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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/sharia_the_law_of_the_land_in_afghanistan.html

Beyond our current concerns with the coronavirus pandemic looms the “historic” formal agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban signed on February 29, 2020.

The three-and-a-half page conditional peace agreement (which is accompanied by secret annexes) provides a means for the U.S. to draw down its forces from 13,000 to 8,600 within 135 days of the agreement, then subsequently remove all of its forces from Afghanistan within 14 months. A major part of the agreement hinges on the ludicrous assertion that “Afghan soil will [no longer] be used against the security of the United States and its allies.”

Apart from concerns that the Taliban has no intention of disavowing its ties to multiple terrorist organizations (including its longtime ally, al-Qaeda), upholding a reduction in violence (RiV) or consenting to a permanent ceasefire; Afghanistan’s future political roadmap may be more than the Afghan government can bear after the current military balance tips the other direction — in favor of the Taliban who have already gained control of more territory in Afghanistan since 9/11.

While there are four parts to the public agreement, “the obligations of the [Taliban] in [the] agreement apply in areas under their control until the formation of the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations.” It comes as no surprise the Taliban has refused to talk to the 21-member Afghan government negotiating team.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15886/turkey-erdogan-coronavirus-economy

Before the coronavirus, Turkey hoped its tourism revenues might reach as high as $45 billion this year. But in the first quarter of the year, the number of passengers traveling through Turkish airports fell by 18.8%, and the second quarter does not look promising. Economists agree that the year-end decline will be even sharper.

This is where alarm bells ring for Erdoğan. Turks are scheduled to go to the ballot box again in 2023 to elect the president and members of parliament.

Erdoğan owes his spectacular election victories, uninterrupted since 2002, in large part to rapid economic growth and the subsequent improvement in the standard of living. A reversal now could end his glittering political career.

Erdoğan remains the potential victim of a small virus.

We may be months away from Covid-19’s global peak but the punishing, global, post-pandemic economic repercussions will vary from one country to another, depending on what economic vulnerabilities the pandemic has caught off-guard. One anticipated outcome is to see bigger post-corona damage to economies that have a large dependence on tourism and on economies with fundamental imbalances. Turkey belongs in both categories.

In the early days of the virus, before the skyrocketing number of cases, Turkey’s fragile economy boasted 4.3 million jobless. The official unemployment rate was 13.8%.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-will-halt-funding-to-world-health-organization-over-coronavirus-response/ar-BB12Diws?li=BBnb7Kz

WASHINGTON—President Trump said the U.S. would halt funding to the World Health Organization while his administration investigates what he called the group’s mismanagement of the coronavirus response.

The president faulted the WHO for, in his view, failing to adequately investigate early information about the virus’s ability to spread from one human to another and for not calling out China on its alleged lack of transparency over the virus.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/04/13/concern-grows-in-germany-over-antisemitic-propaganda-tied-to-coronavirus-pandemic/

A prominent psychologist in Berlin who deals with extremist groups has expressed fear that the coronavirus pandemic will encourage a further wave of antisemitism in Germany.

“An attempt is being made to spread the image of an enemy that people are already familiar with,” psychologist Ahmad Mansour told the Tagesschau news outlet over the weekend, when asked about a rash of antisemitic images associating Jews with the virus.

Mansour — an Israeli Arab and former Islamist who now works on counter-extremism programs in the German Muslim community — observed that the “images are very popular and widespread, online and offline.”

One image being shared by antisemitic agitators depicts crudely-stereotyped Jews smuggling the virus into a city in a Trojan Horse, along with an accompanying text railing against the “devious Jewish Orthodox Freemason sect, aka Zionists.”

Mansour warned that antisemitic messages increasingly urged violence against Jews.

“I don’t just see conspiracy theories,” he said. “I see incitement, calls for injuries to Jews.”

German government officials monitoring extremist activity quoted in the same article concurred that the danger was growing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15861/palestinians-human-rights-syria

Those in the international community expressing concern about the possible spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip are ignoring the existing tragedy of the Palestinians in Syria, particularly those held in various Syrian government-controlled prisons.

While Palestinian Authority leaders have been urging Israel to release Palestinian prisoners in Israel out of fear they may be infected with coronavirus, these same leaders have left, without saying a word, hundreds of Palestinians held in Syrian jails.

“Such practices represent flagrant violations of international law which criminalizes all forms of torture and mistreatment against civilians,” the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) stated.

An Arab persecuting or torturing an Arab never seems to be condemned by the international community…. The reason the world does not care about the atrocities committed against Palestinians in Syria: they cannot blame Israel for them.

Unfortunately, the Palestinians of Syria live in an Arab country. Were those Palestinians living in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, the international media, the United Nations and human rights organizations would have interrupted the daily media fare of coronavirus by shouting day and night about Israel’s purported persecution of the Palestinians.

As the world is busy combating the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, Palestinians are continuing to “disappear” in Syrian prisons — or otherwise die. Those in the international community expressing concern about the possible spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip are ignoring the existing tragedy of the Palestinians in Syria, particularly those held in various Syrian government-controlled prisons.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/venezuelas-beleaguered-president-waiting-david-paulin/

The Trump administration has implicitly acknowledged that its Venezuela policy has a major problem: Juan Guaidó. Venezuela’s beleaguered president-in-waiting, a leftist at heart, has gotten considerable support from the Trump administration to achieve a major U.S. policy goal: ease out Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, a stooge of Cuba and Russia. Guaidó would then serve as interim president in a democratic Venezuela.

The 36-year-old Guaidó, a professional politician backed by Venezuela’s democratically elected National Assembly, has nevertheless let down the Trump administration, and he may even be playing the president for a chump if recent comments by his ad hoc adviser are anything to go by. Maduro, meanwhile, has doubled down on the late President Hugo Chávez’s socialist policies, ensuring that oil-rich yet impoverished Venezuela remains an economic basket case and authoritarian hell-hole.

Political allies, of course, are expected to behave in a certain way: friendship is a two-way street. Trump, for his part, has bent over backwards to support Guaidó, a self-declared political independent who previously was a member of Popular Will, a left-wing political party with socialist ties. Guaidó’s fruitless quest to assume Venezuela’s presidency also has gotten steadfast support from some 60 countries. But Maduro hasn’t budged.

Now that the Trump administration has wised up to Guaidó, it has asked him to renounce his claim to Venezuela’s presidency while nevertheless continuing to support him. Under this plan, Maduro and Guaidó would establish an interim government and agree to elections in six to 12 months. In exchange, Washington would ease up on sanctions against Maduro’s regime. Guaidó is seen as a shoo-in over Maduro in a general election. Not surprisingly, Maduro has rejected the plan, for now, while using the cornonavirus pandemic as an excuse to crack down on political opponents.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/indias-covid-19-super-spreader-tablighi-jamaat-radhika-singh/

Tablighi Jamaat has been making headlines after becoming known as the super-spreaders of the novel coronavirus across South Asian countries, India in particular, where they held a gigantic religious congregation, despite the government-sanctioned lockdown. If mingling with thousands of Indians and transmitting the virus in a country of 1.4 billion people was not enough, Jamaat members and their accomplices have resorted to pelting with stones the police officials who came to quarantine them and the medical officials who tried to treat them. They also harassed female medical staff by marching naked in front of them in hospitals. Despite these actions, their apologists race to defend them, because the Muslims can never be wrong.

However, this is not the first time India is reeling under the threat of the Islamic radicals of Tablighi Jamaat. In February 2002, the Muslim extremists who torched the Sabarmati Express in Godhra, burning 57 Hindu devotees to death, are also suspected to have been members of this Jamaat.

Though little known, the Tablighi Jamaat is far from being an  innocuous socio-cultural organisation, as liberal media would like you to believe. It is an India-based radical Islamist hydra with multiple heads, and has its tentacles spread worldwide, with corroborated connections to violence, vandalism, terrorists and terror activities across the globe. The movement, which operates out of 150 countries, boasts between 50 million and 150 million adherents. An offshoot of the fundamentalist Deobandi movement, the Jamaat believes Islam must have hegemony over all other faiths, and is out to establish the rule of Islam globally, albeit stealthily.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-factories-shutter-as-export-orders-dry-up-amid-pandemic_3310277.html#

A large number of export-oriented Chinese factories were shuttered recently after they didn’t have enough orders to fill.

Some home appliance manufacturers also announced that they laid off employees because of a lack of export and domestic demand due to the pandemic.

As the outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, became severe in January, much of China was placed under lockdown and factories halted production for more than a month.

In February, Beijing encouraged companies to resume operations as it grew concerned about an economic slowdown. But Chinese companies were worried that the virus could spread among employees; many factories remained closed.

As some factories reopened in March, they realized they faced a bigger challenge—having no orders to fill. Orders were canceled as the virus spread to other countries, which also adopted social distancing measures and reduced economic activity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-still-misleads-the-world-on-the-coronavirus-11586818132?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

As the world struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak without triggering a new Great Depression, China is withholding vital information that would save lives and significantly alleviate the economic catastrophe that now threatens to immiserate hundreds of millions of people around the world.

This isn’t the old coverup, when Communist Party bumbling and deceit allowed a local outbreak to turn into the worst global disaster in decades. The new coverup is even more brazen. China continues to falsify vital information about the epidemic on a massive scale.

The evidence comes from many sources. In a classified report to the White House, the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that China underreports both deaths and the total number of cases. The Economist magazine compared China’s reported statistics with those from other countries and found that numbers changed dramatically in response to political events, such as the firing and replacement of local officials. Using conservative figures and assumptions, a report by Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute estimates 2.9 million total cases in China, rather than the total of about 82,000 Beijing reports. If Mr. Scissors is right, the number of cases that China has concealed is greater than the total number of cases reported in the rest of the world.

These data matter. Without accurate information about the number and location of cases, including asymptomatic cases from China, it is much harder for the rest of the world to understand basic facts about the disease and its spread. And the absence of accurate information from China makes it much more difficult to know when it is safe to lift lockdowns.