Christian Persecution and Antisemitism
Barnabas Fund - prayer Focus Update October 2020:
Yesterday, the Christian Legal Centre supported street preacher Mike Overd in a High Court case where police tried to impose severe restrictions on his freedom to preach in the streets of Avon and Somerset. Mike Overd has been preaching publicly ever since he became a Christian in the early...
The kidnapping, sexual abuse and forced conversion of Christian women and girls in Egypt — a "particularly vulnerable group to exploitation" that is quietly living an "unimaginable nightmare" — is rampant, with no signs of easing up. This is the finding of a report published on September 10, 2020 by Coptic Solidarity, an international organization based in Washington D.C., that works to promote equal citizenship rights for Egypt's Christian minority. In its 15-page report, "'Jihad of the Womb': Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt," Coptic Solidarity documents "the widespread practice of abduction and trafficking" and estimates that there have been "about 500 cases within the last decade, where elements of coercion were used that amount to trafficking," according to the UN's own definitions, particularly per its "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children.
"A Christian 6 year old girl was beaten and raped after being forcibly taken to the home of a Muslim rapist in broad daylight.... the local Muslim community are threatening the Christian parents with violence, the rape of their other daughters and financial ruin if they proceed with a legal case against paedophile Muhammad Waqas (18 yrs)...." — Report; British Pakistani Christian Association, September 16, 2020. "Another Christian girl aged 14 was recently abducted and gang-raped by some Muslim youths... The victim is a student of grade nine and was abducted by four or five boys on her way to a local tuition center on Jan. 16, 2020. The abductors not only raped her but also obtained her signatures and thumb impressions on some papers." — Morningstar News, February 12, 2020. "Christian girls are only meant for the pleasure of Muslim men" — to quote a group of Muslim men, seconds before they rammed their car into three young Christian girls, who had ignored their sexual advances while walking home from work; one died. — British Pakistani Christian Association, January 20, 2016.
A mob of extremists has attacked and destroyed a much-loved church building on a hilltop, near China Bay, on the outskirts of the coastal city of Trincomalee, in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Church minister, Jorge Dissanayake, lamented the loss of the building situated on the “Mount of the Cross”, commenting that many believers visited the place of worship as a pilgrimage. “A mob came and attacked us on the 5 of October while we were conducting our service,” he recounted as he asked for prayer for Christians in the region “to have freedom to make their pilgrimage”.
A Christian couple detained for being “apostates and evangelists spreading Christianity” in Muslim-majority Somaliland are to have their case forwarded to court, a police colonel announced at a press conference on 5 October. Police arrested the couple, who have three children, on 21 September after finding Christian material at their home. The police colonel threatened that “whoever dares to spread Christianity in this region should be fully aware that they won’t escape the hand of the law enforcement officers and that the spread of Christianity will not be allowed and is considered blasphemy”.
The heavily armed attackers, who were wearing police uniforms according to eyewitnesses, sporadically fired their guns as they stormed the small community around 9.00 pm, causing a number of villagers to flee their homes. “They [the Fulani militants] kept shooting and picking their expended bullet shells as they moved,” said a witness.
The Chinese Communist Party (CPP) is stepping up attempts to prevent information about religious persecution in China from reaching overseas media by threatening pastors with long prison sentences and punishments that could also affect their families. Leading Party members have ordered officials to “spare no cost” to find sources “leaking state secrets” to report the CCP’s growing persecution of Christians and other minorities.
The full horror of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against non-atheist minorities, particularly Uighurs and other ethnic groups, is emerging from detainees who have managed to escape communist “re-education” camps where 24-hour close surveillance and apparent forced sterilisation are the norm. Ethnic Kazakhs, who have fled the camps, have spoken out describing the CCP’s notorious internment camps, officially known as “centres of professional development,” as an “anti-religion exercise targeting non-atheists”.
Communist party officials in China have rewritten one of the Bible’s most powerful accounts of Jesus Christ’s grace and divinity by blasphemously claiming the Saviour stoned to death the woman caught in adultery. The well-known New Testament account in John's Gospel (8:3-11) is completely altered to depict Jesus Christ as a devious murderer, and self-proclaimed “sinner”, in a “professional ethics and law” text book used in Chinese vocational secondary schools.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up enforcement of its ban on the printing of Christian and other religious material by threatening printers and reprographics businesses with closure, and owners and staff with large fines or imprisonment. The manager of a print business in Luoyang city, in the central province of Henan, said he was refusing all orders relating to religious books and materials. “Any religious content makes the issue political, not religious,” he said. “Although banners on the streets say people are allowed religious beliefs, the only faith they can practise freely is that in the communist party.”
Iranian Christian convert Ebrahim Firouzi, who has already spent six years in prison and nearly a year in internal exile because of his faith, was cleared of fresh charges on 27 September. The prosecutor dismissed the latest accusations against Ebrahim after a ten-minute hearing. “The reports by agents from the Ministry of Intelligence was the only ‘evidence’ against me, which was just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims with nothing to support it,” said Ebrahim.
The remains of a Ghanaian Christian martyred by Islamic State in Libya, murdered alongside 20 Egyptian Christians more than five years ago, were taken to Egypt and finally laid to rest at the end of September. Before their murders in February 2015, the 21 men were filmed by their captors kneeling in front of black-clothed jihadists, each armed with a knife, on a beach in Sirte, Libya. In the video released by the terrorists, the Christians’ lips were seen moving, several silently, and many were clearly praying “Lord Jesus Christ” in Arabic in their final moments before they were beheaded.
Seven Indian Christians were reported beaten, subjected to humiliating head tonsuring and forced to chant the Hindu affirmation “Jai Shri Ram” (victory to Lord Ram, a Hindu god also called Rama) when a mob of rod-wielding Hindu extremists stormed their tribal village in Jharkhand State on 16 September. One of the victims recounted how around 26 Hindu males, armed with rods and sticks, entered Bherikudar village in Simdega district early in the morning. The extremists dragged him and six other Christian men to a neighbouring village, slapping and beating them with sticks. After demanding that the Christians chant “Jai Shri Ram” the mob forced them to squat and have their heads tonsured (partially shaving the head is a Hindu symbol of religious devotion).
Human rights charity, Amnesty International, has been forced to halt its work in India after the government froze its Indian bank accounts on 10 September……Despite India’s constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, Christians and other non-Hindu minorities are at increasing risk of being prevented from freely assembling together for events or public worship and face restrictions on openly expressing their faith. Violence and hate crimes against Christians, often perpetrated by Hindu nationalist extremists, rose in India in 2019. The Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) recorded 366 incidents last year, compared to 325 incidents in 2018.
Iran's 25,000 Jews are the victims of officially sanctioned discrimination and harassment, and even though some may try, that cannot be denied.
Next week, an online event organized by the human rights group "3 Generations" will feature New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who sparked an international furor in 2009 when he visited Iran and announced that the oppressed Jews there were not really so oppressed, after all…… Cohen's assertion that Iranian Jews were "living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility" was met with scorn across the political spectrum. Jeffrey Goldberg, in The Atlantic, called him "credulous." The Anti-Defamation League charged Cohen with viewing Iran through "dangerous rose-colored lenses." J.J. Goldberg, in The Forward, characterized Cohen as "simply naive, and dangerously so."….. The 9,000-15,000 Jews remaining in Iran "face societal discrimination and harassment," the report says. They cannot serve in the judiciary, the security services, or various other professions. They "may not engage in public religious expression." Jewish schools must have Muslim principals, must remain open on the Jewish Sabbath, and must have their curricula and textbooks approved by the authorities. Iranian government officials "employ anti-Semitic rhetoric in official statements and to sanction it in media outlets, publications, and books," "government-sponsored rallies continued to include chants of 'Death to Israel,'" and "local newspapers carried editorial cartoons that were anti-Semitic."
New York City police on Friday were investigating an attack on a Hasidic Jewish man in Brooklyn — but as an attempted robbery, rather than the hate crime some members of the community believe it was. Surveillance video showed two suspects approaching the man from behind around 10:40 p.m. on Thursday on Barlett Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
Twitter and Google declined to participate in next week’s U.S. State Department event, featuring U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on countering anti-Semitism on the Internet and social media—the first event of its kind in the department’s history, U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Elan Carr told JNS on Thursday. Facebook and TikTok each sent a senior representative to the pre-recorded event, which will be broadcasted for the first time Oct. 21-22.
Facebook has announced that it is updating its hate speech policies to explicitly ban Holocaust denial. The site had previously allowed such content to be posted on the site, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that he found it “deeply offensive” but that his company would continue to host it. “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong,” he said. The social media giant will now “prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust”.
A journalist resigned from the BBC after a British Jewish paper revealed he had defended a rapper accused of antisemitism. Nimesh Thaker, who worked at BBC World News until this this week, used an anonymous Twitter account to defend the rapper Wiley, who made a number of statements on Twitter this summer deemed antisemitic. After a Jewish radio host named Emma Barnett referenced Wiley’s remarks in speaking about her family’s Holocaust history, Thaker wrote that she was “using the same old antisemitism excuse whenever people criticize Israel.”….. Over the summer, Wiley tweeted: “I don’t care about Hitler, I care about black people” and “There are 2 sets of people who nobody has really wanted to challenge #Jewish & #KKK but being in business for 20 years you start to understand [sic] why.” He later apologized for the statements, but then made new ones deemed antisemitic.
The government’s demand for universities to adopt antisemitism code is denounced by recalcitrants as a slide to ‘McCarthyism’. Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, wrote to vice-chancellors last week warning them he would act if “the overwhelming majority” of universities had not adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism by the end of the year….. Oxford University — one of the institutions that has refused to adopt IHRA — ignored the government’s warning over the definition.
Why would American universities accept money from corrupt regimes who actively work against American interests? Why would they accept money from regimes whose human rights records clash with every American value we hold sacred? Covert Cash seeks to blow this subject wide open and drive awareness of the corruption and lack of transparency in US universities, which allow foreign governments like China, Russia, Qatar and Dausi Arabia to gain influence and a nefarious foothold in the United States.
“Simply put, there are no values advanced by giving her a forum to express her hateful and false views,” wrote the American Jewish Committee…… Given what she writes about and advocates for, he continued, “I’m sure it [the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic] will come up. That’s really concerning and speaks to how propaganda has hijacked any remnants of scholarship. I’d be concerned about the kind of messaging they are trying to put out there,” he said.
A painting of two young, 19th-century skaters that was looted by Nazis from a Jewish family in 1933 and recently discovered at a small museum in upstate New York was returned Thursday after 87 years. The painting "Winter" by American artist Gari Melchers was part of a cache of more than 1,000 pieces of art and artifacts seized from the Mosse family, prominent and well-off Jewish residents of Berlin who became early targets of the Nazi Party. Heirs have been tenaciously seeking to recover the lost pieces for the past decade.
Unprecedented Weather
List of worldwide mass animal deaths for 2020, with pages also for mass die offs from the previous 9 years. There are animals dying all over the world today in huge numbers, due to the polluted state of the sea and air. Millions of Fish and massive numbers of various marine creatures are washing ashore dead. Birds are falling dead out of the sky, and millions of poultry and wildlife are dying from avian flu. The animals of the land are also dying in large numbers. Now although animals and fish have been dying all throughout history, we have not seen the massive consistant numbers that we are seeing today.
Up to 1,500 birds flew into some of Philly’s tallest skyscrapers one day last week. The slaughter shook bird-watchers. Maciejewski gets emotional when he speaks about all the birds he finds, but nothing, he says, prepared him for what happened Friday. “So many birds were falling out of the sky, we didn’t know what was going on," he said, choking up. "It was a really catastrophic event. The last time something like this happened was in 1948.” On Friday, an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 birds flew into buildings in a 3½-block radius of Center City overnight and into early morning during what Maciejewski called a “perfect storm” of avian calamity. That could mean thousands more likely perished elsewhere in the city, he estimated. He collected 400 birds between 5 and 8 a.m. in the radius he regularly covers roughly spanning 17th to 19th Streets between Market Street and JFK Boulevard — an astonishing number, according to an Audubon Pennsylvania official. “There were so many, I was picking up five at a time," Maciejewski said. “One guy from building maintenance dumped 75 living and dead birds in front of me as if it were a collection." Maciejewski logs each bird, noting its flight path, time, and location of impact. "There were so many birds I ran out of supplies.”.... Elsewhere.......
Flycatchers, swallows and warblers are among the species “falling out of the sky” as part of a mass die-off across New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and farther north into Nebraska, with growing concerns there could be hundreds of thousands dead already..... “The fact that we’re finding hundreds of these birds dying, just kind of falling out of the sky is extremely alarming … The volume of carcasses that we have found has literally given me chills.” The first deaths were reported on 20 August on White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Initially, incidents were thought to be unrelated, but thanks to online forums, ornithologists noticed that they were happening all across the region
2 weeks ago - photos and videos posted online showed a Russian street littered with birds’ corpses. The incident happened in Balakovo, a city best known for its large nuclear power plant. Residents of the city, in the Saratov Region, around 1,000km south of Moscow, witnessed a road strewn with dozens of dead birds.
Nearly all seafloor-dwelling life in pollution-hit waters off Russia’s Pacific coast in the Kamchatka region has been wiped out in an unexplained mass death of marine animals, scientists told the region’s governor Tuesday. Last month, the Guardian reported that at "least 380 whales are dead in one of the largest mass strandings on record globally and the biggest in Australia’s history" Whale rescuers at one of the world’s largest stranding events on Tasmania’s west coast have now released 88 of the 470 marine mammals into the ocean, with about 20 of those remaining now well enough to be rescued.
" natural disasters, wildfires in California have burned more than 6 million acres this year (6,250 square miles; more than double the old one-year record): This is in addition to wildfires in Washington, Oregon, and other states. More than 31 people have been killed and more than 8,400 structures have burned. Also, as I am writing this article, the tenth named storm (the most ever in one year) is in the Gulf of Mexico and bearing down on the U.S. So, we have the worst wildfires ever and the most named storms ever to hit the U.S. in the same year (like birth pains)."
Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Zephaniah, speak of birds and fish being swept away or consumed before God's judgement on Israel:
"Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because [there is] no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away." Hosea 4:1-3 "I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the LORD. Zephaniah 1:3 4 "How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they said, He shall not see our last end." Jeremiah 12 We can be assured that they were prophesying of times of destruction of ancient Israel, and their prophecies came to pass. In other words, these prophecies have been fulfilled. But the pestilences and famines foretold as signs of the times for the last days most likely involve animals as well as man.
Technology and Economy
Banking cartel’s fingerprints can also be found in the document “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” published by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010. On page 18, titled “Lock Step,” the document presciently describes our current reality as “A world of top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.” The scenario anticipates a “pandemic the world had been anticipating for years…” And now we have that “pandemic,” as well as the world of top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership. There can be little doubt that the enemy is the international banking cartel headquartered in the City of London and on Wall Street, together with their agencies like the Bank of International Settlements, the IMF, World Bank, the global systemically important banks and institutions like the World Economic Forum, big pharma corporations, World Health Organization, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI and numerous others.
Almost 2,000 people have signed a petition in support of a “universal basic income” trial in Brighton and Hove. They want the backing of Brighton and Hove City Council as part of their campaign to guarantee a minimum standard of living for everyone.
Giving everyone a minimum amount of cash, regardless of their personal wealth, has been explored by political parties and policymakers around the world.The Liberal Democrats vowed to spearhead the idea if they return to government. Now, with the UK grappling with how to bounce back from the coronavirus recession, Wales' wellbeing tsar urges parties to examine the scheme in the run-up to next year's crunch Senedd, or Welsh Parliament, elections.
More more than 10m yuan ($1.49m) in a citizens’ lottery, as part of trials of a new digital currency. Almost 2 million people applied to be one of 50,000 randomly selected citizens receiving a “red packet” valued at 200 yuan (about US$30) on Sunday, to spend at 3,800 designated outlets in the district of Luohu. Participants must download the official digital Renminbi app, which is not yet publicly available, to receive the currency for purchases within the next week....... In April, several cities, including Shenzhen, reportedly began a trial adoption of digital currencies into the local monetary system, including paying the salaries of public servants. The currency is backed by China’s state-run People’s Bank of China, and is part of the government’s push for a cashless society, with digital currencies more easily monitored than paper money of cryptocurrencies. Digital payments in China are already a widespread and increasingly essential part of the consumer economy, mostly through apps run by tech firms TenCent and AliPay.......Last year, state media reported plans for Shenzhen to become “one of the leading cities in the world in terms of economic strength and quality of development” by 2025.
The Bank of Japan has said that it will start testing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in early fiscal 2021. The BOJ said Friday it will create a system on the internet, where the basic functions of the CBDC, including its issuance and circulation, will be tested. The central bank will then work on more advanced experiments......In January, six major central banks, including the BOJ, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of England, as well as the Bank for International Settlements launched a joint research group on CBDCs. The U.S. Federal Reserve joined the group later.
The Bank of Korea (BoK) is to run trials of a possible central bank digital currency (CBDC) through next year. As reported by The Korea Herald Wednesday, the move follows the progress of research to the technical phase in the summer and will see testing of distribution and circulation of the digital coin
Can paper money keep up in a world marked by a pandemic, extreme weather and rapid digitalization? The ECB has announced plans to develop an electronic form of Europe's most used currency. Considered by many to be a symbol of European integration, the European Central Bank (ECB) recently announced it would pursue the possibility of issuing an electronic form of the euro, the official currency of 19 of the European Union's 27 members. A digital euro "would have pervasive effects on society as a whole," wrote the authors of "Report on a digital euro," an analysis of the subject from the European Central Bank released on October 2.
After delisting 500 digital currency firms - The Estonian central bank has launched a multi-year research project into the viability of a central bank digital currency. Known as Eesti Pank, the bank believes that a CBDC would give residents and businesses new ways to deposit and use money. The move comes just days after reports of its e-Residency scheme being linked to growing number of cryptocurrency fraud cases and the delisting of 500 digital currency start-ups in early 2020........The CBDC research project comes months after the Estonian government stripped 500 digital currency firms of their licenses. The unexpected clean-up was the government’s response to the country’s huge implication in the $226 billion Danske Bank money laundering scandal. Estonia’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) claimed at the time that many of the delisted firms were not ‘subject to Estonian supervision and coercive measures.’
The Pope has embarked on a new initiative called "Economy of Francesco". It has its own website, he has conducted several seminars and conferences aimed at young people under the age of 35, which he calls "Order of Minors. The next conference is in November. The event will consist of workshops, artistic and plenary events with the best-known economists, experts in sustainable development and business people who are engaged today worldwide in a different economy and will reflect and work together with young people. Nobel laureates Muhammad Yunusand Amarthya Senhave already confirmed they will attend. Other participants include Bruno Frey, Tony Meloto, Carlo Petrini, Kate Raworth, Jeffrey Sachs, Vandana Shiva and Stefano Zamagni….
Coronavirus
A team of scientists developed new wearable sensors that can be manufactured directly onto someone’s skin — without burning the recipient in the process. Typically, manufacturing wearable circuits — flexible sensors or devices that fit and stick to the skin — requires a lot of heat. By finding a way to fabricate them at room temperature, as described in research published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the Penn State University scientists behind the technique hope to develop new medical sensors that are a much better fit for the individual patient.
As governments balance travel restrictions with protecting public health, evolving border entry requirements have created hurdles to the resumption of international travel. The challenge of ensuring trust in COVID-19 tests shared across international borders while also preserving privacy was the focus of more than 350 public and private sector leaders from 52 countries at a convening brought together on July 9 by The Commons Project, The World Economic Forum and The Rockefeller Foundation. ….. The CommonPass framework will allow individuals to validate their COVID-19 status via lab results – and eventually share immunization records – without revealing any other health information. Lab results and vaccination records will be accessible through existing health data systems, national or local registries or personal digital health records (Apple Health for iOS, or CommonHealth for Android), which let individuals store their health records securely and privately on their phones.
In this video and article, Dr. Carrie Madaj questions what “it is to be human”. In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) admitted that this type of technology can be used to “enhance and subvert” humans at a genetic level. Hydrogel nanotechnology is injected beneath the skin. It can interface with cell phones and Artificial Intelligence to monitor basically everything within the body, including anxieties, emotions, ovulations, vitamins etc. etc. Once implanted, the technology spreads throughout the body. Scientists do not know how this affects our DNA. But, while Gates’ role in funding the global health field is by now well known, his role in funding other technologies that will shape the post-COVID world is not.The Gates Foundation is tied to ID2020 through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Also known as the “Digital Identity Alliance,” ID2020 brings Gavi and Gates’ old company Microsoft and other corporate partners together to create a global digital ID system. This has led the Gates-tied Gavi alliance to focus increasingly on tying vaccine recipients with governmental digital health records and, ultimately, with biometric ID databases. Meanwhile, Gates himself has been a vocal advocate of India’s Aadhaar system, the ambitious project to enroll a billion Indian citizens in the largest biometric database ever constructed.
Anti-government activists streamed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem for the first time in weeks Saturday night, as regular protests looked to resume following a clampdown during Israel’s nationwide virus lockdown. Media reports put the crowd size at Paris Square in the thousands, and organizers claimed at the end of the evening that some 260,000 people attended rallies throughout the country, though their figures could not be independently confirmed.
Lockdowns are having a devastating impact on people’s lives. It’s time for some serious dissent. We voted to take back control, and yet it’s hard to remember a time when people were less in control of their lives than they are right now. This is the tragedy, and the failure, of the Boris Johnson government. It was swept to power on a wave of democratic yearning, on a people’s tiredness of life under the diktats and decrees of bureaucrats and self-styled experts. And where have we ended up? In a situation where every facet of our existences – from where we’re allowed to go to which loved ones we may hug – is governed in minute detail by long, dry decrees drawn up by the powerful and well-educated. Take back control? I’ve never felt more controlled in my life.
Big Tech now treats any opposition to lockdown as misinformation – even if it’s from eminent scientists.
As much of the world gears up for a second round of lockdowns, and restrictions on everyday life grow ever tighter, a group of infectious-disease epidemiologists and public-health scientists have come together to propose an alternative. The Great Barrington Declaration was spearheaded by Martin Kulldorff from Harvard Medical School, Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University and Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford University Medical School….. The censorship of alternative approaches to the coronavirus is shocking – but it is entirely predictable. Ever since Covid-19 arrived, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and governments across the world have been warning about an ‘infodemic’ of Covid misinformation. In a big boost to the anti-lockdown movement, one of President Donald Trump’s key advisers on coronavirus, Professor Scott Atlas, tweeted yesterday that Trump’s policies align with the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration. Atlas told The Hill in an email that he attended the meeting and supports the declaration the group put out endorsing herd immunity…… Immediately a pushback came from Stefan Baral, a physician epidemiologist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, said he was concerned that the meeting had taken place.
Pushback also came from Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson and The Lancet, the UK's top medical journal. In a letter to The Lancet, 80 experts on medicine and public health have called for immediate action to stop the disease in its tracks, a politically motivated response: “This week Matt Hancock condemned experts who dared question lockdown. Now, after two of them embarrassingly exposed his basic errors”, Prof ANGUS DALGLEISH asks... “How IS this petulant, shockingly ignorant minister still in a job?”…..Its not surprising that Prof Dalgleish questions Matt Hancock’s suitability to remain in the job as Health Secretary. He has been caught out on number of occasions of giving false and misleading information (lying): Supermarkets have accused Matt Hancock of lying after the Health Secretary claimed that ministers had been working with them to ensure food will be delivered to people in self-isolation for coronavirus testing. Mr Hancock said on BBC Question Time on Thursday that the Government was in discussion with supermarkets about the issue. “We are working with the supermarkets to make sure that, if people are self-isolating, then we will be able to get the food and supplies that they need,” he said. But supermarket sources told the BBC they had not discussed delivering food to homes. An executive said: "Matt Hancock has totally made up what he said about working with supermarkets. We haven't heard anything from government directly." Ministers are said to be reconsidering the use of vitamin D in tackling coronavirus after Matt Hancock wrongly claimed it had been proven to be ineffective in a Government-funded study. The health secretary told the House of Commons last week that a ‘trial’ investigating vitamin D had taken place, and that it did not ‘appear to have any impact’ on the effects of Covid-19. But officials have since admitted that no clinical trials on the vitamin have been carried out at all. Yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said Mr Hancock should ‘get his facts straight’. Experts have pointed to growing evidence suggesting the vitamin could have an impact on how badly people who catch the virus suffer. From Twitter “Matt Hancock told the Commons last week that he had ordered a trial that showed vitamin D did not “appear to have any impact”. Officials now admit that no trials took place. I thought Ministers were not allowed to lie to the House of Commons? The misleading of parliament is the knowing presentation of false information to parliament, a very serious charge in Westminster system parliamentary assemblies.
The BBC are reporting that a report by Amnesty, founded in the UK, stated that UK Care homes policies violated human rights. Sending thousands of older untested patients into care homes in England at the start of the coronavirus lockdown was a violation of their human rights, Amnesty International has said. The report says government decisions were "inexplicable" and "disastrous", affecting mental and physical health: “Most shockingly, on 17 March, four days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the Government ordered the discharge of 25,000 patients from hospitals into care homes, including those infected or possibly infected with COVID-19. On 2 April, the same day that the WHO confirmed the existence of pre-symptomatic cases of COVID-19, the Government reiterated its guidance for hospital discharge that ‘Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home’. Several care home managers told Amnesty that they had no COVID-19 in their homes until after they received patients discharged from hospital. The manager of a care home in Yorkshire said: “Because of what we’d witnessed in Spain and Italy, we stopped visitors on 28 February and got PPE. We had no cases until 28 March when a resident was discharged from hospital with COVID.” These and other decisions taken by the Government led to violations of human rights of older people in care homes during the pandemic - notably their right to life, their right to health and their right to non-discrimination
Caroline Abrahams, the charity director at Age UK, told The Telegraph restrictions could leave elderly care home residents alone for a year. She said: 'Given where we are now with Covid-19, we worry that more and more care homes will now shut their doors to visitors, either off their own bat or because their local director of public health instructs them to do so….. 'The other is the risk of undermining older people's mental and physical health by cutting them off from those they love for a long time. Under the social care winter plan, which came out last week, local directors of public health were given the authority to close care homes if the spread of coronavirus is rising in the community. In order to free up space in hospitals, older patients were discharged into care homes without even being tested for the virus. In the two weeks after lockdown, when the risk of infection should have been waning, a further 1,800 homes in England reported outbreaks. The lockdown regime virtually removed GP support from care settings and the community. People have had to get used to telephone consultations instead of examinations and home visits. Thereby, hugely increasing the risk to the most vulnerable in the middle of an alleged global pandemic.
Professor Angus Dalgleish, a professor of oncology at St George's, University of London, best known for his contributions to HIV/AIDS research, published an article in The Mail: Cancer specialist says he has been lost two colleagues to suicide in two weeks. One 'killed himself as result of profound despair at loneliness created by Covid'. Prof Angus Dalgleish says focus on Covid-19 is 'distorting healthcare priorities'……Whilst speaking in the Commons yesterday, Matt Hancock warned cancer patients will only be treated if Covid-19 stays 'under control'. The government's scientific advisory, many who are linked to pharmaceuticals are the ones who have pushed harsher restrictions and are now pushing for two weeks national lockdown. We are promised by the government and his advisers, that the previous lockdown, will include review of in three weeks, and relax them if the evidence shows this is possible. It lasted until the end of July. The Prime Minister has vowed to end social distancing by October 2021; he previously promised relative ‘normality’ by November 2020.
1/2 "My mum is 82, has lost both her legs, her eyesight bad and she's going deaf, she hasn't been allowed any physical contact for 7 months, Prestons lockdown so we cant visit but I go with my brother twice.." 2/2 "We take her a pie and some fags which we have to put in a box by the main door, then we ring her phone so she can hear, she just wants a day out to Blackpool so I keep telling her its gunna be great when we go, yet the odds of her having her day are not good. Its inhumane". Blackpool is a seaside (beach) town not far from where she lives.
A son was left "angry and upset" when he was told to move while comforting his mother at his father's funeral, because of social distancing rules. Writing on Facebook Mr Bicknell pointed out the idiocy of the action. “I can sit in a restaurant, I can sit in a pub, I can live at her house, I can travel in a limousine to the crematorium with 6. But when I want to give my mum a cuddle at dads funeral, a man flies out mid service shouting stop the service and makes us split... A devastating day made even worse.”…. Another person highlighted that this is not an isolated incident, and that it is deeply affecting people’s mental health. “We went through this in April and I was unable to console my own children with the loss of their beautiful nanna my amazing mum. The effect on us mentally is indescribable the pain is long felt. As a family we feel we have not been able to honour my darling mum,” the commenter urged.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, along with his agency colleague, the epidemiologist David Morens, warned in a report in the science journal Cell that if humans don’t make significant changes in all activities, that more diseases — more terrible health issues like COVID-19 — will soon come.
A court in Madrid has rejected strict new lockdown laws imposed on the Spanish capital by the government last week to stem the spread of coronavirus. The Health Ministry banned 4.8 million people in the city from leaving their local areas except for essential business on Friday. But regional...
Post-Brexit: UK-EU Trade Deal
The British prime minister will continue to negotiate with the EU, but accused Brussels of failing to engage in negotiations for a Canada-style deal. In a TV video clip released Friday, Johnson said the U.K. should get ready for a no-deal from January 2021. The U.K. prime minister had previously set a deadline of this week’s European Council summit to agree a trade deal with Brussels. However, negotiators have failed to make progress on key sticking points, including fish quotas, the so-called level playing field which Brussels wants to ensure the U.K. doesn’t undercut the bloc, and governance of any deal. Yet again, Boris backs from his ultimatum…..Boris doesn’t want a “no Brexit Deal” even though that was the reason he was elected and why he has a majority.
Last month, Boris Johnson gave a final ultimatum to the EU that if no deal is agreed by 15 October, the UK will walk away without a deal. PR!! If he really wants the UK to leave, why is he and his administration continue to extend deadlines. Simply walk away and see how the EU responds, they need us more than we need them. The latest news is that Michael Gove, the same gentleman that supported keeping Britain legally bind to the EU and Boris have announced a deal that will tied us to ECHR. UK newspapers are reporting that a "Proposed Brexit deal 'would keep the UK tied to European Court of Human Rights rulings' - as Michael Gove says chances of reaching agreement stands at 66 per cent". Additionally, a UK government spokesman said: “The UK remains committed to the ECHR – we have been clear on that time and time again, including in parliament. We agree that cooperation with the EU should be based on our shared values of respect for fundamental rights and for the rule of law. The UK’s approach to these issues in the context of law enforcement is based on precedent for EU-third country agreements in this area.” Separately, earlier this week, it was reported that "Britain had offered a three-year transition period for European fishing fleets to allow them to prepare for the post-Brexit changes in a last-minute concession." Again, it means we have not left. Fishing chiefs have reacted furiously to this "sell-out" deal, and warned that there will not be "an industry left to save" after a three-year transition period. The furious outburst from former Brexit Party MEP June Mummery and Chairman of Lowestoft Fishing Alliance Paul Lines came during a new episode of Brexit Unlocked. We also have the curious silence of UK Defence policy, where neither Boris or the Brexit Negotiations Team are addressing even after repeat enquiries. Furthermore, it was revealed that the UK armed forces are regularly in training exercises with EU members wearing uniforms with EU Defence Union logos, i.e European Army.
Middle East Peace Process
The explosive interview, not being reported by the propaganda media, centers around a three-part series exclusive interview given by the Prince (including opinion pieces), in which he sets the record straight and expressed his anger over the Palestinian leadership's media propaganda that the Arab nations have betrayed the Palestinians. On the contrary, not only does the Prince give a two hour interview, that includes full transcript, but he has promised to upload documentary evidence to back his claims which includes the financial support his government has provided over the years. The interview shows the stark contrast between Saudi Arabia’s steadfast position on the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian leadership’s self-inflicted wounds and “failures,” including their criticism of Gulf states over the UAE-Israel peace deal.
In the final part of the interview, the prince recalled how a peace initiative by Saudi Arabia’s then-Prince Abdullah (who later ruled as king from 2005 to 2013) came close to fruition – only for the process to be derailed by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the US. Prince Bandar recalled how Arafat refused to agree to a deal at the Camp David 2000 Summit, hosted by then-US President Bill Clinton. However, Prince Bandar said that a Saudi Arabian-led initiative almost came to fruition following the failure of the summit and the election of George W. Bush, who took office in January 2001.Washington Post reported that in April 2001, Bush 'endorses' Palestinian state - Tuesday, 2 October, 2001, BBC News. Bush: Palestinian state 'part of a vision' if Israel respected October 2, 200, CNN.
Whether the 2,000-year dream of reapplying Jewish sovereignty to Israel's biblical and historic heartland is advanced will depend largely on the outcome of the upcoming US presidential election….. In his column titled "A Rare Middle East Triumph," Stephens concluded, "… [I]t behooves those of us who are frequently hostile to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [U.S. President Donald] Trump to maintain the capacity to be pleasantly surprised – that is, to be honest what happened between Israel and two former enemies is an honest triumph in a region, and a year, that's known precious few."
Qatar may be seeking to purchase the 5th generation F-35 from the US, in a request that has raised eyebrows because it comes in the wake of a UAE-Israel deal and after rumors suggested Abu Dhabi might acquire the plane as well. The Lockheed Martin F-35 is America’s premier warplane with advanced capabilities; only a handful of countries in the world, all key US allies, possess the warplane. Israel is one of those countries and American and Israeli pilots have been increasingly drilling together, with several exercises this year. Israel seeks to maintain its qualitative military edge in the region, which means any sales of the plane raise eyebrows, especially because Qatar has been accused of being too close to Iran and also to an increasingly belligerent Turkey.
“It might be a first sign for peace that could maybe happen in the future,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week. But he warned that “there will be no peace with Lebanon as long as Hezbollah is in control of it.” For the first time in three decades, Israel and Lebanon held the first of what is expected to be a series of negotiations over the next few months regarding the two countries’ shared maritime border. Both countries, Lebanon in 2007 and Israel in 2010, delimited their respective exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the eastern Mediterranean with Cyprus. But a 330-square-mile section of the Mediterranean Sea between Israel and Lebanon remains in dispute.
The kingdom, its image tarnished by multiple missteps, is seeking to ensure that it is not perceived as the odd man out as smaller Gulf states establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state…. Largely dependent on the kingdom since Saudi troops helped quash mass anti-government protests in 2011, Bahrain, a majority Shi'ite Muslim nation, would not have agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel without Saudi consent..
One of the primary avenues of this narrative-based attack is “occupation”—a buzzword that the State of Israel has been most identified with by international organizations and media outlets across the globe. This nefarious term, “Israeli occupation,” implies all that Israel’s enemies wish to convey: that Israel is a colony of the “white man” in the heart of the Middle East, a European foothold, a foreign entity seizing Arab lands and violating the human rights of the natives, the original people of the land: Palestinian Arabs. How does one fight this? How do we express the Jewish people’s deeply-rooted connection to this land, which is the backbone of the State of Israel, and undo the image of the heartless occupier? The answer to this question lies in this new treaty, and is predicated upon a single word: “Abraham.”
Geopolitics and Culture News
Over the years many of us have felt that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) does not deserve its name. Think of Israel and the court's propensity to rule in favour of Sharia law and Muslim claimants / countries. Think of the legalisation of abortion, same sex marriage and the LGBTQ+ regulations that has had negative impact on churches, the private and public sector, helped by the rollout of the global "hate" speech laws implemented by governments and enforced by the police and social media. But there is a connection and it is Soros. No matter how much the MSM tries to convince the public, via various Factchecks that claims "he has been the target of multiple conspiracy theories", Soros is not a sweet little old man with a heart full of charity to save the world. Just as it was proven by Newt Gingrich and others, time and time again, that Soros' model of funding, through financing disruptive groups, is destructive to democratic processes.
A report by Dr Gregor Puppinck, provides evidence of how George Soros infiltrated and heavily influenced the ECtHR by organizations pressing for the “open society“ ideology promoted by George Soros. According to a ground-breaking report, Dr Gregor Puppinck from the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), a network of non-governmental organizations financed by George Soros have gained enormous influence in the European Court of Human Rights, a court that essentially sets many of the laws related to gender, immigration and religion across Europe. In this report of his speech, Mr Farage said: ‘Open Society boast that they had 42 meetings last year with the European Commission.’ Moreover, Soros organizations published a 177-page booklet providing details of 226 reliable ‘friends’ who serve in the European Parliament..... Mr Farage said he would call on the parliament to set up a special committee to investigate the issue. The booklet is called ‘Mapping: Reliable Allies in the European Parliament (2014-2019).’ It is an extraordinary display of arrogance which has revealed the entire Soros EU Parliament network: ........
A coalition of ten European militaries ready to defend the continent’s borders has been unveiled in Paris, just days after Emmanuel Macron called for a “real European army”. Finland has joined Germany, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal in the French-led initiative, which will see members collaborate on planning, on the analysis of new military and humanitarian crises, and on eventual military responses to those crises. Proponents say the coalition would not conflict with the almost 70-year-old, US-dominated Nato alliance, but reflects in part concerns about a more isolationist United States under President Donald Trump.
This bill effectively allows medical death on demand for almost anyone who wants it On Monday, the federal government reintroduced Bill C-7. Under the proposed legislation, medical assistance in dying (MAID) would no longer be offered only to people who are dying, but would include those who...
In his book Ball of Collusion, investigative journalist Andrew McCarthy explains that London was actually “the nerve center of Russia-gate.” Aside from Danchenko’s Russian drinking buddies, almost all the key players in the effort to convince the public that Donald Trump colluded with Russia were American and British government officials who desperately wanted Hillary Clinton to win the election. And Hilary wanted to deflect attention away from the email controversy. Shortly after he was inaugurated in 2009, President Barack Obama removed a bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. He did it publicly, because he wanted to send a message! Barack Obama was mentored by the card-carrying Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, who also harbored a special hatred for Winston Churchill. Davis said, “[T]he only people Churchill gives a rap about are the white people of the British Empire.” During his presidency, Mr. Obama tried to weaken Britain by preventing it from leaving the European Union. He told Britain that if it left the EU, it would go to the “back of the queue” for trade deals with the U.S. — he wanted Britain to be a vassal state to a German-led European superstate! Washington Post reporter Shane Harris notes breathlessly: "... Trump has accused the United Kingdom of conspiring with American intelligence to spy on his presidential campaign." President Trump certainly has made that claim, and one believes for very good reasons that seem to compound weekly. Having the British run an aggressive intelligence collection operation against Team Trump targets, bypassing US legal prohibitions, and then laundering the intelligence "take" back to US officials via the UK-US liaison relationship is precisely something an "honorary UK desk officer" might be good and adept at accomplishing. Certainly, these subjects and questions deserve closer examination, without the phony prophylactic defense of grave warnings about "sources and methods." It appears Haspel (while serving as London Chief of Station from 2014 to early 2017) was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with an FBI-instigated foreign counterintelligence operation. That seditious conspiracy carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Donald J. Trump. CIA Director Gina Haspel can answer all of those questions, and she does not even have to touch upon classified information to do so. The American public is due her answers. CIA Director Haspel and the Anti-Trump Conspirators
- interview with The Hill newspaper in April of 2019 US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch had blocked the visas of GPO officers, in order to disrupt their working visits to the USA where they hoped to share the case files with their American colleagues…..had evidence of illicit dealings of former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich... embezzled Ukraine state budget funds with the help of an American financial firm – a firm with connections to high-ranking members of the US Democratic Party establishment.….Zlochevsky laundered it for several Yanukovich’s companies at once via his three companies in the Baltic states, a global operation which initially looting the money from Ukrainian budget, then transferring it to offshore companies, and finally investing it into Ukrainian state bonds.…..laundering of funds were obtained illicitly by way of purchase by Franklin Templeton Investments of state bonds to the total sum of $7.4 billion USD, transferred to offshore jurisdictions during 2013-2014, and then via Franklin Templeton Investments the money made its way back into Ukraine where it was spent on state bonds. A financial pyramid scheme that was created in Ukraine and developed by everyone beginning with Yanukovich and later by Poroshenko. …..“The son of the Templeton’s founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of the biggest donors of President Obama’s electoral campaign,” Derkach explained at the joint press conference. “One more figure with connections to the fund is Thomas Donilon, the chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the biggest shareholder of Franklin Templeton Investments. It is significant that he (Donilon) had previously served as National Security Advisor to President Obama.”…..Ukrainian citizens were robbed twice, and all with the help of one criminal scheme with Burisma Holdings at the center of it.…. The algorithm of the corrupt scheme was with the help of American investment firms, the funds siphoned-off from the state budget…..Yanukovich and Poroshenko, Ms. Gontareva and companies she controls were investing the stolen funds...they managed to pull it all off owing to his influential American “friends” and Board of Directors mentioned earlier. Peak Corruption: Bidens’ Ukraine Influence Peddling Exposed, Covered-up by Silicon Valley - This could be one of the worst cases of open political corruption in US history. In reaction to this week’s New York Post exposé on Hunter Biden’s damning email cache and evidence of he and his father Joe Biden’s influence peddling in Ukraine, the mainstream media has chosen to completely ignore the story, relying instead on partisan Democratic Party operatives in the Silicon Valley to literally erase the story from monopoly platforms Twitter and Facebook – effectively shielding the American voter from factual information which is definitely in the public interest. The evidence – which has not been denied by the Bidens, clearly demonstrates that Ukrainian energy firm Burisma had told Hunter Biden they wanted “to close down any cases/pursuits against” its top officials in Ukraine. Hunting for Hunter: Evidence Reveals Biden, Burisma Ukraine Bond Scandal, Tied to U.S. Firm / https://gellerreport.com/2020/10/hu...-vp-dad-before-getting-prosecutor-fired.html/
At the Prima Porta cemetery, hundreds of white wooden crosses mark the burial plots of aborted fetuses. On each cross is written the name of the woman who terminated the pregnancy. Until recently, the existence of the cemetery was unknown to many of the women, who say they consented neither to a burial nor to being named. Now that they do know, more than 100 have come together to pursue legal action demanding those responsible be identified….. "It is a way of punishing the women by creating a sense of guilt," she said. "To have a tomb with your name on implies that you are as good as dead." Monica Cirinnà, a senator in the Italian parliament, told POLITICO: "Every woman who terminates a pregnancy has the right to choose if and how to bury the fetus and according to which ritual. These are deeply personal decisions that cannot be brought into question.
“The story did not end the way it was meant to,” Pope Francis wrote recently, deftly excommunicating about a half-century’s worth of economic ideology. In a striking, 43,000-word-long encyclical published last Sunday, the pope put his stamp on efforts to shape what's been termed a Great Reset of the global economy in response to the devastation of COVID-19. The “story” he’s referring to is neoliberalism, a philosophy espousing austerity, privatization, deregulation, unbridled markets, and relatively weak labour laws. While it’s been faithfully told through innumerable economists and policy-makers since the 1970s, and put into practice in prominent ways, the pope believes this tale has now worn thin. He is not alone.
The Vatican issued a coin depicting a mother carrying the earth in her womb. The issue of the coin comes almost one year to the day when the idol Pachamama was worshipped in the Vatican gardens in the presence of Pope Francis as part of the opening ceremony of the Amazon synod. “The Vatican City State Mint will issue a 10 euro silver coin made by Maestro Oldani, depicting a mother carrying the earth in her womb, to whom we owe care and love as if it were a daughter, with long ears of wheat in her hair, in a reference between past and future that becomes timeless, and therefore eternal,” states the official description of the coin. https://www.tfp.org/the-pachamama-pope-francis-and-the-pandemic/
Despite ongoing fears of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and aggression in the Middle East, the UN arms embargo on Tehran is scheduled to expire on Oct. 18, which would allow the Islamic Republic to purchase missiles and other armaments from other countries…… The expiration comes after the United States enacted UN snapback sanctions on the regime in August, a move that included extending the arms embargo indefinitely. It remains unclear, however, if the arms embargo is technically and legally lifted, or if Iran can now be able to purchase advanced weapons.
North Korea’s military parade and its arsenal, along with Iran’s progress on missile technology, illustrate how these countries have achieved success in the last decade. North Korea’s massive military parade showcased an arsenal that should raise eyebrows in the Middle East. It wheeled out its Hwasong-15 ballistic missile and a giant intercontinental ballistic missile that had to be pulled on a transport vehicle with 11 axles. This is a monster and reports call it a “strategic weapon” that appears to threaten the globe. Years after the Trump administration believed personal diplomacy would make North Korea into a compliant actor, the regime has new weapons. Because Iran is working with North Korea, this could mean Tehran could threaten Israel with similar missiles or shared technology, as it has in the past.
An attack on a Kurdish political party in Baghdad on Saturday, followed by the murder of civilians in Balad in Iraq, has led to concerns that pro-Iranian militias are out of control. The militias, often called Hashd al-Sha’abi or Popular Mobilization Units, are actually part of an official government paramilitary force, but they have so many brigades and units that they not only behave like a shadow state, but when there are incidents, each unit can also feign not being responsible….. Under the guise of popular protests, they ransacked the security belt around the embassy compound. It was a show of force. Days later, US President Donald Trump ordered the strike in Baghdad that killed IRGC Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Washington alleged they were planning further attacks on the US.
McMaster, key to Trump administration’s first year, paints gloomy future picture
The effort to erode Iranian influence in the Middle East will take far more than precision strikes, argues former US national security advisor, H.R. McMaster. The US has a lot cut out for it if Washington wants to try to disentangle countries like Iraq and Lebanon from Tehran’s octopus-like grasp. The US would need to make sure Sunni Arabs and Kurds are no longer marginalized, help responsive government institutions grow, engage Baghdad with powerful diplomatic means and bring Saudi Arabia and Iraq together as friends. In Lebanon, the US should support representative government and the rule of law.
For the past several months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has busily dispelled any residual doubts about his hostility toward the U.S. and its allies in NATO and the Middle East. He has accomplished this in multiple ways. Erdogan purchased Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile system and, in a swipe at the U.S. and NATO, announced his intention to test the system next week. He threatens and seeks to subvert Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. He has destroyed his nation’s longstanding strategic alliance with Israel. He has cast his lot with the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world, and with Iran against his Arab enemies. Indeed, Erdogan has effectively appointed himself the head of the Muslim Brotherhood. An associate of his recently published a map of a new Ottoman Empire, or “Greater Turkey”—with Erdogan as sultan. It included vast territories spanning from northern Greece to the east Aegean islands, half of Bulgaria, Cyprus, most of Armenia and large swaths of Georgia, Iraq and Syria. Erdogan is fighting on behalf of Sunni jihadists in Syria and in Libya.
Evidence of Turkey’s role in pushing Azerbaijan to war against Armenia is growing. As more videos emerge of Syrian mercenaries sent by Ankara to fight against Armenians, it becomes clear that the logistical effort to send these fighters would have had a tail stretching back months. In addition, Turkey’s media and government have hyped the use of the Bayraktar TB2 drones against Armenian armored columns, illustrating that for Turkey, this is profitable for its arms industry. The media-industrial complex in Ankara also mobilized false news stories as the war began to try to link it to “terrorism” against Turkey.
China has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers on India’s Northern border, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said, in further signs that a deadly military standoff between the world’s two most populous countries is far from cooling down. “The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border,” Pompeo said on Fox News late Friday. Each of the three major Indo-Pacific democracies -- India, Australia and Japan -- which form the so-called Quad along with the U.S., is under threat from the Chinese Communist Party, Pompeo said, according to a transcript released by the U.S. State Department.
Media in the Gulf, particularly Al-Ain and Al-Arabiya, have focused on an ostensibly new trove of emails linked to Hillary Clinton. It was not entirely clear, since western and US media seemed to only cover the fact that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was going to release more emails, what was new and old in the reports. However, the focus has been on Clinton’s relationship with the “Muslim Brotherhood,” a group that the UAE and Saudi Arabia consider terrorists.
Arab states have stopped giving money to the Palestinian Authority due to U.S. pressure, Deputy Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri said on Friday. Arouri’s comments were aired by Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV as a rocket, fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, landed in an open field in Israel.
The Washington Post, the New York Times, television commentators all said his misstatement – “standby” instead of “stand down” — was proof positive that Trump was signaling to his Nazi guard that he wants them to take to the streets. The Jewish Democratic Council of America, which had just launched a commercial comparing Trump to Hitler pounced on his “standby” gaffe as proof they were right and Trump is the gravest danger to American Jews. No one mentioned that Trump had condemned white supremacists twice in the same exchange or that Biden wouldn’t condemn the leftist rioters who – in addition to burning stores – have vandalized several synagogues since May, and reject the Jewish state’s right to exist. Jewish progressives and Democrats have been playing this trick since the 2016 elections. In 2016, Trump was asked to disavow the endorsement he received from David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grandmaster and he did, repeatedly.
“Let’s not panic,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the United States. “The world is not ending, as some people seem to be suggesting.” Ischinger organizes the annual Munich Security Conference, the world’s premier gathering for world leaders to discuss issues of war and peace. But he was not referring to worries about nuclear Armageddon, terrorism or even the coronavirus pandemic. The palpable fear among Europe’s foreign policy elite is about four more years of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Almost all the polls say that President Donald Trump is heading towards defeat at the hands of his Democrat challenger, former vice president Joe Biden next month. But Robert Cahaly who heads the Trafalgar Group polling firm disagrees. Cahaly was the only major pollster that accurately called the 2016 presidential race. In an interview with “The Political Trade” podcast last week, Cahaly said his data show Trump headed for another upset victory November 3. Cahaly said that today, as in 2016, the disparity between his numbers and the marquis polling firms’ numbers owes to the latter’s systematic neglect of what he calls the “Shy Trump Voter Effect.” From the time Hillary Clinton referred to Trump’s supporters as “deplorables,” through today as Democrats demonize them as racists and fascists, Cahaly explains that a significant and growing segment of Trump voters will not admit their support for him. Fearing social and professional repercussions, the Shy Trump Voter lies to pollsters and anyone else who asks him what he thinks of Trump.
Imam Shaker Elsayed of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center of Fairfax, Va., a mosque known for its links to high-profile terrorists, has called for the creation of a Muslim caliphate.
In Oct. 2 sermon posted on the mosque's YouTube channel, Elsayed said Islam's enemies malign the terms "caliphate" and "caliph" to prevent Muslims from uniting, and have even gone so far as to "artificially manufacture" entire organizations meant to push Muslims away from the idea of a caliphate.
European governments provide substantial funding to multiple organizations that are organizing the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations around the country, Member of Knesset (MK) Ariel Kallner (Likud) charged. Several organizations have been holding weekly demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while calling for his resignation in recent months. While the demonstrations are not large, they have gotten violent, and not all participants follow Coronavirus social distancing and mask guidelines.
Back in June I noted that Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko publicly snubbed a $940 million line of credit from the International Monetary Fund. He rejected it because the IMF conditioned the loan on Belarus imposing a strict Covid 19 lockdown policy and a curfew. At the time I thought it was very strange that the IMF would offer loans to a nation while setting conditions that severely impair that nation’s ability to repay. Apparently, a number of other nations received similar offers from the IMF and/or the World Bank. We know about the Covid 19 conditionality only because the president of Belarus disclosed it publicly. Significantly, Lukashenko mentioned on several occasions that the IMF negotiators wanted Belarus to do “like in Italy.” Other nations and governments who accepted the money may have quietly agreed to the conditionality which they never disclosed to the rest of us. As of April 2020, 85 nations have requested financial assistance from the IMF. Deeply in debt and with severely damaged economies, most governments worldwide needed loans, making them prey to the dictates of money power. To secure the needed funds they may have agreed to shutting down their economies, restricting their population’s freedom of movement, created stasi-like contact-tracing structures and closed down the schools.
The Israeli Left likes to claim its no-holds-barred fight against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters is an ideological struggle that pits the forces of democracy and old-time Zionism against the forces of tyranny and tribalism. Events of recent weeks tell the opposite tale. In 2008, then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin leaped onto the world stage following then-Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain’s surprise decision to select the young, charismatic first-term governor as his running mate. In one of the early photos released following her selection, Palin was seen standing behind her desk in the Alaska governor’s office. Amidst the mementos and family photos, a small flag of Israel hung from her wall. Amazed Israelis marveled at the unexpected display of friendship from the until-then unknown governor halfway around the world. Many assumed that Palin’s support for Israel owed to her evangelical Christian faith. But while her faith did inform her position, so did her attachment to Alaska. Many Alaskans view their history as enmeshed with that of the State of Israel due to a little known historical episode that happened in 1949.
It is both damning and revealing that many Palestinian civil-society organizations either have links to, or vocally support, those whose stated aim is the destruction of world’s sole Jewish state. The P.A., which rules over the majority of Palestinians, has prohibited all Palestinian NGOs from cooperating with foreign funders who want to put anti-terror clauses in their funding. And, as the blogger Elder of Ziyon has documented, “if any Palestinian NGO signs a clause” saying “that they will not hire or fund terrorists, they will be prosecuted u Al-Enein warned that organizations who accept the conditional funding would be guilty of “national betrayal and a departure from the national ranks, and will not pass without punishment.” Authorities “will work to prosecute these institutions … and expose those in charge of them in front of the Palestinian public.” These threats—Palestinian leaders have a history of persecuting those who support “normalization” instead of violence and these threats illustrate a growing concern on the P.A.’s part. And the P.A. has reason to be worried. Some Palestinian NGOs have links to terrorist organizations—a fact that several European donors are finally seeking to address.
Asked during an interview with Lebanese television station al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Hezbollah terror group, why 13 of the Joint List’s 15 lawmakers had voted to strike down the agreements, Odeh said the Abraham Accords “are based on a flawed assumption: that the fundamental issue in the East is the Iranian question, and not the Palestinian question, and that there must be an alliance” to defeat it…….. But, he said, “practically, the Israeli occupation is the fundamental problem. All this talk of ‘combating Iran,’ we cannot accept this twisted logic, either morally or nationally.”
Killing of history teacher Samuel Paty has sparked outrage and memories of a wave of Islamist terror in 2015; Macron says a national tribute to be held. Thousands of people across France are expected to join rallies Sunday in a show of solidarity and defiance following the beheading of a teacher outside his school for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed…… The 18-year-old Chechen suspect, named as Abdullakh A, was shot dead by police shortly after the attack….The schoolgirl’s father and a known Islamist terrorist are among those arrested, along with several members of the suspect’s family. An 11th person was taken into custody on Sunday, a judicial source said.
Some 15 years ago, European Commission President Romano Prodi proposed a vision of Europe surrounded by “a ring of friends.” His words did not age well. Today, instead, the Continent finds itself encircled by czars, sultans and emperors, ruthlessly playing the EU.
Another standoff with Russian President Vladimir Putin looms. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is redrawing the map of the eastern Mediterranean. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expanding his influence in the Balkans. Then there’s Donald Trump, who calls the EU “almost as bad as China, just smaller.”
Josh Eisen originally ran as Republican but faced allegations of racism, inappropriate conduct; reportedly once told wife of legal opponent she’d ‘bathe in warm semen of Mengele’. At least a dozen campaign signs supporting Jewish congressional candidate Josh Eisen were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, with at least one tagged with the words “Nazi lover,” according to News12, a local station in Westchester County….. Eisen originally ran as a Republican but withdrew from the primary after facing allegations of racism and inappropriate conduct…..According to evidence from a past lawsuit reported by City & State New York, he has used the n-word in emails and once wrote to the wife of a legal opponent that she would “bathe in the warm semen of Mengele,” a reference to the Nazis’ notorious Auschwitz concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele.