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Over 90% of plastic waste comes from Asia and Africa.
BORDER SECURITY – NINE AND COUNTING: Another Illegal Alien Charged with Child Rape in Maryland Sanctuary County
In less than two months, there have been nine illegal immigrants charged with sex crimes in the Maryland sanctuary county.
In what has become a disturbingly familiar story over the past couple months, another illegal alien has been charged with rape in the sanctuary jurisdiction of Montgomery County, Md.
Wilder Hernandez-Nolasco, 21, of Silver Spring is accused of raping a six-year-old girl. He was apprehended and charged with the crime last week, and faces 155 years in prison if he is ultimately convicted of the heinous act.
Hernandez-Nolasco, an illegal immigrant who is a Honduran national, reportedly threatened his child victim that he would ground her for “100 days” if she told anyone about the vicious attack. Law enforcement claims he admitted to committing the rape, and he committed sexual assault against the child on more than one occasion.
This is at least the ninth time that there has been an illegal immigrant charged with a sex crime in the sanctuary jurisdiction of Montgomery County since July 25. The area has become a hot bed for illegal aliens to commit vicious sex crimes with law enforcement being ordered by county officials not to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Kevin Lewis of ABC 7 News has documented the many gruesome cases that have emerged as the result of the county’s liberal policies.
NEW: 37yo Emilio Carrasco-Hernandez raped a 15yo girl in a Silver Spring home they shared, cops say.
The victim ha… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Kevin Lewis (@ABC7Kevin) August 31, 2019
An executive order was issued in July to officially grant sanctuary status within the county. County Executive Mark Elrich signed the executive order that banned all county support toward enforcing federal immigration law.
“We don’t interact with ICE. We don’t contact ICE nor do we ask any of our residents in Montgomery county about their immigration status in the United States,” Acting Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones said.
“I feel pretty sure that most Montgomery county residents don’t agree with the president’s immigration policy such as it is,” Elrich said.
#StandWithICE organizer Michelle Malkin held a rally in Montgomery County last week to unite the community against partisan left-wing county officials who have put the vulnerable in extreme danger in a vain attempt to damage President Donald Trump.
The full video of her rally can be seen here:
Despite the ongoing illegal rape spree, the liberal county officials are digging in their heels and refusing to budge no matter how many innocent people are victimized.
“These individuals and organizations should be ashamed for spreading false information seeking to establish a baseless, illogical and xenophobic connection between a person’s failure to obtain legal status and their propensity to commit a sex crime,” the county officials said in an official statement, placing blame on the “White House, President Trump, Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli, local and national conservative news outlets and neo-Nazi sympathizers.”
No Wonder They’re Moving to Mexico!
1.5M subscribers
But if he had only made racists jokes against white people, he’d still have a job at SNL.
YOUTUBE BLOCKS TRUMP RALLY BROADCASTER FROM BEING ABLE TO LIVESTREAM
Platform continues to censor Right Side Broadcasting, popular for streaming Trump rallies
SEPTEMBER 16, 2019
A channel popular for broadcasting President Donald Trump’s rallies was banned from livestream capabilities Sunday night, according to the broadcaster.
Without explanation, YouTube blocked Right Side Broadcasting from going live, despite the channel, known for streaming Trump rallies, having over 380,000 subscribers and 80 million views.
“Tonight our live-streaming abilities have been revoked by youtube,” said the channel’s founder Joe Seales, in a video uploaded to Twitter. “That’s right after 300+ million views and four years plus of obeying copyright law, of obeying community guidelines, all of a sudden we can no longer livestream on YouTube. They have given us no reason why we can’t livestream. We have received no communication or correspondence whatsoever.”
The channel’s YouTube analytics also show RSBN received zero copyright violations and zero community guidelines strikes.
Seales says ultimately the ban will “cripple” his company’s revenue going into 2020, and suspects his channel has been targeted for censorship by Big Tech, especially given the channel’s demonitization and recent censorship from search results.
“We don’t want to say this, but it feels like we are being targeted by YouTube – because we have been kept out of the search results now for the last several months,” Seales says, adding, “But now not even allowing us to livestream, this is going to severely cripple our company and make it very difficult for us to survive in the lead-up to 2020.”
In follow-up posts, RSBN says a YouTube bot shut down livestream capabilities after it flagged one of their videos for containing audio which violated copyright guidelines, unbeknownst to them.
The channel hopes to have livestream capabilities restored in time to stream a Monday Trump rally in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Three Hot Topics Unmentioned at Democrat Debate: Impeachment, Abortion, and Warren’s Ancestry
By Hannah Bleau
The third Democrat debate in Houston, Texas, finally brought the top-tier candidates on the same debate stage. While there were a few squabbles over hot button issues like Medicare for All and ongoing wars, three subjects were, notably, not mentioned during the three-hour event: impeachment, abortion, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) false ancestry claims.
There were a few tense matchups between the ten candidates on the debate stage – Joe Biden (D), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), Beto O’Rourke (D), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Andrew Yang (D), and Julián Castro (D). Early on, Castro questioned Biden’s memory during a heated discussion on health care.
“Are you forgetting what you said already just two minutes ago?” Castro asked after Biden said his healthcare plan would cause Americans to lose their employee health insurance and “automatically … buy into” his plan. Minutes later, he said they would not have to.
“I mean, I can’t believe that you said two minutes ago that they had to buy in, and now, you’re saying they don’t. … You’re forgetting that,” Castro said.
Other notable moments include O’Rourke’s vowing to enact mandatory gun confiscation, Warren’s refusing to say if she would raise taxes on middle class Americans to pay for Medicare for All, and Sanders’ urging the U.S. to focus less on military expenditures and more on bringing the world “together” on climate change.
However, three hot topics were notably absent from the evening’s discussions: impeachment, abortion, and Warren’s false ancestry claims.
Impeachment: Impeachment has been a contentious topic on Capitol Hill. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee passed a resolution outlining the impeachment inquiry rules, even though the full House has yet to vote. While Democrats are more than 80 votes short of a pro-impeachment majority in the House, chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said a vote will transpire before Democrats choose a Democrat nominee to face President Trump.
“Candidates for the president are going to run on whatever they run on,” Nadler told the Washington Examiner. “By the time of the campaign, the president will or will not have been impeached.”
Despite the buzz on the Capitol and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) constantly fielding questions on her position on the committee’s move, impeachment was not mentioned during the debate.
Abortion: Women’s issues – abortion, specifically – have been a massive talking point for many of the Democrat candidates. The subject became even more prominent following the slew of states enacting pro-life laws this year, and tensions increased as Democrats repeatedly stiff-armed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
Some candidates have been under fire in recent weeks for their hardline stance on abortion. Buttigieg – who considers himself a Christian – made waves last week after suggesting that Scriptures indicate that a baby’s life does not begin until a physical first breath. Sanders also came under fire last week after CNN’s climate change town hall during which he floated population control – via worldwide abortion – as a viable solution to combat the climate change “crisis.”
Despite that, abortion was not mentioned during the three-hour event.
Warren’s ancestry: Warren’s ancestry failed to come up in the third presidential debate, as moderators and candidates refused to grill her on the subject. While Warren mentioned her past – waitressing, going to college, and becoming a special needs teacher – she failed to mention the role her false claims of Native American heritage played.
The presidential hopeful identified as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) deskbook for years and listed herself as a Native American on her Texas Bar registration card. Ultimately, a DNA test found that she had between 1/64th to 1/1,024 Native American ancestry. Even so, her possible connections were not associated with tribal nations in America. Additionally, as Breitbart News reported, Warren has significant ancestral ties to Indian fighters. Specifically, her great-great-great-grandfather, Jonathan Crawford, “served in Major William Lauderdale’s Battalion of Tennessee Volunteer Militia from November 1837 to May 1838, a six month time period during which it fought two battles in Florida against the Seminoles.”
While Warren has apologized for making “mistakes,” she has yet to elaborate on her false claims of Native American heritage, particularly on a debate stage.
BETO O’ROURKE: “HELL YES, WE’RE GONNA TAKE YOUR AR-15”
The days of Democrats saying, “Nobody wants to take your guns,” are behind us
SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
Beto O’Rourke solidified himself as the Civil War candidate after proclaiming, “we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” during Thursday night’s Democrat debate.
The amazingly stupid presidential hopeful is openly promoting a policy that would rip the country apart by sending armed government agents to seize semi-automatic rifles from law-abiding Americans.
Beto even reiterated his bold stance on Twitter, repeating, “Hell yes, we’re gonna take your AR-15.”
O’Rourke previously tried to mask his intentions by calling his plan a “mandatory government buyback,” but most people understood exactly what that means.
The Texas Democrat is using his anti-gun platform to raise money, asking people to donate money so he can ban semi-automatic rifles.
The 2020 field of Democrats is the most anti-Second Amendment group of politicians to ever run for office in America.
Gungrabbers Unite! BETO, Biden, Kamala and Klobuchar All Pledge To Go After Your 2nd Amendmenthttps://assets.infowarsmedia.com/videos/f5cb7028-ae4c-4f8c-b2d3-ab25d319bd15.mp4
SICK: Never Trumper David French Calls Drag Queen Story Hour a ‘Blessing of Liberty’
By Shane Trejo
Long-time National Review columnist David French has been one of the most vicious and dishonest Never Trumpers for many years, but he has hit a new low with an endorsement of drag queen story hour.
In a profile published in the New Yorker about the future of conservatism, French gave a full-throated endorsement for the grooming operation that has given pedophiles and other cross-dressing perverts intimate access to young children across the country.
“There’s this idea that victory is the natural state of affairs and defeat is the intolerable intrusion,” French said, demonstrating the mindset that has caused mainstream conservatism to conserve nothing throughout the decades.
“What I’ve been trying to tell people is that none of this stuff is fixed. There is not necessarily an arc to history, and you don’t have to surrender first principles to fight over stuff that you care about. The day is not lost in any way, shape, or form. And, oh, by the way, you can’t define victory as the exclusion of your enemies from the public square,” French added.
This is when French went completely off the deep end, making statements that are an affront to every principle that the founding-era revolutionaries put their lives on the line to protect.
“There are going to be Drag Queen Story Hours. They’re going to happen. And, by the way, the fact that a person can get a room in a library and hold a Drag Queen Story Hour and get people to come? That’s one of the blessings of liberty,” French said.
French has gone on many Twitter tirades in favor of drag queen story hour in recent months, making justifications for the obscene practice at every turn.
“Disney should rehire James Gunn. We’re rapidly reaching a point where we’re telling our most creative and interesting people that they can never, ever speak outside the lines,” he wrote after Gunn was fired. French eventually got his wish, and Gunn was re-hired to direct “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” despite his vile comments.
Making matters worse, French and his wife adopted a young foreign child from Ethiopia in 2010. The craven opportunist has frequently used his daughter to virtue signal and attack the President and his supporters. With his support of a glorified grooming operation for pedophiles and a man who make remarks in favor of pedophilia, one can only imagine the horrors this child is subjected to within this monster’s household.
145 Corporate Oligarchs Call for Gun Control
By Jose Nino
The New York Times reports that a group of top business executives called on the U.S. Senate to pass gun control.
“Doing nothing about America’s gun violence crisis is simply unacceptable and it is time to stand with the American public on gun safety,” wrote the CEOs from 145 companies, which included Twitter, Uber and Bloomberg LP.
This letter was shared with the Times.
The corporate big wigs are now demanding that the Senate pass the political establishment’s favorite gun control schemes such as universal background checks and “red flag” laws.
“The Senate must follow the House’s lead by passing bipartisan legislation that would update the background checks law, helping to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, in an effort to save lives,” the CEOs wrote.
They added,”Background checks on all gun sales are a common-sense solution with overwhelming public support and are a critical step toward stemming the gun violence epidemic in this country.”
After three mass shootings in Austin, the pressure has been dialed up on Congress to pass gun control legislation. Corporate America has played a major role in these calls for gun control during the last few years.
This letter is one of the most notable developments in Corporate America’s campaign against guns. It’s also a sign of the increased politicization of all facets of society.
Some polls claims that gun control is no longer a divisive issue. A Washington Post–ABC News poll that was unveiled earlier this week found that 89 percent of respondents, which includes 83 percent of Republicans, support universal background checks.
However, poll numbers and even the questions that they deal with do not always accurately portray popular sentiment and also do not show how enthusiastic people are about a certain policy proposal. So, it’s not inevitable that gun control will pass.
Earlier this year, the House passed a universal background check bill but it is now stagnating in the Republican-controlled Senate.
In the wake of recent shootings, stores like Wal-Mart and Kroger have discontinued the sale of firearms and changed open carry policies at their stores.
Their letter can be read here
Dear Members of the Senate :
Our hearts are with the victims, their families and loved ones and all those affected by the tragic
shootings ElPaso and West Texas , and Dayton, Ohio . These families becamemembers of a
club that no onewants to join : the millions of Americans whose lives have been forever altered
by gun violence.
Every day , 100 Americans are shot and killed andhundredsmore are wounded . These are more
than mass shootings; in recentweeks, gun violence has devastated Chicago, Canoga Park,
NewportNews, Gilroy and Brooklyn, among others. This is a public health crisis that demands
urgent action
Asleaders of some of America smost respected companies and those with significant business
interests in theUnited States, weare writing to youbecause wehave a responsibility and
obligation to stand up for the safety ofour employees , customers and all Americans in the
communitiesweserve across the country . Doing nothing America ‘ s gun violence crisis is
simply unacceptable and it is time to stand with the American public on gun safety .
Gun violence in America is not inevitable ;it’s preventable . There are steps Congress can , and
must,take to prevent and reduce gun violence .Weneed our lawmakers to support common
sense gun laws that could prevent tragedies like these .
That s why we urge the Senate to stand with theAmerican public and take action on gun
safety by passing a bill to require background checks on all gun sales and a strong Red
Flag law thatwould allow courts to issue life-saving extremerisk protection orders.
Background checks and Extreme Risk laws(also referred to as “Red Flaglaws” ) are proven to
save lives. Since Congress established the background check system 25 years ago ,background
checkshave blocked more than 3. 5 million gun sales to prohibited purchasers, including to
convicted felons, domestic abusers, and people who have been involuntarily committed .
However, in the decades since, the law requiring background checks on gun sales has notbeen
updated to reflecthow people buy guns today. The Senate must follow the House s lead by
passingbipartisan legislation that would update the background checks law , helping to keep guns
outofthe hands of people who shouldn ‘ t have them , in an effort to save lives. Background
checks on all gun sales are a common -sense solution with overwhelming public support and are a
critical step toward stemming the gun violence epidemic in this country .
Perpetrators ofmass shootings , school shootings, and hate crimes often display warning signs
before committing violent acts. Additionally, peoplewho end their lifewith a gun also often
show signs that they are in crisis before they act Interventionsin states with ExtremeRisk laws
have already prevented potential tragedies . Expanding Extreme Risk laws to enable families and
law enforcement nationwide to intervene when someone is at serious risk of hurting themselves
or others is critical to preventing future tragedies.
These proposals are common-sense , bipartisan and widely supported by the American public . It
is time for the Senate to takeaction.
Sincerely
Organizations with morethan 500 employees :
Brian Chesky, Co-Founder, Head of Community and CEO , Airbnb
KeithMestrich, Presidentand CEO , Amalgamated Bank
John Connaughton and Jonathan Lavine, Co-Managing Partners, and Josh Bekenstein and
Steve Pagliuca, Co -Chairmen, Bain Capital
Ethan Brown, Co-Founder and CEO , Beyond Meat
Peter T. Grauer, Chairman , Bloomberg LP
Ric Clark , Chairman, Brookfield Property Group
Fritz Lanman, CEO , ClassPass
Roger Lynch, CEO , CondéNast
Ken Lin, Founder and CEO , Credit Karma
Edward Stack , CEO, DICK ‘S SportingGoods
Tony Xu, Co -Founder and CEO , DoorDash
Doug Baker, Chairman and CEO , Ecolab
Richard Edelman, President and CEO, Edelman
Julia Hartz, Co-Founder and CEO , Eventbrite
Art Peck, CEO ,Gap Inc.
Eddy Lu, CEO GoatGroup
Ben Lerer, Co -Founder and CEO, Group NineMedia
Yannick Bolloré, CEO, Havas Group
BillKoenigsberg, President, CEO and Founder, HorizonMedia
Patrick O . Brown,MD, PhD, Founder and CEO , Impossible Foods
MichaelRoth, Chairman and CEO , Interpublic
Rob Frohwein, Co-Founder and CEO , and Kathryn Petralia, Co-Founder and President,
Kabbage Inc. and Drum Technologies
Chip Bergh, President and CEO , LeviStrauss & Co.
Logan Green, Co-Founder and CEO, and John Zimmer, Co -Founder and President, Lyft
Dev Ittycheria, Presidentand CEO , MongoDB, Inc.
HowardMarks, Co-Chairman, Oaktree CapitalManagement
Todd McKinnon, Co -Founder and CEO, Okta
John Wren , Chairman and CEO , Omnicom Group
Ben Silbermann, Co- Founder and CEO, Pinterest
Bastian Lehmann, Co-Founder & CEO , Postmates
Hamid R . Moghadam , Chairman and CEO , Prologis
Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO , Publicis Groupe
Steve Huffman, CEO, Reddit
Richard Fain , CEO , RoyalCaribbean Cruises Ltd.
ScottRechler, Chairman and CEO , RXR Realty
Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO , Shutterstock , .
Jack Dorsey, CEO, Square and Twitter
Anthony Casalena, Founder and CEO, Squarespace
Zander Lurie, CEO, SurveyMonkey
AriannaHuffington, Founder and CEO , Thrive Global
Blake Mycoskie, Founder and Chief Shoe Giver, and Jim Alling, CEO , TOMS
Jeff Lawson, Co-Founderand CEO Twilio
DaraKhosrowshahi, CEO , Uber
Mark Read CEO, WPP
JeremyStoppelman, Co-Founder and CEO, Yelp
Organizations with fewer than 500 employees:
Kevin P . Ryan , Founder and CEO , AlleyCorp
Travis Truett, Co-Founder and CEO , Ambition
John W . Rogers, Jr., Founder , Chairman and Co -CEO , and Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO &
President, Ariel Investments , LLC
Mike Steib , CEO , Artsy
Sean Knapp, Co-Founder and CEO , Ascend
Andrei Cherny , Co -Founder and CEO , Aspiration
Abdur Chowdhury , CEO , Aura
Fahim M . Aziz , Founder and CEO , Backpack
Abrams, Chairman and Co-CEO, and Katie McGrath , Co-CEO Bad Robot
Ari Paparo , CEO , BeeswaxIO Corporation
Ryan Block , Co -Founder, Begin
John Borthwick , Founder and CEO , Betaworks
Raphael Crawford -Marks, Co -Founder and CEO , Bonusly
Darren Lachtman , Co-Founder , Brat
Trevor McFedries , CEO , Brud
Sameer Shariff, Co -Founder , Cambly
Analisa Goodin , Founder and CEO, Catch & Release , Inc.
Andrew Feldman , Founder and CEO , Cerebras Systems
George Favvas, CEO , Circle Medical
Alex MacCaw , CEO , Clearbit
Tyler Bosmeny , CEO , Clever
MattMartin , Co-Founder and CEO , Clockwise
Othman Laraki, Co -Founder and CEO Color Genomics
Jager McConnell, CEO , Crunchbase , Inc.
Apu Gupta , Co-Founder and CEO , Curalate , Inc .
David Oates , Co-Founder and CEO, Curtsy
Brian Ree , Founder and CEO , DAILYLOOK
Saurabh Ladha, CEO , Doxel, Inc.
Andy Coravos , Co -Founder and CEO , Elektra Labs
Laurene Powell Jobs, President, Emerson Collective
Pradeep Elankumaran , Co-Founder & CEO Farmstead
Desiree Gruber , CEO , Full Picture
Jared Hecht, Founder and CEO , Fundera
JudeGomila , Founder and CEO , Golden
Rick Nucci, Co-Founder and CEO , Guru
Kara Goldin , Founder and CEO , Hint, Inc.
Jeff Sellinger, Co -Founder and CEO , HipDot
Prerna Gupta , CEO , Hooked
Cyrus Massoumi,Managing Partner, humbition
Kristin Savilia , CEO , JOOR
Pierre Valade , CEO , Jumbo Privacy
William Martino, Founder and CEO , Kadena
Jake Perlman -Garr, CEO , Kanga
Warren Shaeffer, Co-Founder and CEO , Knowable
Jack Altman , CEO Lattice
Aaron N . Block , Co-Founder and Managing Director,MetaProp .
Afton Vechery , Co-Founder and CEO ,Modern Fertility
Dan Parham , Founder and CEO , and Tee Parham , Founder and CTO Neighborland
Shafqat Islam , CEO , NewsCred
Sarah Friar, CEO , Nextdoor
Athan Stephanopoulos , President, NowThis
Varsha Rao, CEO , Nurx
William E . Oberndorf, Chairman , Oberndorf Enterprises
Steven Rosenblatt , Co-Founder andGeneral Partner, Oceans
Nick Huzar, Co-Founder and CEO , OfferUp
James Segil , Co -Founder and President, Openpath
Jordan Husney , CEO , Parabol
Doug Aley, CEO , Paravision
John Milinovich , CEO , Plato Design
Rajat Suri, CEO , Presto
Christopher Gavigan , Founder and CEO , Prima
Adam Regelmann , Founder and COO , Quartzy
Nate Maslak , Co-Founder and CEO , andNate Fox, Co-Founder and CTO , Ribbon Health
Zachariah Reitano, Co-Founder and CEO , Ro
Gary Beasley , Co-Founder and CEO , Roofstock
Stephen Ehikian , Co -Founder and CEO , Ruist
Brian Schechter, CEO , SelfMade
Olga Vidisheva , Founder and CEO , Shoptiques Inc.
Dan Doctoroff , CEO , Sidewalk Labs
Jason Tan, CEO , Sift
Matt Cooper , CEO , Skillshare
Grant Jordan , CEO , SkySafe
Josh Guttman , Co- Founder and CEO and Florent Peyre, Co-Founder and President , Small Door
Michael Carvin , Co Founder and CEO SmartAsset
Aaron King, Founder and CEO , Snapdocs , Inc.
Neil Capel, CEO , Solve. io
Ben Hindman , Co-Founder and CEO , Splash
Evan Beard , Founder and CEO Standard Bots
Stanlee R . Gatti, Founder, Stanlee R . Gatti Designs
Bradford Oberwager, CEO , Sundia Corporation
Ross Feinstein , CEO , Sunlight Health
Paul Budnitz , CEO , Superplastic
Ron Conway , Founder , SV Angel
HeidiZak, Co-Founder and Co-CEO , and David Spector, Co-Founder and Co- CEO ThirdLove
Yashar Nejati, CEO , thisopenspace inc .
Joshua Kushner , Founder and Managing Partner, Thrive Capital
Chris Wang, CEO , ThunderCore Inc.
Corbett Kull, CEO , Tillable
Meghan Jewitt, CEO , Uniform Teeth
Nicholas Goldner , Co- Founder and CEO , and Christopher Bulow , Co-Founder and COO
Viosera Therapeutics
Ken Chong, CEO Virtual Kitchen Co
Irv Remedios, CEO , Voxer
Oliver Cameron , Co-Founder and CEO Voyage
Chase Adam , Co-Founder and CEO , and Grace Garey , Co-Founder and COO , Watsi
Liz Wessel , Co-Founder and CEO , WayUp
NeilWaller, CEO , Whalar
Bismarck Lepe, CEO , Wizeline
Dennis R . Mortensen , Founder and CEO , x .ai, inc.
Geoff Ralston, President, Y Combinator
Shan -Lyn Ma, Co -Founder and CEO Zola
THE CIRCUS IS BACK IN TOWN! 🤡
There clapping just because he spoke Spanish like yaaaayyyyy more examples of getting rid American culture! Dems hate america
I would gladly take Yang’s money and then vote Trump in 2020.
Australian Couple Travels Through Asia To ‘Break Stigma’ Of Countries Getting A ‘Bad Rap.’ They’re Reportedly In Jail In Iran.
By Hank Berrien
An Australian couple traveling through Asia who wanted to “break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad wrap [sic] in the media,” reportedly found out the hard way that some countries may well deserve the reputation they have: the couple was reportedly arrested 10 weeks ago in Iran.
Jolie King, who has dual U.K. and Australian nationality, and Mark Firkin, have over 20,000 followers on Instagram and YouTube, where they document their travels. According to the BBC, the couple was traveling through Asia to Great Britain, starting in 2017. The pair had a drone they used to take footage of the dozen countries through which they were passing.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that drone landed them behind bars in Iran 10 weeks ago. “The pair has been held as prisoners for about 10 weeks after being arrested for reportedly flying a drone without a permit,” ABC reports.
The BBC reports that the couple is “believed to be being held in Tehran’s Evin prison.”
Another British-Australian woman, reportedly a University of Cambridge-educated scholar, has been jailed for 10 years in Iran, according to the BBC.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said she spoke to the Iranian government about all three people last week. “Since they were detained, the Australian Government has been pressing the Iranian Government for their release,” said Payne. “I have communicated with my Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Zarif, many times about these cases, including through face-to-face face meetings. We met as recently as last week.”
“Our biggest motivation … is to hopefully inspire anyone wanting to travel, and also try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad wrap [sic] in the media,” King and Firkin had written about their travels.
In July, Australia announced that it would join the U.S. and the U.K. as they monitored the Strait of Hormuz. Reported Iranian provocations involving other nations’ ships have been rampant near the Strait in recent months.
The BBC reported that U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab met the Iranian ambassador and “raised serious concerns about the number of dual national citizens detained by Iran and their conditions of detention,” according to the Foreign Office.
The story of King and Firkin bears similarities to another story reported by The Daily Wire in August 2018 in which a “young American couple who took a year-long bike trip around the world, believing that evil was a make-believe concept, took a fatal route in Tajikistan near the Afghan border, where alleged ISIS terrorists stabbed them to death. Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, 29, quit their jobs last year in order to make their trip.”
Austin had written:
You watch the news and you read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse.
I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own—it’s easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that’s quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.
In June 2019, the man who was the alleged ringleader in the attack on Austin and Geohegan was asked if he interacted with the tourists at the gas station they stopped at just prior to the attack, Hussein Abdusamadov replied,“Yes. I talked to them. I asked them where they were from. I asked them what nationalities they were and they told me they were Americans … They said they were Americans and laughed.” He concluded, “Americans had to be killed.”
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