Trump Just Threatened HUGE Tariffs on China

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China may back out of trade talks scheduled for this week with U.S. officials after President Donald Trump threatened Beijing with increased tariffs.

Trump said in a Sunday afternoon Twitter post that the current 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods will rise to 25% on Friday. He also threatened to impose 25% levies on an additional $325 billion of Chinese goods “shortly.”

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He had planned to bring a large delegation to Washington on Wednesday to hash out a trade deal — and there’d been talk in recent days that something resembling a deal could result. Instead, two sources briefed on the talks said the Chinese side may back out of this week’s negotiations.

That was pegged to Trump’s new threats, they said, which abandon a six-month truce after Beijing waffled on some previously discussed commitments.

One source said the Chinese vice premier will likely cancel the trip he’d planned for himself and a 100-person delegation for the final round of talks that U.S. officials had previously said could yield a deal by Friday. Chinese officials canceled a trip in late September 2018 in similar circumstances. (Read more from “Trump Just Announced HUGE Tariffs on China” HERE)

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The Next Islamic State Battlefield Will Be in South Asia

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How did a small, fringe Wahhabi splinter group, led by a fiery speaker with a sixth-grade education, known mainly for defacing Buddhist symbols, carry out a coordinated and sophisticated terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka?

The answer is, it didn’t, not without external support, both direct and indirect.

The Sri Lanka attack reinforces the notion that the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is more a brand around which forces with overlapping goals coalesce to exploit local or regional opportunities than an entity.

The events in Sri Lanka were soon followed by the propaganda video reappearance of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who, acknowledging defeat in Syria and specifically citing the Sri Lankan attack, exhorted his followers to expand the fight.

Defeat in Syria has triggered a diaspora of Islamic State fighters either to their native lands or to targets of opportunity such as the thriving extremist networks in South Asia.

The instigators of that extremism and operating continuously in the background are the global promoters of austere and often intolerant forms of Islam such as Wahhabism-Salafism, financed either by wealthy individuals or nation-states that offer forums for radicalization and sources for potential jihadi recruits.

The main group behind the Sri Lankan bombings, the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), is an ideological offspring of the rapidly growing, Saudi-funded Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ), which has a headquarters in Chennai, India. The TNTJ, a Wahhabi-based organization, helped establish the Sri Lanka Thowheed Jamath, from which the NTJ emerged as a splinter.

It is a now well-known fact that some Islamic clerics and preachers play a significant role in the radicalization of young Muslims and their recruitment for terrorist attacks.

As the late Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew said about preventing terrorist attacks:

“You must use force. But force will only deal with the tip of the problem. In killing the terrorists, you will only kill the worker bees. The queen bees are the preachers, who teach a deviant form of Islam in schools and Islamic centers, who capture and twist the minds of the young.”

Today, drug trafficking not only provides funding for terrorism, but there is a growing use of the organizational and logistical capabilities of criminal cartels to support terrorist operations, some of which contribute to the geopolitical ambitions of nation states.

In the South Columbo Muslim area of Dehiwala, a drug trafficker named Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, who was designated by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a terrorist supporter in 2003, reportedly set up a distribution hub. In 2018, authorities seized 736 kilograms of Dawood’s heroin.

According to one article, Dawood’s D-Company cartel obtains opium from Afghanistan, where production is overseen by the Taliban. From there, logistics and transportation are arranged by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), which provides protection for Dawood in his Karachi base and stipulates the distribution of a portion of the profits to various jihadist and militant groups.

There is much concern about the growth of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. There are reports that Islamic State jihadis, who fought in Syria and Iraq, are migrating to Afghanistan, joining disaffected Taliban fighters seeking greater Islamic purity.

Although Afghanistan offers a potential power vacuum, which the Islamic State can fill, a far more fertile ground for expansion is in Pakistan.

It is a little-known fact that the Islamic State now operating in Afghanistan, originated in Pakistan.

Members of the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan or TTP began migrating to Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province as “refugees” in 2010 after Pakistani military operations against the TTP in Orakzai and Khyber Agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

It was those “refugees” who provided a foundation for the Islamic State. That base support was augmented by thousands of Pakistanis who fought for the Islamic State in Syria and returned starting in 2013.

In January 2015, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) was declared with former TTP commander Hafiz Saeed Khan of Orakzai as the leader, whose twelve-member Shura had nine Pakistanis.

It is the growing level of extremism and intolerance in Pakistan that should be of concern, which has been a threat to Afghanistan and will be the main contributor to instability in South Asia.

It is the direct result of official Pakistani policy and the activities of Pakistan’s ISI.

The “Islamization” program initiated by Pakistani President Muhammad Zia ul Haq in the late 1970s, which involved the proliferation of Islamic schools, “madrasas” and the promotion of Islamic law “Sharia,” was specifically designed to create national unity by suppressing ethnic separatism and religious diversity.

Not surprisingly, radical groups have proliferated in Pakistan, becoming increasingly more extreme and intolerant.

The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a Deobandi anti-Shia organization was created in the wake of the Iranian revolution to counter Shia influence in Pakistan. The rapid spread of fundamentalist Deobandi ideology in Pakistan has been widely attributed to funding from Saudi Arabia.

When the SSP proved insufficiently militant for its growing population of zealots, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) was formed as a splinter group of the SSP.

In the search for ever purer forms of Islam, the ever more violent and intolerant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami (LeJ-A) was created out of the LeJ which, over the last two years, has claimed responsibility for several bloody atrocities in Balochistan, Pakistan’s southwest province. It has been reported that elements of the LeJ-A now comprise the senior cadres of the Islamic State in Pakistan.

Another so-called Islamic State affiliate operating in western Balochistan out of the city of Turbat, also known as a center for drug trafficking, is Laskar-e-Khorasan, a group accused of killing religious minorities.

Saudi support gradually shifted from the Deobandi to the more radical Ahle-Hadith movement, the Pakistani equivalent of Wahhabism. It is a small ideological step from Ahl-i-Hadith to the Islamic State, which explains the growth of its affiliates in Pakistan.

Among such Sunni-supremacist groups believed to have received Saudi funding is Jaish al-Adl, which has carried out attacks on Iran from safe havens in Pakistan and reportedly has links to the Islamic State.

While downplaying the Islamic State threat in Afghanistan, U.S. officials have virtually ignored the explosive potential of Islamic State influence in Pakistan, which will only accelerate in the expected power vacuum left after a U.S. withdrawal. (For more from the author of “The Next Islamic State Battlefield Will Be in South Asia” please click HERE)

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, an international IT businessman and a veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq and a humanitarian mission to West Africa. He receives email at [email protected]

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Things Are Going So Great in Afghanistan That the Government No Longer Wants to Share the News

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Remember that troop surge announced in August 2017 to finally win the undefined Afghanistan tribal war after 16 years? Well, it must be succeeding so well that now the Defense Department has placed a complete gag on any reports of how many provinces the “Afghani military” controls, once touted as the key metric of success or failure. But at least 14,000 of our best soldiers remain entangled in this undefined and untenable mission, with young soldiers now serving in a dangerous nation-building operation that began before they were born! Meanwhile, our own border remains in control of narco-terrorists who are just as evil as the ones in Afghanistan, except they actually directly affect us.

From 2015 to October 2018, the number of districts in the hands of the Afghani military dropped from 72 percent to 54 percent. And the definition of “control” is quite tenuous, to say the least. Now, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the last beacon of truthful government reporting on this quagmire, the Afghanistan mission “formally notified SIGAR that it is no longer assessing district-level insurgent or government control or influence,” because the command no longer believes the data has decision-making value.

Don’t shout all the good news from the rooftop at once.

Indeed, just 17 months ago, General John Nicholson, former commander of our operation in Afghanistan, referred to this measure as “the most telling” metric of success.

Thus, after 17-plus years refereeing tribal warfare rather than exacting retribution, leaving, and then securing our borders and visa system, we have nothing to show for the war effort but $840 billion wasted, 2,400 dead soldiers, roughly 20,000 wounded or psychologically disabled from trauma, and nearly 100,000 Afghani immigrants to our shores!

We still spend $45 billion a year propping up the Islamist Afghani government and military when we could be using that money for Americans, or at the very least to build up allies in our own backyard in Latin America. We could have built an enormous military and diplomatic deterrent with potential allies in Latin America to block Russia, China, and Iran from invading our backyard and fueling the “Bolivarian” revolutionaries in countries like Venezuela. But we cast our lot halfway around the world to prop up a military in which there is nothing but incompetence, corruption, radical Islamism, and even pedophilia.

In SIGAR’s quarterly report released Wed., Inspector General John Sopko noted that we’ve spent $133 billion just on reconstructing Afghanistan and that despite our efforts, there has been a 33 percent increase in casualties among Afghani security forces. Our soldiers remain in mortal danger while our government continues to negotiate with the Taliban and knows there is nothing left to do in the country.

The report further found that 40 percent of Afghanis who were brought to Fort Worth to train in flying light combat aircraft went AWOL, so the program had to be discontinued. It was unclear whether our government has ever tracked down the missing Afghanis in our country. Wait … tell me again why we went overseas … to fight the enemy there so potential terrorists don’t … err … come here??

It would be tragic enough to continue this ill-fated operation if all was good on our home front and we had the luxury of callously expending our lives and money on refereeing a 1,300-year tribal war across the world. But the sad reality is that we have drug cartels, mass migration, and transnational gangs pouring over our border. That is precisely where we need our military. And no, not just to serve as bus drivers and cooks.

Look at the twisted priority of how hard we work to secure the sovereignty of an undefined and unworthy foreign government from enemies that are similar to the ones on our own border, which we ignore. According to a new Fox News report, the elite Task Force ODIN — Observe, Detect, Identify, Neutralize — has been deployed there with “a complex mix of interwoven variables — to include networked drones, fixed-wing intelligence aircraft and helicopters coordinating real-time video feeds with target analysis and aircraft-mounted electro-optical sensors.” Their job is to “find and destroy enemy targets and weapons in the austere, mountainous terrain of a war-weary country.” The operation is described as “extremely active and successful.”

As one listener of my podcast noted, “Seems like a shame they have to go all the way to Afghanistan to do that stuff. Hmm, where else might there be a mission just waiting for Task Force ODIN, any ideas? Rugged terrain, remote international borders, paramilitary militias, narco-terrorists… nope, I’m drawing a blank. Well, if you think of anywhere please let the Pentagon know.”

There are cartel members crossing our border with AK-47s to orchestrate a flow of migrants, drugs, gangs, and criminals (and likely terrorists) into our country, yet we will do nothing to eliminate or apprehend them or empower the military to do so. We all understand that the military-industrial complex is keeping this mission in Afghanistan alive because they get a lot of money for making cool war toys, but they can actually have their cake and eat it too, and benefit our country to boot, if our soldiers were to be deployed against the enemies that directly threaten our homeland and irrevocably bring crime and mayhem to our communities and our border.

Which raises the question: For whom does our military exist? (For more from the author of “Things are going so great in Afghanistan that the government no longer wants to share the news” please click HERE)

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Venezuela’s Freedom Demonstrators Join a Long Line of Oppressed People Who Were Stripped of Their Guns

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“You have to understand, in Venezuela, gun ownership is not something that is open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power, and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”

That was a statement from MSNBC’s Kerry Sanders Tuesday as Venezuelans took to the streets to demand an end to the tyrannical socialist regime of dictator Nicolas Maduro. His words, while they might have very well raised some blood pressure among the hosts and higher-ups at the network, are a stark reminder for freedom-loving people everywhere of how critical the right of self-defense is to human liberty.

Sanders’ admission happened on the same day that unarmed civilian protestors were plowed over by one of Maduro’s armored vehicles and as defected military members fired back on Maduro forces in order to protect protesters.

And this all happened to a people who were stripped of their ability to defend themselves against their own government. In 2012, the country’s legislature passed a sweeping gun ban that outlawed private firearms ownership.

“Venezuelans are now defenseless against a government that runs roughshod over their civil liberties, while also destroying their economic livelihood,” reads a January post from the Mises Institute. “As if it weren’t enough, everyday Venezuelans must put up with rampant crime and the constant threat of colectivos, Venezuela’s infamous pro-government paramilitary units.”

A 2018 report from Fox News found that several oppressed Venezuelans regretted their country’s gun ban after years of socialist oppression. “Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” a 28-year-old English teacher told the outlet.

But, lest we forget, what the world watched happen on Tuesday isn’t without historical precedent.

The Soviet Union confiscated and banned guns to consolidate its control over multiple Eastern European countries. The Third Reich’s genocide was largely assisted by Nazi Party gun control measures in the 1930s. The Cambodian genocide was also preceded by strict gun control policies. The Armenians slaughtered in 1915 were rendered largely defenseless by Ottoman Empire gun laws.

That is not to say that what’s happening in Venezuela is equivalent to genocide (there are the legal thresholds for that), and it’s not to say that gun control always precedes tyranny or crimes against humanity as a rule. But what history does show us, time and time again, is that people are a whole lot easier to oppress when there’s zero chance they’ll be able to fire back when you send in government agents to oppress them.

This is the kind of easy-to-oppress population that King George III’s forces were trying to create for themselves when they went searching for patriot weapons and powder caches at Lexington and Concord in 1775. And that’s precisely why they were met with gunfire from privately owned muskets when they showed up and demanded that the patriot militiamen drop their weapons and disperse.

And that’s why we have the right to keep and bear arms codified into our Bill of Rights, no matter how much the rest of the world or how many of our own citizens scoff at its existence, and it’s why any freedom-loving people should think twice before doing anything to disarm themselves. (For more from the author of “Venezuela’s Freedom Demonstrators Join a Long Line of Oppressed People Who Were Stripped of Their Guns” please click HERE)

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Mount Everest Is Covered in Garbage and Dead Bodies

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6,613 pounds of trash — more than 3 tons — have been collected from Mount Everest since mid-April, with plenty more to go, according to recent reports.

Four dead bodies have also been located during the campaign to clean the mountain, which began on April 14 out of Nepal, according to The Himalayan Times. Officials expect they will remove a total of 11 tons of garbage by the end of the 45-day campaign period, USA Today reported on Thursday. . .

“Our goal is to extract as much waste as possible from Everest so as to restore glory to the mountain. Everest is not just the crown of the world, but our pride,” Dandu Raj Ghimire, Nepal’s tourism director, said according to The Hindu.

Nepal’s tourism department, local government and other mountaineering groups are working together for the campaign, which is the first of its kind, The Himalayan Times reported.

“Everything on Everest, other than rock and snow, will be brought back,” Tika Ram Gurung, secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, said according to The Kathmandu Post. “The goal is to send the message that we should keep this mountain pollution free.” (Read more from “Mount Everest Is Covered in Garbage and Dead Bodies” HERE)

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Liberals Admit: Because Venezuelans Were Disarmed, They Have No Power Against the Government

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The effort to oust dictator Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela continues today after President Juan Guiado launched a new operation yesterday in hopes of a military defection. In response, Maduro’s Cuban thugs ran people over in the streets with heavy armored vehicles and fired tear gas.

While watching the video of innocents being mowed down, MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders admitted that because everyday Venezuelan citizens are not allowed to own firearms, they’re defenseless against the government. The Washington Free Beacon pulled the clip.

“You have to understand, in Venezuela gun ownership is not something that’s open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country,” Sanders said, watching in horror.

Venezuela banned and confiscated firearms for civilians in 2012 under the guise of crime reduction.

(Read more from “Liberals Admit: Because Venezuelans Were Disarmed, They Have No Power Against the Government” HERE)

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This Is Why Trump Is Threatening a New Embargo on Cuba

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The situation in Venezuela is deteriorating. Throughout the day, protests have erupted. Supporters and opponents of socialist President Nicolas Maduro are once facing off after months of economic destitution that has left the beacon of 21stCentury Socialism an absolute hellhole. You’ve all read the reports. Medicals supplies are absent, hunger is rampant, and inflation is through the roof. No one is safe from economic blight, except Maduro. Venezuelans from all social classes have suffered. There’s footage of people eating out of trashcans. Zoo animals are being killed for food. Venezuelan children are now being forced into prostitution in order to eat. It’s a nightmare, but ‘onward comrades’ is the mantra of the current government, which has devolved into a de facto dictatorship.

Now, President Trump has threatened Venezuela’s ally, Cuba, with a new and aggressive embargo, demanding their security forces end military operations in the country (via Reuters):

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the United States would hit Cuba with sanctions and an embargo if it continued its military support for the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

(Read more from “This Is Why Trump Is Threatening a New Embargo on Cuba” HERE)

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A Jordanian Man Planned to Smuggle People From Yemen Through Mexico and Into the U.S.

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Jordanian national Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in an illegal scheme to [smuggle] people from Yemen, through Mexico and to the United States.

“According to the plea agreement, during the second half of 2017, Aldairi conspired with others to smuggle at least six Yemeni nationals across the Texas border and into the United States in exchange for a fee. Aldairi admitted his role in transporting the aliens from Monterrey, Mexico to Piedras Negras where he directed them to cross the Rio Grande River into the United States,” the Department of Justice released in a statement. “Aldairi provided construction hard hats and reflective vests to some of the aliens in an effort to enable them to blend in after crossing. Aldairi will be sentenced by the Honorable Alia Moses at a later date.”

A number of different government agencies, including Border Patrol and the FBI, worked with the U.S. Embassy in Jordan on the case.

“When Mohammad Aldairi illegally smuggled multiple Yemeni aliens across our southwest border, he put the security of the United States in peril,” Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski said about the plea. “The Department of Justice cannot — and will not — tolerate such threats to our national security. The Criminal Division remains dedicated to prosecuting alien smugglers, especially criminals like Aldairi who attempt to sneak aliens from countries of interest into the United States.” (Read more from “A Jordanian Man Planned to Smuggle People From Yemen Through Mexico and Into the U.S.” HERE)

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Classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization Is the Ultimate No-Brainer

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Reports are emerging that the Trump administration is once again considering designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as an officially classified terrorist organization. This ultimate no-brainer move will serve to empower policymakers and government officials to crack down on the double-dealing Islamist extremist organization, which seeks to undermine the United States and our allies abroad.

The New York Times reports:

The White House is pushing to issue an order that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization, bringing the weight of American sanctions against a storied and influential Islamist political movement with millions of members across the Middle East, according to officials familiar with the matter.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by an Egyptian preacher named Hassan al-Banna, who is a revered, almost holy figure in the fundamentalist Islamic community.

Al-Banna said of his group’s founding ideology: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” The MB leader, who later became a staunch admirer of Adolf Hitler, called on his followers to constantly “prepare for jihad” and be “lovers of death.”

The Muslim Brotherhood originally sought to seize control of Egypt before pursuing a worldwide expansion. Since the day of the organization’s founding right up to modern day, its leaders have consistently endorsed violent action as a means to achieve its ends. However, unlike groups such as ISIS or al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, while sharing those groups’ ideology, has preferred to take a long-term strategic course, instead of pursuing immediate violent action, to achieve its endgame.

Terrorism experts often describe the Muslim Brotherhood as a gateway to violence and further extremism, as proven by its rogues’ gallery of terrorist alumni, which includes Osama bin Laden, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and current al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, to name a few.

Today, the Muslim Brotherhood and its devotees find sanctuary in many nations, but its most prominent backers are the nations of Qatar and Turkey, which not only provide safe havens for the group’s top leaders, but also remain devotees to the group’s global Islamist agenda. Qatar is home to the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has publicly endorsed suicide bombings against American soldiers deployed abroad.

If the Muslim Brotherhood is classified as a terrorist group in the U.S., it remains unclear what would become of its offshoots in the United States, such as the terror-tied Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), among others. A terrorist designation could also provide legal hurdles for new Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who have consistently advocated for those groups and even keynoted several fundraisers for the MB-tied outfits.

Since the early days of the Trump administration, conservatives and a widespread coalition of national security experts have been advocating for the White House to pursue the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist designation. Previous efforts to push the terrorist designation regularly hit a standstill, as it seemingly did not have the support of key cabinet members. However, both national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been major advocates for a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist designation. Bolton has voiced his support publicly for the measure, while Pompeo cosponsored a bill supporting the designation while he was in Congress.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots have been classified as a terrorist organization in several nations, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Russia, and elsewhere. The United States currently classifies the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, as a foreign terrorist organization.

(For more from the author of “Classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization Is the Ultimate No-Brainer” please click HERE)

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Notre Dame Architect Makes Huge Revelation About Fire

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When the Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith hung up on French politician and media analyst Philippe Karsenty during live coverage of the Notre Dame Cathedral blaze, authorities already were speculating the catastrophe that gripped the world was caused by an accident.

Although speculation is the coin of the cable-news realm, an indignant Smith wanted nothing to do with Karsenty providing context to the April 15 fire – nearly 2,000 attacks on French churches in two years – that would suggest an alternative cause should be considered.

And, in fact, as Karsenty pointed out in a phone interview from France with WND, a former chief architect of the Notre Dame – whose analysis has been virtually ignored – believes the accident theory makes no sense.

Karsenty told WND he was “shocked” when Smith abruptly ended the interview.

“I just wanted to put it in context,” he said, referring to the surge of attacks on churches. “And then I said, nevertheless, the media are lecturing us an hour after it started, saying it can only be unintentional. (Read more from “Notre Dame Architect Makes Huge Revelation About Fire” HERE)

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