ecumenism, global church, Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar, International Day of Human Fraternity, vatican
On Saturday, only three days after the inauguration of Joe Biden, the city of Seattle suddenly announced that vandals who destroy property during protests will be arrested and prosecuted more vigorously.
Seattle interim police Chief Adrian Diaz announced that the decision was made in coordination with City Attorney Pete Holmes, and enforcement would commence Saturday afternoon, the Seattle Times reported.
Diaz said of the rioters, “They’re focused on breaking windows, and these are things we need to work on,” adding that people who have been arrested “four or five times” for vandalism will be prosecuted more heavily. He asserted, “We will be prosecuting these crimes from now on. … When we don’t have any form of accountability for people — and many of them are coming from outside the city — they will continue to do that activity, and we can’t have that.”
“Diaz said police have arrested about 600 people for various incidents in riots or protests since last spring, and often misdemeanors haven’t been prosecuted,” the Seattle Times noted. Read More
Israel 365: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas addresses a rally commemorating the fifth anniversary of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s death in the West Bank city of in Ramallah on November 11, 2009.Abbas stood by his demand for a complete Israeli settlement freeze as he addressed tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered to honour Arafat.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued an official decree last Friday, ordering that elections be held within seven months. According to the decree, elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council will be held on May 22. Another round of elections will be held on for the Palestinian Authority president on July 31. Yet another round will be held on August 31 for the Palestinian National Council. Just prior to the announcement, Abbas issued a number of unilateral amendments to the Palestinian elections law.
The last time elections were held in the P)A was 2006 and Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005 after replacing Yasser Arafat, who served a four-year term lasting from 1994-2004. In those elections to determine rule over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, Hamas won 74 seats out of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Abbas’ party, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (an outgrowth of the terrorist organization founded by Arafat), refused to allow them into the government but Hamas took control of Gaza by force, expelling the PLO. The PA, which was formed as a result of the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, then took control of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria. \
In 2018, Abbas dissolved the Parliament, promising new elections within six months. Those elections were never held. Read More
Zero Hedge: Janet Yellen is Joe Biden’s Treasury Secretary nominee. She claims to support “market forces” as the driver for the US dollar. What does that really mean in a practical sense?
Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is also a prior Fed Chair. I noted her Swiss Cheese Statements on the US Dollar.
“The United States doesn’t seek a weaker currency to gain competitive advantage. We should oppose attempts by other countries to do so.”
Yellen can make whatever swiss cheese statements she wants but how would a central bank act if it wanted to sink the dollar?
The Jerome Powell Fed is five for five on doing the very things that would cause the dollar to sink and Yellen supports all of them. Read More
On May 1, 2020, President Trump signed Executive Order 13920, “Securing the United States Bulk-Power System,” to prevent foreign adversaries from creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system.
“The bulk-power system is a target of those seeking to commit malicious acts against the United States and its people, including malicious cyber activities,” the executive order read. “Although maintaining an open investment climate in bulk-power system electric equipment, and in the United States economy more generally, is important for the overall growth and prosperity of the United States, such openness must be balanced with the need to protect our Nation against a critical national security threat.”
In December, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette issued a prohibition order “designed to reduce the risks that entities associated with the People’s Republic of China pose to the Nation’s bulk-power system” under Executive Order 13920, which took effect January 16, 2021—mere days before Biden’s inauguration.
On his first day in office, Joe Biden suspended Executive Order 13920 for 90 days as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.”
According to the order, “The Secretary of Energy and the Director of OMB shall jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.”
While it remains to be seen whether a replacement order will be issued, and whether a replacement would similarly protect Americas’s bulk-power system from being exploited by foreign adversaries, it’s still hard to understand why Trump’s executive order was suspended in the first place.
Was it simply an anti-Trump action or was it because of his son Hunter Biden?
As CNN reported last month, “After [Joe Biden] left office in 2017, Hunter Biden worked on securing a deal with CEFC China Energy to invest in US energy projects.” The deal fell through, but Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China may very well be a motive behind his father’s suspending Trump’s executive order. Recall that Joe Biden is on the record saying that “China is not our problem.” And he has repeatedly insisted that his son’s business dealings with Ukraine, while he was vice president and the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine, was not a conflict of interest.
While President Trump believed in “America First,” Joe Biden seems to believe in “China First.” Read More
Page Six: There are concerns about Katie Couric as a guest host of “Jeopardy!” after her “condescending, elitist” remarks that GOP and Trump supporters should be “deprogrammed.”
https://youtu.be/jU2orgLDALo
Zero Hedge: President Joe Biden’s United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday stopped executive orders from his predecessor designed to significantly lower prescription drug prices for Americans, including insulin and epinephrine.
The new administration will apparently re-evaluate the executive action from President Donald Trump toward the end of March. It remains unclear if it will be reinstated.
“The HHS Thursday froze the former Trump administration’s December drug policy that requires community health centers to pass on all their insulin and epinephrine discount savings to patients,” Bloomberg Law reported Thursday. “Centers that don’t pass on the savings wouldn’t qualify for federal grants.” Read More
Antifa, Donald Trump, insurrection, Joe Biden, national civilian security force, riots
Jerusalem Online: The Economic Affairs Committee on Thursday approve a measure that all passengers entering Israel from abroad would need to present a negative coronavirus test performed within 72 hours of take-off, or present a “recovering or “inoculated” certificate issued on behalf of the Health Ministry. Failure to provide a negative test will result in a NIS 2,500 fine.
The decision is scheduled to go into effect at midnight between Friday and Saturday in order to give airlines and passengers ample time to prepare.
“This government is in one big panic. The Ben Gurion Airport fiasco is a national fiasco that will be investigated and examined by an inquiry commission that will surely be established. All the corona and all its mutations were imported through Ben Gurion Airport,” said MK Boaz Toporovsky
“They wanted to bring the decision for approval in the middle of the night to avoid a public debate and to allow people to arrive. It’s good that it happened and we will vote in favor of it, but it’s a shame that it happened after 4,000 deaths,” he said. Read More
Zero Hedge: Of all the technological revolutions we’ll live through in this next decade, none will be more fundamental or pervasive than the transition to digital cash. Money touches nearly everything we do, and although all those swipes and taps and PIN-entry moments may make it seem as though cash is already digital, all of that tech merely eases access to our bank accounts. Cash remains stubbornly physical. But that’s soon going to change.
As with so much connected to digital payments, the Chinese got there first. Prompted by the June 2019 public announcement of Facebook’s Libra (now Diem)—the social media giant’s private form of digital cash—the People’s Bank of China unveiled Digital Currency/Electronic Payments, or DCEP.
Having rolled out the new currency to tens of millions of users who now hold digital yuan in electronic wallets, the bank expects that by the time Beijing hosts the 2022 Winter Olympics, DCEP will be in widespread use across what some say is the world’s biggest economy.
Indeed, the bank confidently predicts that by the end of the decade digital cash will displace nearly all of China’s banknotes. Read More
conspiracy, National Guard, Revelation, Satan, totalitarianism
Arutz Sheva: Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Friday urged US President Joe Biden to “choose a better path” by returning to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, Reuters reports.
Zarif, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, also warned that the opportunity would be lost if Washington insists on further Iranian concessions up front.
Biden “can begin by removing all sanctions imposed since Trump assumed office and seek to re-enter and abide by the 2015 nuclear deal without altering its painstakingly negotiated terms,” wrote the top Iranian diplomat.
In turn, Iran would reverse all the remedial measures it has taken in the wake of Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal,” he added, stressing that the “initiative squarely rests with Washington”
Zarif also stressed that temporary limitations on Iran’s defense and missile procurements under the 2015 deal cannot be re-negotiated.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 agreement nearly three years ago, and proceeded to reimpose crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Read More