Reader’s Links for December 26, 2020

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

33 Replies to “Reader’s Links for December 26, 2020”

  1. Four people seriously injured in shooting in Berlin as police launch manhunt for perpetrators (RT, Dec 26, 2020)
    https://www.rt.com/news/510776-berlin-kreuzberg-shooting-germany/

    “Four individuals were rushed to the hospital with serious injuries resulting from a shooting in the German capital, according to Berlin’s police and fire services. Security forces are currently searching for suspects.

    The incident occurred in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district in the early hours of Saturday. A police spokesman confirmed that there had been a shooting involving several people but did not provide more details.

    In a message posted to Twitter, the city’s fire department said that three people had been hospitalized with serious injuries. Two of the victims were found at the crime scene while the third person was pulled from a nearby canal with an injury to his leg, Berliner Zeitung reported. Police later confirmed that a fourth person had been hurt in the incident.

    Local media, citing eyewitness accounts, said that heavily armed security personnel had been deployed to the scene to search for those involved in the shooting. A police helicopter was also used in the operation.

    Authorities are still trying to determine the circumstances that led to the shooting.”

  2. A collectivist by any other name should smell so–.

    Transhumanism is the perfect example of collectivist self-delusion seeing only what it chooses to see rather than reality.

    The net result of this endeavor will be less creativity, not more. Capping the well of human innovation won’t end well.

    I have yet to see a single article written addressing the intelligence quotient problem of artificial intelligence. There exists no test for the creativity component of human intelligence because creativity is, necessarily, a moving target most difficult to quantify. If you think you can hold it or measure it, you’ve lost it. Forgive me, but programming a machine to be creative sounds like something that comes from some Chinese or Japanese lab. Only the non-creative mind tries to paint by numbers the cognitive flamboyance of what amounts to associative chaos. The CCP admits to this with its constant thievery of ideas and technology, does it not? And the big problem with thievery of ideas is you’re always one step behind. And the biggest problem with AI is that it isn’t human. Sure, it has its place for the good of humanity, but this won’t happen in collectivists’ hands for political purposes.

    If you’re not creative you will not progress.

    Klaus (Thumb Sucker) Schwab and his “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is a glorified used-car salesman, selling antiquated sci-fi sexy Jetson’s utopia with uninvented technology.

    Transhumanism, I suppose, is a word that appeals to collectivists who quite hate themselves. No healthy person wants to “trans-” into anything more than a flatter stomach or a new haircut, because they are generally satisfied with themselves. I bet Klaus secretly wears lady’s underpants, and has a tattoo of the whole world on his arse. Every time he farts half the planet separates.

    https://mises.org/wire/dystopian-fourth-industrial-revolution-will-be-very-different-first-one

    • “…fourth [wave] Industrial Revolution will “lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness.””

      All Religions claim they are “a new collective and moral consciousness.”. They ascribe themselves the True Belief with eternal pain and damnation to unbelievers.
      They are all genocidal.

      To break free from this “collective and moral consciousness” code, is to repent of the Pride of Association, to be still, to find the memory of the child that submitted to conform or rebel to their intimidations of plastic-niceness and manevolence.

      And then with the awful realization, apologize to that first person or event that violated you. To realize they were unconscious. A clone themselves. Their mind is not your mind. They claim unagree-ers makes them offended and force them to do wicked things but all will be peace if only you hand them your soul to copy them. And you, so small, imprisoned and made dependent on their handouts to live, had no choice.

      Minds altered by imprinted terror. Now become willing-slaves from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil. Everyone under the yolk halal and haram.

      Transhumans looking for superior vessels on Earth, rather than being cast into pigs, or as superior masters in Heaven taking revenge of past trangressors Every possible distraction, to deny the kingdom of god.

      John the Baptist, his disciple Jesus, and his disciples – all followed the Way to bring the lost sheep of Israel back to the fulfillment of The Law. Never changes. The truth sets you free. Those too fundamentally agressive or too piously passive, too forward or too back to ever live and see the present moment and deal with it. All avoiding a cursing to receive a blessing and made blind.
      https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%203%3A1-2&version=NIV

      • This path of a very simple technique has a great fear for those wanting to let go of their own props and comforts, and a great anger from alcoholics when one of their number announces they are going-sober and will leave the mutual supporters club.

        So it is easier just to glorify the first fellow, wait for Heaven, and blame it on Evil that made you do it.
        https://youtu.be/DMx_JKJbvJI

  3. A lot of people are saying that the Nashville bombing was the work of a “Right Wing” group made about the Covid restrictions. This reminds me of what happened in the 1960s when the terror campaigns started in Italy, no one was taking credit for the bombings and everyone said it was the “Right Wing” or “Nazi’s” that were doing the bombings.

    The one of the bombers screwed up planting a bomb to take out the big electric transmission lines and killed himself. It was a very famous left wing Professor who had been very vocal about the attacks by the “Right Wing”. This was when the Red Brigades started bragging about the bombings that they were doing, this was also the start of the kidnapping of industrialists in Italy. The terror campaigns spread to all of the other European nations with West Germany being the home of the Baader-Meinhof gang also known as the Red Army Faction. ( https://www.thoughtco.com/red-army-faction-also-baader-meinhof-group-germany-3209151 )

    In France you had a lot of small left wing groups and a lot of Arab terror groups, the most famous was “Carlos the Jackal” ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carlos-the-Jackal ) he was famous for his terror attacks but no one knew who he was. A police officer went to question him on a totally different matter, Carlos panicked and before the policeman could explain what he was there for Carlos shot him and ran. A search of the apartment proved that Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, was Carlos the Jackal. ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carlos-the-Jackal ) A world wide man hunt ensued.

    In the US the most famous of the left wing terror groups (the only kind that has ever been proven) was the Weather Underground ( https://www.britannica.com/topic/Weathermen )
    The members of this group that didn’t end up serving life with no parole, blow themselves selves up building bombs or be killed by the police in a shoot out eventually decided to finish their higher degrees and are usually found teaching in Universities where they are radicalizing new generations. Two of this group (Bernadette Dorn and Bill Ayers) were Barrack Obama’s mentors at the University of Chicago. They are suppose to be the people who pushed him to get involved in politics.

    The Western Terror groups of that era were initially trained in West Germany by Soviet (KGB) trainers, when the publicity got too bad the training camps were shifted to North Africa (Algeria among other nations) with the KGB trainers serving on a rotating basis. When the terror campaign died down the European Terrorists sought refuge in East Germany and when the Communist governments of that region fell they fled to Iraq, Syria and a few other Islamic countries.

    • (Richard: I haven’t read the entire article yet so I will take the time to do that see you later. Remember JE is a retired Naval Intelligence Analysist)

      Horrifying bomb attack in Nashville appears to target AT&T hub
      By J.E. Dyer December 26, 2020

      Having a life, I didn’t get to the Internet early on Christmas Day to check into the particulars of the appalling blast that went off in downtown Nashville the morning of 25 December. So I am hardly the first to notice that the homely little RV seen in security camera videos, which apparently carried the bomb to the intended location, was parked directly adjacent to a major regional hub facility for AT&T, located in the 100 block of 2nd Avenue North.

      The AT&T building took the greatest damage from the enormous blast, and I doubt we will learn at any point that something else was supposedly the target. At least two eyewitnesses speaking to local media confirmed that the RV sat on the street a few feet from the AT&T building for some time (apparently a minimum of nearly an hour; possibly more) prior to the blast.

      However, there appears to be a (possibly minor) discrepancy for which I haven’t yet seen a resolution. The location from which the RV seemed to be broadcasting an audio warning over a loudspeaker, if we go by the viral image seen across American TV screens on Friday, was not the location where it blew up. It’s not just that an eyewitness interviewed on a local news station described a different location (video below). It’s that there’s no bomb blast where the RV was sitting in that viral image. The bomb blast is visible in post-explosion videos down where the eyewitnesses have said it was just before the explosion. So the RV apparently moved — not just down the street, but across the street — after the Nashville police provided the image that went viral.

      https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/12/26/horrifying-bomb-attack-in-nashville-appears-to-target-att-hub/

  4. BBC Diversity Exec: ‘White Privilege’ Is Fact, White People ‘Will Never Be Discriminated Against’ for Race (breitbart, Dec 26, 2020)
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/26/bbc-diversity-exec-white-privilege-fact-white-people-will-never-discriminated-against/

    “BBC diversity chief June Sarpong has insisted that “white privilege” is a fact and white people “will never be discriminated against” for their race.

    Sarpong, the London-born daughter of Ghanaian migrants, told the Telegraph that “There is unfairness baked into our system” in an interview on her role as the publicly-funded broadcaster’s director of creative diversity.

    “I don’t for a single second say that all white people are privileged. Of course not. But there are benefits even if you come from a low income and you’re white. You’re never judged on your race,” she claimed, adding: “You may be discriminated against because of class, you may be discriminated against because of your age, you may be discriminated against because of gender, size, etc, but you will never be discriminated against because of your race and that in itself feeds into the concept of white privilege.”

    This is arguably not the case at the BBC, however, which frequently advertises so-called training opportunities and “internships” — which often pay more than a full-time job on the minimum wage — which white people and sometimes white men in particular are banned from applying for.

    Sarpong, who is being paid £75,000 to work three days a week directing a £100 million fund to produce more “diverse and inclusive content” at the BBC — where minorities are already overrepresented and the white working class significantly underrepresented — went on to double down on her belief in the highly contentious idea of “white privilege”, suggesting that many white people merely need to have their eyes opened to it and they will become keen to atone.

    “The thing about modern privilege is that if you’re the beneficiary, often you’re unaware that you’re the beneficiary, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Because the default is white and everything that isn’t is other,” she said.

    “And I think, actually, the minute many white people understand that, they stand up and say, ‘My God, I never knew. I want to be part of the solution.’”

    Sarpong has even released a book titled The Power of Privilege which lectures readers on the subject of How White People Can Challenge Racism, which the Telegraph helpfully promoted in its interview article.

    The installation of Sarpong, a committed leftist who launched the anti-Brexit Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE) campaign and signalled agreement with Boris Johnson’s sister that MPs should overturn the people’s vote to Leave the European Union on a Sky News panel in 2017, is a curious choice for the BBC, already mired in accusations of increasingly blatant left-wing bias, especially given her belief in “white privilege”.

    Being funded by a compulsory licence fee, which all people who watch live television must pay — even if none of it is BBC programming — or else face fines backed by the threat of imprisonment, the BBC is supposed to be neutral on political and social issues, with its staff required to keep their personal views to themselves, at least in theory.”

  5. Poland to Pass Law Protecting Online Free Speech Against Big Tech Censorship (breitbart, Dec 26, 2020)
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/26/poland-to-pass-law-protecting-online-free-speech-against-big-tech-censorship/

    “Poland’s national conservative government has detailed a new law protecting free speech online against Big Tech censorship, backed by a new court and big fines.

    Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro has announced the draft ‘Act for the Freedom to Express One’s Views and Obtain and Disseminate Information on the Internet’ will give social media users a statutory right to appeal bans and content removals on social media platforms such as Facebook on Twitter, which they will be able to escalate to a new Court for the Protection of Freedom of Speech in a streamlined, all-digital process.

    If the new court rules that the tech censors have removed accounts or deleted posts for speech which is legal under Polish law, they must be restored — or the social media firms involved will face fines of as much as 1.8 million euros, enforced by the Slavic country’s Office of Electronic Communications, according to reports.

    “In Germany, the Minister of Justice may arbitrarily decide what content needs to be eliminated from the Internet. This is the introduction of censorship. We want to balance the freedom of public debate,” Ziobro explained of the planned legislation recently.

    “We want to regulate the relationship between social media users and their owners… It is primarily about censorship when expressing opinions that are consistent with Polish law”, added deputy minister Sebastian Kaleta elsewhere.

    Many on the right in the United Kingdom and the United States have suggested that, while they are not happy with what Ziobro has described as “ideological censorship” by tech giants, they prefer the status quo to “the government getting involved” in the affairs of private businesses.

    From the Polish government’s perspective, however, such so-called interference is a constitutional duty: “The Constitution… guarantees full freedom of expression… Therefore, any manifestations of limiting it must meet with the reaction of the state to enable protection against interference with this freedom,” Kaleta insisted.

    “The Left tries to define any fundamental criticism of its views or ideology as ‘hate speech’, and then expects such content to be censored or even punished… the left is trying to consistently implement its anti-democratic aspirations,” he added.

    “This law is a response to what they are trying to impose on us as legal norms, that is, forcing us to censor with political correctness and refrain from expressing one’s opinion.””

  6. After Migrant Camp Burns Down, Hundreds Stuck Out in Balkan Snows (breitbart, Dec 26, 2020)
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/26/after-migrant-camp-burns-down-hundreds-stuck-out-in-balkan-snows/

    “Hundreds of migrants on Saturday were stranded in a burnt-out squalid tent camp in Bosnia as heavy snow fell in the country and temperatures suddenly dropped amid a wintry spell of bad weather.

    Migrants at the Lipa camp in northwest Bosnia wrapped themselves in blankets and sleeping bags to protect against biting winds in the region, which borders European Union member Croatia.

    A fire earlier this week destroyed much of the camp near the town of Bihac that already was harshly criticized by international officials and aid groups as inadequate for housing refugees and migrants.

    Authorities have failed to find new accommodation for the migrants at Lipa, leaving around 1,000 people stuck in the cold, with no facilities or heating and on meager food parcels provided by aid groups.

    “Snow has fallen, sub-zero temperatures, no heating, nothing,” the International Organization for Migration´s chief of mission in Bosnia, Peter Van Der Auweraert, tweeted. “This is not how anyone should live. We need political bravery and action now.”

    Bosnia has become a bottleneck for thousands of migrants hoping to reach Western Europe. Most are stuck in Bosnia´s northwestern Krajina region as other areas in the ethnically divided nation have refused to accept them.

    The EU has warned Bosnia that thousands of migrants face a freezing winter without shelter, and it urged the country´s bickering politicians to set aside their differences and take action to accommodate thousands sleeping rough.

    On Saturday, migrants crowded at the camp to receive water and food provided by Bosnia’s Red Cross as police sought to maintain order. Some migrants wore face shields to protect them from the new coronavirus.

    Plans to relocate the migrants temporarily to a closed facility in central Bihac have prompted protests by residents.

    Left without a solution, migrants put down carboard on the floor and set up improvised barriers for a piece of privacy inside the only standing tent at the Lipa camp.

    Some people held up their wet feet above the small fires migrants lit outside to warm up, while others held blankets tight next to their bodies for warmth. Many migrants were wearing sneakers despite the snow.

    To get to Croatia, migrants often use illegal routes over a mountainous area along the border. Many have complained of violence and pushbacks by the Croatian police.”

  7. Sweden: Asylum Seeker Interpreter Told Migrant Not To ‘Smear Islam’ (breitbart, Dec 26, 2020)
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/26/sweden-asylum-seeker-interpreter-told-migrant-not-to-smear-islam/

    “Interpreters in Sweden for asylum seekers and other migrants have been accused of major misconduct with one interpreter telling an asylum seeker not to “smear Islam.”

    Interpreters in Sweden fall into two categories, those with official government authorization and those without, but that authorisation can be stripped in cases of abuse or misconduct as faulty interpretations can greatly affect asylum claims, trials, and other cases.

    According to a report from Swedish television broadcaster SVT, there are high standards to strip the authorization of an interpreter and those that have had their authorization stripped were accused of serious misconduct such as engaging in multiple scams. In one case uncovered by the broadaster, a translator is said to have told off the migrant he was supposed to be translating for after the individual had spoke critically of Islam.

    The broadcaster notes that as many as four out of five complaints made against interpreters are usually ignored totally and written off, while those who have their authorization removed are still able to work as interpreters. Some unauthorised interpreters have even received jobs from the Swedish state.

    Magnus Bengtsson, an employee at the Swedish Migration Board, had previously admitted to the SVT that while the migration board prefers authorized interpreters, particularly for important cases, it also employed unauthorised interpreters as well due to high overall demand.

    After reviewing cases in which interpreters had been reported for misconduct, the broadcaster found one case in which an interpreter was accused of engaging in 47 fraud scams, another where an interpreter ruined a trial of a person accused of murdering a child, causing a mistrial, and a case of an interpreter linked to an anti-semitic radical Islamist group.

    A lack of interpreters following the height of the 2015 migrant crisis may have led to police in the city of Helsingborg having to release a teen who was suspected of murdering another teen because they were unable to find an interpreter in 2017.

    While the bar is high for removing authorisation of most interpreters, that was not the case for one interpreter in 2016 who was suspended for criticising mass migration and claiming that Arab migrants lied in order to get asylum in the country.!

    • Where is nurse tiffany dover & why do alabama records show her deceased?
      16min video.

      At 9min mark I think, he shows a video of a guy looking up each name from tiffany dover’s death record on her social media account, and most of the names are on her account.

      https://youtu.be/GITIUq-jqgU

  8. Trump Doubles Down on Sending $2,000 Stimulus Checks to Struggling Americans
    By Katabella Roberts
    December 26, 2020 Updated: December 26, 2020
    biggersmaller Print

    President Donald Trump insisted that he wants to send $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans who are impacted by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

    “I simply want to get our great people $2,000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill. Also, stop the billions of dollars in ‘pork,’” he wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday morning.

    The president apparently was referring to the personally motivated spending in the COVID relief and Omnibus spending bill which was passed in the House and the Senate.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that the bill has been enrolled and sent to the White House.

    Trump implied in a video statement on Dec. 22—after the bill was passed in the Congress—that he would block the bill unless Congress removed billions in spending allocated to foreign nations and domestic institutions unrelated to the battle against the COVID-19, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, the disease caused by the CCP virus.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-doubles-down-on-sending-2000-stimulus-checks-to-struggling-americans_3632892.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-26-1

  9. A COVID-19 Vaccine Has Caused Side Effects for People With Cosmetic Facial Fillers
    By Zachary Stieber
    December 26, 2020 Updated: December 26, 2020
    biggersmaller Print

    One of the two COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States caused facial swelling for people with cosmetic facial fillers.

    According to information presented during this month’s meeting of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, two of four serious adverse events related to the vaccine in a phase 3 clinical trial happened to patients with the fillers, which are gel-like substances injected beneath the skin to help create a smoother and/or fuller appearance in the face.

    One trial participant received the injection two weeks prior to getting vaccinated. The other received it six months prior to the shot. Both experienced facial swelling. The swelling was related to the vaccine, according to Moderna and an investigator.

    “It is possible the localized swelling in these cases is due to an inflammatory reaction from interaction between the immune response after vaccination and the dermal filler. This phenomenon has been reported after natural infection (e.g., after an influenza-like illness),” the administration said in its briefing document to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-covid-19-vaccine-has-caused-side-effects-for-people-with-cosmetic-facial-fillers_3632988.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-26-1

  10. Giuliani: Election-Related Cases Going to ‘Blow Up’ After Christmas
    By Zachary Stieber
    December 26, 2020 Updated: December 26, 2020
    biggersmaller Print

    Election-related lawsuits and similar matters are going to “blow up” after Christmas, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said this week.

    In a self-hosted podcast episode, Giuliani told listeners that there is “considerable movement” in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin towards decertification of the election results amid a growing body of evidence of election fraud.

    “So starting after Christmas, this is really going to blow up,” he said. “Because the evidence that all these crooked television networks, newspapers, big tech, and the leadership of the Democratic Party, have been giving you is false. And you’re going to find that out all at once. It’s going to be very shocking to the country.”

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/giuliani-election-related-cases-going-to-blow-up-after-christmas_3633023.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-26-2

    • This will cause a major uproar in DC and in the Propaganda Media, how dare the States interfere in and election they have declared for Biden?

  11. FAA shuts down air space over Nashville after bombing and military warns the U.S. government will use ‘deadly force’ against any aircraft that enters as FBI hunts attacker

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has designated the airspace around the area of Friday’s bombing in downtown Nashville as a ‘national defense airspace,’ threatening ‘deadly force’ to any aircraft that poses as a possible security threat.

    The FAA issued an alert on Friday night stating that an area of one nautical mile would be zoned off, along 2nd Avenue street where the explosion took place.

    ‘Pilots who do not adhere to the following procedures may be intercepted, detained and interviewed by law enforcement/security personnel,’ the alert reads.

    n addition to the penalties from the FAA, the U.S. government ‘may pursue criminal charges’ or ‘deadly force’ against the airborne aircraft if it is determined that the aircraft ‘poses an imminent security threat.’

    The restriction are valid until 4.45pm on December 30.

    The FBI is probing whether Nashville’s Christmas Day bombing was deliberately designed to target police officers, after they were lured into the area prior to the massive explosion.

    The blast – which injured three people and caused massive damage to the city’s downtown area – emanated from a white RV parked on 2nd Avenue at 6.40 am Friday.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9089147/FAA-shuts-air-space-Nashville-bombing-military-warns-use-deadly-force.html

  12. Wisconsin Lawmakers Join Lawsuit to Block Certification of Presidential Electors
    By Tom Ozimek
    December 25, 2020 Updated: December 25, 2020
    biggersmaller Print

    Two Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have joined a federal lawsuit that seeks to block the counting of Electoral College votes from several contested states when Congress meets in a joint session on Jan. 6.

    Wisconsin state Reps. Jeff Mursau and David Steffen signed onto a suit filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society and the Wisconsin Voters Alliance, among others. Also included in the list of plaintiffs are two GOP members of the Michigan House, Reps. Matt Maddock and Daire Rendon, according to the complaint (pdf).

    Attorney Erick Kaardal of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society argued in the complaint that the state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona were prevented from exercising their power under the U.S. Constitution to certify the presidential electors’ votes cast on Dec. 14.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/wisconsin-lawmakers-join-lawsuit-to-block-certification-of-presidential-electors_3632577.html?utm_source=morningbriefnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-12-26

  13. CHINA IS SETTING A TRAP FOR INDIA! China’s offer for disengagement in East Ladakh is a trap.

  14. Kuwait Thwarts Possible ISIS Terrorist Attack on New Year’s Eve
    https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2704456/kuwait-thwarts-possible-isis-terrorist-attack-new-year%E2%80%99s-eve

    “Kuwait’s security services have thwarted a possible ISIS terrorist attack targeting compounds and places of worship on New Year’s Eve.

    The government decided to close the places of worship and ban gatherings during the celebration of religious holidays in public areas, starting Dec.24.

    Although it linked the decision to the preventive measures applied to limit the spread of coronavirus, it came amid news of a raised security alert after exposingthe ISIS cell.

    Six young Kuwaitis have been arrested for contacting the terrorist organization, sources said, adding that it recruited them through a famous online game.

    Al-Qabas Newspaper reported that the Ministry of Interior’s investigations with the juvenile cell revealed that its main operator was the son of a former member in the National Assembly.

    Apparently, he was the first to be contacted and enrolled by ISIS members, it noted.

    The young boy recruited the rest of his comrades in favor of the extremist organization, the newspaper noted, adding that they were asked to target compounds and mosques on New Year’s Eve.

    Police confiscated firearms and computers that contained chats and coordination schemes to carry out terrorist acts in the juveniles’ possession.

    The interior ministry deployed patrols of fully equipped special forces units inside residential complexes and shopping malls in a step aimed at imposing discipline and observing the law, it said.

    This is not the first time that ISIS targets Kuwait. In 2015, the terrorist organization carried out a suicide attack against a mosque in the al-Sawaber area in the capital, killing 27 and injuring 227 in June 2015.

    On Nov. 19, 2015, authorities arrested members of an extremist network that financed ISIS’s terrorist activities and obtained missiles and ammunition for the terrorist organization. The cell included 10 people, most of whom were foreigners.”

  15. Iraq’s Central Bank under investigation for alleged money laundering
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-central-bank-investigation-alleged-money-laundering

    “Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council is investigating the country’s central bank and 13 private banks over alleged involvement in money laundering and terrorist financing operations, lawmakers and officials have told Middle East Eye.

    In response to a parliamentary probe that ended last month, the council is understood to be investigating cases of customs and tax evasion and potential fraud in connection with the foreign exchange auction run by the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) and the 13 private entities.

    A statement issued by the Supreme Judicial Council on Thursday said that the Rusafa Investigation Court, which oversees cases of integrity, money laundering and economic crimes, had decided to “bring in” the directors of the banks “for violating the procedures of the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Law (No 39) of 2015”.

    The statement did not mention any details of the “violations”, or the names of the banks involved. However, the Parliamentary Finance Committee revealed the existence of “suspicious operations” concerning officials in the CBI, who were reported to be aiming to exploit the foreign exchange auction…”

  16. Erdogan says Turkey will break economic ‘triangle of evil’ with reforms
    https://gulfnews.com/business/erdogan-says-turkey-will-break-economic-triangle-of-evil-with-reforms-1.76126056

    “Ankara: Turkey will bring in structural reforms to break the “triangle of evil” of interest rates, inflation and exchange rates, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, adding Ankara was determined to form a system based on production and employment.

    Erdogan promised a slate of judicial and economic reforms last month, leading to expectations of the possible release of politicians, including Kurdish ones, and human rights advocates from jail. But Erdogan’s recent comments on court rulings and criticism aimed at his government have fuelled scepticism about his pledge…”

  17. Terrorism Suspect Dies After Hunger Strike in Sale Prison
    https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2020/12/329890/terrorism-suspect-dies-after-hunger-strike-in-sale-prison/

    “A terrorism suspect in Sale prison died today after a month and a half-long hunger strike he started in early November. A statement by Morocco’s national prison administration announced that the detainee died at 7am on Saturday morning.

    The detainee in question was suspected to be affiliated to international extremist group the

    Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIS or Daesh. He had refused meals at the Sale prison, saying they came from “the tyrant.” The prisoner had announced his hunger strike on November 9 and again on November 13.

    On Friday, the terrorism suspect was brought to Ibn Sina University Hospital in Rabat for medical examinations. He was then transferred back to Sale prison, where he died the following morning despite the efforts of the prison’s medical staff. Morocco’s prison authority has informed the public prosecutor and the detainnee’s family of his death…”