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WORLD NEWS

DANIEL PEARL’S MURDERER HEADED FOR RELEASE- CATHERINE SMITH

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/30/wall-street-journal-reporter-daniel-pearls-murderer-headed-for-release/

The New York Post reports that a British-born man sentenced to death for kidnapping and beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl could walk free.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was found guilty of masterminding Pearl’s murder, and sentenced to death in 2002. He has been in jail ever since awaiting the outcome of a series of appeals and legal arguments. His death sentence was overturned in April after Pakistani prosecutors failed to prove he was the killer, The Guardian reported at the time.

“The court has commuted Omar’s death sentence to a seven-year sentence. The murder charges were not proven, so he was given seven years for the kidnapping. Omar has already served 18 years, so his release orders will be issued sometime today. He will be out in a few days,” defense lawyer Khawaja Naveed told Reuters back in April, according to The Guardian.

Pearl’s family, the U.S. Government and media rights groups were outraged over the decision and appeals were filed to reverse the ruling, the outlet reported.

In response, Saeed Sheikh was instead held on a 90-day detention order, expiring Thursday, under a public ordinance that allows defendants to be held in custody longer if their release could lead to violence and chaos, the outlet reported.

However, Pakistan’s supreme court refused a government request to suspend the lower court’s decision to release Saeed Sheikh on Monday and refused to promptly hear an appeal on the ruling, which is now scheduled for Sept. 25, the outlet said.

Pakistan’s prosecutor, Faiz Shah, declined to say whether they will seek an order extending Saeed Sheikh’s detention, meaning the man could be walking free as early as Thursday, the outlet reported.

“The prosecution’s cases are won or lost not on the basis of emotion, they are won or lost on the basis of evidence and in this case the prosecution did a woeful job,” Mahmood Sheikh, Saeed Sheikh’s lawyer, no relation, told The Guardian.

“If Daniel Pearl’s parents have any grievance or complaint it should be against the Pakistani authorities for the prosecution’s failings.”

In January 2002, Pearl was an intrepid journalist investigating Islamic militants in Karachi when he was kidnapped by Saeed Sheikh. He was eventually beheaded in a filmed execution that was shared around the world, according to The New York Post.

China Swallows Hong Kong By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/china-swallows-hong-kong/

The Chinese Communist Party, through what it portrays as its legislature (the “National People’s Congress”), has enacted a law crushing democracy in Hong Kong.

Under the guise of protecting “national security,” the new law criminalizes as “subversion” and “terrorism” various expressions of protest and political dissent. It further endeavors to cut off Hong Kong’s support lines by criminalizing, as conspiracy to endanger national security, sundry exchanges with other countries and outside groups.

The people of Hong Kong have been protesting against Beijing’s increasingly overt repression for over a year. President Trump, however, has prized what he claims is a strong personal relationship with China’s CCP strongman, Xi Xinping; he has thus been reluctant to pressure Beijing or lend rhetorical support to democracy activists — in stark contrast to President Reagan’s support for the anti-Communist democracy movement in Poland.

More recently though, with Beijing’s cover-up of the origins and seriousness of the novel coronavirus having contributed mightily to a deep U.S. economic downturn and the wounding of his reelection bid, the president has reversed course. “China claims it is protecting national security, but the truth is that Hong Kong was secure and prosperous as a free society,” he recently asserted. “Beijing’s decision reverses all of that.”

The Trump administration has indicated that some sanctions would be imposed on some Chinese officials responsible for strangling Hong Kong, though not on Xi. It has further vowed to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential customs and trade status — a move that makes sense if Hong Kong is now like any other Chinese city, but that will hurt Hong Kong more than it does China. All in all, however, the U.S. has done nothing with much bite, certainly nothing that has dissuaded Xi from his course.

The Corporate Thought Police by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16128/corporate-thought-police

Sweden has been steeped in political correctness for decades; its failed immigration policies, which have had multiple negative consequences, as reported by Gatestone Institute, have long been taboo.

The idea that free speech is not a fundamental liberty that must be defended at all costs runs deep in Sweden.

Radio personality and NBA announcer Grant Napear was fired from his radio show at KHTK radio and resigned as the Sacramento Kings play-by-play TV announcer after tweeting on June 1, “All Lives Matter… every single one!”, in reference to protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

A young Democrat data scientist, David Shor, was fired by the research firm for which he was working, Civis Analytics, after tweeting about the electoral effectiveness of peaceful protest as opposed to violent protest.

Our corporate thought police have been working overtime, and from the look of it, they are only beginning.

Mats Skogkär, a journalist and editorial writer at one of Sweden’s largest regional newspapers, Sydsvenskan, was recently demoted from editorial writer to a non-writing position for tweeting the following:

“When you see the Left’s almost sexual excitement over the riots in the United States, over the looting, fires and violence, it also becomes easier to understand its desire to create similar conditions here with a large… segregated underclass of migrants”.

“A tweet way over the line,” wrote Jonas Kanje, editor in chief at Sydsvenskan, after receiving backlash on Twitter. “A way to express yourself that Sydsvenskan can never support. I dissociate myself from it.”

According to the Swedish publishing house Bonnier, which owns Sydsvenskan, “Bonnier defends freedom of expression… a diversity of voices and perspectives should be heard in our media”.

Less than a week later, Sören Åkeby, who had an advisory role on the board of the Swedish football team, ÖFK, was let go by the board for sharing a Facebook post that “directly violate[s] ÖFK’s values”. The post that Åkeby shared contained the following:

“Another Swede murdered by a racial stranger!… [The boy] was stabbed when he helped a Swedish girl who was being raped by a Somali… Don’t stand by and watch your own people get murdered, raped and humiliated. Organize and resist this alien invasion. We are at war!”

“I read it too quickly and just [shared it],” Åkeby apologized.

“I certainly don’t have those (thoughts)… I have trained foreign players for more or less all my life… For me, this became so surreal… I’m definitely not a racist. I’ll take it back. I will delete the posts immediately if it is interpreted this way. I didn’t mean to.”

China Passes Hong Kong Security Law Aimed at Crushing Protests Beijing rejects criticism that the law will curb people’s freedoms in the financial hub

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-passes-hong-kong-security-law-aimed-at-crushing-protests-11593488146?mod=hp_lead_pos1

HONG KONG—China’s legislature approved Tuesday a sweeping new law aimed at quashing threats to national security in Hong Kong, rejecting Western criticism that Beijing’s efforts will curb people’s freedoms in the protest-torn city.

The legislation was passed by senior Chinese lawmakers, according to Lau Siu-kai, a senior adviser to Beijing on Hong Kong policy. Drafted and approved in an unusually rapid and opaque process, the law has stirred fears across pro-democracy groups, businesses, schools and media over its potential impact.

The law is meant to prevent and punish subversive, secessionist and terrorist activities in the former British colony, as well as collusion with foreign forces. Its full text is expected to be released later Tuesday and the law may be put into effect in time for the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule on Wednesday.

Since Beijing first announced plans for enacting national-security legislation for Hong Kong in late May, Chinese officials have repeatedly rebuffed criticism from opposition politicians and rights activists in the city, as well as the U.S. and other Western powers, who have decried the law as a tool for suppressing civil liberties in the Asian financial center and undercutting its promised autonomy from Beijing.

Iranian Ayatollah Gloats: Now It’s Americans Screaming ‘Death to America!’ The Hate-America Left gives aid and comfort to the nation’s enemies. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/iranian-ayatollah-gloats-now-its-americans-robert-spencer/

The Iranian Ayatollah Lotfollah Dezhkam, Supreme Leader Khamenei’s representative in Iran’s Fars province, is thrilled about the recent riots in the United States. In a Friday sermon last week, he declared: “The shout of the Iranian nation [is] being heard from the mouths of the Americans themselves: Death to America!” Dezhkam thus reveals that the truth of David Horowitz’s recent observation can be seen clearly from as far away as Iran: “The Democrat Party is at war with America. The alliance between the international jihad and the Left is growing more violent and aggressive in the United States by the day, thanks to political officials who dare not confront them.

Dezhkam gloated over what he believed were signs of the imminent demise of the United States: “The entire world has seen with its very eyes that today, America cannot be the main decision-maker when it comes to strategic matters in the world. We are unequivocally informing the American administration, Republicans and Democrats alike: If you’ve shut your ears with cotton balls, remove them [so you can hear]. The sound of America being shattered and of its collapse, is being heard all over the world. The shout of the Iranian nation, which has been leading the fight against America for 40 years, is being heard from mouths of the Americans themselves: Death to America!”

The crowd was thrilled and responded with that ever-popular Iranian slogan: “Death to America! Death to America! Death to America! Death to America!” Do the Leftist rioters in the U.S. also want to see the death of America? Nothing could be clearer. In their iconoclastic fury, they have targeted not only statues of Confederate generals and slave-owners, but of General Ulysses S. Grant, who led the great war to free the slaves; President Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive environmentalist; and of course the slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as well as the abolitionist Abraham Lincoln.

Whatever Happened to Boris Johnson? Why he has to get his act together fast. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/less-bo-jo-more-so-so-whatever-happened-boris-katie-hopkins/

It’s the question everyone is asking, but no one seems to have a definitive answer.

From my personal experiences with Boris what I can say with certainty is that something is not adding up. The man that led London through its most successful period in recent history as its Mayor, and the effervescent beast that rammed Brexit over the line has gone.

The Boris we are looking at now reminds me of the Melania body double. Somewhat similar if you squint a bit, but not quite all there. Less Bo-Jo. More So-So.

There are a few theories behind the sad demise of the blond bombshell. Some are patently absurd. Others more probable, knowing him as I do. But one thing is for sure. If he doesn’t get his act together, and fast, those allies he relied on to get him into power, will be the same forcing him from it. The vultures are in the trees, watching, waiting.

2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine Winning Dr Luc Montagnier Says Covid-19 was “manipulated” for HIV Research

https://thejewishvoice.com/2020/04/2008-nobel-prize-for-medicine-winning-dr-luc-montagnier-says-covid-19-was-manipulated-for-hiv-research/

According to Professor Luc Montagnier, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 for “discovering” HIV as the cause of the AIDS epidemic together with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the SARS-CoV-2 responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic  is a virus that was manipulated and accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, in the last quarter of 2019. According to Professor Montagnier, this laboratory, known for its work on coronaviruses, tried to use one of these viruses as a vector for HIV in the search for an AIDS vaccine,  Gilmore Health reported after Montagnier was interviewed on a medical podcast.

Dr Luc Montagnier  discovered the HIV virus back in 1983.

“With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,” explains Luc Montagnier, interviewed by Dr Jean-François Lemoine for the daily podcast at Pourquoi Docteur,  adding that others have already explored this avenue: Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus, … the HIV virus (AIDS virus), but they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great.

In a challenging question Dr Jean-François Lemoine inferred that the coronavirus under investigation may have come from a patient who is otherwise infected with HIV. No, “says Luc Montagnier,” in order to insert an HIV sequence into this genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can only be done in a laboratory.

Massive Explosion Rocks Suspected Nuke Site in Iran By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/06/28/massive-explosion-rocks-suspected-nuke-site-in-iran-n583607

The Associated Press is reporting that a huge explosion occurred on Friday that rattled Tehran and lit up the horizon. The site of the blast was a region where many nuclear experts believe Iran conducted high-explosive tests relating to its nuclear program.The explosion happened in the Alborz mountains, just east of the city. Satellite photos show the massive extent of the blast.

Fox News:

Satellite photos of the area, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of downtown Tehran, showed hundreds of meters (yards) of charred scrubland not seen in images of the area taken in the weeks ahead of the incident. The building near the char marks resembled the facility seen in the state TV footage.

The gas storage area sits near what analysts describe as Iran’s Khojir missile facility. The explosion appears to have struck a facility for the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, which makes solid-propellant rockets, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

The footage on Iranian TV shows charred gas canisters and not much else.

One of its journalists stood in front of what appeared to be large, blackened gas cylinders, though the camera remained tightly focused and did not show anything else around the site. Defense Ministry spokesman Davood Abdi blamed the blast on a leaking gas he did not identify and said no one was killed in the explosion.

For a gas explosion, the Iranian government treated it as a security problem. Civilian firefighters were banned and access was extremely limited.

“32,000 Christians Butchered to Death”: The Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16166/christians-butchered

“The atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked and risen to alarming apogee with the country’s security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists.” — The Nigerian Voice, May 14, 2020

Earlier this year, Christian Solidarity International issued a “Genocide Warning for Christians in Nigeria.”

“This [using a church as a personal toilet] is only the latest incident … [I]t has become extremely common for Greek Orthodox Churches to be vandalised and attacked by illegal immigrants on Lesvos…. As a deeply religious society, these attacks on churches are shocking to the Greek people and calls to question whether these illegal immigrants seeking a new life in Europe are willing to integrate and conform to the norms and values of their new countries.” — Greek City Times, May 16, 2020.

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of May 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: From January 2020 to mid-May 2020, Muslim terrorists massacred at least 620 Christians (470 by Fulani herdsmen and 150 by Boko Haram). According to a May 14 report:

“Militant Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram … have intensified their anti-Christian violence … with hacking to death in the past four months and half of 2020 of no fewer than 620 defenseless Christians, and wanton burning or destruction of their centers of worship and learning. The atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked and risen to alarming apogee with the country’s security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists. Houses burnt or destroyed during the period are in their hundreds; likewise dozens of Christian worship and learning centers.”

The report further states that, since 2009, “not less than 32,000 Christians have been butchered to death by the country’s main Jihadists.”

Earlier this year, Christian Solidarity International issued a “Genocide Warning for Christians in Nigeria,” in response to the “rising tide of violence directed against Nigerian Christians and others classified as ‘infidels’ by Islamist militants…” More recently, in a May statement, the Christian Rights Agenda, another human rights group, expressed concern for “the seeming silence of Nigeria’s President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, who as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces has not only failed to protect the Christian communities but has remained silent over these killings. To date, no Fulani herdsmen have been arrested and prosecuted over the killings, a development that has helped to embolden them.” It is worth noting that Buhari himself is a Fulani Muslim.

Iraq: Turkish Airstrikes Terrorize Christian and Yazidi Natives by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16154/iraq-turkish-airstrikes

“On June 20, they even bombed the safe spot where the other villagers could go.” — Athra Kado, Assyrian rights advocate in Alqosh, Iraq, to Gatestone.

“We have been informed by the Turkish forces that ‘we’ll bomb whenever we want to’… But nobody seems to be concerned about our struggles or wants to help us.” — Younan Youkhanna, Assyrian journalist in Challik, Iraq, which is affected by Turkish bombings.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry announced on June 17 that the country had “launched a military operation against the PKK” (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in northern Iraq after carrying out a series of airstrikes. Turkey has named its assaults “Operation Claw-Eagle” and “Operation Claw-Tiger,” the Turkish government-funded Anadolu Agency reported.

The Yazidi and Assyrian Christian communities in the area had already been terrorized when they were targeted in a genocidal attack by the Islamic State (ISIS) beginning in 2014.

The Yazidi and Assyrian natives of the area have expressed their condemnation of the bombings.

On June 16, the Free Yezidi Foundation (FYF) issued a statement, in which it “condemns in strongest terms the Turkish airstrikes conducted in Sinjar, Iraq.”

“In 2014, Daesh (ISIS) terrorists swept through vast areas in Syria and Iraq, committing genocide against the ethno-religious minority Yezidi community in Sinjar. Yezidis have been displaced since that time and are slowly beginning to return back to their areas of origin. These airstrikes, in violation of Iraqi sovereignty, heighten the risk to Yezidi civilians and jeopardize the safe, voluntary return of a fragile and severely traumatized minority population…

“Now, the recent airstrikes conducted by Turkey have not only endangered the lives of Yezidis in Sinjar but have also dimmed the prospect of the return of civilians to their areas of origin. This places further hardship upon the more than 300,000 displaced Yezidis living in grim conditions in IDP camps.”