- China Threatens France For Giving Political Asylum To Wife Of Jailed Ex-Interpol Chief
Chinese officials have threatened to cease all police cooperation with France for giving political asylum to the wife of ex-Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, according to AFP.
“There hasn’t been any official request to suspend the cooperation but an informal expression of intent,” said an AFP source, confirming a weekend report by French daily Le Monde that the security attache in France’s Beijing embassy has been informed of the impending decision.
Tensions between Paris and Beijing have been fraught since the September 2018 disappearance of Interpol president Meng Hongwei, shortly after he left for China from the international police agency’s headquarters in Lyon, southeast France.
After several days with no word on his whereabouts, China disclosed that he had been arrested, and in June a court in northern China revealed that Meng had pleaded guilty to bribery.
His wife Grace and their two children, who have remained in France, were given police protection after she expressed concerns about kidnapping attempts, and later applied for asylum, a request that was granted in May. –AFP
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman denounced the asylum as an “abuse of French legal procedures,” while the French Interior Minister declined to comment.
In June, the Chinese court said that Meng – a former vice minister of public security – pleaded guilty to accepting $2.1 million in bribes between 2005 and 2017.
Critics of Meng’s arrest, however, have suggested that the ex-Interpol chief was caught up in an anti-graft campaign in which they have accused President Xi Jinping of trying to remove his political enemies.
A few weeks after his disappearance, Interpol was forced to accept Meng’s resignation as its first Chinese president.
His wife, Grace, sued the agency last month, saying it had failed to protect her family and was “complicit in the internationally wrongful acts of its member country China.” Interpol has rejected the allegations. –AFP
Last year while Meng’s whereabouts were unknown, Grace made an emotional appeal – telling journalists in October she had not heard from her husband since September 25 when he sent her a WhatsApp emoji with a knife.
- The Latest UN Horror Show: Christian Refugees Ignored
Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,
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Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement to other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program.
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The registration with the UNHCR gives them the protective status of refugee as they await resettlement. Yet, the process of resettlement takes at minimum several months and sometimes even years due to the growing refugee backlog….. “The majority of those stuck in limbo have been waiting more than two years—some since the rise of ISIS in 2014,” according to the report.
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“Since January, the process has become even slower and more difficult. The UNHCR has not even granted newcomers refugee status since. They just give them an appointment date, then they cancel the date and give them a new one. So we all keep waiting.” — Lorance Yousuf Kazqeea, a Christian originally from Baghdad, has been an asylum seeker in Jordan with his wife and two children since September 2017; to Gatestone Institute.
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“You can contact the local UNHCR office in your country and demand answers – why Iraqi Christians have been waiting for resettlement for years and why the West continuously rejects them.” — Juliana Taimoorazy, founding president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, which has been active in Jordan since 2015; to Gatestone Institute.
Since the 2014 invasion and genocide by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, at least 16,000 Assyrian Christians from Iraq have become refugees in Jordan. Most are still suffering economically and psychologically there, under extremely difficult circumstances.
These Assyrian Christians are in Jordan on a temporary basis with plans to emigrate to a third country. However, as they have not been given official work permits by the Jordanian government, they largely rely on their savings, remittances sent by relatives abroad or aid from charity organizations and churches. Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement in other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program.
Pictured: The Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
The indigenous people of Iraq, the Assyrians, have been severely persecuted for decades. According to a 2017 report by the Assyrian Confederation of Europe:
“Assyrians represent one of the most consistently targeted communities in Iraq throughout its modern history. This has included the state-sanctioned massacre at Simele in 1933; Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign, which included the targeting of Assyrians villages; ruthless campaigns of terror to which Christians were subjected after the U.S. invasion in 2003; and finally, the recent tragic chapter authored by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist organization.”
Hence, Assyrian Christians have been forced to leave their ancestral homeland and seek asylum elsewhere including Jordan. After arriving in Jordan, they register with the UNHCR Registration Center in Amman and receive a special registration card.
The registration with the UNHCR gives them the protective status of refugee as they await resettlement. Yet, the process of resettlement takes at minimum several months and sometimes even years, due to the growing refugee backlog. Assyrians live as urban refugees, meaning they face many challenges and lack access to many humanitarian services because they live largely in isolation.
On June 20, the Assyrian Policy Institute (API) published a report entitled, “Lives on Hold: Assyrian Refugees in Jordan,” in which the authors conducted interviews with many Assyrian Christian refugees in Jordan. The root causes for the emigration of Assyrians from Iraq since 2014, according to the report, include “the lasting instability and devastation, lack of trust in various security actors, lack of livelihood opportunities, loss of property, fears of demographic change, and fears of future violence targeting Assyrians.”
“Assyrian refugees have endured many traumatic experiences due to their exposure to war, ethno-religious persecution, political oppression, forced displacement, and genocide. According to the Refugee Health Technical Assistance Center, refugee trauma often precedes the primary war-related events that causes them to flee.
“Prior to their departure from Iraq, Assyrian refugees may have experienced imprisonment, torture, forced displacement, physical assault, rape, kidnapping, religious persecution, loss of property, loss of livelihood, family separation, and extreme fear.”
Yet, the trauma of Assyrian Christians has not ended in Jordan, where they have been forced to flee. “The majority of those stuck in limbo have been waiting more than two years—some since the rise of ISIS in 2014,” according to the report. “Their wait for resettlement is characterized by limited information, uncertainty about their futures, and a growing sense of hopelessness.”
When asked about what factors drive them to seek resettlement in a third country, the Assyrian refugees cited the following reasons: “safety, religious freedom, respect for human rights, equal educational and economic opportunities, and family reunification”.
Among the most serious problems Iraqi Christian refugees in Jordan face are:
“A recent study conducted by the Government of Jordan found that nearly forty percent of urban refugees cannot afford needed medicines or access health care services. More than thirty percent of households interviewed by the API reported at least one household member suffered from a chronic disease or disability, noting that they struggled to access affordable medicine or care.
“Access to education for Assyrian refugee children in Jordan is limited; many parents fear their children will become part of a lost generation.
“Assyrian refugees from Iraq are unable to access the required work permit in order to be employed legally in Jordan due to the restrictive administrative process and the prohibitively expensive filing fees.
“Assyrians are also suffering from what have been termed the ‘silent killers:’ waiting, boredom, hopelessness, and isolation. Like most displaced peoples, feelings of weariness and frustration are widespread. Life is monotonous for many Assyrian refugees, as they spend years awaiting resettlement with little to do on a daily basis. While the long wait for a visa is anticipated, there is no guarantee of resettlement.
“Nearly half of the households that remain in Jordan reported that their applications for resettlement via the Australian Special Humanitarian Program had been rejected since the time of their initial interview with the Assyrian Policy Institute (between December 2017 and January 2018). If an application is denied, there is no opportunity for an appeal, however, applicants do have the option of reapplying.”
Lorance Yousuf Kazqeea, a Christian originally from Baghdad, for instance, has been an asylum seeker in Jordan with his wife and two children since September 2017, and is still trying to immigrate to the United States. He told Gatestone:
“The greatest challenge for us here is that Iraqi Christian refugees can’t work legally. I was an IT (information technology) specialist in Baghdad. Many Christians from Iraq used to have a good job or business there. But we have lost everything. How are we supposed to support our families now? We rely on aid from charity organizations, churches and family members outside of Jordan. And in special and rare cases refugees get monthly salaries from the UNHCR.
“Christians from Iraq want to move to the West for safety and stability. But since January, the process has become even slower and more difficult. The UNHCR has not even granted newcomers refugee status since. They just give them an appointment date, then they cancel the date and give them a new one. So we all keep waiting.”
The UNHCR was approached by Gatestone for a comment but has not replied.
Juliana Taimoorazy, founding president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, which has been active in Jordan since 2015, told Gatestone:
“Assyrian refugees in Jordan have lost everything in Iraq. One of the victims that our organization has been trying to help – a Christian mother in her 50s – used to have a hair salon in Iraq. ISIS terrorists attacked her, knifed her, destroying her abdominal area. The terrorists then set fire to her salon, home and everything else she owned. She and most of her family had to migrate to Jordan to seek asylum. They then applied for resettlement in Australia but were refused four times. However, their situation is even more tragic now. Her youngest children contracted an eye virus and are losing their eyesight gradually. Every 6 months, they have to renew the treatment and get new glasses. Her oldest daughter died recently in Iraq. Her teenage daughter, who was an excellent student in Iraq, has been unable to go to school for the last four years because she does not have the appropriate paperwork to go to school in Jordan. And because of that, she is suffering from severe depression. Around 50.000 Assyrians that have had to leave Iraq and have become refugees in Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere have similar painful stories.”
Taimoorazy made a plea to help the Christian victims of ISIS:
“We’ve been told ISIS has been militarily defeated, but will we leave the victims of ISIS alone? The aftermath of the ISIS genocide in Iraq is more important for the world to pay attention to. The victims are still suffering.
“The past atrocities… are unfolding before our eyes every day. Because of the refugee situation they are in, the Christian victims of ISIS have still not been liberated. For example, at least three children from one family are about to lose their eyesight because the parents are not able to provide money for their treatment. And their hope is diminishing. But we have more power than we are willing to admit. You can contact the local UNHCR office in your country and demand answers – why Iraqi Christians have been waiting for resettlement for years and why the West continuously rejects them. Western NGOs and churches can also have a local representative in Jordan. Every single individual can make a difference. The wounds of the victims of ISIS are still bleeding. Let us not stand on the sidelines.”
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- Drone Strike By Pro-Haftar Forces On Public Assembly Kills Over 40 In Libya
Pro-Haftar forces in Libya have been accused of yet another mass atrocity, this time in an airstrike on a public building in southwestern Libya, according to new reports, following an attack on a migrant center in Tripoli July 3rd which killed 44 people and wounded some 180. Al Jazeera is reporting a new drone strike Monday killed at least 40 people who were attending a wedding ceremony in the town of Murzuq:
Reports said forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar launched the attack on Sunday in the town of Murzuq. Al Jazeera learned that the victims were attending a wedding when the attack took place.
Illustrative file photo: Reuters Hours later the AFP said the drone attack was carried out on a town hall meeting where over 200 people were present, but details remain unclear.
The air strike left “42 dead and more than 60 injured, 30 of them critically” in Qalaa neighborhood, according to eyewitness statements made to the AFP.
Tripoli’s GNA government immediately called for a full investigation and is connecting to downed drone to the mass casualty airstrike. Recently there’s been growing evidence that UAE and Turkish-supplied drones have been operational in the hands of Haftar forces.
International monitors now count nearly 1,100 killed since Haftar’s bid to take Tripoli began on April 4; however, the current chaos and proxy war still unfolding in the North African country has been largely ignored in American media.
Since longtime Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow and field execution by UK and UK backed-rebels in 2011, which was facilitated by a US-NATO bombing campaign, the country has existed in chaos and anarchy, with up to three and sometimes four governments vying for control over the population.
The European Union last week reiterated calls for the warring sides to establish a “permanent truce” amid Haftar’s offensive. The “rogue general” is backed by the UAE, France, and more recently the US, and others. The UN has also repeatedly condemned the ongoing violence, which has lately seen reports of fast rising death tolls, including of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe by boat.
Haftar already controls well over half the geographic territory and oil resources of Libya, after his LNA forces advanced against different factions for more than the past two years, and as of the spring began deploying MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighter jets against GNA forces outside Tripoli. It appears the LNA is also frequently deploying drones.
Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar. Image source: AFP/Getty Likely, as airstrikes increase in the heavily populated suburbs outside Tripoli where fighting has continued through the summer, headline grabbing mass casualty events due to air power will continue.
- The Declining Empire Of Chaos Is Going Nuts Over Iran
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The transition in recent years from a unipolar to a multipolar world order has created international tensions that seem to threaten to escalate into clashes between regional and global powers.
In 2014 we were almost at the point of no return in Ukraine following the coup d’etat supported and funded by NATO and involving extremist right-wing Ukrainian nationalists. The conflict in the Donbass risked escalating into a conflict between NATO and the Russian Federation, every day in the summer and autumn of 2014 threatening to be doomsday. Rather than respond to the understandable impulse to send Russian troops into Ukraine to defend the population of Donbass, Putin had the presense of mind to pursue the less direct and more sensible strategy of supporting the material capacity of the residents of Donbass to resist the depredations of the Ukrainian army and their neo-Nazi Banderite thugs. Meanwhile, Europe’s inept leaders initially egged on Ukraine’s destabilization, only to get cold feet after reflecting on the possibility of having a conflict between Moscow and Washington fought on European soil.
With the resistance in Donbass managing to successfully hold back Ukrainian assaults, the conflict began to freeze, almost to the point of a complete ceasefire, even as Ukrainian provocations continue to this day.
Tensions were then focussed on Syria, where a mercenary army of at least 200,000 men, armed and trained by the US, UK, Israel, France, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, almost managed to completely topple the country. Russian intervention in 2015 managed to save the country with no time to spare, destroying large numbers of terrorists and reorganizing the Syrian armed forces and training and equipping them with the necessary means to beat back the jihadi waves. The Russians also ensured control of the skies through their network of Pantsir-S1, Pantsir-S2, S-300 and S-400 air-defence systems, together with their impressivejamming (Krasukha-4), command and control information management system (Strelets C4ISR System) and electronic-warfare technologies (1RL257 Krasukha-4).
As the Americans, British, French and Israelis conducted their bombing missions in Syria, the danger of a deliberate attack on Russian positions always remained, something that would have had devastating consequences for the region and beyond. It is no secret that US military planners have repeatedly argued for a direct conflict with Moscow in a contained regional theater. (Clinton called for the downing of Russian jets over Syria, and former US officials claimed that some Russians had to “pay a little price”.)
Since Trump became president, the rhetoric of war has soared considerably, even as the awareness remains that any new conflict would sink Trump’s chances of re-election. Despite this, Trump’s bombings in Syria were real and potentially very harmful to the Syrian state. Nevertheless, they were foiled by Russia’s electronic-warfare capability, which was able to send veering away from their intended target more than 70% of the latest-generation missiles launched by the British, French, Americans and Israelis.
One of the most terrifying moments for the future of humanity came a few months later when Trump started hurling threats and abuses at Kim Jong-un, threatening to reduce Pyongyang to ashes. Trump, moreover, delivered his fiery threats in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
Trump’s dramatic U-turn following his historic meeting with Kim Jong-un (a public relations/photo opportunity) began to paint a fairly comical and unreliable picture of US power, revealing to the world the new US president’s strategy. The president threatens to nuke a country, but only as a negotiating tactic to bring his opponent to the negotiating table and thereby clinch a deal. He then presents himself to his domestic audience as the “great” deal-maker.
With Iran, the recent target of the US administration, the bargaining method is the same, though with decidedly different results. In the cases of Ukraine and North Korea, the two most powerful lobbies in Washington, the Israeli and Saudi lobbies, have had little to say. Of course the neocons and the arms lobbyists are always gunning for war, but these two powerful state-backed lobbies were notably silent with regard to these countries, less towards Syria obviously. As distinguished political scientist John J. Mearsheimer has repeatedly explained, the Israel and Saudi lobbies have unlimited funds for corrupting Democrats and Republicans in order to push their foreign-policy goals.
The difference between the case of Iran and the aforementioned cases of Ukraine, Syria and North Korea is precisely the direct involvement of these two lobbies in the decision-making process underway in the US.
These two lobbies (together with their neocon allies) have for years been pushing to have a few hundred thousand young Americans sent to Iran to sacrifice themselves for the purposes of destroying Iran and her people. Such geopolitical games are played at the cost of US taxpayers, the lives of their children sent to war, and the lives of the people of the Middle East, who have been devastated by decades of conflict.
What readers can be assured of is that in the cases of Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and Iran, the US is unable to militarily impose its geopolitical or economic will.
The reasons vary with each case, and I have previously explained extensively why the possibilities for conflict are unthinkable. With Ukraine, a conflict on European soil between Russia and NATO was unthinkable, bringing to mind the type of devastation that was seen during the Second World War. Good sense prevailed, and even NATO somewhat refused to fully arm the Ukrainian army with weapons that would have given them an overwhelming advantage over the Donbass militias.
In Syria, any involvement with ground troops would have been collective suicide, given the overwhelming air power deployed in the country by Russia. Recall that since the Second World War, the US has never fought a war in an airspace that was seriously contested (in Vietnam, US air losses were only elevated because of Sino-Soviet help), allowing for ground troops to receive air cover and protection. A ground assault in Syria would have therefore been catastrophic without the requisite control of Syria’s skies.
In North Korea, the country’s tactical and strategic nuclear and conventional deterrence discourages any missile attack. Any overland attack is out of the question, given the high number of active as well as reserve personnel in the DPRK army. If the US struggled to control a completely defeated Iraq in 2003, how much more difficult would be to deal with a country with a resilient population that is indisposed to bowing to the US? The 2003 Iraq campaign would really be a “cakewalk” in comparison. Another reason why a missile attack on North Korea is impossible is because of the conventional power that Pyongyang possesses in the form of tens of thousands of missiles and artillery pieces that could easily reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of minutes. This would then lead to a war between the US and the DPRK being fought on the Korean Peninsula. Moon Jae-in, like Merkel and Sarkozy in the case of Ukraine, did everything in his power to prevent such a devastating conflict.
Concerning tensions between the US and Iran and the resulting threats of war, these should be taken as bluster and bluff. America’s European allies are heavily involved in Iran and depend on the Middle East for their oil and gas imports. A US war against Iran would have devastating consequences for the world economy, with the Europeans seeing their imports halved or reduced. As Professor Chossudovsky of the strategic think tank Global Research has so ably argued, an attack on Iran is unsustainable, as the oil sectors of the UAE and Saudi Arabia would be hit and shut down. Exports would instantly end after the pipelines going West are bombed by the Houthis and the Strait of Hormuz closed. The economies of these two countries would implode and their ruling class wiped out by internal revolts. The state of Israel as well as US bases in the region would see themselves overwhelmed with missiles coming from Syria, Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Iran. The Tel Aviv government would last a few hours before capitulating under the pressure of its own citizens, who, like the Europeans, are unused to suffering war at home.
Because a war with Iran would be difficult to de-escalate, we can conclude that the possibility of war being waged against the country is unlikely if not impossible. The level of damage the belligerents would inflict on each other would make any diplomatic resolution of the conflict difficult. While the powerful Israeli and Saudi lobbies in the US may be beating the war drums, an indication of what would happen if war followed can be seen in Yemen. Egypt and the UAE were forced to withdraw from the coalition fighting the Houthis after the UAE suffered considerable damage from legitimate retaliatory missile strikes from the Yemen’s Army Missile Forces.
An open war against Iran continues to be a red line that the ruling financial elites in the US, Israelis and Saudis don’t want to cross, having so much at stake.
With an election looming, Trump cannot risk triggering a new conflict and betraying one of his most important electoral promises. The Western elite does not seem to have any intention of destroying the petrodollar-based world economy with which it generates its own profits and controls global finance. And finally, US military planners do not intend to suffer a humiliating defeat in Iran that would reveal the extent to which US military power is based on propaganda built over the years through Hollywood movies and wars successfully executed against relatively defenceless countries. Even if we consider the possibility of Netanyahu and Bin Salman being mentally unstable, someone within the royal palace in Riyadh or the government in Tel Aviv would have counseled them on the political and personal consequences of an attack on Iran.
It is telling that Washington, London, Tel Aviv and Riyadh have to resort to numerous but ultimately useless provocations against Iran, as they can only rely on hybrid attacks in order to economically isolate it from the rest of the world.
Paradoxically, this strategy has had devastating consequences for the role of the US dollar as a reserve currency together with the SWIFT system. In today’s multipolar environment, acting in such an imperious manner leads to the acceleration of de-dollarization as a way of circumventing sanctions and bans imposed by the US.
A reserve currency is used to facilitate transactions. If the disadvantages come to exceed the benefits, it will progressively be used less and less, until it is replaced by a basket of currencies that more closely reflect the multipolar geopolitical reality.
The warmongers in Washington are exasperated by their continuing inability to curb the resilience and resistance of the people in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Donbass, countries and regions understood by the healthy part of the globe as representing the axis of resistance to US Imperialism.
- 22% Of Millennials Say They Have No Friends
A staggering 22% of millennials (aged 23 – 38) surveyed by YouGov say they have no friends, while less than 1/3 say they have at least 10 friends.
Meanwhile 30% of Millennials say they ‘always or often feel lonely.’
According to the New York Daily News,
Even if younger Americans are overstating their isolation, the jarring numbers reflect long-term rising trends in loneliness. Studies have indicated that loneliness has myriad negative mental and physical health effects.
“Strong social relationships support mental health, and that ties into better immune function, reduced stress and less cardiovascular activation,” Debra Umberson, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas, told Time magazine in 2015.
Oddly, 25% of Millennials surveyed also said they don’t have any acquaintances.
Is social media to blame? As the Daily News points out, “a 2018 study out of the University of Pennsylvania linked usage of apps like Facebook and Instagram to social isolation. “Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness,” the study’s author, psychologist Melissa Hunt, said at the time.”
Meanwhile, according to Vox, many 30-somethings have a hard time making new friends as they get older, as their lives become busier and friends move away.
More recently, in a 2016 paper, researchers in Germany found a peak of loneliness in a sample of 16,000 Germans at around age 30, another around age 50, and then increasing again at age 80.
“We don’t quite know why this is happening,” said Maike Luhmann, a psychologist who researches loneliness at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and co-authored the paper. –Vox
“So most of the previous research has focused on old age, and for good reason, because it’s when loneliness levels are high,” said Luhmann, who said the larger point was that “researchers have ignored that loneliness can happen at any time.”
Is loneliness hazardous to your health?
According to a 2015 meta-review of 70 studies, loneliness has been linked to higher blood pressure and heart disease – and increases risk of dying by 26%.
“As long as we then do what we should do — reconnect with people — then loneliness is a good thing,” said Luhmann, adding “It becomes a bad thing when it becomes chronic. That’s when the health effects kick in. And it becomes harder and harder to connect with other people the longer you are in the state of loneliness.”
Of course, who needs friends when you’ve got $12 avocado toast?
Meanwhile – the next generation has problems of its own:
The suicide rate for children has doubled in the last decade. More children now take their own lives than die in auto accidents.https://t.co/CrhSAZhHJd pic.twitter.com/QodGEbPrDA
— THE LONG VIEW ⚫️ (@HayekAndKeynes) August 5, 2019
- America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer
Authored by Michael; Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Whenever a tragic act of violence makes national headlines, the calls to give up more of our freedoms and liberties in exchange for the promise of increased security become deafening.
But if we take another step toward becoming an authoritarian society every time something horrible happens, eventually we won’t have any of the basic liberties and freedoms that previous generations of Americans fought so hard to secure for us.
Unfortunately, voices like mine are becoming increasingly rare, and the American people seem to want a society that will shelter them from anything that could possibly go wrong. Of course there has never been such a society in all of human history, and we won’t be able to create one either. No governmental system can eliminate the problem of evil, and bad things sometimes happen to good people. And without a doubt, the mass shootings that we witnessed over the weekend were absolutely horrific. In less than 24 hours, 29 American lives were lost between these two mass shootings, and this has greatly shaken the entire nation…
On Sunday, Americans woke up to news of a shooting rampage in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, where a man wearing body armor shot and killed nine people, including his own sister. Hours earlier, a 21-year-old with a rifle entered a Walmart in El Paso and killed 20 people.
In a country that has become nearly numb to men with guns opening fire in schools, at concerts and in churches, the back-to-back bursts of gun violence in less than 24 hours were enough to leave the public stunned and shaken.
Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. As our society has become less moral, we have seen an escalation of violence all over the country.
According to USA Today, so far in 2019 there have been more mass shootings than days in the year…
As gunfire ripped through America in an unprecedented 24 hours, a bleak milestone in a nation pocked by gun violence was marked: There have been 251 mass shootings in 2019, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
A shooting spree early Sunday at an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio – which left at least nine dead and more than two dozen injured – notched an even darker statistic: It occurred on the 216th day of the year, meaning there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year.
As I have been warning for years, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is steadily disappearing.
At one time, you could walk down the streets in most communities in America without worrying that someone would suddenly gun you down, but that is no longer a safe assumption.
And in some areas, things are getting really, really bad. Just check out what happened in Chicago over the weekend…
In Chicago at least three people have been killed and 37 more injured since Friday evening in shootings within city limits, including 22 people shot Sunday in less than four hours, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
In particular, a mass shooting that took place near a children’s playground was particularly tragic…
As The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports, at least seven people were shot and wounded on Aug. 4 as they gathered near a children’s playground on Chicago’s West Side. The people gathered at 1:20 a.m. as they stood in the park on the 2900 West Roosevelt Road when a person opened fire from a black Chevy Camaro, said Chicago Police.
So why didn’t this mass shooting get the same kind of coverage that the other mass shootings received?
Could it be that it is because it didn’t neatly fit the agenda that the mainstream media is trying to promote?
The city of Baltimore is another major American city where violence is completely and utterly out of control. In fact, there is only one nation on the entire planet that has a higher homicide rate than Baltimore…
Only one country in the world has a higher per capita homicide rate than the city of Baltimore.
According to WorldAtlas, the murder capital of the globe is Honduras — where there are 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people.
Baltimore, with 56 homicides per 100,000 people, edges out the number two spot ahead of Venezuela, where there are 53.7 homicides per 100,000 people.
As the violence across our country continues to escalate, the calls to restrict our 2nd Amendment rights are going to become overwhelming.
But taking away our 2nd Amendment rights is not going to solve the problem. Instead, it will just take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.
The truth is that the El Paso shooter picked a gun-free zone for a reason. When they know that their targets will be sitting ducks, that just makes things even easier for the mass shooters.
And the bad guys will always find ways to get guns. Just look at the city of Chicago – they have some of the harshest gun laws in the entire nation, but they also lead the country in gun deaths.
Unfortunately, logic doesn’t tend to work with those that love authoritarianism. Whenever something happens, they want the government to do “something”, and that “something” almost always involves eroding our most basic rights.
I wish that it wasn’t true, but this is where our country is heading. Americans have been trained to believe that the government should take care of them from the cradle to the grave and should do all that it can to shield them from everything bad that can possibly happen in life.
Sadly, every time such a totalitarian “utopia” has been attempted throughout human history, it has always ended very badly, and that will be the case here as well.
- Cathay Pacific Airline Admits Spying On Passengers With Seatback TV Cams And Airport Surveillance
Passengers on Hong-Kong-based Cathay Pacific have been warned that their movements and preferences will be recorded by the airline via seatback in-flight entertainment screens equipped with cameras, according to News.com.au.
Seatback entertainment system camera (via news.com.au) What’s more, the airline says the data will be stored indefinitely, or “as long as necessary.”
Their new policy was introduced last week, according to Forbes, which explains that images taken from CCTV on the plane as well as at airports could be held by the airline.
The policy explains that they collect “information such as previous travel arrangements, feedback about your experiences, details of lost luggage and other claims, your use of our in-flight entertainment system and in-flight connectivity, your images captured via CCTV in our airport lounges and aircraft”. –News.com.au
According to the report, this may allow Cathay Pacific to “build an extremely detailed database of passengers, including what they look like, what they do at the airport and what programs they watch on the plane.”
Moreover, the airline says that while they will do their best to make sure the information is secure, “no data transmission over the internet … can be guaranteed to be secure from intrusion.”
So – ‘sorry if we get hacked’ in other words.
While the information could be used to personalise your experience and comply with local laws, your details could also be shared with “third party partners for marketing purposes”.
The change in policy follows a major data breach last year where 9.4 million Cathay Pacific passengers had their data stolen.
Data that was accessed included passport numbers and identity cards. –News.com.au
In-flight cameras made headlines earlier this year when passengers spotted the surveillance devices on airlines such as United, Delta, American Airlines and Singapore Airlines. They have all said the cameras weren’t active, and were simply a part of the screens they bought. While some passengers began covering up the cameras, the airlines were eventually forced to do so to “reassure customers.”
“We will retain the personal data as long as is necessary to fulfil business needs. The information that is no longer needed is either irreversibly anonymised or securely destroyed,” said a Cathay Pacific spokesperson to Sun Online Travel, adding “In line with standard practice and to protect our customers and frontline staff, there are CCTV cameras installed in our airport lounges and on-board aircraft for security purposes. All images are handled sensitively with strict access controls. There are no CCTV cameras installed in the lavatories.”
- UN Report Shows US Forces Kill More Afghan Civilians Than ISIS & Taliban…Combined
Authored by Matt Agorist via TheFreeThoughtProject.com,
The war in Afghanistan has reached new levels of insanity as a UN report shows US forces are killing more civilians than ISIS and Taliban combined.
For the last several decades, the US government has openly funded, supported, and armed various terrorist networks throughout the world to forward an agenda of destabilization and proxy war. It is not a secret, nor a conspiracy theory—America arms bad guys. The situation has gotten so overtly corrupt that the government admitted in May the Pentagon asked Congress for funding to reimburse terrorists for their transportation and other expenses. Seriously. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. A new report from the United Nations shows the US and its allies in Afghanistan have killed more innocent men, women, and children than the group they claim are the bad guys, the Taliban.
The now 18-year-old quagmire in Afghanistan is raising serious questions and once again, it appears that the civilians are taking the brunt of the hit — not the ostensible enemy.
According to a report in the NY Times:
In the first six months of the year, the conflict killed nearly 1,400 civilians and wounded about 2,400 more. Afghan forces and their allies caused 52 percent of the civilian deaths compared with 39 percent attributable to militants — mostly the Taliban, but also the Islamic State. The figures do not total 100 percent because responsibility for some deaths could not be definitively established.
The higher civilian death toll caused by Afghan and American forces comes from their greater reliance on airstrikes, which are particularly deadly for civilians. The United Nations said airstrikes resulted in 363 civilian deaths and 156 civilian injuries.
“While the number of injured decreased, the number of civilians killed more than doubled in comparison to the first six months of 2018, highlighting the lethal character of this tactic,” the United Nations report said, referring to airstrikes.
Naturally, the US military calls this report by the UN anti-American propaganda.
“We assess and investigate all credible allegations of noncombatant casualties in this complex environment, whereas others intentionally target public areas, use civilians as human shields and attempt to hide the truth through lies and propaganda,” Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for the United States military, said.
The line between the ostensible “good guys” and the “bad guys” has gotten so blurred that the good guys are now openly supporting the bad while simultaneously killing more innocent people than the bad ones. It’s a story straight out of The Onion, but in real life.
While the idea of the US government paying to support terrorists or killing more civilians than terrorists may seem like a crazed notion it has become so overt in recent years that legislation was specifically introduced for the sole purpose of banning the the flow of money to terrorist organizations.
However, given the insidious history of the American empire and its creation and fostering of terrorist regimes across the globe, it should come as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of politicians would refuse to sign on to a law that requires them to ‘Stop Arming Terrorists.’ And, in 2017, that is exactly what happened.
The text of the bill was quite simple and contained no hidden agendas. It merely stated that it prohibits the use of federal agency funds to provide covered assistance to: (1) Al Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or any individual or group that is affiliated with, associated with, cooperating with, or adherents to such groups; or (2) the government of any country that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) determines has, within the most recent 12 months, provided covered assistance to such a group or individual.
The only thing the bill did was prohibit the US government from giving money and weapons to people who want to murder Americans and who do murder innocent men, women, and children across the globe. It is quite possibly the simplest and most rational bill ever proposed by Congress. Given its rational and humanitarian nature, one would think that representatives would have been lining up to show their support. However, one would be wrong and in the five months after it was proposed, just 13 members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors.
Not only is the United States refusing to stop arming terrorists, but now they are becoming more violent than the terrorists they claim to fight. At what point do the American people wake up to this insanity?
Sadly, it appears that the American people couldn’t care less about innocent men women and children being slaughtered with their tax dollars on the other side of the planet. They only seem to pay attention to the area when one of these people — whose seen their children blown to a fine red mist by a US drone strike — acts out in a retaliatory way. But instead of understanding that this is blowback caused by US foreign policy, Boobus Americanus thinks these people simply “hate our freedom.”
Terrorism is necessary for the state. War, is the health of the state.
Without the constant fear mongering about an enemy who ‘hates our freedom’, Americans begin questioning things. They challenge the status quo and inevitably desire more freedom. However, when they are told that boogeymen want to kill them, they become immediately complacent and blinded by their fear.
While these boogeymen were once mostly mythical, since 9/11, they have been funded and supported by the US to the point that they now pose a very real threat to innocent people everywhere. As the horrific attacks earlier this year in Sri Lanka illustrate, terrorists are organizing and spreading.
Terrorists groups have been exposed inside the UK as well for having ties to the British government who allowed them to freely travel and train with ISIS-linked groups because those groups were in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, who the West wanted to snub out.
It’s a vicious cycle of creating terrorists, killing innocence, and stoking war. And, unless something radical happens, it shows no signs of ever reversing.
The radical change that is necessary to shift this paradigm back to peace is for people to wake up to the reality that no matter which puppet is in the White House, the status quo remains unchanged.
Trump is proving that he can lie to get into power and his supporters ignore it. If you doubt this fact, look at what Trump did by calling out Saudi Arabia for their role in 9/11 and their support for terror worldwide prior to getting elected. He now supports these terrorists and his constituency couldn’t care less.
This madness has to stop. Humanity has to stop being fooled by rhetoric read from teleprompters by puppets doing the bidding of their masters. If Americans aren’t shaken out of this stupor by the idea that the US military and its allies are now killing more innocent people than the Taliban and ISIS — combined — perhaps
- Indian Rupee Plunges Most In Six Years Amid Trade War And Kashmir Chaos
The Indian rupee (INR) plunged the most in six years amid turmoil in both global equity and currency markets to start the week.
The rupee fell to 70.74 against the US dollar, could test 71.50 level in the coming weeks.
What sparked the overnight currency chaos was China allowing its yuan to pass 7-per-dollar level for the first time since 2008 after President Trump last week escalated the trade war by slapping a 10% tariff on an additional $300 billion of Chinese imports.
The weakness in the rupee was also intensified by uncertainty over Kashmir, a nationwide economic slowdown, and increasing foreign capital outflows.
Cabinet members met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to address currency volatility and a deteriorating situation in Kashmir along the Line of Control (LoC).
India removed the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, a move that is expected to increase the deteriorating security situation in the region, Bloomberg noted.
Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament on Monday that Prime Minister Modi scrapped Article 370 of the constitution that granted a degree of autonomy to Kashmire to draft its laws except in communications, defense, finance, and foreign affairs.
“The worries over the political situation in Kashmir and the yuan depreciation are weighing on the currency,” said Paresh Nayar, currency and money markets head at FirstRand Ltd. in Mumbai.
On Monday evening, India’s Upper House passes a bill splitting Jammu and Kashmir into two different administrative states.
Leading up to Monday’s government order, intense fighting between India and Pakistan flared up late last week through the weekend.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday requested the international community to mediate the developing crisis as India continues to strengthen its military forces in Kashmir.
Khan accused India on Saturday of shelling and using cluster bombs on civilians across densely populated areas on the LoC. He asked the United Nations to monitor the situation.
Several Indian television news outlets have reported that Indian military reinforcements are arriving in the Himalayan territory amid threats of conflict with Pakistan.
The India Times reported Saturday that Indian Armed Forces had deployed howitzer artillery pieces in response to what they say Pakistan has broken ceasefire agreements.
#BREAKING
India deploys Bofors guns on LoC . @gauravcsawant joins in for more
LIVE : https://t.co/4fqxBVUizL pic.twitter.com/1yBwH8Wi4y— India Today (@IndiaToday) August 3, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Meanwhile, an economic slowdown has plagued Prime Minister Modi’s economy, as new data from the Reserve Bank of India showed disbursed retail loans were at their lowest level in 1H19 in more than five years.
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