimated 400 million births.” (Read more from “China Debuts Three-Child Policy To Fight Dramatic Decline in Births” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Warning Sounded: China Soon Could Patrol U.S. East Coast

/0 Comments/in , /by

China’s military soon could be patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, not far from some of America’s major population centers, warns China expert Gordon Chang, a Gatestone institute distinguished senior fellow.

The Communist regime “is scouting for a naval base on the west coast of Africa,” he explained in a column at Gatestone.

“In the near future, therefore, Chinese ships could be regularly patrolling off America’s East Coast.”

He cited recent testimony from Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. Africa Command.

He revealed that right now, China’s only offshore military base is in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. (Read more from “Warning Sounded: China Soon Could Patrol U.S. East Coast” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Netanyahu’s Opposition Rivals Warn of Civil War in Israel

/1 Comment/in , /by

Israeli opposition leaders said they have received death threats in response to their plan to form a government that would oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a backlash that has raised the specter of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“This is the time for all public leaders to come out in an unequivocal call against every threat, whatever the democratic decisions are,” said Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, per the Times of Israel. “We all need to respect them and avoid sparking a dispute — let alone, God forbid, a civil war.”

Right-wing politician Naftali Bennett’s announcement Sunday that he planned to deliver the necessary votes to form a government with center-left opposition leader Yair Lapid sparked an uproar in Israel. Netanyahu accused him of making a self-interested play for the prime minister’s office at the expense of Israeli security, but the opposition leaders denounced Netanyahu with thinly veiled references to allegations that he was responsible for Rabin’s death at the hands of a right-wing extremist who opposed the Oslo Accords.

“That fact that elected officials are being threatened over taking part in democratic processes raises a great concern that we have not learned the lesson, neither from the Jewish history of baseless hatred nor from the murder of Rabin,” Gantz said. (Read more from “Netanyahu’s Opposition Rivals Warn of Civil War in Israel” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Report: Wuhan Researcher’s Wife Died From COVID-Like Illness in 2019

/0 Comments/in , /by

The wife of a Wuhan lab researcher working on coronaviruses died of what appeared to be COVID-19 in December 2019, the leader of a State Department investigation under the Trump administration told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

It would have been an early clue that the virus could be transmitted among humans, yet Chinese authorities said that the virus was not transmissible for at least a month after they knew it was, allowing it to spread, according to David Asher, who led an investigation on COVID-19’s origins and served in the State Department under Democrat and Republican presidents. . .

An individual who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time provided the information on the lab researcher’s wife dying, according to Asher.

A Wall Street Journal story on Sunday reported that three Wuhan lab workers were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, before the first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Dec. 8. The story’s main findings, that WIV workers had possible COVID-19 symptoms in fall 2019, before the first confirmed case, were already in a State Department statement on COVID-19’s origins released in the last days of the Trump administration. (Read more from “Report: Wuhan Researcher’s Wife Died From COVID-Like Illness in 2019” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Taliban Seizing Afghan Military’s Outposts, Forces Surrendering

/0 Comments/in , /by

As U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan, Taliban militants seize military outposts by threatening security forces until they agree to surrender, The New York Times reported Thursday.

By mid-May at least seven security outposts in rural Eastern Afghanistan have surrendered to the Taliban and around 120 law enforcement officials were allowed to leave villages after handing over weapons and other equipment, according to the Times.

“We told them, ‘Look, your situation is bad — reinforcements aren’t coming,’” 53-year-old village elder Nabi Sarwar Khadim who helped negotiate the surrenders said, the Times reported.

At least 26 outposts have surrendered to the Taliban since May 1, according to government officials and village elders, the Times reported. The Taliban have seized four district centers and displaced governors, police officers and intelligence officials. . .

The Taliban have exploited the U.S. troop withdrawal’s effect on Afghan security force morale to seize territory, military vehicles, weapons and ammunition, while buying off local militias, according to The Times. (Read more from “Taliban Seizing Afghan Military’s Outposts, Forces Surrendering” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Netanyahu Publicly Rebuffs U.S. Efforts To Re-Enter Iran Nuclear Deal

/0 Comments/in , /by

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rebuffed U.S. efforts to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal during remarks in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden wants to revive the deal canceled by former President Donald Trump three years ago despite pushback from both parties, Politico previously reported. The deal, officially dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was brokered by former President Barack Obama in 2015 when Biden served as vice president.

Netanyahu pushed back on the Biden administration’s recent efforts and expressed his hope that the U.S. would forgo its plans. The prime minister voiced concern for the implications of Iran having “an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy.”

“The second point is – naturally, is Iran. We discussed many regional issues, but none is greater than Iran. And I can tell you that I hope that the United States will not go back to the old JCPOA because we believe that that deal paves the way for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy,” Netanyahu said during the joint press event. (Read more from “Netanyahu Publicly Rebuffs U.S. Efforts To Re-Enter Iran Nuclear Deal” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.