Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The Dictator and The Con Man

With the meeting of President Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea on Tuesday in Singapore, human rights groups are watching for Mr. Trump to bring up North Korea’s widespread crimes against humanity. 

 Mr. Kim rules with extreme brutality, making his nation among the worst human rights violators in the world. 

 In North Korea, these crimes “entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” concluded a 2014 United Nations report that examined North Korea. 

 Christianity is deemed a ‘serious threat’ 

North Korea considers the spread of most religions dangerous, but Christianity is considered a “particularly serious threat” because it “provides a platform for social and political organization and interaction outside the realm of the State,” according to the United Nations report.

‘Deliberate starvation’ as a play for power 

Two million to three million people were believed to have died during an extended famine in North Korea in the 1990s, The New York Times reported in 1999, around when the country began to recover. At the time, North Korea used food as a tool to enforce political loyalty, prioritizing its distribution based on who was most useful to the nation’s political system, the United Nations report stated. 





What have Trump and Kim signed? We read between the linesDocument hailed by US president as ‘very comprehensive’ does not go much further than existing denuclearisation agreement









The man who wouldn't shake the hand of Angela Merkel and called Justin Trudeau "weak" is giving a thumbs up to a brutal dictator who kills dissidents and even his own family while that same dictator laughs at him. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)










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We’ve seen it time and time again from this President. He treats foes like friends, and friends like foes.

3 comments:

Lee Arnold said...


Obama’s comments in 2008 and 2009 about talking to strongmen “without preconditions,” and his efforts to work with both North Korea and Cuba’s communist governments, were greeted by conservatives with scorn. So it seemed odd to some on the right that Trump doing the same was being feted as a victory for American foreign policy.

“I’m not certain why meeting with Kim without preconditions is suddenly a grand coup when we would have gone nuts had Obama done the same,” said conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, who criticized Obama back in 2009 and is now often critical of Trump.

Dave Miller said...

Lee... we’ve learned not to be surprised by inconsistency from the right. They only have and care about principles when a Dem is in office.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Lee and Dave,

Trump: “THE GREATEST AGREEMENT IN THE WORLD!!!!”

"North Korea experts, however, called the agreement “vague” and “old news” — and pointed out that it falls short of goals the U.S. outlined prior to the Singapore summit.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Monday that the “complete and verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the only outcome that the United States will accept” from Pyongyang.

Tuesday’s agreement included a commitment by Kim to work toward the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula, but the terms “verifiable” and “irreversible” were conspicuously absent from the document.

It failed to explicitly define the scope of denuclearization, and didn’t outline how North Korea might go about achieving it."