Jamal Khashoggi, Fake Journalist, Shares Time’s 2018 Person of the Year

The big Khashoggi lie continues.

TIME magazine has decided to include the late Jamal Khashoggi as one of the “Guardians” — a group of journalists that on Tuesday were named TIME’s 2018 Person of the Year.

As Conservative Review readers probably know by now, Jamal Khashoggi was anything but journalist. He was an Islamist activist, a Saudi regime change conspirator, an ally to terrorists and their organizations, and a former correspondent for several state-controlled media operations, but never a journalist. Real journalists aspire to seek the truth above all else. Khashoggi was an information operative, not a journalist.

The TIME profile of “The Guardians” begins by lavishing praise on “journalist” Khashoggi.

The stout man with the gray goatee and the gentle demeanor dared to disagree with his country’s government. He told the world the truth about its brutality toward those who would speak out. And he was murdered for it.

Khashoggi may have had a “gentle demeanor” on the surface, but he did not hide his radical beliefs and his bloodlust for the destruction of Israel and the toppling of Middle East allies. In 2014, writing in a Muslim Brotherhood-run outlet, Khashoggi hoped that Israel would violently “die by force” at the hands of Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip.

Khashoggi certainly did “disagree with his country’s government,” but he disagreed with the Saudi monarchy because it decided to declare an end to long-standing peaceful relations with political Islamists both inside and outside the country. Last year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman vowed to return to a “moderate Islam” and announced that radical preachers and activists had no role in Riyadh’s future. This was devastating news to Jamal Khashoggi, who until his last days sought to empower these actors not only in Saudi Arabia, but also in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza, Egypt, and elsewhere.

Describing his death using unproven, poorly sourced information, the TIME piece continues:

Every detail of Jamal Khashoggi’s killing made it a sensation: the time stamp on the surveillance video that captured the Saudi journalist entering his country’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2; the taxiway images of the private jets bearing his assassins; the bone saw; the reports of his final words, “I can’t breathe,” recorded on audio as the life was choked from him.

CNN reported over the weekend that “I can’t breathe” were Khashoggi’s last words. However, there’s no firm evidence that this is actually the case. CNN’s Nic Robertson, who reported the quote, did not appear to actually hear the supposed audio tape of his killing firsthand. CNN relied on “a source with knowledge” to read a transcript of the supposed tape to the CNN correspondent. It still remains unclear how exactly the Turkish intelligence services got an audio tape of what was happening inside the Saudi diplomatic building during the Khashoggi incident. We do know, however, that Turkey, a rival of Riyadh’s, has pushed out countless pieces of false information to keep the Khashoggi killing in the news as much as possible.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has admitted to running the Khashoggi information operation through Ankara’s intelligence services. Yes, the same Turkey that is the world’s foremost jailer of journalists is doing its best to feed a constant stream of information to click-hungry journalists and convince them that the unsourced data obtained about Khashoggi’s death is accurate.

It’s no coincidence that President Donald Trump is mentioned sixteen times in TIME’s “Guardians” piece. Turkey has geopolitical goals for the Khashoggi information operation that its intelligence services is running. Mostly, Turkey seeks to chip away at the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy, so that Ankara can fill that vacuum with its own power and influence.

To the U.S. media, however, Khashoggi has to be a journalist, because the real Khashoggi — the caliphate-seeking regressive Islamist and anti-Semite with genocidal aspirations — could not be used as an instrument to attack the president. In this post-truth era, the legacy media has decided that “journalists” like Khashoggi no longer need to seek the truth. They just have to be useful tools to attack and sabotage the legitimacy of one’s political opponents. (For more from the author of “Jamal Khashoggi, Fake Journalist, Shares Time’s 2018 Person of the Year” HERE)

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Members of Unofficial Chinese Church Vow to Defy Crackdown and Keep Meeting

More than 100 Protestant Christians from the Early Rain Covenant Church – one of China’s few openly operating unofficial house churches – were snatched from their homes and streets across Chengdu, Sichuan province, in a crackdown that began on Sunday night. Among those detained were church pastor Wang Yi, his wife Jiang Rong, church leaders, members and seminary students.

The round-up in Chengdu is part a broader crackdown on unofficial or underground churches that Beijing launched early this year, bolstered by amendments to the Religious Affairs Regulation that gave grass-roots officials more power to act against churches and impose tougher penalties for “unauthorised religious gatherings”. . .

[The jailed pastor of the church] also called on church members to keep worshipping and meet outdoors if venues could not be rented, adding that the group would never give up on practising its faith publicly. . .

[The church] has about 500 followers but its weekly gatherings spread across more than a dozen meeting points around Chengdu, attracting more than 800 church-goers each week, according to church leaders. It also has about 100 seminary students and a primary school catering to about 40 children.

Another major house church, the Living Stone Church in Guiyang, Guizhou province, was also banned three years ago. Li Guozhi, one of the church’s two pastors, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for releasing a document outlining an official plan to destroy the church. (Read more from “Members of Unofficial Chinese Church Vow to Defy Crackdown and Keep Meeting” HERE)

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What Does Mueller Have? Memo Hints at Damaging Russia Info from Cohen

A sentencing memo written by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s legal team is sparking interest with hints about what President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen may have told prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. . .

“Cohen provided the [special counsel’s office] with useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with Company executives during the campaign,” Mueller wrote in his memo.

Cohen has admitted lying to Congress about how long he worked on the Trump Tower Moscow project and repeating the falsehoods to the media. But Mueller’s team doesn’t just consider this self-protection. It was a “deliberate effort” to publicly present a “false narrative” in the hopes of limiting the scope of the various Russia investigations, Mueller’s team wrote in the memo.

While the memo does not go into great details, it does provide new information about one of the earliest known contacts between Russia and a Trump campaign associate. In fall 2015, Cohen was months into his work on a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow when an unidentified Russian national proposed a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This person, prosecutors say, claimed to be a “trusted person” in Russia who could offer the Trump campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level.”

This person sought to connect the Trump business project with the campaign, saying the meeting could have a “phenomenal” impact on the proposed tower in Moscow. There is “no bigger warranty in any project than the consent of” Putin, the person told Cohen. (Read more from “What Does Mueller Have? Memo Hints at Damaging Russia Info from Cohen” HERE)

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China Detains Activist Pastor and over 100 Christians

By Townhall. China detained evangelical Pastor Wang Yi as part of raids on his congregation that began Sunday evening. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Early Rain Covenant Church leader and over 100 of the church’s congregants were detained in the latest crackdown by government officials.

“Officials have threatened to close the Early Rain Covenant Church in the central city of Chengdu by the end of the year in keeping with new religious-management regulations,” several of the Church’s congregants told the Journal. . .

Rev. Hong Yujie, another friend of Pastor Wang, told the Journal that he is “the bravest pastor in China today.”

The Journal reports that the pastor wrote a defiant social media post Saturday accusing the Chinese government of attempting to institute “Caesar worship” by elevating president Xi Jinping.

He wrote that the government’s elevation of the Chinese president was “morally incompatible with the Christian faith and with all those who uphold freedom of the mind and thought.” (Read more from “China Detains Activist Pastor and over 100 Christians” HERE)

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100 Church Attendees in Custody, Attacks Ongoing

By China Aid. Around 100 leaders and seminary students from Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sichuan have been arrested today.

Among the arrested are Pastor Wang Yi and his wife, Jiang Rong, who were seen being taken away after those who attend their church could not find them. Another two, Guo Hai and his wife, were forced to leave their two children at home unattended when police took them into custody.

Others had their homes raided. One church elder, Qin Defu, was forced to the ground as police inspected his residence.

The situation began at 6:00 p.m. China Standard Time (hereafter referred to as CST) when police seized a Christian at the entrance of the church and a multitude of officers searched his place.

Additionally, authorities shut off power to the home of church members Song Enguang and his wife. The police stationed downstairs also took three Christians, who attempted to visit them during the ordeal. (Read more from “100 Church Attendees in Custody, Attacks Ongoing” HERE)

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Hamas Celebrates After Pregnant Woman Critically Injured After Terrorists Open Fire in Israel

By Daily Wire. On Sunday, seven Israelis were wounded in a drive-by shooting near the town of Ofra, approximately 13 miles north of Jerusalem.

One of the critically wounded is a 21-year-old pregnant female. Following the violent attack, the woman was taken to Shaare Zedek Hospital, where doctors successfully delivered her baby, which is currently in a ward for premature infants.

The woman is said to be in critical condition and undergoing surgery. The Times of Israel spoke with a surgeon, Dr. Alon Schwartz, who said that the woman had “lost a lot of blood” as a result of the gunshot wound to her stomach.

Hamas has welcomed tonight’s Palestinian shooting attack, in which a pregnant Israeli woman and six others were wounded, calling it a “blessed” demonstration of “the ability of the resistance to hurt the enemy in its most sensitive places.” https://t.co/3FOFicjOgh

— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) December 9, 2018

According to an IDF spokesperson quoted by Arutz Sheva: “Following the previous report regarding the shooting attack adjacent to the Ofra Junction, shots were fired from a passing Palestinian vehicle towards Israeli civilians who were standing at the bus station. IDF troops who were present nearby responded by firing towards the suspect vehicle, which fled.” . . .

On Thursday, the United Nations rejected a resolution to condemn Hamas, which was introduced by the United States. The resolution needed a two-thirds supermajority to pass, but only 87 member nations voted in favor, while 58 voted against. There were 32 members that abstained. (Read more from “Hamas Celebrates After Pregnant Woman Critically Injured After Terrorists Open Fire in Israel” HERE)

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Jerusalem Hospital Delivers Baby of Pregnant Israeli Woman Shot in Terror Attack

By Times of Israel. Doctors successfully delivered the baby being carried by a 21-year-old Israeli woman late Sunday night, shortly after she was shot and critically hurt in a terrorist attack outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra.

The baby, who was delivered in the 30th week of the pregnancy, was immediately transferred to the ward for premature babies at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the hospital said, and was said to be in “stable” condition.

The woman was undergoing surgery late Sunday and was “fighting for her life,” the hospital said. . .

The woman suffered wounds to her upper body and was rushed to Shaare Zedek, the Magen David Adom paramedic service said. (Read more from “Jerusalem Hospital Delivers Baby of Pregnant Israeli Woman Shot in Terror Attack” HERE)

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U.S. Fears Iran Planning ‘Massive Regional War’ in Middle East

The Trump administration disclosed that Iran is behind the construction of several underground tunnels leading into Israel that Hezbollah militants and other terror forces have been using to conduct attacks, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon and communicated fears that Tehran is preparing to lead a “massive regional war.”

The public identification of Iran isn’t likely to surprise international observers, but signals aggressive moves by the Trump administration to tie Iran to the rise of terrorism not just in Israel, but across the Middle East, where Iranian-backed militants continue to strike U.S. interests and allies.

The Obama administration, in contrast to Trump, was careful to avoid singling out Iran as the chief force for terrorism against Israel and U.S. allies in the region in hopes of appeasing the hardline regime as it sought to ink the landmark nuclear pact that Trump abandoned earlier this year.

Senior U.S. officials familiar with Israel’s discovery of these new tunnels—a tactic long used by Hezbollah and Hamas to conduct cross-border raids against Israeli civilians and military personnel—say they mark a massive escalation by Iran’s terror proxies.

The Israeli military conducted operations to destroy the tunnels earlier this week, shortly after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels. (Read more from “U.S. Fears Iran Planning ‘Massive Regional War’ in Middle East” HERE)

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Immigrating to the U.S. Has Become the Welfare Program for the World

We are told by the apathetic elites who run our culture that illegal aliens can invade our border, force themselves in, give birth to a baby, and steal our American birthright – and there’s not a darn thing we can do about it. Moreover, we are then stuck with the welfare, health care, and education tab for people from the most impoverished countries, while we have our own teenage pregnancy and poverty problems. We won’t cut a single dollar of the welfare state among Americans. Is it too much to ask that we stop funding welfare for the entire world under the false pretenses of immigration policy?

Although the overwhelming majority of the caravan is male, a number of pregnant women have made the trip north in order to game out our scandalous birthright citizenship policies. Once again, we see this all about magnets, not about border resources or wall funding. The AP reported today that a 19-year -ld pregnant woman, with a two-year-old child, was growing impatient that we are only allowing in 100 invaders per day (so much for stopping the caravan!). She rushed through in order to get arrested. She told agents she was going into labor and was sent to a hospital in San Diego, where she gave birth.

Here’s the money quote from the article: “Maryury Serrano Hernandez, 19, told the network giving birth in the U.S. was a ‘big reward’ for the family’s grueling journey.” According to Fox, she supposedly climbed the border fence, even though pregnant, and then surrendered to the Border Patrol. Which, as we’ve warned before, is why a border wall is meaningless if we allow insane policies to continue.

Think about this for a moment: She is a 19-year-old who just gave birth and has a two-year-old son, and now, because of the TV scholars who twist and ruin our Constitution, the child will get an American birth certificate, and we will be responsible for this family for the rest of their lives. Who is looking out for the forgotten taxpayer? What’s worse, she said she wanted to connect with “family” in Columbus, Ohio, which means she likely has other illegal relatives. It’s a vicious cycle of illegal immigration chain migration. Look up the dictionary definition of sovereignty – “free from external control” – and you will understand that we are literally experiencing the opposite. We don’t control our own destiny as a people; we are controlled by the whims of invaders enabled by a corrupt ruling class and court system.

During the October debate over birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, I pointed out that Wong Kim Ark, the very court case proponents rely on for birthright citizenship of illegal aliens, used the word “domicile” in some form over 20 times to describe the type of immigrant eligible for citizenship and explicitly qualified it as “so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here.” Our current brilliant legal scholars would have you believe a pregnant fence-jumper is domiciled with permission to reside here.

Yet Republicans are passing a budget today ignoring all of our severe immigration reform needs, and they are doing so by acclamation, without a recorded vote!

It is one of our founding principles since colonial times that immigration, being an elective policy of a sovereign nation, should only be a positive for Americans and never a liability in terms of public charge, health risks, or public safety problems. It is codified in our current laws that immigrants may not be a public charge on the nation. Yet the Center for Immigration Studies just published an analysis of Census data showing that “63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.” In states like California and Texas, the number topped 70 percent! Medicaid use among non-citizen families was 50 percent, as opposed to 23 percent for native families.

We refuse to enforce the public charge laws against even illegal immigrants. By far, more illegal immigrants are a public charge than legal ones, which is why the CIS study used a specific data set of the Census that includes illegal immigrants in its analysis. Many advocates suggest that they are not eligible for welfare, but this is why unconditional birthright citizenship is such a problem, because it gives illegal aliens access to the system on behalf of their children whom they insidiously ensure are born here.

What happened to the president’s promises of A) not letting in the caravan; B) stopping catch-and-release; and C) enforcing public charge laws? What happened to the inaugural promise that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer” and his complaint that “we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own”? We are still defending the borders of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, but not our own.

Unfortunately, the political class keeps telling us that unelected judges can declare the Constitution binding on all 7.7 billion people of the world. Consequently, if the Constitution extends to them, evidently so does the welfare state. (For more from the author of “Immigrating to the U.S. Has Become the Welfare Program for the World” please click HERE)

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One Marine Dead, Five Still Missing After Midair Collision near Japan

By Townhall. A midair collision involving a Marine Corps KC-130 Hercules and F/A-18 Hornet 200 miles off of the coast of Japan has resulted in the death of one Marine, one being rescued, and five others still missing. III Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) announced the collision occurred around 2:00 A.M.

The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force initially rescued one of the Marines, with another being found a short time later and was sent to hospital for medical evaluation. Hours later, III MEF revealed the Marine had died.

“The United States Marine Corps confirms that two Marines have been found. One is in fair condition and the other has been declared deceased by competent medical personnel,” III MEF stated. “The aircraft were conducting routine training and aerial refueling was a part of the training; as to what was taking place when the mishap occurred, that is under investigation.”

(Read more from “One Marine Dead, Five Still Missing After Midair Collision near Japan” HERE)

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Rescue Mission in Japan After Two US Marine Aircraft Collide

By BBC News. A big search and rescue operation is continuing in Japan for five missing US Marines after two aircraft with seven crew collided and crashed into the sea.

One Marine was rescued and was “in fair condition”, while another one “has been declared deceased”, Marines officials said in a statement.

The planes involved were a KC-130 and an F/A-18 based at Iwakuni near Hiroshima, south-western Japan.

US media say they crashed during a mid-air refuelling exercise.

The Marine Corps has not officially confirmed this, describing the incident as a “mishap”. (Read more from “Rescue Mission in Japan After Two Us Marine Aircraft Collide” HERE)

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The Ceasefire in Our Trade War with China Doesn’t Solve Deeper Problems

The highly anticipated meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit concluded last Saturday evening with no major breakthrough. Pundits who had hoped for a good trade deal between the U.S. and China are surely disappointed.

President Trump previously threatened to raise tariffs from 10 to 25 percent on about $250 billion worth of Chinese imports on January 1, 2019. Now he has agreed to hold off on the tariff hike while both the Americans and Chinese delegations engage in trade negotiations for the next 90 days.

At present, President Xi has agreed not to impose any tit-for-tat response to current U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. While stock markets and businesses worldwide can breathe a sigh of relief for now since the trade war will not get worse for another three months, the temporary truce can’t mask the deep divisions between the United States and China. . .

From the U.S. perspective, the rise of China has transitioned from a hope to a disappointment to a threat. When former president Richard Nixon visited Communist China in 1972 and established a diplomatic relationship, 99 percent of Chinese people made less than $2 a day and China’s per capita gross domestic product was less than $200. The Chinese people were poorer than people in Bangladesh, to put it into perspective.

In 2017, China’s GDP per capita was close to $9,000. Global poverty rates have been cut in half since 1981, mainly because of China’s impressive economic growth. This economic growth has a lot to do with the Chinese people’s ingenuity and certain market-friendly policies from their central government. But China often fails to mention that China wouldn’t have had almost four decades of impressive growth without the West, especially the United States, providing markets for Chinese goods, bringing foreign investment to China to build factories, and training millions of talented Chinese students at Western colleges and universities. (Read more from “The Ceasefire in Our Trade War with China Doesn’t Solve Deeper Problems” HERE)

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Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas

By The Federalist. Even as anti-gas tax riots raged in France this week, the naturalist David Attenborough warned a crowd at a United Nations climate change summit in Poland that the “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” UN General Assembly President Maria Espinosa told the media that “mankind” was “in danger of disappearing” if climate change is allowed to progress at its current rate.

Speakers, who flew in to swap doomsday stories and partake of the meat-heavy menu, advocated for radical changes to avoid this imminent environmental apocalypse. These days, “the point of no return” is almost always in view, yet always just out of reach.

Sorry, but by now, this rhetoric is familiar. You can go back to 1970, when Harvard biologist George Wald, riding a wave of popular environmental panic during the decade, estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Or you can go back to 1977, when President Barack Obama’s future science “tsar” John Holdren co-authored a book with Paul R. Ehrlich predicting that global warming could lead to the deaths of 1 billion starving people by 2020. (The authors theorized that “population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution.”)

Or you can go back to 2006, when Al Gore warned in his Oscar-winning documentary that sea levels would rise by 20 feet “in the near future.” The producers even offered chilling depictions of cities underwater. Gore was only off by around 20 feet, or so. Anyway, South Beach is still with us. (Read more from “Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas” HERE)

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New Zealand Defence Report Says Climate Change Greatest Security Risk

By The Economic Times. New Zealand released a defence policy statement on Thursday calling climate change its greatest security threat and stressed the importance of the issue to the geostrategically contested Pacific region, which is seeing increased influence from China.

The assessment came on the heels of a defence policy earlier this year that warned China’s rising influence in the South Pacific could undermine regional stability, drawing a complaint from the Asian giant.

“It identifies climate change as one of the most significant security threats of our time, and one that is already having adverse impacts both at home and in New Zealand’s neighbourhood,” said Defence Minister Ron Mark in an emailed statement. (Read more from “New Zealand Defence Report Says Climate Change Greatest Security Risk” HERE)

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