North Korea is Appalled that the UN Would Point Out Human Rights Violations

Night Watch / Towmhall Columnist

 
North Korea-US: The US Will Face the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) Toughest Counteraction. A statement by a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Minister. Key excerpts follow.

"The United States has recently become all the more pronounced in its "human rights" offensive against the DPRK…"

"The DPRK agreed on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula not to allow the United States to swallow it up but to have the nuclear threat of the United States to the DPRK defused and peace and security on the peninsula ensured."

"Now that the confrontation between the DPRK and the United States over human rights is high on the agenda, any dialogue on the nuclear issue is meaningless."

"The United States is talking this or that about the release of Americans who had been detained in the DPRK. But the release was nothing but a cleaning work done by it to start confrontation with the United States over human rights, not to want dialogue with it."

Comment: The North Korean leadership is manic about the UN's findings of longstanding, institutionalized and systemic human rights abuses in North Korea. For most of the world, that finding is not only overdue but unsurprising.

The North Korean leaders judge that it is a contrivance of the US and is aimed at overthrowing their system.

The significance of this statement is that the North Koreans have somehow linked human rights issues to the nuclear talks. That is a fairly small step once human rights concerns are equated with regime overthrow. Thus the North is once again exposing its deep seated belief that it is the perennial victim of plots by outsiders. Victimization is a standard fallback meme for preserving the North's sense of itself.

A second point is that the North's strategists appear to have re-interpreted the release of American detainees. The facts are that the North blundered in judging that the US would reciprocate what the North's leaders considered a good will gesture for starting talks.

The new interpretation is that the release was the start of confrontation with the US. The argument is contrived but the North's behavior bears watching because the new line is confrontation with the US over human rights.

Yes, Michelle, It's Because You're Black

John Ransom / Townhall Finance Editor

 

Michelle Obama wants you to feel bad for her, and for Barack, because they are black.

“I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” Michelle says in People Magazine. “Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.”

Oh, the horror.

Why didn’t the emperor clean up Chicago neighborhoods with his pen and his phone while he was there? Cabs likely would have stopped more frequently if the city, especially the South and West Sides, wasn't infested by crime.

No doubt there is racism in Chicago, a city I lived in longer than Barack Obama did.

But much of it is the latent kind—and it’s committed by both whites and blacks.

Chicago, you’ll remember, is a city that is home to the Jesse Jacksons, both senior and junior.

And as a white man, remind me to tell you the times I’ve had trouble catching a cab in the rain or the cold in Washington, D.C, another city in which I lived longer than Barack Obama did.

No doubt there is racism in D.C. and much of it is the active kind.

D.C. is a city where Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry, despite his many crimes, succeeded as a race baiter because he was black.

List of Hundreds of Millions of Questions: ONLY ONE Answer

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shugs

The Islamic State published a document detailing the shari’a legal penal code. The document, which was titled “Clarification [regarding] the Hudud [Koranic punishments],” included a list of crimes and their respective punishment according to the shari’a. “The document begins with various Koranic verses emphasizing the need for Muslims to adhere to the shari’a, while noting that those who do not follow it are considered unbelievers.”

This is the sharia. It’s what Islamic groups mean to impose and why the wage holy war. The Taliban, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, et al slaughter and maim for an Islamic State under Islamic law.

So if you find yourself asking, what does the Taliban want? An...

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EU Court Rules Hamas Should Be Taken Off Terrorist List

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The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which fought Israeli forces for nearly two months this year, won a court ruling that could lead to it being removed from a European Union list of terrorist organizations. 

The EU General Court in Luxembourg, in what was described as a procedural ruling, said that the bloc’s decision to place Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, on the list of terrorist groups wasn’t sufficiently thorough and was based “on factual imputations derived from the press and Internet.”

Israel reacted with anger to the decision, seeing it as the latest in a series of European diplomatic moves the country views as favorable to the Palestinian cause. The ruling came on the same day that the EU Parliament voted to back “in principle recognition of Palestinian statehood,” though failing short of a setting a deadline demanded by some lawmakers.

“We are not satisfied by the explanation offered by the Europeans that the removal of Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations is due to a procedural issue,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an e-mailed statement. “The burden of proof is on the European Union and we expect them to immediately return Hamas to the list that everyone knows it belongs on,” he said.

Hamas, which is also deemed a terrorist group by the U.S., is a militant Islamic movement that arose out of the Gaza Strip during the 1980s. Israel has conducted three major military operations against Hamas since it seized full power in Gaza in 2007 in an effort to halt rocket attacks on its communities in the south. Israel also maintains a partial blockade on Gaza that the United Nations says is harming Palestinian civilians.

Hamas ‘Victory’

“Removing Hamas from the terrorism blacklist is a victory for the Palestinian people,” Musa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said in an e-mail. “Hamas calls on all those who put us on this list to correct their stance, because doing so has always been unfair.”

Op-ed: 
Concessions to Tyranny Obama-Style
By: Diane Sori

“Barack Obama is the worst negotiator that we've had as president since at least Jimmy Carter, and maybe in the history of this country.”
- Florida Senator Marco Rubio, son of Cuban immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1956

Yesterday...in yet another tactic to divert and deflect our attention away from his unilateral authorization of 9,000 unapproved Syrian muslims being let into our country over the next few months...'We the People' got yet another lump of coal in our Christmas stocking from the traitor- in-the White House as Barack HUSSEIN Obama...coming but a day after Congress recessed for the Christmas holiday...has now taken it upon himself through executive action to LIFT the embargo against Cuba...a country on the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

With his announcing that the U.S. will work towards 'normalizing' and restoring full diplomatic relations with the island nation just 90 miles off Florida's coast...including opening an embassy in Havana and easing restrictions on remittances, travel, commerce and banking, including allowing the use debit cards in Cuba as well as raise the level of remittances allowed to be sent to Cuban nationals to $2,000 every three months from the current limit of $500. And this means Obama is allowing even more American dollars to be sent out of this country going to non-Americans.

So once again and true to form Obama is violating standing U.S. laws by dealing directly with the communist/marxist country of Fidel and Raul Castro...dealing directly with a country 'in bed' with our enemies. And all this comes as Cuba releases American contractor Alan Gross...after his having served five years most recently in a Cuban prison hospital ward...for so-called 'humanitarian' reasons but the reality is this release is for anything but.

NOT done for humanitarian reasons for the reality is this release was done to mask yet another paying of ransom of sorts to an enemy...just like Obama did with that now come back to haunt '5- for-1' trade of five high-ranking Taliban terrorists for one low-level army deserter named Bowe Bergdahl. However this time, to secure Gross' release Obama actually used his clemency power to commute the sentences of the last three of the five Red Avispa members...allowing the three to be simultaneously released as Gross was released. This 3-for-1swap...of those convicted of spying on anti-Castro groups here in America (including Miami-based 'Brothers to the Rescue') with one of those being released convicted of 'conspiracy to murder' when the Cuban military shot down two of the 'Brothers to the Rescue' civilian planes...was ill-conceived from the start as Gross was NO spy but this deal of Obama's does make it seem as if he indeed was.

And so another prisoner swap has been completed where America once again comes out on the short end for this was an Obama-planned and executed swap...and you just know that cannot be good.

Alan Gross...who worked for Development Alternatives, out of Bethesda, Md., was a man who had traveled to more than 50 countries as an international development worker. Arrested in 2009 and falsely convicted in 2011 of spying for bringing standard satellite telephone equipment that was capable of cloaking internet connections into Cuba, the Castro government claimed this equipment was going to be used in a U.S.-led plot to overthrow said government. Gross was finally released yesterday after 18 months of secret 'back channel' talks at the highest levels of both governments...talks that were largely hosted by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis.

Hmmm...Obama willingly talks with a communist government...after all he is a communist himself...but NO talks were conducted with our 'supposed' friend Mexico for the release of Sgt. Andrew Tahmoorissi...just saying.

And now the U.S. and Cuba...once the 'Jewel of the Caribbean' but sadly now a cesspool of poverty of Castro's own doing...are going to immediately begin talks to restore full diplomatic relations to end the five-decades-old embargo against Cuba. Saying he will send 'major' amounts of money to the Cuban people...people who will now go from having the Cuban government supporting them...'them' as in Cuba's version of our welfare gimme-gimme sponges...to a by-proxy form of our American government and our taxpayer dollars supporting them. And all the Cubans who came here LEGALLY...including in what is the still legal and in effect 'Wet foot-Dry foot policy... just got a slap in the face from the traitor-in-chief as did any and all others who came here LEGALLY.

And what happens to all the Cubans who lost everything when Castro took power...the Cubans who were forced to flee the island in fear of their lives...when Castro 'stole' for himself and his minions all the property, monies, and tangible assets from those who opposed him...from those whose family members he murdered. And do NOT think for a minute that Castro didn't have people murdered for Castro had a direct member of my husband's family murdered...executed actually...as in lined up before a firing squad in front of his family, shot in the knees to force him into a hoped for 'begging for his life position' (he NEVER caved), and then had countless bullets fired into his body until dead. His crime...my husband's uncle was resistance member Humberto Sori-Marin, the Cuban Agricultural Minister who was actually working for and in tandem with JFK on the 'Pay of Pigs' invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro.

And now Sen. Rubio said he will (rightfully) try to use his upcoming key roll on the Foreign Relations subcommittee in an attempt to block Obama's "dangerous and desperate attempt to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people’s expense." And the incoming Foreign Relations chairman, Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, said this panel will be “closely examining” the implications of the administration’s new Cuba policy.

Also, former Florida governor and possible 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush recently told a gathering of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, "I would argue that instead of lifting the embargo we should consider strengthening it again to put pressure on the Cuban regime." Obviously, Obama did NOT give a damn about Bush's thoughts nor did he even heed RINO extraordinaire John Boehner words that "Relations with the Castro regime should not be revisited, let alone normalized, until the Cuban people enjoy freedom – and not one second sooner."

So the bottom line in Obama's announcement is that he is now rewarding a dictator who continues to oppress his people, thus setting in place an extremely dangerous precedent that could actually put American lives in danger. And how so...simply because this trade and Obama's now official recognition of the continuing Castro regime begs America's enemies to kidnap and use Americans overseas, both those serving in our military and in the private sector, as bargaining chips to get what they want. And with America's enemies being Obama's friends they will surely get whatever they damn well please.

“This entire policy shift announced today is based on an illusion, on a lie, the lie and the illusion that more commerce and access to money and goods will translate to political freedom for the Cuban people,” so said Sen. Rubio. And how right he is as this NOTHING but a politically opportunistic move that Obama has now set in motion will do NOTHING but allow Fidel's hand-picked successor...his younger brother Raul Castro...to remain in power unchecked for Castro has the upper hand as Obama vindicates the very actions of yet another dictator against his own people.

"Todos somos Americanos" Obama said which translates into "We are all Americans." But know these words are a direct slap in the face to the Cuban people for the Cuban people are NOT Americans just as Americans are NOT Cubans...just as Barack HUSSEIN Obama is NOT an American himself...need I say more.