Free Republic

The Underworld Bank scandal is oozing out all over. Conceived in Karachi, financed in Abu Dhabi, the conspiracy reached into the world's Western capitals and perhaps the U.N. under the protection of high-paid lobbyists and naive spooks. The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system. For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the...

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan on January 10 claimed that India is backing the Islamic State (IS) and facilitating attacks in the country. Khan’s statement came a week after 11 Shia Hazara coal miners were brutally massacred by IS affiliated militants. In the interim, the Pakistani premier labeled the mourning families as “blackmailers” for refusing to bury their dead until Khan visits them to hear their demands for justice and security. Protesting with unburied coffins has become a means of expressing outrage against the state for the Shia Hazaras, thousands of whom have been targeted and killed since the turn...

A near power grid outbreak on January 8, 2021 cut Europe’s power grid into a south-eastern and a north-western part for about an hour was described as one of the most critical near-blackout situations since the region’s last major blackout in 2006. A day after, on January 9, 2021, Pakistan and most of its 210 millions inhabitants were plunged into darkness during several hours. This was Pakistan’s second major power breakdown since May 2018, when the country remained without electricity for more than nine hours. A disturbance in the synchronised European high-voltage power grid on Friday, 8 January 2021, resulted...

Comment And Analysis Before the news summary lets consider the situaton and try to consider the way it really is tonight... President Trump ordering US flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of law enforcement including those members of law enforcement who died in connection with events at the US Capitol... Fences erected in Olympia, Washington outside the State Capitol building ahead of tomorrow's legislative session... "There will be 400-750 National Guard present as well as 200 police and 100 other deputies..." That's the scene people were told to expect at Washington's State Capitol Monday as the legislature goes...

Pakistan Hit By Nationwide Power Blackout

A failure in Pakistan's national power grid left more than 200 million people without electricity Saturday, local officials said. The widespread blackout happened just before midnight, plunging the major cities of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar into darkness, Energy Minister Omar Ayub said. He added that mobile and Internet services also were affected. Ayub said the power grid failed after high transmission lines tripped, causing the frequency in the distribution system to drop suddenly from 50 to zero. Officials said it could take several hours for power to be restored. "Systematic restoration of power will be initiated soon," representatives from...

It takes a lot to rattle Leena Ghani. As an artist turned activist helping to raise the voices of Pakistan’s women, she has often fielded abuse, threats and harassment. But when she learned, on a morning in late September, that police had charged her for criminal defamation, linked to Pakistan’s most high-profile #MeToo case, Ghani says she was shaken. “In terms of silencing and demonising people speaking out against sexual assault, it was a new low even for Pakistan,” she says. Ghani was not alone. Eight others were also named in the case, facing three years in jail for criminal...

When you meet the unbelievers, strike necks.” (Qur’an 47:4).. “Islamic State claims responsibility for attack on Pakistan’s Shi’ite Hazara minority that kills 11,” by Gul Yousafzai, Reuters, January 3, 2021 (thanks to Henry): QUETTA, Pakistan -Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on Sunday that killed 11 miners from Pakistan’s minority Shi’ite Hazaras in Baluchistan province. The attack took place early on Sunday morning in the Mach area of Bolan district around 100 kms southeast of Baluchistan’s capital Quetta, killing the miners who were in a shared residential room near the coal mine where they worked, officials said. “The throats...

The global anti-American alliance is now on full display in the Middle East, with Iran at the lynch point. The headlines have told us about the coordination of Iranian/Iraqi/Syrian/Russian/Chinese activities, and of course there is a division of labor. That was all worked out in recent weeks in a series of Iranian visits to Moscow (General Suleimani, who commands the Revolutionjary Guards’ foreign ops, twice traveled to Russia in open defiance of existing sanctions). Basically, the Russians are sending some crack troops and their favorite heavy weapons (tanks, big guns). It goes via an Iranian air bridge and thence across...

U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

...and refuse to be released until the US Congress rejects the Iran nuclear deal.

Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen has released the following statement: “We understand that Pakistani authorities are taking steps to ensure that Omar Sheikh remains in custody while the Supreme Court appeal seeking to reinstate his conviction continues. The separate judicial rulings reversing his conviction and ordering his release are an affront to terrorism victims everywhere. We remain grateful for the Pakistani government’s actions to appeal such rulings to ensure that he and his co-defendants are held accountable. If, however, those efforts do not succeed, the United States stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here....

The number of Pakistani girls being forced to convert to Islam has increased during the pandemic, human rights advocates say according to an Associated Press report. Nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities in Pakistan are are forced to convert to Islam each year, but since underage girls have been out of school due to the pandemic, predators looking to kidnap and force them to convert to Islam have taken advantage of the circumstances, according to the AP. Usually, male acquaintances and relatives looking for brides kidnap the girls, who are often from impoverished Hindu families or are Christians. Sometimes the...

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- Fourteen people including two security personnel were injured in a hand grenade attack at a security forces' vehicle in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province on Tuesday, local media reported. The vehicle of paramilitary troops Frontier Corps was passing by a busy market area in Surab city when it was attacked, the reports said, adding that the injured also included passersby who were doing shopping in the market. The wounded were shifted to a nearby hospital, but their condition is not known. The area was cordoned off by police and security forces for investigations. No group or...

... A police officer was killed and three officers were wounded in an attack by the Taliban on Monday morning on the police headquarters in the western Farah province, ... Police shot a suicide bomber whose vehicle exploded followed by insurgents opening fire on police, Mohib said, the AP reported. At least four insurgents were killed and eight were wounded. In a separate incident, two provincial revenue agency employees were fatally shot in the eastern Ghazni province, ... In another incident, a roadside bomb killed a security forces member and wounded two others including a council member, provincial council leader...

Kabul , December 29 : A suicide bomber blew himself up before reaching his target in the town of Torghundi in Afghanistan's Herat Province, local police said. According to Herat police spokesman Abdul Ahad Walizada, the man blew himself up after being identified by police. No one was injured by the blast, the police spokesman said. Meanwhile, the Herat branch of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) said the suicide bomber had wanted to plant a mine in Torghundi, but ended up detonating the explosives and killing himself before reaching the intended target.

Some 1,000 girls are forced to convert to Islam in Pakistan each year, according to a report Monday from the Associated Press (AP). The forced conversions often take place as a prelude to non-consensual marriages and frequently involve underage girls, AP stated, a practice that has only increased during the long months of coronavirus lockdowns. “Forced conversions thrive unchecked on a money-making web that involves Islamic clerics who solemnize the marriages, magistrates who legalize the unions and corrupt local police who aid the culprits by refusing to investigate or sabotaging investigations,” AP declared, citing child protection activists. These conversions and...

Evidence of Foreign Influence in 2020 Election: Nevada Secretary of State Caught Sending Voter Data List to Pakistani Firm Linked to ISI Catherine Engelbrecht is the Founder and President of True The Vote the nation’s largest voters’ rights group. The organization for over ten years now has been on the front lines of election fraud prevention by building action-oriented election integrity movements in key states, counties, and precincts. ‘True the Vote’ does not advocate for particular parties or candidates only for fair elections at all levels. In November True the Vote wrote the Nevada Secretary of State for the eligible...

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has issued notices to Google Inc and Wikipedia for "disseminating sacrilegious content" through the two platforms, it emerged on Friday. In a press release, the authority said it has been receiving complaints regarding "misleading search results associated with 'present khalifa of Islam' and an unauthentic version of the Holy Quran uploaded by the Ahmedi community on Google Play Store". Being a matter of a very serious nature, the PTA has approached Google Inc with directions to immediately remove the unlawful content, the statement said. The platform has been issued the notice under the Removal and...

Faith-Based Social Media Post Leaves Hundreds Homeless for the Holidays 12/27/2020 Washington, D.C. (International Christian Concern) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that hundreds of Pakistani Christian families from Charar, a neighborhood in Lahore, have fled their homes after a mob of Muslims threatened to set fire to their neighborhood. Local sources report that the mob threatened the Christians after a faith-based social media post was published by a local pastor. “Pastor Raja Waris published a faith-based post on Facebook on December 22, which Muslims claim hurt their religious sentiments,” Saleem Khokhar, a displaced Christian from Charar, told ICC....