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https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-to-invoke-emergency-powers-to-ban-masks-at-protests-11570089982

Hong Kong’s cabinet will meet Friday to invoke emergency powers to tackle spiraling protests and lawlessness, starting with a ban on people wearing masks that are used to protect themselves from tear gas or hide their identities, people familiar with the plan said.

The city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam called the special meeting of her executive council to propose the ban, which, if agreed, would become law Friday, one of the people said. The measure is almost certain to be approved as the cabinet comprises mostly pro-government figures.

Police and pro-Beijing groups ramped up calls for the British colonial-era law to be used for the first time in half a century after the city was rocked by the worst day of violence in 50 years during China’s National Day celebrations on Tuesday. Protesters and riot police clashed in more than a dozen districts, leaving more than 100 injured. Police shot one protester in the chest.

The shooting brought people back into the streets to condemn the city’s police force Wednesday evening, targeting subway stations. Police were mostly absent from the streets until about midnight. Officials, who fear similar scenes this coming holiday weekend, have been running out of options to contain the unrest that has increasingly taken over the city and has sent the economy tumbling toward a recession.

The government is taking the unusual step of invoking the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to “end the violence and restore law and order to the streets,” one of the people familiar with the plan said. It would be the first time it has been used since the British colonial government invoked it to suppress 1967 leftist riots that shook the city during China’s Cultural Revolution.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14941/macron-appeasing-iran

Has French President Emmanuel Macron forgotten that he is helping and appeasing a state leading in human rights violations? In 2018, according to Javaid Rehman, the UN expert on human rights in Iran, at least 273 people were executed in Iran, and 6,000 over ten years, according to Iran Human Rights.

In addition, the use of cruel and inhuman punishment is also on the rise in Iran; according to Amnesty International, the use of various forms of torture such as amputation and flogging has been increasing at an alarming rate.

Macron also fails to recognize that the nuclear deal never contained or adequately addressed Iran’s multifaceted threats, which include but are not limited to: The arming and financing of terror and militia groups in the region; intervening in the internal affairs of regional countries; pursing a sectarian agenda by pitting Shiites and Sunnis against each other; carrying out cyber attacks against other nations; and committing human rights violations inside Iran and abroad through its proxies.

French President Emmanuel Macron appears to be following the footsteps of former US President Barack Obama when it comes to appeasing the top state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In a recent development, the French government offered $15 billion to bail out the Iranian government from US sanctions, and a plea to “restart negotiations.” The Iranian government was most likely thrilled; a headline of a major Iranian state-controlled media outlet, Abrar Eqtesadi read: “Iran to receive $15 billion line of credit!”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-opens-a-second-front-along-israels-border-11570056375

Israel is fighting off Iranian expansion across the Middle East, but danger for the Jewish state lurks near its own borders. Painstaking work by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their loyal proxies has succeeded in laying the groundwork for a second Iranian front with Israel in the Golan Heights.

The first front is to Israel’s north in South Lebanon. The Golan, which Israel won from Syria in 1967, lies further east. Though Israel rules the skies, the Syrian land adjoining Israel’s border appears increasingly to belong to Iran. Reports from both Israelis and Syrian opposition groups have revealed glimpses of the methods the Iranians and their allies have employed to build a military infrastructure on the Syrian side of the Golan.

One is “The Iranian Conquest of Syria,” a report published last month by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The authors are two retired senior Israeli military intelligence officers, Brig. Gen. Shimon Shapira and Col. Jacques Neriah. They explain how Iranian and Hezbollah fighters have crept methodically westward from the Syrian lava field of Lajat, 40 miles from the Golan Heights in Syria’s southwest, to the broken nation’s Quneitra province, which is even closer.

The Iranian element, made up of the Revolutionary Guard, Lebanese Hezbollah and the local Syrians they have recruited, is tightly woven into the border villages and the official Syrian security forces. That much is clear from the locations of the four permanent bases used by Lebanese Hezbollah in southwest Syria. One is at Al Haraq, within an area controlled and maintained by the Syrian army’s 52nd Brigade. Two others are in the Lajat area. These are used to train locally recruited fighters and store short- and medium-range missiles.

The fourth base is in Quneitra, outside Al Hadr, about 3 miles from the Israeli border. According to the Israeli researchers, the base is protected by the Quneitra Hawks Brigade, which is part of the Syrian National Defense Forces, a reserve army established by Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. The base is situated within a position of the Syrian army’s 90th Brigade and used mainly for intelligence gathering and eavesdropping. CONTINUE AT SITE