UK Govt: Lockdown Likely to Last 12+ Months, ‘Hard Winter’ Coming, Repeated Vaccinations May Be Required

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Lockdowns won’t end until anticipated vaccines “come to our aid” in the future and the country can expect a “hard winter”, the Prime Minister has said, as the government’s science advisor warned it is quite possible the coronavirus will simply mutate to outperform vaccinations.

Speaking at the Downing Street press conference hours after the details of the new post-lockdown-lockdown were revealed to the country, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made clear to the nation that there was no reasonable hope of lockdown ending soon, saying merely that there was “reason to hope” that spring would see an end of “this era of restrictions”.

Given the United Kingdom’s regime of lockdowns began in March 2020, it stands to reason that the Prime Ministers remarks confirm that the nation’s lockdown will be in place with varying degrees of intensity for at least a full calendar year.

As England emerges from the so-called second lockdown running into early December and heads straight into tighter-than-before tiered regional lockdowns, the Prime Minister also teased that things stand to get worse before they improve. Johnson said: “to get there we must first navigate a hard winter, when the burden on our NHS is heaviest, and cold weather favours the virus… If we ease off now, we risk losing control all over again.” . . .

Yet subsequent comments by the science experts flanking the Prime Minister at Thursday’s conference made clear that the arrival of a vaccine would not necessarily herald the end of Covid-19 as repeat vaccinations may, in the eyes of the government, be required in return for allowing society to re-establish itself. (Read more from “UK Govt: Lockdown Likely to Last 12+ Months, ‘Hard Winter’ Coming, Repeated Vaccinations May Be Required” HERE)

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Chinese President Pushes for Global Tracking System

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Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing for a global tracking system using QR codes to monitor people and any potential exposure to the coronavirus, which originated in China.

“China mandated the widespread use of QR-based health certificates earlier this year. The system, which uses an electronic barcode to store a person’s travel and health history, has been credited with helping to curb the spread of the virus,” CNN reported. “The code issues users with a color code based on their potential exposure to the novel coronavirus. The colors are like traffic lights — green is safest, then amber and finally red.”

Xi, who has religious minorities locked up in concentration camps, made the remarks at the virtual G20 leaders’ meeting on Saturday, saying [emphasis added]:

While containing the virus, we need to restore the secure and smooth operation of global industrial and supply chains. We need to reduce tariffs and barriers, and explore the liberalization of trade of key medical supplies. We need to further harmonize policies and standards and establish “fast tracks” to facilitate the orderly flow of personnel. China has proposed a global mechanism on the mutual recognition of health certificates based on nucleic acid test results in the form of internationally accepted QR codes. We hope more countries will join this mechanism. We also support the G20 in carrying out institutionalized cooperation and building global cooperation networks to facilitate the flow of personnel and goods.

(Read more from “Chinese President Pushes for Global Tracking System” HERE)

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State Department Says Anti-American Educators Undermine U.S. Efforts to Counter China

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The United States’ ability to counter the rise of China is being undermined by anti-American attitudes in the education system, according to a new State Department report outlining a longterm strategy to compete with China.

The agency said Americans need to be educated about the strategic threat that Beijing poses to U.S. interests and called for government officials and the public to have access to English translations of Chinese Communist Party speeches. Such an effort, according to the State Department, could be undermined by high school and college systems that are hostile to America’s founding principles and history.

“America’s grade schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities have to a dismaying degree abandoned well-rounded presentations of America’s founding ideas and constitutional traditions in favor of propaganda aimed at vilifying the nation,” the paper reads. “In the face of these polarizing forces, the United States must reclaim its own legacy of liberty.”

Rachelle Peterson, a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars, called the State Department’s assessment of American education “spot on.” Young people raised with a “biased, disfigured teaching of our own history” will be “receptive to Chinese propaganda,” according to Peterson.

“For years, students have been taught American history as an unbroken chain of violated promises, ignoring the groundbreaking work Americans have done to advance the cause of personal liberty and individual responsibility,” Peterson said. “Is it any wonder that students, convinced America is inherently bigoted, find Chinese propaganda persuasive?” (Read more from “State Department Says Anti-American Educators Undermine U.S. Efforts to Counter China” HERE)

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Terrorists Turn to New, High-Tech Weapon for Attacks

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Middle East terrorists are turning to drones, making the technology a “clear security threat around the world.”

The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported Israel has intercepted repeated attempts by terror factions to fly drones into its air space.

“But that doesn’t mean its adversaries have given up on using the tool, or that they aren’t further developing their drone attack capability,” the report said.

The Israel Defense Forces handle threats from outside the nation while the police respond to drone threats from inside.

“A milestone incident underscoring the growing reliance on drones by radical actors came on Sept. 14, 2019, when a swarm of Iranian military attack drones crashed into Saudi oil installations, together with cruise missiles,” the report said. “Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil and natural gas company was forced to suspend 50 percent of its oil production in the aftermath. For the Islamic Republic, it was an exhibition of its new attack capabilities, and a message meant to cow Iran’s Sunni-Arab state rivals.” (Read more from “Terrorists Turn to New, High-Tech Weapon for Attacks” HERE)

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Mexican Ambassador: Let’s Restart Mass Migration Into U.S.

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The United States should reopen itself to migration, amnesties, refugee inflows, asylum seekers, and more temporary contract workers, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday.

The U.S. immigration system “has to be based on facts and realities,” Ambassador Martha Bárcena Coqui told a forum arranged by the National Immigration Forum (NIF). She continued: ‘The facts and realities is the need to protect the most vulnerable, the need to keep open the generosity towards refugees, the need to recognize the complementarity of labor markets and demographic profiles, the need for temporary workers in the United States.”

The United States should not view migration as a security threat, she said, adding, “If you conceptualize migration as a national security issue, if you [push for] securitization of migration, and what is even worse, if you criminalize migration, then your approach always be policing, contentious [and] reduction of migration. So what we need is really to conceptualize migration … as an economic and social and political phenomena.” . . .

“The Mexican ambassador is going to tell us what is in the best interest of Mexico,” responded Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA. “But that doesn’t mean we have to do it — we have to do what’s in the best interest of the United States. of American, of Americans and legal immigrants,” she told Breitbart News, adding:

You know we have the pandemic still raging, we have economic lockdowns still going on, we have unemployment way too high. We have underemployment way too high. We have American citizens hurting. We absolutely do not need to reopen mass immigration — and certainly don’t need to give amnesty and taxpayer benefits to people who came here illegally. If Mexico thinks its plan is to just open up its own southern borders in the hopes that America will open our southern borders, that’s just going to reignite the caravans. I hope that the Biden administration is planning for that because that’s not going to go well, and 2022 is not going to go well for Democrats.

(Read more from “Mexican Ambassador: Let’s Restart Mass Migration Into U.S.” HERE)

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Chinese Journalist Faces Prison Time Over Wuhan COVID Reporting

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Chinese authorities indicted a Shanghai-based citizen journalist for allegedly sending “false information” after she reported on the coronavirus outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China, early this year, a prosecution document released on Monday and seen by the Guardian revealed.

According to the indictment sheet, Zhang Zhan, 37, is accused of sending “false information through text, video and other media through the Internet media such as WeChat [Chinese messaging and social media app], Twitter and YouTube.”

“She also accepted interviews from overseas media Free Radio Asia and Epoch Times and maliciously speculated on Wuhan’s Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] epidemic,” the document stated.

A former lawyer, Zhang was arrested in May following months of continuous online reporting on Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak via social media platforms. Her reporting was highly critical of municipal authorities’ handling of the outbreak. Authorities accused Zhang of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a crime regularly used to jail political dissidents in China. The charge carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

(Read more from “Chinese Journalist Faces Prison Time Over Wuhan COVID Reporting” HERE)

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Iran: ‘Golden Days Will Be Back’ With Biden Presidency

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Iran’s Islamic regime is looking forward to having a Democrat, Joe Biden, in the White House, because it means “golden days will be back.”

“It is unfortunate that Iran’s ruling mullahs view a possible victory of the Democrat Party in U.S. elections as a win for the Tehran regime, its proxies and militia groups,” wrote Majid Rafizadeh, a business adviser and political scientist who is a board member of Harvard International Review.

“President Rouhani has already called for restoring the nuclear deal. It could well be a loss for continuing peace in the region and for finally restoring the violated Iranian people’s hoped-for human rights,” he wrote in a column for the Gatestone Institute.

Rafizadeh, who also is president of the International American Council on the Middle East, said Iran’s leaders are “excitingly” promoting Biden’s claim to have won the 2020 election amid President Trump’s court challenges alleging vote fraud. . .

“The last three years has indeed been a nightmare for the Iranian regime and its proxies. No U.S. administration before the current one has imposed such a draconian pressure on the mullahs, their rogue state and their allies,” he said. (Read more from “Iran: ‘Golden Days Will Be Back’ With Biden Presidency” HERE)

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Trump Announces New Sanctions on China’s Military Industry

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The Trump administration unleashed new sanctions on companies that contribute to China’s military-industrial base, the White House announced Thursday.

The executive order will prohibit Americans from owning shares of 31 companies that support the industrial, communications, and technological capabilities of China’s People’s Liberation Army. Pentagon officials designated the firms as “Communist Chinese military companies” in June and August memos, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The targeted companies have enjoyed the support of American investors—many of the sanctioned firms are traded on Chinese stock exchanges, and two of them are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Even if the latest sanctions are reversed by a Biden administration next year, investment experts believe the White House’s order could deter further American investment in Chinese companies. (Read more from “Trump Announces New Sanctions on China’s Military Industry” HERE)

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ISIS Returns: Jihadis Claim Credit for Saudi WWI Memorial Bombing

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The Islamic State on Thursday claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombing at a World War I cemetery in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah. Two people were injured in what the Saudi government denounced as a “failed and cowardly attack.”

The Jeddah attackers detonated an improvised explosive device at a non-Muslim cemetery where Western diplomats were gathered for a ceremony organized by the French embassy to Saudi Arabia.

The bombers evidently targeted the French, the latest in a series of jihad attacks after cartoons of Mohammed were republished by French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo in September 2020. Jihadis attacked the offices of the magazine in 2015, brutally murdering 12 people and beginning a series of Islamist terrorist attacks across France.

Much the same thing is happening today, beginning with the savage beheading of a teacher in Paris last month after he showed the Mohammed cartoons to his class. French President Emmanuel Macron’s unyielding response to the terror attacks enraged Islamists around the world, bringing threats of terrorism against the French at home and abroad.

The attack in Jeddah injured a Greek consular employee and a Saudi security officer. France’s i24 News reported on Friday that a British citizen may also have been wounded. (Read more from “ISIS Returns: Jihadis Claim Credit for Saudi WWI Memorial Bombing” HERE)

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Iran To Block Inspectors at Nuclear Sites

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Iran will reduce the access international nuclear inspectors have to its sites following a new watchdog report indicating Tehran is stockpiling more than 12 times the amount of enriched uranium allowed under the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Mojtaba Zonnour, chair of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said on Wednesday that the Islamic Republic will continue to reduce the access granted to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is tasked with performing oversight on Iran’s contested nuclear sites. The agency will only be permitted to perform supervisory actions, severely limiting the IAEA’s ability to keep tabs on Iran’s nuclear advancements.

The move comes just days after a confidential IAEA report indicated Iran is hoarding large amounts of enriched uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon. Iran has been steadily increasing its uranium stockpiles in breach of the nuclear accord since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal. The IAEA concluded that Iran’s reasons for producing this amount of uranium are “not credible,” furthering suspicions Tehran has resumed work on an atomic weapon. (Read more from “Iran To Block Inspectors at Nuclear Sites” HERE)

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