CTH will not be part of the insufferable media narrative that China and North Korea are detached and independent; that nonsense is just plain silly.  Beijing’s old communist guard tells Kim Jong-un what he can and cannot do.
That said, Beijing flinched. Kim Jong-un takes finger off trigger. It appears Guam has nothing to worry about for the moment.
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un received a report from his army on its plans to strike the area around Guam and said he will watch the actions of the United States for a while longer before making a decision, the North’s official news agency said on Tuesday.

“The United States, which was the first to bring numerous strategic nuclear equipment near us, should first make the right decision and show through actions if they wish to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and prevent a dangerous military clash,” Kim was cited as saying in the report by KCNA.
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Facing increased criticism from the EU and Libyan officials being paid by the EU to keep North African economic migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, Doctors Without Borders has temporarily shut down their North African ferry services.
Under the auspices of generous NGO funding, the globalist organization transported thousands of economic migrants from North Africa to the EU so far this year by transferring small groups onto their bigger ships for the journey across the sea.   However, the EU is overflowing with the migrant arrivals, and without the billions of dollars from U.S. pledges via the Paris Climate Treaty even liberal EU supporters of Drs w/out Borders are now saying enough is enough.

ROME (Reuters) – Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Saturday it was suspending its migrant rescues in the Mediterranean because it felt threatened by the Libyan coastguard and the Italian government’s policies have made its job harder.
The aid group’s decision is the latest development in mounting tensions between Rome and NGOs as migration dominates Italy’s political agenda ahead of elections early next year.

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Serial fibber Brian Williams leads his interview segment with a moment of honesty.  During his introduction to a panel segment he leads with the set-up: “tonight our job is to scare you”. WATCH:

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Seriously folks, CTH readers, MAGA supporters, and those who travel the deep weeds of politics and have followed Donald Trump can spot the strategy he is deploying.  The strategy is all about economics and leverage.  The media will NEVER discuss it, because they need to act willfully blind to it and use fear as a weapon.
The media is simply taking advantage of “fear” to position yet another anti-Trump narrative. However, all of their hyperbolic analysis of the North Korea situation takes on new understanding when idiots like Williams let it slip that their job is to “scare people to death on this subject.” He makes it clear their goal is to drive down the public’s trust in the President to handle this threat.
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President Donald Trump, together with Labor Secretary Acosta and Education Secretary Devos, spoke about jobs, his apprenticeship initiative and answered questions about North Korea during a statement at a workforce roundtable in New Jersey on Friday.
President Trump is meeting with Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary T-Rex later today.  Everything is going according to plan.

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There’s something rather enjoyable about watching President Trump discuss North Korea when you fully understand he has ZERO, Nada, Zippo intent on a military approach. When you accept words are just words, and the real confrontation will take place with China over economics, this entire enterprise takes on a rather interesting and enjoyable dynamic….
President Trump has the media, and the entire globe, right in the sweet spot where he likes and enjoys them; everyone is laser focused on the dancing red dot.
Seriously, no kidding, only he could pull this off.  Epic.
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When we initially read this article yesterday our review began with an earnest and sincere effort to understand the concerns amid the career bureaucrats in the U.S. State Department; and also to understand the overall cultural climate that would need Secretary Tillerson’s Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to calm these officials….

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The No. 2 U.S. diplomat on Tuesday sought to allay concerns among the State Department’s rank-and-file employees over possible layoffs and perceptions of a lack of firm direction under the administration of President Donald Trump. (more)

…After all, this has to be about the eleventyth time either Secretary Tillerson or Deputy Sullivan has addressed these ‘climate assessment’ issues. It was less than a week prior to this latest effort by Sullivan when Tillerson himself was talking to the department.
I mean seriously, how much “talking to‘ could one organization need? These are obviously some seriously needy people. Then again, we’ve long discussed the overall liberal perspectives within the department; so the most entrenched liberalism inside government is definitively inside the Department of State.
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Well, many of us were waiting for this – and we have discovered exactly what most CTH readers anticipated, China is a paper tiger.
Last night China finally delivered the official communist government position outlining their perceived leverage over the U.S. and President Trump’s economic diplomacy and economic security platform.
China has always used The Global Times to communicate their official communist state positions.  Last night China delivered their warning; oh, you’re gonna love this:

“US needs correct logic in dealing with North Korea”.

[…] The US asks China for help when it cannot solve its problems with North Korea. Some US elites even want to urge China to claim full responsibility for the issue or they will threaten to retaliate. Under this logic, isn’t it reasonable for North Korea to attack its southern neighbor when it is under military threat from the US?
Moreover, those US elites may not have considered the leverage China has over the US. What if China restricts the usage of iPhones and the number of Chinese students to the US, or imports fewer US agricultural products? (link for more)

Now, it is critical to emphasize this is the official outlook of the Chinese Communist regime and what they perceive as their leverage over the United States.  This is the official outlook of the party apparatus behind Xi Jinping.
So let’s look at their position in sequence.
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By now most discerning political followers have identified the ideological source of the attacks against HR McMaster.  A widely diverse community of domestic America-Second interests that have come together, in common ideological purpose, to attack President Trump’s National Security Advisor.
Sadly these interests often use the divisive label of antisemitism to attack people behind policies they disagree with.  It is an unfortunate, albeit historically predictable, approach.  Specifically because of the agenda behind these attacks, last night President Trump delivered support for McMaster noting the NSA head’s support for Israel.

“General McMaster and I are working very well together.  He is a good man and very pro–Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”
~ President Donald Trump, August 4th, 2017

Today, the Times of Israel also comes to McMaster’s defense by pointing out that officials within Israel are well aware that HR McMaster supports the pro-Israel viewpoints of the Trump administration:

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman meets with US National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster on May 22, 2017.

(ISRAEL) Israeli officials responded to mounting allegations that US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is anti-Israel, saying that these were blatantly false and he was a staunch supporter of the Jewish state.
“Anyone who meets McMaster among us and is in contact with him is constantly impressed by how pro-Israeli he is,” an unnamed Israeli security official told the Haaretz daily on Saturday. “The connection with him is excellent.”

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There is a considerable amount of visible internet and social media angst surrounding the National Security Council and staffing decisions made by National Security Advisor HR McMaster.   CTH has no insight into the inner workings of disagreements within the current NSC, however, with a modest amount of both skepticism and cynicism the current level of alarm appears over indulged.

Within any work group there’s going to be differences of opinion.  Within any national security working group there’s going to be ideological differences of opinion.  The issues are important and very complex.  The differences should never be dismissed or marginalized in their potential consequence.  That said, it’s not the differences of opinion that present problems – it’s when those differences become entrenched in opposition to the reason for the groups primary function.  That’s when differences become problems.
Consider the foreign policy proposals, and worldviews therein, of candidate Donald Trump and candidate Ted Cruz.  Now think about taking the foreign policy/NatSec principals from both candidate camps, and the outlooks carried therein, and put them into the same council chamber to hammer out papers of recommended action toward policy.
Can you see the structure for an underlying problem?  Now overlay the ideological interests of the institutional military with a healthy dose of both deep state and religious (centered principle outlook) career ideology, and you’ve got a recipe for disagreement.  Well, that’s essentially what I see when reviewing various media reports of internal group conflict points. (more…)

During a televised press conference White House Policy Advisor Stephen Miller was answering questions about the newly proposed RAISE Act.  A reporter from CNN named Jim Acosta, who always advocates for maximum camera time, thought he could engineer a narrative of self-promotion through the use of the Statue of Liberty.
After inferring an inscription on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty was part of our founding documents, it wasn’t, an epic fail followed:

The Statue of Liberty had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with immigration.  The Emma Lazarus poem that Acosta refers to was affixed to the pedestal as an ex post facto inscription in 1903.  Even the New York Times knows the correct origin:

“The only immigrants mentioned at the dedication in 1886 were the “illustrious descendants of the French nobility” who fought on behalf of the United States against Britain during the American Revolution.”

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Dangerous/Sketchy – An Inspector General investigation into a military recruitment program for non-Americans with foreign language skills has resulted in a dangerous level of foreign infiltration by potential terrorists.  Some of the dangerous recruits, potentially terrorists, are now “missing” and “unaccounted for”.

“The program has been replete with problems, to include foreign infiltration.”

(Via Fox News) Defense Department investigators have discovered “potential security risks” in a Pentagon program that has enrolled more than 10,000 foreign-born individuals into the U.S. armed forces since 2009, Fox News has learned exclusively, with sources on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon expressing alarm over “foreign infiltration” and enrollees now unaccounted for.

After more than a year of investigation, the Pentagon’s inspector general recently issued a report – its contents still classified but its existence disclosed here for the first time – identifying serious problems with Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI), a DOD program that provides immigrants and non-immigrant aliens with an expedited path to citizenship in exchange for military service.

Defense Department officials said the program is still active but acknowledged that new applications have been suspended.
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